yes not only motor skills involved.. But even with those sports with motor skills to train.. books with enough graphical illustrations to reach different kind of learners that are more visual, but can also use the text as pointers to organise the visual chunks, can also help there, and have for me.
I did for swimming, downhill skiing and also sailing. Those have dynamical models to internalize, and book that have visual explanations in enough mechanical evolution details, can help the nearby experience learning (I am not saying always turn by turn, or infinitesimal videos, but that follow putative causations, and consequences flow).
I think the conscious can help the non-conscious learning. I think this might be related to "few shot learning". A bit like a basket baller could adjust with few shots to a new court with different size or weight of ball and different height of hoop, the internal model would already be there. not a strict analogy as it might be there through experience only. But I suggest that being able to anticipate out of real time, and use the slow conscious mind to start building some internal map (yes, the non-conscious is not at war with the conscious, it still experiences what the conscious is crawling through, I would propose).
I just think that books have not had enough critical thinking readings to them, because mainly they will always be sold because of enough impatient improvers not needing to digest critically recipes to play like the best as fast as possible.
The best would discover new things, that they might start stalling soon.. maybe.. but those that ever happen in one generation?
this is more caricatural and punchy. I could ramble on it too, with nuances.
Edit: "explicit theory of learning" I understood as the meta stuff around the games examples. the organisation of the material, why is this before that. if not that, then some structure of presentation made clear about the nature of each chunk of juicy informatino. . not a litany of games to be having to follow one by one, with a generic title for a chapter with many concepts never enunciated cleary without first being in an example. or principles of organisation of the material being in front mattter to help someone use the book as they see fit to their individual chess journey. not a sequences flat cogs tightly wound next to each other, and don't you dare put your finger in the middle, you have to start at the begginnig to find out where it goes. That mean not much thinking is avaible about the teaching intent (where the author had some progression goal or not, we can't use that to help managing the exposure to the obligatory linearly ordered presentation. Am I close, op?
I see chess as a pure sport (the parts I can tolerate at least) which is why I enjoy bullet so much. Much like how faking exists in sports - where you fake a movement, shot, etc. - faking also exists in bullet. You can make aggressive or surprising moves and still win even when they are objectively bad.
Much harder to get away with that in Classical.
I have read zero chess books and find reading in general painful.
I was able to achieve 2200 in Bullet in just a few years of casual, play, though - and largely enjoy my time doing it.
Awful article.
@MrPushwood said in #9:
> "an explicit theory of learning"...hmmm...
It's like you need to read them, or something.
@Toadofsky said in #14:
> It's like you need to read them, or something.
It's explained in this blog post through examples quite well!
Not everything can be learned through reading, such as sports. Also, people learn in different ways. Someone who hates reading books such as myself can never really learn effectively through them. I would much prefer videos - or best of all, practice.
@thefrickouttaherelol said in #15:
> It's explained in this blog post through examples quite well!
>
> Not everything can be learned through reading, such as sports. Also, people learn in different ways. Someone who hates reading books such as myself can never really learn effectively through them. I would much prefer videos - or best of all, practice.
I think it was about why books could be inadequate, in chess. before even the idea of analogy with motor skills sports.
The possibility that the books, could have some learning theory basis or not only being about chess truth but learning truths..
Being right about the chess is not a teaching basis. It might be good not to teach, errors, but I think the aim of teaching is not to teach chess directly but how to think about chess. so the book should not ask how to solve a problem and only solve the problem, it should show that there was also some knowledge not only tradition being perpetuated, because that is how the author was formed, but some continuous injection of what is out there in other fields where complicated things have to be learned (and I am sorry but difficult to hone motor skills does not mean complex to solve, it is complex to execute, and why there is so much repetition, while the rational complexity of the tasks are known, there precise execution is often what is driving the experiential practice. In chess, often the task is figuring out what to do, not being the fastest at executing it.. perhaps bullet approaches it.. but even that.. there is the fog there. I would assume, some pale shadow of chess rational challenges might still remain.
I though "toad of sky" was being sarcastic about what a chess book could be about. That having to teach be some kind of news for the book author task.
I have coached more than 100 people and know at least a dozen professional coaches personally. I am yet to see or hear about a player who "reads piles of books without seeing their rating go up". This kind of player exists only in Marketing Fairyland, where traditional methods are always useless.
What I see a lot is players who pile up books but hardly ever finish one. Instead, they watch videos and buy Chessable courses, because it does not feel so much like work.
If you read piles of well-chosen books ("reading" means playing out all the lines on a physical board, including the sidelines!), it is almost guaranteed that your rating will go up at least a few hundred points. That is what I see all the time.
This blog is complete rubbish. If no chess book out of 1000s can help you, it is something wrong with the reader, not the book. Almost any book published by Russell/QualityChess/NIC/Thinkers/GambitChess/Evolution is 1000 times more worth than all the blogs on Lichess.
A blog like this would have been unthinkable in the past when the attention span was more than 1 second
Chess in entertainment for most players. For some this entails reading books and watching videos. Most people do not get much better at after initial improvement
Like Silman told a story in one of his books on lecture on a chess club he was visiting he gave lecture largely on same thing year before with several same listeners and from reactions he could see that good part thing he told were something totally new to them. I mean listening chess lectures is a form of entertainment in chess hobby.
Hence the flow books handling latest variations on Najdorf variation of Sicilian sold to people who never actually encounter opponent who can play the variation past few first moves.
Eloquently written blog, but I absolutely disagree with the message.
Books have been a main learning ressource for decades for good reason.
Maybe there is a trend towards other ressources that show convincing results as well, but reading the right books the right way will yield guaranteed improvement (unless you are Carlsen, but even in that case it still might).
As with everything in life, the right balance is what matters, but every chess player interested in improving their game should have worked through at least a couple of books.