Patrick closed down his Chess for Blood blog last week. I’ve read his last post several times, because it provokes interesting thoughts about blogging as an activity.
I’m closing this blog because a public chess blog generates undue pressure/incentive to excel at this silly game. If I were to continue this blog, then I’d feel some obligation to reach 2000 or higher, and I just don’t need pressure from a board game in my life.
[...] I had also been getting a little too wrapped up in my own chess progress. It’s hard to avoid this when you have a public chess improvement blog.
[...] I was also spending too much time in front of a computer. Reading blogs, writing blogs, commenting blogs– this is all very time consuming and of dubious utility. -Patrick
I work on my blog because I enjoy chess; I enjoy studying and trying to improve at chess; and I enjoy thinking about different approaches to chess improvement. I see blogging connected to this in two ways:
- Chess improvement is a long-term thing, requiring patience and persistence. A blog records thoughts and progress along the way. It allows you to look back and see where you’ve been, to gain perspective about the cumulative sum of your efforts.
- Writing is the act of communicating, articulating, explaining. Writing down your thoughts clarifies those same thoughts.
There’s also the social aspect of chess, which I enjoy. In particular, I think the chess blogging community shares a spirit of mutual encouragement.
With some blogs, though, blogging seems to become a competitive activity itself. Patrick alludes to this with his comments about hit counting and blog-induced pressure. Fortunately I don’t seem to suffer from this problem.
Patrick’s comment that made me pause longest was about spending too time in front of the computer and on blogging in particular. Chess comes last for me after work and family, so I tend to have relatively little time to study and play. In the time I’ve composed this blog, I could have done 30 problems in CT-ART, or studied a another section in Silman’s new endgames book, or figured out where I went wrong in the Scandinavian last night.
I think in the future I will continue to write, because I still enjoy it and because I think it helps my improvement efforts, but I’ll focus on topics that take less time. I may also prune the list of chess blogs that I follow regularly.
6 Comments
OK, I just did 20 CT-ART problems.
Hi Steve,
Same thing here – I write mostly to keep my thoughts organized. But the online-chess/blog community also is a big motivation factor to me, because I play almost exclusively online and therefore almost never really meet other chess players.
Good post. I have similar thoughts on the subject myself and recently cut back on the number of chess blogs that I subscribe to – I’m down to 15! However, now I’ve discovered your blog, so it’s gone up to 16.
I was led to your post by the BCC Weblog. This is a thoughtful response to a question that likely haunts all bloggers from time to time: why do it? I think, finally, the feeling of belonging to a virtual community or even “family” (”gens una sumus” after all) is at the heart of it. Certainly the Knights Errant feel a sense of membership that rewards them, for example. In the end, though, it’s hard to say if chess blogging can actually improve your game. My own feeling is that the blogging becomes an end in itself that distracts from the real work of improvement (which is training and play), as you also suggest. But in the end, chess blogging becomes its own goal and success at the game seems less important than being involved. Witness the many bloggers who dwell on their mistakes: it seems less to help themselves improve than to garner support and community involvement.
Thanks for the inspiration. I may take up the question myself at greater length.
His post dismissing chess as a ’silly game’ is pathetic at best. It reminds me of that moment in the Simpsons when Homer tells Bart to give up things that he is not instantly good at and put his guitar in his closet with his karate uniform, etc.
Very very sad.
1. Chess prevents Alzheimer’s and improves the quality of life in old age. It also makes you smarter so you are more effecient at work and making money, thus freeing time for chess.
2. Blogs and comments about blogs and comments about those comments build the body of chess culture–and culture will be what’s left when we all die of non-Alzheimer’s related cuases.
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