On the Reason People Don't Get Better at Writing
And poker and bridge and pool.
Grandmaster Ben Finegold might seem hard to love.
He takes the piss out of everything at a low level all the time. He’s sarcastic, and he’s not great at being sarcastic. Rather than incisive wit, he maintains a constant level of universally directed snark. It’s almost impossible to impress him — although he’ll admit some wonder at the very very best.
However, he’s one of the best teachers you’ll find.
He’s a grouch, a sourpuss, but puts so much comic energy into it that you know he’s probably a softie.
A lot of the teaching he does is for the younger chess players at the Saint Louis Chess Club, the Doofuses.
He seems very happy at their level of humour.
Hello, I’m Grandmaster Ben Finegold and you are not.
But what he says in this video is one of the best explanations of learning and more importantly not learning you’re ever going to find.
As one of the comments says,
Ben really just described how people don’t get better in general.
The trouble is, I think I can assume that most readers of the diary don’t watch as many chess videos as I do, and so might not get as much out of this as I did.
However, after yesterday’s swimming lesson lesson, this seems the necessary follow-up.
An example of a great teacher telling you something painful but true.
If you want to get anything out of the Wisdom of Ben — for that’s what it is, snarky and pitiful Wisdom — you’ll have to do some translating of chess into writing.
This isn’t difficult. The point is clear.
And Ben himself translates chess into poker and bridge and pool.
People who don’t get better make the same mistakes over and over again, and they have a kind of glee in doing things deliberately badly.
I know this story would be better if I put it away for three months, came back, rewrote it, put it away again, made a few changes, then sent it off to the competition. But I want it out this afternoon.
Here’s a short glossary:
Magnus = Magnus Carlsen, former World Champion and almost inarguably the best player of all time
Blunder = a mistake that loses a chess piece, and almost certainly loses the game
Sack = sacrifice a chess piece in order to gain a perhaps not obvious advantage
It’s hard not to be insane, because that’s the way you were brought up.
What a great line.
Here’s the nub:
People who are good at stuff, like, trial and error, analyse stuff, try to figure it out, and people who aren’t good say they’re unlucky and they’re tired,…
And this can be translated directly into writing:
If you watch somebody play pool, and you’re a good pool player, you know in five seconds how good they are. They don’t have to shoot the ball. All they have to do is stand, hold their stick, see what their stroke is, see what their bridge is, see how they’re looking, see the way they’re standing, and you know how good they are. Because good players always do the same thing that’s really good, and bad players just randomly random.
Oh, and there’s the bonus joy of Ben’s delight chugging his pink drink.