Chess Steps is making me wonder whether it's worth it to try to ever reach low club player level

Adult learner here, who's played at a raw beginner level for decades of my life, on and off.

For those unaware, the Chess Steps system is an extremely thorough Dutch system of teaching chess, through thousands of curated problems and exercises dealing with all stages of the game. I recently picked up the program version of it, Chess Tutor. Which is excellent. No cause for complaint with the software or teaching system. (The problem, as it turns out, was the user.)

Seemed perfect to finally get serious about the game -- at least serious enough that I could eventually, after years of work, reach the level of a low/average club player. I'd already gone through almost all of the Dr. Wolf exercises, and the first book of Polgar's "Learn Chess The Right Way," plus "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" and an older elementary checkmates book with 400 problems. Which I completed without any issues. Plus occasional games against the Kilobyte's Gambit and other chess programs. So I assumed I'd at least be able to learn some of the basics.

As I worked my way through the first step, though (designed for 800-and-below children who barely know how to play), I found by about 14% through the course that the Chess vision drills and exercises got quite hard for me.

Finally, I reached an exercise that I'm pretty sure is impossible for me. Not for other people; for me. Eight pawns on each side. No king. Race to pawn promotion. I've occasionally managed to win, but those "wins" were essentially by random accident. I have no idea how to repeat them. Worse still, I checked online, and there are explanations for how to solve the problem by people who seem to find it easy, but I can't understand why those solutions work, and they are of no help. Been at this for hours now. The computer opponent can accurately calculate out how to force me into zugzwang, and I'll tell you, I'm nowhere close to being able to calculate that out. Not if my life depended on it. I don't think I will ever be anywhere close to being able to do that.

So my worry is this: If there's this much of a mental gap between me and the sub-800 kids who are taught on this program, where I can't even understand how to get past this elementary problem, or calculate deeply enough to solve it, that is designed for complete beginners, should I really ever be expecting to get decent at this game?

That is not a sub-800 level problem.

No worries. I'm not claiming to be 800 myself on Chess.com. I'm saying that I solved a bunch of problems oriented toward 800 players, and that I play with friends and bots occasionally.

I guess you raise a good point, though. For all I know, I play at the equivalent of 100 ELO or something. Which would explain why I can't solve this problem, but would also raise its own set of questions about whether I should be aspiring to ever get to a competent level.

If you keep chipping away, those pawn puzzles that seem alien now will, a year or two from now, feel obvious. That’s how almost every improving player describes the journey.

👍

Whether my inability to solve this problem suggests that I lack the capacity to ever get beyond a beginner skill level.

Because if so, it might not be worth continuing.