Originally posted by wormwoodThe learning effect of any mental training is known to be negligible? Have you seen a study somewhere on that then or is it just your opinion?
yeah, I get it. but I think you're mixing up two things here, having a bad day and resilience. the latter is common to all good players, the grit, the mental tougness, the ability to suffer through bad positions without wilting under the pressure.
but a bad day is a bad day, it's physical not mental. for one reason or another, all your cylinders aren't ng.
harder is not always better. train hard, but smart. make the time you put in count.
As to the difference between having a bad day and resilience- maybe it is just me but there is a direct correlation in most cases (outside of being sleep deprived/overworked or need more food etc). I can calculate pretty well (when I am in practice-which unfortunately is not the case at present).
But, on my bad days I get into a good position which I know I need to start calculating and I start, don't quite find THE move and just quit and play a natural move. Sometimes it is getting into an opening which I am unfamiliar with and I don't really formulate a concrete plan and just "develop". That is a lack of resilience, is it not?
Maybe it is just me. But, I would think if you were to analyze most players games (which are poor by their standards)this is the rule and not the exception. Would you disagree?
And on another note to the op. I think you would benefit from analyzing your games. You may see that you have "chess blindness" in certain types of positions. Maybe it is defending against IQP positions or maybe you have difficulty playing against the knight pair or closed positions etc. Start looking for patterns I think you might be surprised at what you find
A bad day is just that, a bad day.
The role of imagination in chess must not be underestimated.
You cannot stick a blank canvas infront of an artist and say at 9.00 am on
Wednesday the 4th of Jan paint me a masterpiece.
Just accept that somedays it cannot be done, the juices don't flow, nothing clicks.
Also another thing that has not been mentioned.
Your opponents may have been playing better than you, (blundering less).
A reluctance to give credit to an opponent is very common, it's far
easier to blame yourself for playing bad than to admit your opponent played
better than you.
Most of the strong lads I know when questioned about a loss
simply shrug their shoulders.
"It was his turn to win."
You either play through it or go an do something else (usually sober up if it's me).
my 2p-worth;
chess blindness comes from playing too much.
take a break, maybe even a few days could be needed to do the trick.
i have immersed myself in chess at times, following grandmaster on-line games, studying this and that, etc etc. then one evening in the week i play a game otb and blunder on move 10. i think the brain just stops looking at some point.
could differ for others though.
Originally posted by erikidodid you ever wonder in school why there were breaks between classes? because the brain needs rest or it'll just shut down.
The learning effect of any mental training is known to be negligible? Have you seen a study somewhere on that then or is it just your opinion?
As to the difference between having a bad day and resilience- maybe it is just me but there is a direct correlation in most cases (outside of being sleep deprived/overworked or need more food etc). I can calcu ...[text shortened]... ich are poor by their standards)this is the rule and not the exception. Would you disagree?
here's a summary from different studies related to sleep & and (procedural) memory:
http://www.memory-key.com/improving/lifestyle/activity/sleep
judging by what you're telling, seems like letting yourself off easy might indeed be your problem. then again, the inability to concentrate also often comes down to exhaustion. but it's not like that for everyone, many of us tend to overanalyze instead, ending in time trouble.
also, it's not trivial to know how long to use on a move, before giving up finding that 'best move' you just know is there, somewhere. so you make a practical choice and go with that. in blitz that usually IS the best move BECAUSE it saves time. in CC the best move in the same exact position might be completely different. so that might also be what's your actual problem, not having that intuition to efficiently managing your time yet.
me, I drop pieces left & right when I'm tired. no matter how much or long I try to concentrate. also even when I get it right, the same exact processing of positions happens much slower, and time trouble is inevitable. no matter how fast I try to play, the opponent seems to always get ahead on the clock. it's almost like I was stuck in a time warp where time goes much faster for me. the brain seems to simply funtion slower, giving the illusion that the 'outside' world is speeded up a bit.
but when I'm not tired, I'm usually faster than my opponent. and I don't make those simple mistakes.
I know very well that feeling of just losing a string of blitz games by simple "blindness". Sometimes, this can go on for days as I watch my rating plummet several hundred points for no real reason except that I am dragging on my calculation or I am just not "seeing" things.
Finally, I have come to certain conclusions which I summarize as reasons for blindness and other forms of blitz misery.
1) the main reason I get in one of these funks is when I am doing a lot of database work- i.e. staring at chess positions all day long. After several days, I find that I just am overloaded visually on it.
solution- take a day or two off until your mind is clear of all these worn images.
2) Not getting enough cardio exercise- I had a talk once with a Russian GM friend, who emphasized the importance of jogging/walking as a regular activity. Besides the obvious the point was the effect that jogging has on the nervous system and vision. I noticed as well that if I went for a jog the day before or day of a tournament I found my calculation was quicker, more accurate etc.
If I can at all schedule it, I try to get some cardio in before a major tournamnet.
3) Hangover- simple enough, I am almost certainly 150pts weaker in blitz the day after I drink. Almost doesn't matter the amount, it could be 1-2 glasses .. that is usually enough to keep me from my sharpest.
anyway, those are the usual causes I find for inexplicably weak tactics/calculation etc.
Originally posted by wormwoodWhile interesting I don't think that web page was all that relevant to the discussion imop. It speaks of sleeps effect on memory etc. I (think) I already pointed out that one of the reasons I will have bad days is on acount of sleep deprivation, not enough food and or overworked and I would definitely not keep plugging away on those days(come to close to the bobby fischer story where he falls asleep at the board-except my opponent probably wouldn't have woken me up if I did and I did not winlol).
did you ever wonder in school why there were breaks between classes? because the brain needs rest or it'll just shut down.
here's a summary from different studies related to sleep & and (procedural) memory:
http://www.memory-key.com/improving/lifestyle/activity/sleep
judging by what you're telling, seems like letting yourself off easy might ind red, I'm usually faster than my opponent. and I don't make those simple mistakes.
To your second point-inability to concentrate can come from exhaustion(ie being ground down in a slightly worst position). Don't you think learning to be resilient is in large part having the energy to fight each and every move?
Do you not think that energy levels can be increased through slightly overreaching what you presently are capable?
Every person that does not know a single thing about weightlifting knows one thing instinctively. If this weight gets easy for me then I can increase the weight and it will be good for me because my body will adapt to the new stimulus and I will become stronger. Same is true of mental conditioning. If you are never overreaching you are never improving.
Another billiards example. I play in tournaments basically weekly. Occasionally I will have to take a few weeks off. When I come back to play again generally I don't shoot as well(pretty obvious). But, the interesting thing is it isn't necessarily that I am not making as many shots it is that I am missing shots which I should easily make and making poor decisions(due to lack of attention to the details-otherwise known as focus and additionally probably a little bit of that fatigue factor because I haven't been "in it"😉.
If there is one thing I have learned playing pool it is that you can not teach someone to focus or even tell yourself to focus(that normally has the opposite effect-or shifts your focus to the wrong things). You can, however, teach them the tools. But, the only real way to improve your focus is to put yourself in a situation where you HAVE to focus(ie playing in a very competitive tournament or gambling in billiards case). Once you get in these situations in which you HAVE to focus and actively pay attention to what you are actually focusing on then you are on your way to improving it.
For anyone really interested in sports psychology their is an old but very interesting book called the inner game of tennis(which helped my mental game in billiards. It is not a book just about tennis)