More on wins versus losses, reward versus punishment

Sven posted some very interesting comments on my previous post in which I argue that it is important to go over your wins (both to find mistakes to correct and to find what you did well). I think his comments are useful and respond to them here. His comments are in bold, my reaction in normal text: note I edited the order of some of his comments to make the flow more smooth. I like this topic because it is very practical. I think no research has been done on it in chess.

Everyone has ones own method and there is nothing that works for everyone.

Exactly. So why do so many instructors tell everyone to focus only on losses? My gripe is that the psychology of learning is clear on this: there are methods, often involving positive reinforcement rather than punishment, that work better for the majority of people. Why should chess be different? Is it a unique kind of learning problem for which techniques in other areas will not transfer? I don't believe that.

However, it is because of individual differences that in my previous post I said everyone needs to find the mixture of reward and punishment that works best for them. I just urge you to not trust your introspection about what works best for you. Do some experiments on yourself. You may be wrong about how you learn best, partly because of the dogmas perpetuated by the Russian taskmasters that have turned into self-limiting improvement habits. Chess players tend to like to beat themselves up, but is that the most efficient way to improve? See my post on blunderstanding for a slight twist on this. Indeed, I think this tendency amongst chess players may be a simple selection bias: that's how instructors work, so people who don't like those methods tend to not want to go far in chess (in fact, perhaps girls would play more if we used learning paradigms that were more in line with modern psychological theory than the methods used in the Gulag).

If you look at the mistakes in your losses then you can realize sooner which mistakes are important and which are not. A difference that makes no difference (even if it could have) is no difference.

An interesting point. Let's consider why it is so useful to analyze our own games. It is because we will learn the ins-and-outs of positions that we are likely to see in the future: similar pawn structures, piece placement, and therefore tactics and strategies. Plus the emotional investment in the game makes it more likely you will remember what you have learned than when you are simply looking at compositions or puzzles from books.

So, given that, and the fact that I make significant tactical and positional errors in my wins (and not 1900-level errors that I don't need to worry about, but patzer errors: just look at the previous win I posted), it can only help me to study wins. I will learn elementary strategic and tactical patterns that are much more likely to recur in the future. And in the future, my opponent is likely to see the tactical opportunity I gave him, to exploit my positional blunders (especially if I am improving and am more likely to see better players in future games!).

Perhaps the better you get, the less you need to study your wins.

If you win, you might be tempted not to take them seriously as obviously the outcome of the game was in your favour even with the mistake being made.

I don't have this temptation. My hunch is that if you go over wins and see major errors (like Squirrelchess did) you will take them very seriously. Try it and see. If you just get bored and hate going over wins, then you shouldn't do it as this is all for fun. But you should realize you are missing out on some great learning opportunities.

Also, using your reasoning, you'd never be motivated to study annotated master games, as the outcome of the game is completely irrelevant. Again, this is fine if you don't like doing it, but many espouse the benefits of such study (see Heisman's most recent post for instance).

Finally, imagine not reviewing a game in which you were getting destroyed until the last move, where you were able to win via a crazy one-move mate swindle. It would be crazy not to review that game. So the question isn't whether to analyze wins, but which wins to analyze. I am bad enough that every game has lots to learn from. This brings us to the same point as the previous bit, maybe the better you are, the fewer wins you'll need to analyze.

Another point: The goal to get rid of mistakes ("subtract negatives" like Heisman says) is by itself a "negative task", so this is at the core of its being. If one uses a "positive method" one will avoid "regions of negative feelings" when using it and thereby avoid the core of the task.

I am not saying to avoid looking at negatives. It is incredibly important to understand mistakes!! I am saying that is only half the story (or perhaps 3/5 of the story), that for learning from one's games it is also important to reinforce and understand the good moves, especially the happy accidents (this is the essence of reinforcement learning: random exploration of behavioral space, with selection via reinforcement of those behaviors that lead to good consequences).

Incidentally, the word 'punishment' is not really a good description of what we are doing when finding mistakes: as with blunderstanding, we don't have to punish ourselves for mistakes, but can use a different more positive psychological orientation to the negative chess moves. The issues of reward/punishment and mistake/good move focus are orthogonal and I will have to think more about these distinctions.

In my next post I'll talk about why I think it is just easier (but not good) to focus exclusively on mistakes.