Rose’s Rants

I published a link to this excellent series of articles in the previous Blog and am doing so again because I think Tom Rose’s articles are worth reading by any aspiring player. Tom Rose was (is) an English player rated over 2000 who set out at a late age to obtain the master title. He failed. The reasons given are explained in his last article, “Hello again and Goodbye!”

I understand why he failed. As he said, “…you must have an intense desire for it, and that intense desire must be fuelled by a love of what you are doing…I just did not love chess enough.” Then he went on to say, “I realized this one day a little over a year ago while sitting at the chess board at a tournament in Delft…as I sat there all I could think was Why am I doing this? I would rather be practicing the piano!"

For me it was right in the middle of a State Championship and it wasn’t that I’d rather have been practicing the piano. In my case I just wanted to be doing anything else…period. I dropped completely out of chess for nearly 15 years; didn’t even look at a chess set.

Still I think Rose’s articles on improving will work, and work very well. That is, if one is a young aspiring player. What he says makes a lot of sense to me. In any case his articles are thought provoking even if you disagree with him as to what it takes to become a master.

View the articles.