Blundering

The word “blunder,” which can be briefly defined as “a critically bad move,” is a term of art in chess. Everyone who plays chess is bound to blunder. One can derive some comfort from Wikipedia’s article on the subject, which documents fourteen games in which famous grandmasters blundered. But beginners blunder quite frequently and even repeat the same blunder–such as losing their queen–many times. A blunder often leads to a loss, which is unpleasant for most of us. And for Type A personalities and perfectionists, losing can be so painful that they try to avoid situations in which losing is likely or even just possible. Some people may even start playing chess and soon abandon it permanently because of this pain. But please don’t! If I can withstand it, you can, too. 

How? First of all, I promise–and one purpose of this blog is to demonstrate this–that the joys of chess far outweigh the pain, even when a chess loss feels like a monumental failure (heck, even when you play consecutive games that feel that way). Below I list just a few of the counterbalancing factors.

 ♟  The sheer beauty of the pieces on the board, even on the computer screen. 

 ♟  The curious and delightful vocabulary of the game, from the names of the openings (Nathan Rose has written two wonderful books about these) to the words used to describe techniques and tactics, like fianchetto. 

 ♟  The enjoyment a beginner can experience in the act of playing, even though she also senses vaguely that the game has endless depths that are far beyond her ken. (The closest thing to this that I have experienced is learning a language like Japanese. Two syllabaries and thousands of characters?!? Yes, but every step of the challenging journey has its own rewards.) 

 ♟ The wonderful camaraderie of the global chess community that you can tap into simply by listening to a chess podcast, viewing a chess video on YouTube, or getting involved with a community like the Casual Chess Cafe.

Resilience has become a buzzword, but it truly is a crucial life skill. Bearing up under the many early blunders and losses that a chess beginner encounters will strengthen your resilience. Chess game analysis has two additional categories of errors that are less severe than “blunder”: “mistakes” and “inaccuracies.” When you finish a game on a platform like lichess.org or chess.com, the software conveniently tallies your inaccuracies, mistakes, and blunders (chess.com softens the blows somewhat by also listing your “good,” “excellent,” and “brilliant” moves). When I make them in life, inaccuracies and mistakes can be devastating to me. But when I look at a chess game analysis, it is the blunders that get the most of my attention and further study. I look at the mistakes and inaccuracies, but given their place in the scheme of things, I simply note them mentally and vow not to repeat them in the future. Chess is helping me bring this attitude to life situations as well. 

Recommendation of the Week: Listen to Daniel Lona interview Jennifer Shahade on his podcast, the Chess Experience. They talk about Shahade’s important new book, Chess Queens, and all things women in chess.