Why chess is so hard to study

As a lifelong student of various things--literature, chess, piano, college courses, and more--I've often thought about why it is so hard to study to get better at chess.

Now, of course it's easy to study chess; just solve tactical problems until the cows come home, master essential endings, get a thorough working knowledge of some book openings and opening principles, read over and analyze your own and master games, and more. But so often doing those things seems to result in only marginal improvement over the board.

The reason, as I see it, has several facets. First, you're never just objectively better. You're always playing an opponent, whether human or computer, and your success must be relative--always dependent on the performance of your adversary. A weightlifter, for instance, trains to lift a certain weight, masters the lift, and can do it in every competition. If he loses, it's only because his adversary could lift a heavier weight going in. He's never surprised by some six year old with a secret lifting technique, nor does he ever lose because he made a subtle oversight and thought he was lifting 200 pounds when it was actually 300.

Second, situations arise in every game that you've never studied for and that you've never seen. You didn't prepare for them because they've just never come up. Then, no matter how much or what you've studied, you're on your own again and have to "create" your way through at the board. This never happens to, say, pianists. If playing a Chopin etude, no matter how complicated, the pianist is never faced with a few fantastically intricate measures he didn't know were in the piece, forcing him to read and play them at sight as soon as he comes across them.

Of course I'm not saying that chess is impossible to study for. That's not the title of the thread. Just that it's so HARD to study to get good because of all those unforseen and unprepared for elements that get in our way. It's three steps forward and two steps back--always. But we do get there eventually.

To me, chess is very much like music. 

In music one can study theory to a very great depth. Every musician has met at least one or two people who have just encyclopedic knowledge of theory and musicology. They know their stuff backwards and forwards. But they really would be of zero use to a gigging band because they just aren't that good at playing their instrument. 

And every musician has met the opposite. Some guy who just does his thing but knows nothing about theory or musicology but who can outplay just about anyone around. 

Chess is very similar. While playing chess and knowing chess information (be it opening theory or tactical skills) are intimately related, as are music theory and performance, knowing when to do what is something you can't learn through study. Rather, you have to learn it by doing it.

That's was Botvinnik's great insight when he said that chess could not be taught, it can only be learned.

 

Well i look at chess as a life long dedication,i started playing a year ago and i'm aleready the best player in my school,play tournaments with my chess club,and keep climbing up the ladder.my rating here suck's because i barely play here and when i do im tired or not focused.Anyway in my opinion you should try finding someone older and more expirienced to teach you some things.that's how i got a lot better in a small window of time.the other thing you need is expirience,more games to play,there are people i played with that don't know basic theory or anything but still keep beating me.Good luck to you.
p.s as for the "things yo unever studied for" That's the beauty of chess.it's diversity.The limitless number of variations. 

I am an old timer. I think the players today are very lucky as they have a wealth of study tools not available back in my  prime and before.

To give an example from another game--I remember traveling an hour just to play in a 12 board duplicate bridge tournament with an inferior partner and the then travel home.

Today in the last 4 hours I played in 5 such duplicate bridge tournaments with a robot partner.  Same in chess, I can play at any time day or night and also hundreds of games to look at and so may other things such as ches engines to play against etc.

Another reason is that many people have difficulties studying and practising the basics of chess, especially people who have picked up the game as adults (it's similar to learning a language)

Chess is counter- intuitive. Our intuitive nature operates with our brains observing objects, people and overt behavior. In chess you have to train your brain to look at the squares that our pawns and pieces have control over. And, how those imaginary powers form walls and barriers of restraint and blockades. while simultaneously out of the corner of our brains being aware of where those imaginary walls and barriers emanate from (the squares on which our pawns and pieces are located). But, the job is only half done. You

Have to do the same thing for your opponent's pawns and pieces.

It takes a while to train your brain to do that automatically. Because your neurons have firing sequences thAt have become entrenched into deep ruts. It is difficult and takes a lot of repetition to get the neurons into the right firing sequence. It is one of the reasons for the old saying, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks".

Chess is both an art and a science. You can teach someone to make an oil painting as a science, you can teach perspective, the classification of colors, how to arrange light and shadows and so forth but you cannot teach him how to create a masterpiece.

To the two posters who equated chess with music, I totally agree. True, one can learn the Chopin etude, but never in isolation. There's fingering technique, and scales, and timing and rhythm and emphasis and note-reading etc. etc. And knowing everything about music theory and all the techniques of playing the piano doesn't at all mean that you can play music anyone wants to hear.

Maybe that's why there seems to be such a connection between chess and music. After all, Tartakower said that "Chess, like music, like love, has the power to make men happy." He didn't compare it to math or stamp collecting; he compared it to music.

Wasn't it Tarrasch who said that ?

It may have been Tarrasch. I don't have any resources in front of me at the moment, and was too lazy to "google" it. Anyway, it was one of those old masters whose name starts with a "T." (Were there any others whose name starts with a "T")?

Well, if you claim Tartakower said something, you're gonna be right 90% of the time.

But this is one of the other 10%, I think.

With regard to using music as an analogue to chess, I hear you, but for me I can play viola, piano, button accordion, harmonica (especially blues accompaniment), and guitar in order to ‘make music’ -- not like a professional musician or even accomplished student, but rather as a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. However, playing music in the way that I do isn’t a binary proposition, i.e., I either win or lose, but rather is subject to all sorts of assessments (fair, good, pleasant, expressive, rudimentary, interesting, abstract, minimalist, meditative, etc).

In chess, however, you either win or lose -- there is no ‘sound of one hand clapping’. Playing chess is almost totally cerebral, unlike playing a musical instrument where ‘muscle memory’, interpretative taste and and things of that nature come into play (pun not intended). I’ve been playing chess very sporadically for years but can’t seem to make any more progress than would Bobo the baboon because I would suspect I’m not so ‘left brain’. I know there are those who would argue that music is very much a left brain activity (analytical, information processed in a linear manner, etc), and I would agree with them. However, one must still recognize that although this aspect is ‘sufficient’, it is not ‘neccessary’ to be capable, or we could even say ‘successful’ at playing a musical instrument.

Last night I was playing chess with a six year old grandson who doesn’t really ‘play chess’, but knows how most of the pieces move.  I taught him how to do a ‘scholar’s mate’ and he mastered it immediately. He had some initial  difficulty in knowing how a knight moves, but (no exaggeration) with only ONE demonstration he cleared board after board of an iPad knight exercises and problems app. This kid is very ‘nerdy’ like his mother, and from what I can tell I don’t think music  is of any great interest to him although I am sure he could master learning the notes and other rote aspects without any difficulty.

My only hope is that although I am mostly a right brain type of person I’m still not a total ‘baboon’. So, with A LOT of chess playing and reading and studying the various types of literature I am sure I will improve to some degree.  Will I ever play above, say 1400 or so?  Mmm.....I don’t think so. I’m just not ‘smart’ enough *in this way*. But if I can stick with it and continue to remain fascinated with the game, then it will be interesting to see what happens.

Just my thoughts.

I also think there are two other reasons besides the difficulty of it being a theory + practice combination.

Let's go with the music analogy again...

First, when you play a piece of music poorly, you and all your listeners will immediately know it's no good.  As you make mistakes in chess it's not immediately obvious that they're there, and as a beginner with no innate knowledge of the game, you may even start practicing these mistakes over and over until you've convinced yourself they're not mistakes at all.  (The problem is compounded if your opponents are also weak, and your mistakes end up winning games!)

The second point goes along with the first.  In music you start at the beginning, you'd learn note reading and fingering and keeping rhythm.  (If you tried to learn at random on your own you'd quickly know it's not working very well).  In chess though, if you keep playing beginners your "at random" study will being to pay off simply because you have better board awareness. 

How many class players who are 10 year veterans of the game, who haven't improved in years, have read at minimum: 1 entire endgame book, 1 entire middlegame book, 1 entire tactic puzzle book, and 1 opening book?  Not just skimmed, but actually read it, took notes, referenced back to it after games, etc.  I suspect close to zero.  Most casual players who lament their rating rut just play for fun, and are more or less allergic to structured study.

And I think we see this happening when you observe which players make the most improvement.  If you play mainly in OTB swiss tournaments you're going to get non-trivial opposition (you're going to lose games against good players) and see what's working and not working.  Then you go over those games with your coach to know which parts of your game "sounded" bad :p

Otherwise it's like you said... but worse.  It's not studying music theory in isolation, it's a person who was born deaf studying (at random) and playing music.

MSteen - about learning that Chopin Etude - were you referring to this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA5GH3fOWvQ&list=SP0AB28F67DD083FF4&index=8

Obviously you need to develop some board visualization as well. You can't just memorize every type of position. 

"Chess is easy to learn, fun to play, difficult to master" GM Larry Evans

A better way to say what I was thinking was there is a poor feedback loop for the learner.  In other endeavors you usually know where you've fallen short.  But the very nature of chess is that bad moves are not obvious, therefore study is necessarily more difficult / less productive.

This may be why one of my favorite learning methods (not necessarily good but I enjoy it) is to load up an engine, put it in analysis mode where it's showing a list of its top 3 or 5 choices and go to a position I'm unsure about.  I don't look at the engine's numbers until I've come to my own conclusions.  If we agree, then I move forward 1 move and continue the exercise.  If we disagree I explore why it thinks my move wasn't best and why its suggested move solves that problem.  I really like the instant feedback.

@ waffllemaster

“put it in analysis mode where it's showing a list of its top 3 or 5 choices and go to a position I'm unsure about”

Can you do this on chess.com, and if so, can you give a walk-through description during this first few moves as to how this is done along with some anecdotal comments?

Only if you have the time. Thanks!

Not to beat a dead horse here, but my main difficulty with chess is the inherent emotional component -- the fact that chess is competitive certainly for me separates it from other art forms: I'm good at piano, because "being good" at paino is relative to one's own ability. I'm terrible at paino compared to Chopin, but that's only when the comparison is made. The main difference is that such a comparison, through the very nature of chess, is always being made between you and an opponent. And with competition comes emotion. My absolute worst problem is not that I cannot visualize the board or think ahead, but rather that I let my emotions sweep me into the next move, rather than taking that ever-important pause that we should EVERY SINGLE TIME. :)

That's your problem Meshneiarin.  Willhelm Steinitz did away with emotion based Chess where one saught after a big move finish for its own sake, even if the position didn't call for it.  Even Morphy wasn't immune sometimes.  Starting with Steinitz Chess had a logical, scientific approach.  The torch was then carried by Tarrasch, Reti, Nimzowitsch, Lipnitsky, Botvinnik, and currently Watson (advances since Nimzowitsch), Dvoretsky, and Aagard are carrying the torch improving upon prior theoreticians.