This edition of the blog will be about the effects that chess has over the concentration and the ability to consistently focus for long periods of time.
I will assume that you already have some familiarity of basic knowledge and experience with the game and that at some point have played more than three games consecutively. Whether they were blitz games or 30 minutes games, it does not matter much.
How do you feel after playing a longer game? Or after playing more games consecutively?
To me, the last time that I have played a higher number of games consecutively was on the 2nd of January 2019. During that day I have played a total of nine games. Two of them were longer (67 and 75 moves) and the rest of them were between 22 and 40 moves. Out of the nine total games for that day I have managed to win four, lose four and one draw. Still, by the end of the day, my rating was with 4 points lower than at the beginning of it.
After winning the first two games of 26 and 67 moves against opponents that were slightly lower rated than me, my concentration and ability to focus started to decrease and I have moved on to lose the next two games of 23 and 75 moves against players that were higher rated than me. After losing a long game to a much higher rated player I have decided to focus more and pay attention to every single detail of the game so that I don’t do anymore mistakes. Therefore I have managed to win the next game. The following game, I still remember. I did a blunder at around move 30, at that point I had an advantage of +5, I had two rooks and a queen and he only had one rook and a queen. What I didn’t notice was that he can check me and force move my king into the corner and keep doing so until the computer gives an automatic draw by repetition. That has still played well for me since he was much higher rating and therefore I have won four points from that game. The fact that I was in a winning position and was not able to see this anymore can serve me as a lesson to pay attention even when winning and don’t celebrate the victory early.
If I would try to describe my capacity to concentrate throughout these games, for me it would be something similar to this:
Of course that it also depends on external factors and that these need to be considered as well when talking about the ability to concentrate. Nonetheless, chess is a game where the players need to be able to run the same scenarios over and over again and analyze every single detail that goes into the planning process. The players must be able to focus entirely on the board while blocking other external factors that might interfere. The board is where the players must focus on, and throughout the game, they need to have a clear vision of it in order to be able to comprehend and see the tactics, strategies and traps that are present.
Through the meticulous nature of chess, the players must consider at every move the possibilities that they have and what combinations the pieces and their position can offer. The ability to thoroughly focus on the board and consistently concentrate on every move represents a great training for the mind to search for possibilities and solutions. Playing chess can provide a great opportunity for a person to train their soft-skills.
My rating on chess.com is 1595 and the highest that I have ever got was 1611 on the 26th of January 2019. I have been playing on this website since February 2015 and, so far, I have a total of 688 games.
I will leave you the link to see the details of my account here. If you would like to go over some games together, I would be happy to.
