Knowledge v Skill: The Adult Beginner Diary - Year 2: Month 2

Once upon a time a man was reading Yuri Averbach’s Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge. The man's son was sick and he hadn’t slept much the previous night. His alarm went off at the usual time and he got up yawning and rubbing his eyes. This was not normal at all. Normally the man woke up and hurried downstairs, excited to study chess. That was what he did every morning. But this morning was different. The man was sleepy. He put on his slippers, went downstairs, made his coffee, took his endgame book off the shelf, and sat down. This was also not normal. The man normally started with tactics. But today he was very tired and was doing everything a bit differently without realising it. The ending in his book was bishop vs. bishop + pawn. He opened the book and started reading. After a few sips of coffee the man began to frown as he slowly noticed some things were wrong. Where are my chess board and pieces, he thought? Strange. I always read my endgame book with my board and pieces. But it didn't matter. The man could see all the moves just fine in his head. It was remarkably clear. He had never been able to do that before. What a strange morning, thought the man.

And there ends the world’s worst fairytale. I’ll stay away from fiction from now on. But I will say what happened that morning did feel a bit magical. And it was only the beginning.

The Strangest Thing

Fast forward about a week. I had spent some free time in the evening watching a video on the Fianchetto Variation of the King’s Indian Defence. I went to bed and lay there with my eyes closed thinking about certain move orders and set ups and I noticed I could see the board. I saw my knight on f3, I could see it was a light square. I could see the two central dark squares it attacked on d4 and e5. Everything was suddenly clear. It was so easy to move the pieces about on my imaginary board.

I noticed it again after a fellow Chesspunk sent me an amazing game of theirs that ended in a beautiful checkmating attack. I could replay the sequence over and over again when I was out walking the dog. I could really see it and think, hmm if there was a knight on f6 then this wouldn’t work.

I think the weirdest thing about this for me was how suddenly this came on. I used to close my eyes and think: I have a knight on f3, what does it attack? I could work it out almost mathematically (two up is the fifth rank, one across is the e-file so okay e5). And so on. Then I could try and see it, but it used to all be a blur. Now it was just there in my head, like a painting. I don’t know if I really did wake up one day and it just clicked or if it was more gradual and I just didn’t notice.

I’m also not really sure what to attribute this to. I guess it has been my three daily 5-minute calculation exercises where I really break my brain moving the pieces about in my head. But even then I am looking at a board in front of me. It could also be the last step of my threefold method for going over missed tactics where I close my eyes and try to imagine the sequence. Maybe I have just looked at a chess board for long enough that I can now hold a mental picture of it. I am not sure. Whatever the cause, I am pretty happy. If the variations are short, I have started skipping the use of a board for my endgame book reading and really trying to push myself to visualise. I start to get lost around 4-5 turns in, so if I see the variations are generally much longer than that for an ending I’ll get the board out. I am going to work on stretching my brain to see more moves now that I know the limitations of my newfound superpower.

Fear, Change and Backwards Progress

I have gained a lot of new chess knowledge from the two books I have read in my first two months of endgame study. I am still very much in the phase of having new chess understanding and having zero skill to actually apply it. But I am trying. And it is really really hard. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly there is fear. Secondly your brain tries to trick you. Let’s start by examining reason two: sometimes it doesn’t make any logical sense to apply the things you learn, because your new knowledge (temporarily) makes you a lot worse at chess.

As hard as it is, I am doing (or trying to do) the things I have learnt, even though I am often doing them wrong. My results are actually worse than they were before I opened either of these books. And that is hard to take. All that effort, only to get worse at chess! But only temporarily. I am proud of myself for keeping on trying to apply the things I have learnt. Because that is the hard way. It would be much easier to go back to my comfort zone and forget it all. It is pretty difficult to keep doing something differently and lose, than to just do what you always did and lose less. But I have to force myself to hold a long-term mindset if I want to see meaningful improvement. If that means activating my king at the wrong time and getting checkmated in my next 100 games, then so be it. Eventually I’ll nail the timing and win a lot more games than I would have if I had never started trying to apply my new ‘activate the king in the endgame’ knowledge.

So good for me, right? Why am I writing about this? It occurred to me that I might not be the only one who has experienced this reluctance. I know I have actively gone against my own new knowledge in the past. I am sure I can’t be the only one to have failed to apply what I have learnt. We might actually lose more when we try to apply our new knowledge, so there is a risk of giving it up as bad advice or thinking the change isn't working. Whether we believe in our new knowledge or not, perhaps our brains start to dismiss it and we return to doing what we have always done, because it was comfortable and we lost less.

But we have to try and drag ourselves through this period that comes immediately after learning something new. If you believe in what you have learnt, then you owe it to yourself to actually try it. And to keep trying it. Again and again. Even when you want to give up. That probably means doing it really badly at first. It means having bad results. It might even mean a stagnation or drop in your rating. But you have to believe it’s worth it.

This is not the first time I have experienced a dip in performance after gaining new chess knowledge, but I am starting to learn that it is a difficult but necessary part of the chess learning process. Maybe some people will never come out the other end of this difficult period holding their new chess knowledge and possessing the new skills to implement it, because they gave it up - consciously or unconsciously. Maybe they set it aside as bad advice and just went back to doing what they always did, because it was safe and in the short term, it was actually better for their results and rating to dismiss it and play like they always had. Sidenote: I think this might be why a lot of people chronically change their openings.

Now to the fear part. I say this from a difficult but honest assessment of myself: I have noticed that I seem to apply the knowledge I gain reluctantly. It terrifies me to try the new things I have learnt in a rated game. It occurred to me that although I have been able to try out my new knowledge despite my fear, that the same fear might just completely stop others from implementing what they have learnt.

I have forced myself to actually do what I have learnt even when it feels unnatural. But I’ve done it kicking and screaming (or sweating and hyperventilating) anyway. Practising what I have learnt is essential, even though it makes me feel like I might have a heart attack somewhere between move 50 and 70. It's essential, but hard. Centralising or (as my brain likes to think of it) exposing my king in anticipation of an endgame might be great advice, but everything in my soul is telling me I am making a horrible error. Do not let fear stop you from trying out your new knowledge. Feel the fear and do it anyway. You will grow and gain from it in the long term.

Endgame Skill - Because Knowledge Is Not Enough

All of this made me realise something else about the way I am studying. As I thought about knowledge and the psychological difficulties associated with applying it in a game, I began to greatly value other aspects of the application part of knowledge acquisition. I began to realise that just reading through theoretical endings and playing through the moves on a board wasn’t satisfactorily increasing my ability to actually win or draw these endings. This was because I was gathering knowledge, but not developing any skill.

If there was such enormous value in actually practising the more strategic parts of the endgame knowledge I had taken from my theory books in my games, then surely there was value in practising the theory, too? Yet almost none of my games in the last two months have come down to a theoretical ending. It occurred to me that whilst I was amassing knowledge by the truckload, I wasn’t getting the chance to apply it. And if the endings I was learning weren’t coming up in my games, then I needed a different way to develop that knowledge as a skill.

So how did I add a skill element to my learning? First, I asked my partner if she would get into chess, take a few lessons with Karsten Muller, read all the endgame theory books on my list, and then spend every evening for the next year playing out theoretical endings with me over candle lit dinners and bottles of expensive wine. But she said we couldn’t afford expensive wine. So instead I began inputting each position from my book into a Lichess study and playing it out against Stockfish.

I started this process with Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge. Once I have entered the position I hit ‘practice against the computer’ before looking at any of the book text. I’ll then sit in the starting position and think. I consider the position. I think about my plan, and I calculate. Once I have come up with what I think is the right idea to win or draw the ending, I play it out against Stockfish. If I fail to get the intended result in an ending, I play it from the other side and try to learn from how Stockfish defeats or holds a draw against me. Then I try again. Only after doing this, do I read through the book text for the position. After that I consolidate by entering the moves and variations from the book into the Lichess study along with any notes I have. This exercise has been a real game changer.

Stockfish doesn’t always play the textbook moves so you are forced to think on your own and not just memorise the variations. I suddenly realised the Lucena Position isn’t such a walk in the park when your opponent doesn’t do what Jeremy and Yuri told you they would do.

For example, I found myself defending a king and 7th rank bishop’s pawn vs. queen ending against Stockfish and by move 46 all was fine and well. Check check check. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Then, Stockfish moved their king. I was still on autopilot and was a bit jarred by the move. But I didn't think much about it. And then boom. The white queen was in front of my pawn. And I lost. What happened was Stockfish had given up and allowed me to promote my pawn. I just didn’t notice, because I had spent the last 45 moves getting out of check or setting the stalemate trap. By missing it, I lost. But it occurred to me that a human opponent, worn down and on autopilot, might just make exactly the same mistake. So I am learning unexpected tricks and the non-book moves that might challenge my opponent’s understanding of the ending. I highly recommend this training exercise. I don’t think I have ever been as engaged in the chess learning process as I have been with this training method. Without it, I might be gaining chess knowledge, but I wouldn’t have any chess skill to back it up. The line between the two is quite clear for me here.

I am a bit disappointed that I didn’t train this way with Silman’s book, but I figure I can go back and input the positions from that book later and get a more active learning experience with that book too. That’s just the way it is. It takes time to know how to study best and I am going to be absorbing the information from the next books as efficiently as I can.

In fact I’m already a good bit into my third endgame theory book (Just The Facts! Winning Endgame Knowledge in One Volume). With this book I am following the now refined training process which I will summarise below:

- Input the position from the book to a Lichess Study.
- Consider the position, decide on a plan, calculate out lines.
- Play out the position against Stockfish. Repeat from the defending side if incorrect.
- Read the book text for the position and input the variations and any notes into the study.
- Go to the next position and repeat until the hour is up.

I am rounding up my session by revising the endings I input from Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge. I have split the 100ish endings from that book into 3-5 endings to revise per day over a one month period. Each day covers a theme, for example the three rook vs. bishop positions in the book (endings 18,19 and 20) have been grouped together. I play all the endings in a single theme out against Stockfish and only read the text for an ending if I fail to get the intended result. By doing this each month, I am basically going to ‘woodpeck’ the book. I chose this book to cycle through specifically because I feel like it covers a very small amount of basic but important endings. It is such a good book. Cannot recommend it enough.

Finally, I skipped quite a lot of endgame study days in the first half of this month. I didn’t really get into a rhythm. That was mostly because the hour I had set aside was in the evening before my game. There were two issues with this. Firstly, I am always pretty nervous/excited to play my game in the evening and so I was often half distracted during my study and would sometimes cut it short because I wanted to play my game. Secondly, that time slot just isn’t as secure in my life as my morning hour. I didn’t miss a single morning study session this month. But the evening slot I lost a few times to social events or random things cropping up that meant getting home too late for studying or playing.

So I am moving my endgame study to the morning. I’ll tackle it first thing and do my tactics later. My endgame study requires a single uninterrupted hour to be productive, whereas (as you will know if you read my last article) the tactics hour is broken into chunks that don’t necessarily need to be done consecutively, so I have been able to split that up and consistently get a full hour in over the course of the day.

Evening Game Changes

Lichess used to be the place I went when I thought I had enough time for a rapid game but I wasn’t sure. It was a place to play and resign halfway through a game, because my son woke up from his nap. It was a place to go when I thought 1.b3 might be an opening I would enjoy. It was an experimental playground where winning and losing didn’t matter.

And now all that has changed. I wanted to start playing slow classical chess. But 45/45 (the only currently available standard time control on chess.com greater than G30) is too long a time control for me to manage. Those games can last 4-5 hours and I need to be in bed on time if I want to get up and do my morning endgame study and tactics (or, you know, maintain a relationship with my partner and son). Plus my rapid rating on chess.com is for rapid games, I don’t know how I could track my progress if I had a single rating from a mix of both rapid and classical games. Lichess has a separate rating for classical and rapid time controls, so I have started playing over there for now and have been really enjoying playing 30+20 classical games. Whilst the time control isn’t classical according to FIDE, it is at least longer than what I normally play and affords me time to think a lot more deeply about a position. I’m not able to do this every evening. The rule I have set myself is that if it’s before 9pm I play 30+20, if it’s after I go for a 15+10. This way I should be able to play a longer game a couple of times a week.

I have pretty much exclusively played rapid games up until now and I cannot believe how much more I am enjoying playing chess at a classical time control. I can really stop and think about the position as a whole. I can calculate properly like I do in my daily calculation exercises that I force myself to spend five minutes on. I can sip tea and say hmmm out loud. I can frown and stroke my moustache. I can look quizzically at my opponent's last move, stand up and pace the room. It’s brilliant honestly. It makes me feel like the guy in the black and white photograph from my favourite chess book - the guy with the big beard and the monocle, holding a fat cigar and an air of intellectualism.

I have also decided to bin G30 as a time control. I don’t want to play without an increment ever again, especially now that my focus is on endgames. So my rapid games will now be played at the 15+10 time control exclusively and I will only play them if I absolutely don’t have time for a 30+20 game in the evening. This used to feel too short and is the reason I started playing G30 in the first place, but that is no longer true for me.

The Chesspunks’ Classical League

I wanted to start a league for a few reasons. I thought it would be fun and I wanted a reward system for playing classical games (hence the Lichess switch to have a classical rating there). But on Lichess I am playing 30+20 and I wanted something longer (although funnily enough the vote on time control for the league ended up being 30+20 anyway). Regardless, it is going to be great to play these league games against my fellow Chesspunks. There’s an element of something being on the line. A bit more butterflies in the stomach. And it is a great chance to analyse the game afterwards too when you're playing someone from the community. We plan on playing one game per month with the league running for just over a year. I’m yet to play my first game, but I am really looking forward to it. It will be the first time I have had a chance to prepare for an opponent too, which is such a unique experience.

Conclusion

I think the major takeaway for me this month was understanding the difference between knowledge and skill and why both are essential for improvement. This was most noticeable for me when it came to the pawnless rook and queen endgame. In fact, it’s from there that all these changes to my endgame study arose. It is easy to read about this complex ending, play through the moves and think, yeah I got this. Turns out you don’t. It’s hard. And you're not going to ‘get it’ even if you read the chapter a thousand times and play through the moves a thousand times. Well maybe you are, but I am not. I am learning that for me it is not enough. I don’t learn that way. I have to practise on my own. That means me vs. Stockfish. It means getting it wrong, having Stockfish play the other side and show me the way. It means reading the book again. Trying again on my own against Stockfish, and so on. This exercise has become sacred to my endgame theory learning process. It’s for the same reason I play a rapid game every evening too. It is the application part of my learning, the skill part of my knowledge acquisition. We can’t improve if we only gain knowledge and don’t practise implementing it and we can’t improve if we have no new knowledge to implement.

The Future of This Blog

I am really enjoying writing this blog and, as you may have noticed, I really enjoy learning about, adapting and designing training programs for myself. So I am going to start a new monthly series about training methods in chess. The series will be called: Training Method of the Month. The plan is to showcase a study philosophy or method, talk about who it is for, what it entails and the possible benefits of adopting it for yourself. I’ll also be interviewing a prominent practitioner or advocate of the method for the article as well.

If there is any training method you know of that you would like me to cover, please let me know by sending me a message on Twitter. Remember you can follow me on my Lichess page or chess.com page to get a notification when I post the first article in that series.

Additionally, I set up a Patreon page if anyone wants to support me financially in the writing of this blog. I would really appreciate that, even if just to show my partner that something good can come from my chess obsession.

And that’s a wrap on this month. Next month I'll be a quarter of the way through the year, so I hope to post some stats on my progress and continue to spew out my consciousness onto these pages about anything else that happens along the way.