Chess Improvement Series- 1

The Mencken Principle in Chess Improvement

H. L. Mencken once wrote,

“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”

That line should be printed on every chess notebook. Because chess, like life, tempts you with “neat and plausible” answers.

You lose a few games, and the mind jumps to simple fixes: I’ll change openings. I’ll do 100 tactics a day. I’ll watch this grandmaster course. Each sounds reasonable, even clever — yet each dodges the deeper complexity that true growth demands.

Chess improvement isn’t a single road. It’s a living system — logic, intuition, emotion, memory, fatigue, courage. Treat it as a straight path and you’ll keep circling the same rating forever.

The antidote is layered discipline, not blind repetition. That’s why I built my 60/30/10 Universal Law as a framework:

• 60% Foundation — studying master games, building understanding and structure.
• 30% Reinforcement — sharpening through tactics, calculations, and focused drills.
• 10% Control — playing training games to test and reveal weaknesses.

This rhythm accepts complexity instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. It respects the organism that chess really is.

Mencken saw through the human craving for tidy solutions. The same applies here: the moment a method looks too simple to fail, it’s probably already failed.

— Randy Alstone @ Sa Kannan.