Wijk, 2022 review, and my own training
Welcome to the 67 new subscribers who have joined this week. The newsletter now goes out to 2,729 chess fans. Also a special thanks to those who support Say Chess as paid subscribers!
I hope you have entered 2023 in good spirits. Hopefully, the year will be full of good and interesting chess events. One of my favorite chess tournaments, Wijk aan Zee or Tata Steel, starts on the 13th of January. Classical chess had a really slow run at the end of 2022, at least I have missed the slowness and deep thoughts connected with this kind of tournament.
The rate of play at Wijk is 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from the first move.
This will seem incredibly slow after the Rapid & Blitz World Championship. Chess.com is already marketing Rapid & Blitz as the new gold standard in chess. Just have a look:
I’m sure Chess.com will be happy to facilitate this shift to the faster pace of online play, which aligns with their overall business (there is no classical rating category on chess.com).
Personally, I want to go in the other direction. I want to have deeper thoughts, think longer, be better at focusing, and have fewer distractions in 2023.
While classical chess has its flaws in regard to marketing we have to remember that it was during the 61st Wijk aan Zee tournament that Kasparov played his immortal game against Topalov.
Will we throw all this away for instant action and no time for deep thoughts during chess broadcasts? Are we too afraid classical chess is boring?
The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a new study from Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain.1
Do we really want to get shorter and shorter attention spans, or should we try to hold on to the core values of classical chess?
Okay, I will stop ranting, and focus on my own chess training now..
In 2023 I want to work on expanding my ability to focus and push back on the fast pace of the online world. I can feel that social media and everything else digital are fighting for my attention and consistently shortening the time period I’m able to concentrate.
Yesterday I started a new practice with a book, the Red Tactic Ladder book, a chess clock, and my notebook. I set aside 30 minutes for 6 puzzles. It felt good and challenging to focus for 30 minutes straight without distractions.
I have to credit GM Noël Studer’s new online course on how to study chess for making me do this. Nöel asked me to try out his course and it has already made me rethink a couple of things in my approach to chess training.
I hope that I can have Noël join me for a podcast interview, when I have made my way through the whole course.
Another issue I want to deal with in 2023 is my own focus on rating. It can be fun when it goes up, but when it goes down it can be soo demotivating that you almost completely stop playing, which in turn makes things even worse.
My rapid rating peaked in December 2021 at 2378! But in 2022 it went down…and all the way down to 2219. This has hurt my motivation a bit.
My chess Substack colleague,
, recently published a good piece on working on play.“Reviewing your games with a sense of curiosity, you can teach yourself to have more fun playing chess. If you’re in the habit of tilting or chasing rating points, this will probably be very difficult initially. Your brain has gotten very used to going down that path. But the good news is that the more you practice reacting differently, the easier it will get, as you start to form new habits.” 2
So, in 2023, I will work actively on staying focused on the process, getting quality training time done, and not obsessing about my day-to-day rating.
To stay accountable and track my training I will continue to use and share my weekly training goals in the Say Chess Training Group. If you want to join sign up here — details will come in the confirmation mail:
I also plan to make a comeback to OTB classical chess in 2023, if my family life allows it. But it should be possible with some careful planning.
2022 on the Say Chess and book publishing
2022 was a great year for my newsletter and it seems like I have found a good platform for sharing my passion for chess. Thank you for reading and listening! Also a special thanks to the paid subscribers, it really motivates me to keep going.
I thought I would share a couple of newsletters from 2022 that got a lot of feedback, maybe you missed them:
Besides my writing here on Substack I published two chess books in 2022:
Overall I sold 5,800 books in 2022 and gave away another 2,500 ebooks for free. All the reviews, purchases, and sharing have helped me immensely, I’m really appreciative of the support I have received from the chess community!
At the beginning of 2023, I plan to publish the Tactics Ladder book for the 1000 FIDE level.
I can't wait to share it with you and see what other opportunities the year brings.
Happy new year!
/Martin
On a completely other topic -- I sure hope that (contrary to Magnus' predictions, and perhaps, desires) that classical OTB chess is not going away! I confess to enjoying watching rapid more -- but I wish we weren't in a situation where "numbers of eyeballs" determines the worth of things. As you pointed out, chess has been gifted wonderful classic games, many "immortals", that simply would never have existed if they had been played quickly.
And, besides which, for most of us mortals, rapid chess is just too fast for us to figure out "the best move" in a situation. I need classical time controls to play well. And, in our fast-paced ADD electronic world out there -- there's nothing like sitting down to a 3-1/2 game at a tourney, where you can hear a pin drop, and I'm alone with my thoughts, with no distractions, without checking my phone, etc. It's the only "real" chess in my book! Everything else is just practice.
Thanks, as usual, for the article! I'm wondering if there is a conflict between spending some "hard time" doing puzzles (such as you suggested in the article) and the 85% rule, which article you linked to.
I'm still struggling with the question of "how much time should I spend on a puzzle before I give up"?
And, perhaps, there are two answers? a) two minutes or less if you're practicing the puzzles for pattern recognition; and b) as much time as you need if you are practicing calculation
Thoughts?