Lies about improving

 You cannot sit and “study” chess and then apply it in over-the-board play

This is the introduction of the problem of using the term "study" as it applies to chess.  Reading, gaining knowledge, the "what"s of something is generally what we associate with "studying."  Doing that kind of studying does not translate into improved playing skill by and large.  You may know what all the tactical motifs are in general terms, but without practicing them in simple problems, odds are you won't find them in the more complex positions that arise in games.  In this instance, practice (i.e. working through the reasoning of problems) builds patterns to help find similar problems during games.  

"We try to study chess the way we were told to study school subjects." - Andrew Soltis

I completely agree with Mr. Soltis. Studying techniques from school do not work when applied to chess. You cannot sit and “study” chess and then apply it in over-the-board play like you do in school because chess is too particular, not conforming to general principles enough; in this way, it is like the stupid i-before-e rule you learned in grammar school – more words follow the exception than the rule.

For example, you practice dozens of similarly themed math problems after learning a technique for solving them. However, the same is not true for chess. You may think that tactics are that way, but tactics and math problems are only similar in that they teach you pattern recognition. Tactics still require you to know hundreds to thousands of patterns and, most importantly, find them in the jumbled mess that is your game. In math, you are handed the problem and only have to find a way to the solution. Tactics are the solution to which you must find the problem.

Therefore, studying is the problem with chess. And it should, but often does not, become apparent after someone : "At your level/rating, don't study the opening.  It's all about tactics.  Study tactics and just play the opening according to general principles."  This is fairly similar to my other favorite mantra "higher" rated players like to dole out as though it is solid gold chess wisdom: "Study the endgame first." If you follow these pieces of advice, like I have for my whole chess-playing life, you'll see your rating and, more importantly, your results plummet. You will reach the point where you see that “there's so much [to learn and apply] that if you aren't enjoying yourself, you will become discouraged, frustrated or bored. You will study less and less. Or you'll give up entirely” (Soltis 9). That is where I find myself because I did not dismantle these lies soon enough.

"At your level/rating" is just an arrogant jab designed to dress you down, make you feel inferior, and "end the argument."  Most people use this phrase to remind you that they are higher rated, assuming that their higher rating means they are more knowledgeable and, therefore, sage.  It also has the nice ancillary benefit of setting them up to be your “teacher” or “coach,” for a nominal fee of course, later when you, like me, are so far behind everyone else that learning how to study in order to study in order to play and practice that hiring someone to speed the process along appears to be the only solution. The only people I can reasonably see using this phrase and having the authority to dispense advice are internationally titled players.  But even they will say “study” this, that, or the other thing without being aware of the procedural import of that word.

"Study" is a procedural activity. Advice like "Don't study the opening," "Study tactics," and "Study the endgame first" all suffer from the same delusion: procedure without process.  Most pundits tell you to study this or not to study that, but they will never tell you how to study.  They must think that "studying" is immutable process that is always already known. It's intuitively obvious.

In order to “study” tactics or the endgame, you have to be taught the standard motifs (i.e. the theory). This is why “study” the endgame is always spouted; it's the easiest to make improvement there. Anyone with a decent amount of reasoning should be able to read the first four chapters of Silman's Complete Endgame Course and be able to play simple endgames. How to Beat Your Dad at Chess will show you many standard mating patterns. Yet, most, if not all, of your games are lost long before the endgame. So, you repeat the process again with tactics, learning the basic patterns from some books. These things are necessary, but, as I said before, they are only solution to which you have to find the problem.

Eventually, like me, your endgame knowledge ceases being productive because you do not reach endgames. So you either buy a middlegame book, like I did, or you try to tackle the opening to improve. I began “studying” the middlegame because almost every higher rated player told me, directly or indirectly by where the “guided” me to “study,” that the game should be learned backwards. By the time I worked my way back to the opening, I realized that backwards training teaches the mind to have the solutions to problems that it has to find. Consequently, moves are the focus and what the mind immediately begins to run through when a backwards-trained player looks at a chessboard. This is what Jeremy Silman gripes about in The Amateur's Mind when students would consider moves and not “analyze” (another procedural word) the position. Thankfully Mr. Silman provides criteria, his imbalances, in order to describe the position; it is still a matter of practicing in order to learn how to evaluate properly which imbalances are move valuable in given positions.

Opening “study” is always a fight between you, who knows you need to have opening preparation so that you reach a playable game, and higher higher-rated pundits will keep chanting “Don't study the opening” (I question their motives and the split in their tongue because keeping you ignorant of openings while they “study” openings keeps them ahead of you). “Study,” while still keeping some of its procedural meaning, starts to mean “memorize.” Yes, memorizing all your openings to move 20+ for each branch is ineffective because you do not know why particular moves are made or why they are made in a particular order; you would be a highly trained ape until an opponent played a non-book move. However, memorizing the first few moves, up until the first major branching (i.e. where your opponent can choose between a few different plans) is necessary to ensure that you have a playable game. Generally, it is easy to see why the moves leading up to the branch are played (i.e. control of the center, attacking the center, pinning a defender, disruptive check, etc.). If not, a quick glance in a book like Fundamental Chess Openings, or any book that describes almost every move, should be sufficient to rectify any shortcomings.

“Studying” the opening is difficult because no one really gives the procedure. The best procedural answer I have found is: “'study' the middlegame themes, endgames, tactics, and pawn structures of those respective openings.” This statement is predicated on having learned the game backwards. It is also something that most opening books do not do well enough. Everyman's Starting Out series tries but does not explain deeply enough. Conversely, books like John Nunn's “move by move” books are explicit enough, but probably do not cover all the openings you want to play.

Sadly, “studying” the opening is a daunting task that is almost always an arms race. There are so many openings to prepare for as White that you will always be encountering an opening that you have not yet had time to “study.” Worse, you spend time “studying” most to all of your openings only to forget one because you face it once every six months or thereabout.

This is the state of affairs in which many, including me, find themselves, feeling exactly as Mr. Soltis described. Who likes trying to improve, by attempting to strengthen whatever weaknesses he or she has, only to fail at almost every outing?

Soltis, Andrew. Studying Chess Made Easy. London: Batsford Chess, 2010.

 O_O um...yeah...im definetely not reading all that

and my name is Forrest Gump.

One chess game can be reduced to a series of chess puzzles, to be solved, one at a time. Chess is a puzzle game. Nothing more. Does this help?