Arshad Ali wrote:Jonathan Bryant wrote:
We want the outcome not the process ...
Exercising a higher level of skill in any area of endeavor is inherently satisfying.
Oh I fully agree - but not sufficiently so that this in itself is sufficiently motivating to keep people studying when the going gets tough. This point can easily be demonstrated by glancing around any tournament hall/considering the progress of ourselves and club mates over the years.
Arshad Ali wrote:
Playing more accurate chess is more satisfying than playing sloppy chess.
This, on the other hand, I think is rather more contentious.
Firstly, playing more accurate chess could well put you into the bottom of an Open section (as per Roger’s post) rather than the top of a lower section. This would mean considerably less chance of winning a tournament/games in general.
This would be less satisfying to a lot of people.
Secondly, the reality is we never get that sense of playing more accurate chess really. At least most of us don’t.
As Chris says, when we’re 180 we’d like to be 200. When we get to 200 it doesn’t seem that special at all and we want to be 210. That’s when we’d have really made it. You can substitute any set of lower or higher numbers the point remains.
Also, I rather suspect that the "better" you get at chess the more you understand that you’re not playing accurate chess at all. This isn’t necessarily a satisfying state of affairs for many of us. Ignorance and bliss and all that.
Ultimately I don’t think TGSM’s lack of progress needs explaining. It’s normal. You say, he invested time travel money ... well so do most of us. We do almost anything other than what is necessary - i.e. the hard study as you mention.
As you say, he wanted the outcome, he didn’t want to go through the process. End of story. There’s no shame in it but it’s no mystery.
I don’t believe the 'people don’t know how' argument. Everybody knows. You study your own games. You study master games. You do the Yusupov series etc etc. We all nknow this - and if we don’t it would take 5 minutes googling to find out.
We would like to improve. We know how to improve. We don’t want to do the work necessary to improve.
As I said, we want the outcome not the process.