> Genetics and hard work are ... inferior to information
I have never seen it put better.
The Soviet Union had a stranglehold on chess for almost 70 years until its collapse in the nineties. Then information fled with grandmasters to the west and the present bloom in talent began. Westerners began to regularly defeat soviet players. An Indian, then a Norwegian became world champion. Before then, it was a small miracle to defeat a soviet player. Reason? Information.
My personal experience: I played chess with a lot of frustration and little improvement for over a decade until I began reading 'honest' books written by Soviet trainers. That was I began to see progress.I gained approximately 200 elo in one year.(I would estimate that 90% of chess books for intermediate players are crap, some of these are deliberately misleading hence the 'honest' term)
Genetics and hard work are vastly inferior to information
>What did the Soviet books talk about that the other books were ignoring?
Amongst other things they introduced better training methods; diligent classification and cataloging of common and critical positions. For instance, a systematic introduction to pryomes and positional maoeuvers. These books were written by people who had mastered the craft as players or coaches of elite players.
Improvement in chess to a large part entails becoming conversant with known positions and manoeuvers.
Recall that it was almost treason to reveal the techniques that soviet grandmasters used. This was one reason why Korchnoi was harrassed.
I have never seen it put better.
The Soviet Union had a stranglehold on chess for almost 70 years until its collapse in the nineties. Then information fled with grandmasters to the west and the present bloom in talent began. Westerners began to regularly defeat soviet players. An Indian, then a Norwegian became world champion. Before then, it was a small miracle to defeat a soviet player. Reason? Information.
My personal experience: I played chess with a lot of frustration and little improvement for over a decade until I began reading 'honest' books written by Soviet trainers. That was I began to see progress.I gained approximately 200 elo in one year.(I would estimate that 90% of chess books for intermediate players are crap, some of these are deliberately misleading hence the 'honest' term)
Genetics and hard work are vastly inferior to information