Learning About Something Is Very Different From Learning Something

Or, “make sure the tools you’re using are helping you solve the problem you’re trying to solve.”

Let’s start this one with a story.

For the past month or so, I have been putting roughly 30 minutes per day into what you might call a formal study of chess middlegame concepts.

The form I’ve been using for this study has been a book called Teach Yourself Better Chess, which appears to be part of a branded Teach Yourself series (titles include everything from Complete Spanish to Be a Better Flirt).

I picked Teach Yourself Better Chess because it was the book that was currently available at the public library, and then when I ran out of renewals I bought myself a secondhand copy online, and I have been duly working my way through the exercises.

These short, simple puzzles have taught me to make obvious moves before optional ones; that bishops love the long diagonals; that having “three pawns abreast” can make you “ready for anything.”

So I sat down at the board with my head full of pithy little lessons, got my bishop on the long diagonal and my three pawns lined up side by side, and then then L took my rightmost pawn with his knight and threatened…