5 benefits of OTB tournaments
There's nothing like 9 rounds of 90+30
Over the Easter long weekend I played in the Doeberl Cup, Australia’s premier annual chess tournament. It’s held in my hometown of Canberra and I’ve played every year for 25 years.
I tend to underperform at this home tournament, to put it mildly:
But this time I was able to play some of my best chess in the last 5 years.
In this post I’ll talk about the 5 biggest benefits of playing classical tournaments that I felt over the 5 days that might also encourage you to get away from being a normal functional member of society for several days.
1. Focus
A couple of days after the tournament, I was struggling to focus on creative tasks like writing. Classical games give you the opportunity to be fully focused on something for several hours and with tournaments like these, you get to experience that 9 times.
It’s rich, intense and at least for me it feels like the 9 games aren’t played over 5 days. By the end of Round 9, Round 1 feels like weeks or even a month ago.
Each game is a battle, creative project and deep meditation all in one.
Be concentrated and leonine
in the hunt for what is your true nourishment.
Don’t be distracted by blandishment-noises,
of any sort.
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don’t argue or answer rationally.
Let us die, and dying, reply.
—Rumi, The Essential Rumi
2. Purpose
With each game you play, it’s a life-or-death matter for those few hours. You could play the best game of your life, you could also play what feels like the worst.
You might have important projects and goals in day-to-day life, but it’s hard to feel the same significance as you do with these games. The tournament is one Odyssey and inside it, each game is an opportunity for you to do your best and learn and improve.
Whether it be over 5 days with 2 games a day or if you’re lucky to play the 9 games over 9 or 10 days, you’re the main character of a book or movie in which every move you make matters, every decision you take contributes to the outcome.
And that is a rewarding feeling, like fianchettoing yourself in a cosy cocoon of silk.
Chess is not just one more thing to do. It’s like a pit-stop, a time out of time to heal oneself through a few hours of dedicated sense-making. Sublimation is the psychological term, which, as already indicated, might be one of chess’s major cultural functions. Chess helps to channel the turbulence of our existential plight into a purpose that makes sense, through creative, constructive and meaningful ideas. The game makes sense partly because it’s cathartic and redemptive.
—Jonathan Rowson, The Moves That Matter
3. Introspection
The more tournaments you immerse yourself in, the more you know about yourself.
Openings you genuinely enjoy playing, types of middlegames you tend to overthink in, the clarity of thought you can reach in endgames, what kind of lunch messes up your focus, whether you’re able to hold yourself back from checking evaluations immediately after the game, the routine that works best for you right before games.
So much of competitive chess is about knowing why you play chess the way you do and thinking about & executing how you can make it easier for you to play your best.
The authors cast themselves as the characters they longed to become. They portrayed their dream and their ideal. Furthermore, from the pedagogic point of view the Lives were not a bad idea at all. They provided a legitimate channel for the creative urge of youth. Although serious, creative literary work had been frowned on for generations, and replaced partly by scholarship, partly by the Glass Bead Game, youth’s artistic impulse had not been crushed. In these Lives, which were often elaborated into small novels, it found a permissible means of expression. What is more, while writing these Lives some of the authors took their first steps into the land of self-knowledge.
—Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
4. Improvement
As I wrote in this post:
The top mistake amateur players make
Recently I was a guest on an episode of Ben Johnson‘s Perpetual Chess Podcast, and he asked me this question:
Playing OTB is the best way to get better at OTB.
Playing stronger players and holding your own, getting more consistent at beating lower-rated players, challenging yourself to try new things and learn from it. Each tournament is the highest form of training and study, done through playing.
With each game you play you can deepen your repertoire, pay attention to how you make decisions in the middlegame and try a new step in the process, practice self-talk so you don’t think for too long when you don’t need to and notice what kinds of negative or crippling emotions surface in difficult moments.
One pillar of my chess improvement philosophy is that you should have goals for each tournament that are separate from results. You want it to be something that, if you can be more mindful of it and strive to do better, it will benefit your whole chess.
Do the best one can. Do it over again. Then still improve, even if ever so slightly, those retouches.
—Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian: And Reflections on the Composition
5. Joy
And of course, playing chess, being at tournaments should be fun.
The more serious the environment and more time you have to think in each game, you can play your best chess and simply enjoy the chess. Train hard between tournaments so on game day, you can focus on giving your 100% and feel lucky to be able to play.
If you’re not able to enjoy it, you might be too focused on results and not looking bad.
The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.
—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
Going back to ‘normal life’ after a chess tournament can feel jarring, partly because it’s harder to feel these things all at once (chess tournaments make it easier).
There are further benefits to tournaments that I didn’t include here - what would you add if you could only pick one other thing?
Quite a few people at the tournament told me they enjoy this Substack (and my YouTube videos) which was nice, thank you if you’re reading this.
In terms of the 9 games I played, I did an 8.5-hour stream the day after the tournament where I went through each one, what was I thinking and how I made decisions while answering many questions from viewers. I’ve put chapters in for each game (opponent & opening) so check it out if you want to watch a raw masterclass.