2023-11-14

The Reason People Don't Get Better At Chess According to Ben Finegold

As a chess YouTuber, Ben Finegold is not my favorite.  His presentation is just not as interesting.  He seems rather casual, less informative, and cocky.  


However, I like the point he makes here, which is that people suck at chess because they blunder and don't learn from their mistakes. 

He is only partially correct.  People try to learn from their mistakes, but they do so by just playing.  It is repeated trial and error.  People don't retain information this way, although if a person played a great deal then they would make progress up to a point, which I think would be around the 1700-1800 level.  It is difficult to get better than this without some serious study.

So the way I learn from my mistakes is that I analyze as many of my games as I have time for, and I have a system for reviewing my past mistakes.  This takes much time, and maybe some people would feel that the time would be better spent just playing.

I strongly believe that studying tactics is critical.  There were specific tactics that I studied that took me from 1800 to 1900, and then a different group of tactics that took me from 1900 to 2000.  I studied tactics 30 minutes a day almost without fail, which meant that I spent hundreds of hours studying tactics.  However, this is something I haven't had time for lately, so my most recent goal is to study tactics for 20 minutes per day.

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