Chess improvement

The juicy prospect of improvement constantly dangles above a chess player. Those morsels of knowledge one has acquired whet the appetite for others which lie just out of reach. Even players at peace with their ambient proficiency can’t help but acknowledge that their better games coexist with lousy ones. Once you admit that, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to the idea that replicating the good games might confer improvement. Unless you have the equanimity of a monk, wanting to play well becomes an unshakeable existential burden.

Many chess books will promise to boost your results at the board. Usually, it is taken for granted that absorbing the book’s insights will generate the desired improvement. Considering the large appetite for instructional material, books which treat improvement as their subject matter, rather than their goal, are rare.

The fact is, chess improvement is a slippery subject. There is no magic formula, but opinions are like — ahem — kings, in that everybody has one. Distilling the wisdom from the dogma is no easy task, setbacks are inevitable, and misdirected effort can be worse than useless. So it was refreshing to see these and other topics discussed thoughtfully and deeply in a new book, Chess Improvement by Barry Hymer and Peter Wells (Crown House Publishing). Hymer is Emeritus Professor of Psychology in Education at the University of Cumbria and a strong amateur player. Wells brings his wide experience as a professional player, trainer, England Olympiad team captain and, until lately, chief mentor of the Chess Trust’s Accelerator Programme for leading English juniors.

Together, they analyse improvement through the prism of ‘Mindset theory’, the framework originally championed by American psychologist Carol Dweck, which has gained traction in education in recent years.