After studying a chess book. . .

. . . I played much worse than I had before studying.

As someone who's fairly new to reading chess books, and to taking chess seriously, I noticed something yesterday playing otb with a friend:

I play horribly when I try to incorporate things I've recently learned from chess books into my game.

I know it's not the chess books at fault, but rather me applying ideas that I don't yet fully understand. I've decided, then, to play my game, without thought to what I've been studying, and hope that, as I continue reading, the ideas slowly make their way into my games unforced.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I haven't experienced this, though I can't admit to having actially finished a book yet.

What book did you read, and perhaps more importantly, what time control were you playing at when you felt you played worse?

I had almost finished Znosko-Borovsky's "How Not To Play Chess." A solid chunk of the (brief) book is about positional play and planning. I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough yet to make solid plans. I was caught making tactical error after error. More apparent tactical errors than I usually comit.

Perhaps the main lesson here is one that is often addressed to beginners: tactics are most important in beginners games! Znosko-Borovsky does say that position leads to tactics, but my understanding of postitional play lead to nothing, and I was overly concerned with position. 

We weren't using a clock, playing casually at Starbucks, but they were pretty quick games. Probably around 20 minutes. 

I'm now making my way through "Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur" and Chernev and Reinfeld's "Winning Chess."

OK. I was just making sure that you weren't playing some fast control where the time taken thinking about principles was causing you problems.

Realistically, using a book should never make your chess worse unless it's a book full of inaccurate information or you are applying the principles too religiously.

I think that a tactics book is definitely what you need to be reading now, from what you've said.

lol, I knew it   I read the title and thought "...I played worse"

Yeah, it takes time.  As you study try to play a few games too to keep in the habit.  You can also break up the book study with some tactical puzzles to help remind you that a lot of energy during a game is spent there.

Keep reviewing the material though, I'd give it at least a few weeks.

I once took a break from games for 2 months to read Soltis's pawn structure book twice.  (Too fast for a lot of it to stick, but helped my nearly non-existent knowledge).  Ideas from that book weren't fully incorporated into my thinking for about a year (not that I played worse for a year, like I said give it some time).

If you do not have a certain amount of tactical ability solidly ingrained into your playing, it's probable after reading a book on positional play you thought too much about what was presented in the book and forgot to thoroughly check the position for tactics. 

Since any planning you make will utimately sink or swim do to its tactical underpinnings (i.e. you will have to use tactics to execute your plans), it stands to reason that "positional play" and planning should be a secondary condition until you're adept with some basic tactics. Additionally, since your plan must fit your opportunities on the board, without an eye for yours and your opponents tactical weaknesses, it's unlikely that you'll even come up with a plan that really fits the position.

I remember once getting a friend a copy of "chess fundamentals" by Capablanca for christmas, in hopes of raising the quality of play of my opponents. He read it in a night and I played him the next day. It was horrible. He virtually ignored what I was doing and made his moves in a way vaguely based on the principals he had read about. Meanwhile a built up a large mating attack and won easily. I wonder if you might not be suffering from the same problem.

Not to say that strategy and planning are bad or unuseful, just that they wont get you anywhere if you don't know how find the correct goal or how to accomplish it once you've found it.

Chesstempo.com is a good, free website where you can practice tactics. The other thing that's helped me is to go over master games in the openings that I'd like to play. Click through lots of them fairly quickly, and if you can find annotated ones, spend some time with those. That should give you a concrete idea of the plans and possibilities that might appear in your games.

I can remember stuff like that happening to me.  Especially when it was confusing, complicated stuff (like Nimzovich).

@pyrefly

might I suggest you check out "Novice Nook" by Dan Heisman? He is an American master strength player who has been teaching for a good decade now. He offers up lots of handy hints on how to improve one's game.

One thing he never fails to stress is the need to ask if the move one is making is safe. By safe: does the opponent have some immediate checks, captures or threats available? He also stresses the need to work through all the tactical themes, such as forks, in puzzle books again and again until they become as ingrained and obvious as 1+1=2. Books by Lev Alburt on tactics offer up 300 puzzles with the themes; he suggests solving the puzzles and then going back and doing them again.

Heisman has also offered up a list of what he thinks are useful books to read for players in the different rating ranges. The Chernev and Reinfeld books are certainly books he recommends.

Heisman has written some books but you can access all his (free!) articles on the chesscafe.com website. Also, he welcomes feedback via the chesscafe website.

I think confusion is quite normal after being presented with new material. It probably owes a lot to not really being "in" with the new material. It takes some experience and lots of study to fully appreciate new material, I believe.

You're not alone! Exactly the same thing happened to me after I started seriously working through a book. I got so caught up in trying to set up these deep positional ideas that I kept walking into a pawn storm or an obvious tactic. After a while though, I reached a new rating high as I started to understand how to apply a few new ideas while still keeping track of the game I was playing :-)

I really don't see the problem - the book was about "how not to play chess"

- and from what you've described you  have accomplished this and taken

it to the next level. I recommend you find a book on "how to play chess better".

@beardogjones

"How Not to Play Chess" is a wonderful little book. The title was of course tongue in cheek because the great Eugene offered up examples of bad chess decisions/thought as a means to educate the reader in what not to do and what he should do to play better chess. Highly recommended.

My guess is that beardog was being rather cheeky himself...

It is a rather common experience.  Max Euwe actually warned about it in his book on the middle game.  On another thread I gave this example.  At about the age of 3 a toddler's grammar suddenly gets worse.  They become aware of grammar rules and start to overgeneralize them. It is all part of the learning process.   In my case, I became aware of thematic pawn breaks and would play them immediately.  I finally learned that it was a matter of timing and that playing the break  prematurely (before  you weren't ready to exploit the break) could lead to a disaster.

If you read a book and try to apply it in your game is not the same as PLAYING OUT A BOOK.

Even if you read dozens of book, is not the same as playing out a book.

Also when you are playing someone and you want to try out what you have learned, that is impossible if the position that is needed to apply what you have learned isn't present.

Wait . .  Wait . . . then maybe the situation will appear and you recognize it and then you can use what you have learned.

If you have learned an opening but the opponent changes something then that stops it as far as you know a variation.

The same in tactics and you want to sac a bishop to obtain a goal, if it doesn't work then it was not the time or the position that it would work is present.

If you are working on an end game and you can get to a position that  you can apply what you learned, Eureka. 

Wait be patient and the position or variation might just show up. One thing isn't the answer to every thing.

IMHO

I consider myself a beginner, and have been reading a bit as well. And like you have had a hard time seeing results.

My current read is "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Soltis.  The title aside, I think it a rather good book.  His main theme is that you can not study chess the way you study school topics such as Math or History or such, i.e. read about an idea then turn around and conciously apply it. Beyond learning the basics of the game, he claims that what you need to do, to achieve real progress is improve your intuition with regard to pattern recognition.  This can only be done by practice.  What he recommends you do (playing folks rated slightly above you, work tatical puzzles, collect positional patterns, etc) is often not that different from advice from other authors, but I find his perspective on why you do such things, and what you can expect from it, to be helpful.