okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Strenghts and weaknesses of being young
I found the discussion of the advantage of being young interesting. Carlsen is a Norwegian chess player:
Carlsen: As a young player you have a lot of energy, a lot of strength, you are very motivated. But young players are often not good at defending a position; they cannot cope well when fate turns against them. The fact is simply that experience is a central issue. One of the most important things in chess is pattern recognition: the ability to recognise typical themes and images on the board, characteristics of a position and their consequences. To a certain degree you can learn that while training, but there is nothing like playing routine. I have always made sure to get that. I am only 19, but I have certainly already played a thousand games in the classic style.
Some parallels with orienteering come to mind. Young orienteers are often super motivated, but don't really know what they're doing. As they get older, they learn a lot, but they have a harder time staying motivated (for all sorts of reasons).
