Exeter Chess Club

Jonathan Rowson is a young Scottish GM who has written two of the best and most important books of recent years: The Seven Deadly Chess Sins and Chess for Zebras.  They are important because they are some of the best discussions about how chess is actually played that I have ever read; often Rowson seems to be writing for the first time about things that have rarely been mentioned, let alone explored in any detail.  The books are also confusing, pretentious and irritating by turns. 

'I'm enjoying it - but I don't like it.' Geoff Chandler, October 2005

Let's take them one at a time.

The Seven Deadly Chess Sins is an exploration of chess psychology.  There is a psychology of chess, the academic study of what chessplayers do.  In fact, chess players have been called the 'fruit flies of psychology' because they are such a favourite research subject.  Rowson isn't very interested in all that stuff.   He quotes with approval:

"It seems to us that the theories associated with board reconstruction experiments represent an idealised picture of master chess which may be misleading. ... So often, as any player will agree, it is hopes and fears which seem to influence the choice of a move." – Hartston and Wason

It’s the emotional swamp which is Rowson's territory, seeing it not just as the source of mistakes but a promising route for seeking improvement. 

His sins are: Thinking, Blinking, Wanting, Materialism, Egoism, Perfectionism and Looseness.  (I'm very amused that Thinking is a sin.)  Perhaps some detail would help:

• 1. Thinking: Confusion, pattern limitations, lack of faith in intuition.
• 2. Blinking: Missing key moments, lack of “trend sensitivity” and “moment sensitivity.”
• 3. Wanting: Attachment to results, carelessness, expectation.
• 4. Materialism: Misevaluating, lack of dynamism, oversights.
• 5. Egoism: “Forgetting” the opponent, fear, impracticality.
• 6. Perfectionism: Time trouble, inappropriate copying.
• 7. Looseness: “Losing the plot,” drifting.

Warming up?   The first example in the first chapter (Thinking) shows an example from a GM which obviously provides Rowson with some real inspiration but which might make the rest of us despair...

• Rozentalis E. - Appel R. [B02]

Wow. Is chess really that hard? Do I really have to be able to come up with ideas like that?  Well, no, but if you want to get better, you do need to stop playing the way you do right now.  Shaking up your ideas is part of Rowson's plan.

•  1. Thinking:
• • Hodgson J. - Tiviakov S. [A25]
   
• 2. Blinking:
• • Emms J. - Webster A. [B06]
  
  
• 3. Wanting:
• • Miles A. - Arkell K. [D00]
  Black has just offered a draw.
•  4. Materialism:
• • Capablanca J. - Lasker E. [C80]
  5. Egoism:
• • Thomas - Redpath [C07]
  6. Perfectionism:
• • Morozevich A. - Rowson J. [B80]
  7. Looseness: 

• Urien - Rowson [B84]

These are quite sophisticated mistakes, but I think the same things can be seen at club level as well.  (I just made a mental note to myself to find club-level examples of all of these things).

The irritating bit of Rowson's book is that it is hard going.  The examples are hard.  He gets distracted when discussing them.  Not all the examples are clear.  And then he includes a huge variety of anecdotes, quotations and ideas from outside chess, some of which are hard to see the value of, and some of which seem included just to let us know how widely-read is the author. 

"When considering whether to use these ideas in the book, I was concerned that it might seem too abstract or contrived for most readers and hard to apply to their real games… So even if I’m not making any sense, or if you only partly understand what I’m saying, the main thing is to have the courage to look at chess with new eyes."

I like the aim.  However, he's not really achieving it with passages like this:

“There are some striking parallels with quantum theory in the way of viewing chess outlined above, particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle ... and Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity.” (p.84).

Oh, yeah?  One exasperated reviewer concluded:

"It is at best a flawed if earnest effort. At worst it is a pretentious, barely mitigated disaster ... The Seven Deadly Chess Sins is strong evidence that to the seven we should add two more: writing this book, and buying it." http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review274.pdf

Harsh... I understand this love of quotation and pursuit of analogy from Rowson's point of view; writing something like this, or a PhD, is rather like being in love, everything you read or think about reminds you of what you are doing, and you want to include everything.  I did end up wishing that he had a more brutal editor, but it’s a record of his journey and his thinking, and after a while you enjoy the ride with him.

He has a final rather defensive note, entitled The Author's Redemption, where he says:

"I've tried to write about chess as I've come to understand it: a complex a rewarding game that lies, tantalisingly, beyond the full grasp of the human intellect. ... There is no virtue in giving easy answers to the questions posed by a difficult game. "

And while I think it is not usually given to the author to decide whether he is redeemed or not, I will concede the point.  10% of the book may get up your nose, but the other 90% is witty, informative, thought-provoking, and more likely to focus you on your bad habits of chess than anything else I know.

Chess for Zebras is much more focussed.  The examples are just as demanding (you remember that I used one of his examples when we looked at planning in the endgame) and Rowson's temptation to throw in a quote by 'my favourite Buddhist writer' is still there, but where in Sins the author seemed happy to show us a deal of thought-provoking material and let us get on with it, in Zebras Rowson is more helpful in guiding us through the thoughts he hoped to provoke.  He is also to be commended for listing our website in the bibliography!

That endgame example is accompanied by a long transcript of exchanges between Rowson and one of his students.  I guess that Sins is the result of Rowson thinking about how he got good at chess and how he is going to get better, and Zebras is the result of Rowson trying to teach others to get better.  It's lower-key in many respects but more punchy.  I threw a couple of quotes at you last time:

"If you want to get better at chess you need to place much less emphasis on 'study' whereby you increase your knowledge of positions, and place more emphasis on 'training,' whereby you try to solve problems, play practice games, or perhaps try to beat a strong computer program from an advantageous position." (25).

"Chess skill emerges from chess playing combined with chess training, where ‘training’ means working things out by yourself.  The main skill a chess-player needs is skill in making decisions, so that’s what you need to do and do repeatedly.  If you want to become a better player, you need better habits, and you cultivate better habits through training.  The best training is the kind that pushes you up against the edges of your comfort zone, where you force yourself to take responsibility for difficult decisions.  It is so much easier to read books that give strategic guidelines, hints and tips, etc., but what you need is ‘know how’ and that means learning by doing."

The contents list is an amusing read in itself:

• Part 1: Improving Our Capacity to Improve
• 1. What to Do When You Think There is a Hole in Your Bucket
• 2. Psycho-logics
• 3. Storytelling
• 4. Which Myth are You Playing By?
• 5. Concentrate! Concentrate? Concentrate.
• Part 2: Mental Toolkit for the Exponential Jungle
• 6. Why is Chess so Difficult?
• 7. Something that Works for Me
• 8. Doing and Being
• 9. Why Shouldn’t I be Defensive?
• 10. Glorious Grinding
• Part 3: Thinking Colourfully about Black and White
• 11. Three Types of Theory and What They Mean in Practice
• 12. White’s Advantage
• 13. Black’s Advantage
• 14. Finally….

Oh, and why Chess for Zebras?

‘Thinking like a zebra’ therefore means being more open to experience and less constrained by convention.  It means allowing yourself to think differently."

It's going to be hard to do more than scratch the surface of what you can find in Zebras, but let's give another couple of examples, ones that rang a bell with me.  The first section of the book is about productive training; we already looked at one from the this section in an earlier session (the Estrin endgame).  The second section is about expanding your conceptual toolbox, and the third is about openings from the points of view of White and Black.

Doing and being

• Miles A. - Reinderman D. [B08]

Zugzwang Lite

• Hodgson - Arkell [A36]