The most important lesson I have learnt in chess as a novice is to keep calm and play on. I know what you might be thinking. Who is this guy to teach us anything about chess when his ELO on chess.com is 600 and he has lost almost as many times as he has won, who learned chess when he was 20, a special shout out to meesterzack for teaching me then, and who still suck at 40? Well, keep your hats on. Hear me out and then tell me if you think I am wrong about this. And more significantly, I am making this video for my kids, so that they understand why it is important to not give up when playing chess.
So what do I mean? You know the times when you make a mistake and then lose a key piece like your queen? This has happened to me multiple times, one of which is the visual you are seeing now when I lose the queen due to me not seeing that the knight could take it in move 25. When this happens, the first thought I suspect most of us will have is, Argh, followed by some expletives. Psychologically, one may immediately feel defeated and is thinking of resigning the game. This is so true for me, with thoughts like, why bother continuing when one is playing now on a backfoot. The perfectionist in me is screaming for me to stop, resign and play a new game when I won’t make the same mistake again. But lo and behold, I do make the same mistake again since most games don’t happen exactly the same way and given my middling abilities, I often miss how I could lose my queen or some other major piece like the rook through poor or suboptimal play.
Here are some reasons why you should continue playing anyway:
1) Your opponent may make mistakes which can enable you to turn the tables.
2) Your knowledge of the game is limited. Perhaps you make a bad move here and there, but you might make some great moves later or other lines allow you to win. You might not even realise some other weaknesses in your opponent’s set up until you are pressed to the wall and under pressure to think harder. Only by playing on will you be able to think of those moves and in that way improve your overall game. Which leads me to my next point.
3) Your game does not progress if you keep quitting since all you are practising are openings. Your middle and end game remain weak since you are stopping before you get to that stage. Besides, by playing from a backfoot, you learn how to use your other pieces better. For instance, the pawns and king come into play at the end game. But if you don’t get there, you don’t learn how to use your pawns and king. The same apply to your other pieces. How will you learn how to use your bishops, knights and rooks in the various stages of the game if you don’t get to those stages?
4) By quitting, you feel defeated. You feel bad. You can’t even tell yourself, despite being set back, I persevered. Instead, you feel like a quitter, a loser. If you play on, yes, you might ultimately still lose. But you gave it a fighting chance. And that is something, to have the courage and psychological strength to continue.
5) If you keep stopping when you lose a major piece, you have no chance of winning. At all. Only by continuing do you have a fighting chance. In fact, I admire those who continue playing when they are the ones losing their major pieces to me. It is not easy to overcome your mentality and take the easy way out but in life, often we are on a backfoot, be it from our own fault or simply the cards we are dealt in life. We have to continue nonetheless playing the game of life. So we might as well train our psychology with games when the stakes are not as high as in real life. After all, isn’t that one of the reason why games are valuable to play? Learning to lose, learning to keep playing, learning to be a good sport, learning to control our emotions are some key lessons, perhaps the most important ones, that we can learn from games to apply to our lives.
6) Besides, the key thing to keep in mind, is that we aren’t just playing one game and that’s it. We aim to get better at the game as we keep on playing. Isn’t that why we even play? Chess kind of sucks if all you do is play once and never again. So we need to keep the bigger picture in mind. We aim to get better over the many games of chess we will be playing over time. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We are training our chess abilities and in the bigger picture, we are training our minds. Just like how when we were babies learning to walk, when we fall over, we get up and keep trying. We need that kind of resilience, which we have since we after all did manage to learn to walk and then even later run.
7) We need to understand that we are novices and so making mistakes and losing is to be expected. Not that we want to lose. We don’t, which is precisely why we need to keep playing that losing game so that we train for future games. Plus we are also training our psychology, how to control our emotions when we make mistakes or lose, so that we become better, in the long run, not just in chess but in life. And if we become better in the long run, then that is our reward.
8) Besides, it is only a game. It doesn’t matter so much if we win or lose. We do it for fun, we want to improve. Because it doesn’t really matter, we can then not take it so hard psychologically. So let that thought free you from any false pride you may have, like, O, if I continue, I’d give the opponent only the joy of definitively defeating me while if I quit, they wouldn’t have that satisfaction. That does not make much sense. Your opponents, especially when you play on an internet platform are probably strangers, who do not know you or care about you. They want to play a good game also. Even if they capture your queen, they still have to play on to finally checkmate you and win. They have to also control their psychology, not to let their guard down, not to become complacent since complacency might lead to them being careless and then in turn losing valuable pieces and then finally losing. That might feel even more crushing, to lose when you should win. That might qualify as another of the top 10 lessons in chess: do not be complacent. Even if you see your opponent has a low ELO or make some moves which you might consider as poor moves, you still have to play carefully. Losing to an opponent you thought was poor at the game can be pretty crushing.
9) Try to be a good sport. Whether you win or lose, your opponent has spent time playing with you and if they won, well, they played well or better than you, and if you can think through the game and consider where you went wrong, you have improved also. As a novice, you are clearly not the best and so there is no real surprise if you lose. Let that thought humble you and free you from your own hubris. You can only get better if you keep playing more games and keep persevering in the games that you are behind.
In conclusion, keep calm and play on. You might surprise yourself by winning which would then be a coup. When this happens, congratulate yourself on conquering your defeatist mentality. If you lose, well, where’s the surprise? You were already behind. Finally, think of it long term. The more you play, the better you get.
I hope you found my thoughts on this useful. Please let me know what you think in the comments section below. Thank you.
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