Nova Daily - 25 April 2025
Hi!
In yesterday's blog I talked about George, a boy in one of my old training groups who cut his chess-career short because he failed to impress in one tournament and couldn't shake the negative associations that he now had with chess. Had he continued to play, he might have become a seriously strong player. We'll never know.
To grossly generalise, one thing that losing does is that it confronts people with the exact lacks in their current skill set. Chess rating isn't a linear depiction of a person's playing-strength: with most players, some skills are significantly better developed than others. For example, my own recent endeavours have shown me that tactical awareness is a major issue in my play. As such I need to work on that. I have to do more tactical exercises.
Is it fun to do a lot of puzzles? Let's get to the second point of Iain Abernethy's "10 things the martial arts should have taught you about life" podcast episode.
2. Growth is uncomfortable, but the rewards are worth it.
Losing isn't fun, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Games that I lost or botched reveal very clearly in which areas my play is not up to par. It's confronting to look at these losses, and therefore doubly important. I have to come to terms with the mistakes that I make, confront them, and work the obstacles away.
Training is something I most often enjoy when it's over.
- Iain Abernethy
It will often take a lot of investment before you're going to see the results of your work. You can't even begin to think about composing a symphony without first understanding some very basic and important elements about music theory (scales, chord progressions, cadences, voice leading), composition form (the first movement is typically in sonata form, the first and second theme are to contrast, and how to work and combine the themes in the development section to give the composition body), and the instrumentation (tonal range, specific peculiarities, timbres, orchestration etc). All of these aspects require effort to master. It's very, very hard work.
Every hour that you spend on your craft takes one hour off your work-load. Every journey starts with one single step. It takes a long time, and it takes a lot of effort and dedication. But the hard work will eventually pay off. To quote Iain Abernethy once more:
Training is rarely fun. It's HARD work. However, the sense of achievement and the results of training ARE fun.
- Iain Abernethy
It's quite hard to confront myself with the mistakes that I make, because I have an emotional memory with those moments that I made my mistakes. But if I want to become better, I have to. The discomfort I feel in doing so is not something that should discourage me, or prevent me from facing my demons. Hard as it is, it's a "This way!" sign. You can compare this to music: tensions sometimes exist in the form of dissonant harmonies. You can hear this in the transition between the 3rd and 4th movement in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: the anticipation building up between 24:15 and 24:53 makes you yearn for the symphony's Grande Finale.
The greater the obstacles you defy, the greater the reward at the end. This goes for classical composers as well as martial artists, bloggers, and grandmasters. And you. And me.
The game
As part of my work on my abysmal tactics, I've worked through 79 double attacks and the first 35 exercises of the Woodpecker method. I got one mistake in each set so far. That's not perfect, but I'll take it in stride. Better luck next time.
I had a nice position from the start. I thought that I had a winning combination but my opponent defended well and I decided to take the draw because 1) my opponent was much higher rated than I was and 2) I couldn't find the win. I don't know if I was winning or not, but at least I didn't lose and I didn't let my opponent escape.
My thoughts:
I'll have a day off tomorrow, so I'll work on the rest of the analysis of this and yesterday's games.
