(linkablez.info likes to steal material from here and claim someone else wrote it, so expect this to be showing up there, soon.)

“Don’t believe it if someone tries to convince you that they know the only correct method of improvement. Such a method does not exist, and such claims are at best self-deception and at worst a deliberate attempt to delude pupils or readers.” Mark Dvoretsky, 2009 in “Controversial Thoughts”

Strong words, but if any chess instructor has the “street cred” to back them up, it’s him.

What does he mean? That a specific study recipe that improves everyone as efficiently as possible, whether it’s “all tactics, all the time” or “endgames above all” or anything else, flat-out doesn’t exist. Everyone’s different, more importantly, everyone learns differently.

So does that mean we’re all doomed to fail, or worse, to pay high fees for personal instructors in the game? No. (That is, unless you’re intending to pay me those high fees, then of course it’s true! Um, that’s a joke, son.)

It also means that generic, off-the-shelf, one size fits all classes are no match for dedicated individual work, with or without a trainer.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Chess Instruction, General Chess. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.