Part II: Why is my kid so much better than me?

After a half an hour of watching 10-year-old phenoms regularly finding six move tactics in bullet games, you quickly realize that not only is chess hard, but maybe chess, like Instagram, Facebook, e-mail, or, depressingly, the internet, is for the younger generation.  Reality is setting in that perhaps you are destined to a life of pickleball at the old-folks home.

It’s no secret that children can learn so much faster than adults.  There is a great deal of literature that suggest that children’s brains are higher in neuroplasticity.  Neuroplasticity refers to the brains ability to alter or form new neuro pathways.  Apparently, this is really important when it comes to learning new skills, and literature suggests that the older you get, the more neuroplasticity you lose.

The easy answer is to resign to the fact that loss of mental facility is a natural part of aging.  We get older and our bodies break down, our brain break down; we go through life using and abusing our brain cells not realizing what that does to our future chess ambitions.  Optimistically, I personally do not believe it’s that simple.  While all of that may be true, I also believe in the adage concerning age and wisdom.  Or is it wisdom and age?  Or is it aging and fine wine?  I can’t remember.

I think the bigger picture lies in the difference between how people learn at different ages.  For example, learning chess as an adult and learning it as a kid is akin to learning a language.  Kids can pick up a language far quicker than adults and end up speaking it with more fluency.  Unless you played extensively as a child, as an adult, you will always end up “speaking chess” with an accent. Does that mean that you will never beat your kid at this game?  Not necessarily.  There are ways to reduce that accent, but it does require some work. I believe this “chess accent” manifests itself in simple mistakes regarding board awareness, e.g., hanging pieces.

Check out this example:

Here I play Bxc6??.  

You’ll notice I’m a 1500 level player at this time on chess.com.  I will also mention that it’s not like I blitzed out this move, nor was this sort of mistake an extreme outlier during this time period.  I have other examples like this:

Here I play Ng5??.

 At 1500, I know what the rules of chess are.  I know how queens move and how they capture other pieces.  So, knowledge is not the problem.   What about tactics?  If I recall correctly, I was well over 2500 in my tactics on chess.com, so I know tactical patterns and how to calculate.

So, how does this happen and more importantly, how is this fixed?

Before getting into specifics, allow me to digress into a theoretical hypothesis.  In chess, like in any sports, there are base skills that need to be learned.  For basketball, one needs to know how to dribble, shoot, and pass the ball.  These skills must not just be learned, but be a part of the player who can execute these skills without even thinking.  Even more fundamentally, the player needs to be able to run, jump and move laterally.  In chess, those skills are broken down as follows:

Cognitive skills are what I consider “talent.”  Some people have this in spades, others, not so much.  Although, the adage, “talent cannot be coached,” may be true at the professional levels, at our mundane, patzer level, lack of talent is usually not the reason we “suck at chess.”  Talent can still be developed and enhanced.  We can all get stronger, faster and better.  I believe we all have a certain potential based on the amount of “talent” we possess, but reaching that full potential is generally beyond any practical goal we may set for ourselves.

One of the takeaways is that learning chess at a young age definitely has its advantages.  For example, I don’t believe Board Awareness is generally a problem with chess players learning at a very young age.  They “speak chess” fluently, without an accent, whereas adults speak chess as a second language.

So at an early stage, adult improvement comes by cultivating the lower level functioning chess skills.  That is pattern recognition and board awareness.  If you’re a beginner and learning all sorts of openings and middlegame strategies, you are focusing on the “plan, organize, and strategize” skill.  You will progress very slowly until you fix all the lower-level skills.  Programming your subconscious is much easier as a child than it is as an adult.

I believe that as a child, what you learn shapes how you think. As an adult, how you think shapes how you learn. I think the reason is because, as an adult, your way of thinking, i.e., your subconscious, is formed and will not change without a significant reason.  Furthermore, conscious reasoning becomes integral to how you absorb knowledge.

I can imagine this internal conversation going on:

• Me:  “I suck at chess. You must change.”
• Subconscious:  “Why? I’m perfect.”
• Me:  “Perfect? How so?”
• SC:  “You’re still alive aren’t you?”

So, when you’re younger, your subconscious does not know what will kill you. Thus, it’s far more accepting of new ideas and is willing to engage in risky behavior so long it is not convinced that said behavior is indeed risky, or until said behavior actually kills you.  As you get older, your subconscious becomes resistant to change because your very existence is proof that it is working just fine, and any sort of change is considered a risk and a fight against evolutionary designs that were meant to keep you alive.

Our next chapter will focus on just how to deal with this stubborn adult subconscious.

This article is part 2 in a 6-part series about playing and learning chess at 50+.

If you enjoyed these articles, please leave me a nice comment.  It will encourage me to add more content.  Thanks for reading.