TRICK YOURSELF INTO
PLAYING MORE CHESS
Nothing motivates a chess player like a good rivalry. Back when I started
playing this game seriously (meaning I started spending a truly ridiculous
amount of time playing and studying chess as my primary hobby), I had
the misfortune of playing with a casual group of guys who were, by and
large, buttheads. They'd usually win and, instead of offering advice on
how to improve my play, would typically toss off a snotty remark about
how bad a player I was. Now while I don't recommend that you go out
and find a bunch of jerks to play chess with, I will tell you that the desire to
give these guys a comeuppance was a great motivator which spurred my
desire to improve my chess play. (And, having improved to the point at
which I was regularly beating these guys [although I didn't act like them
after I'd win], I will tell you that whoever said revenge isn't sweet didn't
know what the heck he was talking about.)
So ultimately what you want to do when playing with your favorite chess
program is to find some setting which challenges you without completely
crushing and humiliating you. The idea is to find a setting at which you will
win around a quarter of the time. If your particular program doesn't offer
an adaptive opponent (see above) which will do this for you, then you'll
need to take the bull by the horns and figure out how to find or create a
setting which provides this level of challenge.
It's easy to do this with a program that offers pre-programmed rated
personalities. The easiest thing to do is pick an opponent whose rating
is about a hundred points higher than your own (assuming that you're a
rated player) and start playing some games. If you're not a rated player,
pick a personality as a starting point, then adjust your choice up or down
the player list according to how well (or poorly) you do.
Ultimately, you need to try tricking yourself into thinking you're playing
a real person. I don't mean in some psychologically unbalanced way in
which you become obsessed with this non-person, but in a healthy way
in which you want to become a better player so that you can beat this
imaginary character. And doing so can provide a pretty healthy impetus
to your growth as a player. As I mentioned earlier, one of the Power
Chess characters became my imaginary rival for quite a while (primarily
because of its opening choices, which took me into variations which none
of my real life sparring partners ever played). The “hook” was the fact that
the character had a name and a (cartoon) face; I doubt that I would have
been nearly as eager to beat this character had it been just a group of
settings and sliders.
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