THE BUY-IN!

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Hopefully, you have read my award-winning article, The Secrets of Real Chess (if you haven't, you should read it now).

One of the keys to playing real chess is the realization that yes, you actually have to take the time on each move to figure out:

  1. which of all your and your opponent's pieces are safe and not safe,
  2. what your various candidate moves are,
  3. what your opponent is likely to do against each, and
  4. whether you can meet all of your opponent's threats next move if you make a particular move.
For most players rated over 1500 USCF, I think they understand that they should try to do this.  For those aspiring to play at a higher level, there is the hope that some magic "secret" that can be learned will get them to a higher level, not doing this work each and every move.  Luckily for serious chessplayers, this work is fun.  But for many players, this work is daunting and they are just not willing to buy in.  That is a major reason why some players stay weaker.

That is not to say that everyone who does the work gets good.  But take the following actual experience:

At the 1999 National Chess Congress in Philadelphia, I was leaning against a pole in the middle of the giant playing room.  To my left were all the sections for Under-1600 through Open, and to my right were all the lower sections: Under-1400 down to Under-600.  The time limit for all sections was 40/2, so the first session was supposed to last four hours.  At the time about two hours had elapsed.  To my left, it seemed like every game was still being played - certainly over 90% of the boards were still occupied.  To my right it looked like a war zone.  There were games scattered here and there, but for the most part it was empty.  I had to chuckle.  This one picture was worth a thousand words.  Even though many of the players to my left were below age 12 and many to my right were adults, the better players were taking their time: when they saw a good move, they looked for a better one.  To my right, the players had "made a move and see what happens", often with disastrous, and early game-ending, effects.

So the moral is clear: it is not how old you are or how long you have been playing chess: if you do the work each and every move, you have a chance to be a good player.  If not, you have no chance.

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