How to Suck Less at Chess: Embrace the Suck

Let's face it.  You suck at chess.  I suck at chess.  We all suck at chess.  Leela told me she thought that even Magnus sucks at chess.  The only difference between two players is the magnitude of suck.  And, why wouldn't we?  In a given position, there are 20 sucky moves and only one best move.

As we toil away at trying to improve, maybe the key is simply sucking less.  Trying to improve at just one thing is sometimes like pushing Sisyphus’ rock.  It's sometimes very hard to find anything in this game that you can claim you’re good at, but certainly it's very easy to find things that you suck at.

I suck at chess, and I've struggled hard to not suck, which makes me imminently qualified to write this blog.  There are many lessons I've learned and many lessons I wish I knew years ago.  I was never a prodigy, although as a youngster I thought I was.

Of course, now that I'm older I realize that even though I could beat all my friends easily back then, it did not mean I was any good.  I never had played in any sanctioned tournaments, I never knew about the USCF, there was no internet and there was really no strong competition.  I spent lots of time reading chess books at the local library, but I was likely never stronger than 1100.  And I quit playing before high school.

This means I'm pretty close to being in the same boat as the majority of my readers.  I will say that I'm blessed with an analytical mind, and an ability to find and remember odd details even while missing obvious ones.  However, I don't believe I have any truly innate chess abilities.

This blog will feature a series of articles focusing on adult improvement topics that I don't normally see elsewhere.  You won't find detailed analysis of games here, simply because you can find those elsewhere by people that are way more qualified.  You won't find lessons about how to properly exploit the weak squares around the king because chess.com already does a fantastic job of providing chess lessons.

What you will find are topics that should relate to non-prodigy adults trying to improve their game.  This means that you struggling to get to get “good”, can tell me the difference between the French and the English, and likely have a collection of chess books that you've never read.

Regardless, even if you don't fit that mold, maybe you're here for other reasons, like trolling or snickering at the thoughts of us lower rated players.  That's okay too, because this is the first topic of this blog series.  What does it mean to suck at chess?

It's not like sucking at Uno or Monopoly.  I don't think anybody cares if you lose a game of Uno or Monopoly.  You can always blame bad cards, bad dice, or bad karma.  Chess, on the other hand, is a game of perfect information with no luck involved.  So if you suck at chess you can't blame anybody but yourself.  Chess ability is also thought to be related to intelligence level.  So if you suck at chess, this must mean that stupider than the player you just lost to.  Of course, that Elo rating pasted next to your username is a constant reminder of your level of suckiness.

I was having a conversation with a non-chessplayer about Magnus Carlsen recounting how he could recall a random chess position buried within a library of random chess books.  He could tell you the players, the year the game was played and the outcome.  The non-chessplayer remarked how the world would have changed if Magnus was a nuclear physicist instead.

I pondered that.  Certainly the memory and quick mind helps, and clearly our top physicists have been shown to have genius IQs.  Is that true for top chessplayers?

Garry Kasparov, arguably one of the top three players of all time, scored a 135 on an IQ test.  Certainly above average, but not genius.  Hikaru Nakamura also scored a 102 on an IQ test.  This is barely above average.  And if course, Bobby Fischer is a genius at chess, not so much at life.  What gives?

Although we will never know for sure, it probably means that Kasparov was born to play chess, Hikaru was born to play chess, Fischer was born to play chess, Magnus was born to play chess; and if they all went to MIT, it’s likely they would have struggled to get their time in front of the Hadron Collider.

So, sucking at chess simply means that you weren't one of the .0001% that was born to play this game.  It doesn't mean that you suck at other things or that you suck in general.

There's a military saying:  "Embrace the Suck."  Owning the fact that you suck at chess is the first step.  The second step is asking yourself if sucking less is important.  If it is, great.  If it isn't, that's great too, because chess is something we do when we're done paying the bills.  It may not be important to be super-duper awesome at it.  It's more important that it be fun.

Sucking at chess has nothing to do with any other aspect of your life.  It only means that you suck at chess just like everyone else.  Join the club.