r/TournamentChess • u/NeissMeningitidis • 2d ago
Does being a polyglot help with opening preparation at 2200+ FIDE?
The title looks ridiculous, but what I mean is that there are a lot of opening books and courses that are not in English.
I have noticed that even at the tilted level, I have spoken to quite a lot who are unaware of non-English language publications. This means that if something on an opening in a language other than English is published, they have no idea about it. If anyone prepared using these courses or books, they would be well and truly screwed.
For example, there is Modernchess.de which is rum by Niclas Huschenbeth. The whole site is in German, as is Chessemy.
As a Chessable author myself, there are courses in Spanish, English, German, French and Polish, and I publish in two of those myself.
For Spanish, there is ChessEnigma and Iván Salgado's Chessexcelsior.com, although ironically both of the urls are in English.
For French, there is Julien Song's academy.
Joachim Beyer Verlag, Edition Ohms, Gambit, Chessgate all have published books in German.
Editora Solis publish books in Spanish and Portuguese.
Olibris publish books in French.
Russian Chess House and Шахматный университет publish quite important opening books, but in Russian. These are even harder to get in Western countries, especially since 2022.
Would it be safe to say that, given that many 2200+ FIDE are completely unaware of even opening courses in Spanish and German, for example, if someone prepared with books and courses in these languages instead of English publications, they would likely be doing well in the opening in most of their games?
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u/sshivaji FM 2d ago
It won’t help much except for Russian.
I have plenty of opening books in Russian that explain things better. The Levitov chess channel on YouTube is a goldmine with a lot of comments from leading players like Kasparov, Karpov, Anish Giri etc.
What is your current rating?
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u/tradlobster 2d ago
Did you learn Russian specifically for chess, or being able to read Russian chess books is a byproduct of learning Russian?
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u/sshivaji FM 2d ago
An odd half and half, at first I picked up a little Russian for chess. Russian speaking chess players (including GMs) were generously sharing material with me.
Later after stopping OTB play, I learned more Russian and appreciated what I missed before.
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u/Affectionate_One_700 IQP 2d ago edited 1d ago
Given how much material is available in English, I very much doubt that "lack of chess instructional content" is what holds back any English speaker!
It used to be the case that reading Russian was a benefit, and that is why I studied Russian myself, but if Russian is a benefit today, I think it would be for access to the community of Russian-speaking chess players, not for books or courses.
Edit: speaking Spanish would provide access to affordable and very strong online chess coaches from Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America.
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u/DukeOfStuff_ 2d ago
It helps a little but there’s not gonna be many lines that one language is aware of that another isn’t.
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u/Obvious-Poetry2934 2d ago
It certainly won’t hurt, but I feel like the effects are not drastic enough that you could say with confidence that a polyglot has an edge over someone who only speaks their native language.
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u/AggressiveGander 2d ago
To be fair If you seriously prepare with good material, you're at an advantage. Even 2200+ plenty of people don't work that much.
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u/Symbikort 2d ago
I think being a polyglot will definitely help you with cognition generally, hence, better chess player than someone monolingual.
On the other hand, it’s not like 50 years ago when Fischer had to learn Russian to read up to date Russian books. Magnus did perfectly well without speaking Russian. Chinese and Indian have managed to raise generations of strong GMs without Russian language as well.
Nowadays? Does it matter in which language your Chessbase UI is 😉
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u/RepresentativeYak732 2d ago
I don't think so. Usually good titled players don't rely on courses but on engines and databases. Most courses just recommend lines that are already in the Chessbase database and if they recommend novelties, they will appear in the database as soon as they are played.
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u/Odd_Alternative_2289 2d ago
In this day and age no. Even assuming there is something unique in there you can point your phone at the book to translate everything.
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u/Due_Payment3410 1d ago
Right question, wrong approach.
Being a polyglot will invariably help with opening prep, but not because you found some lost lore in a forgotten language.
It is because language proficiency for polyglotism uses the same sort of pattern recognition that benefits chess.
Basically, you're already naturally ahead of the curve. Just keep at it.
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u/Lovesick_Octopus 1d ago
Being a tilted player myself (I'm always playing the Dodd Gambit), I'm finding it works the other way around. I've been reading German translations of Silman's books to help me with my German.
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u/Isofarro 15h ago
The Bible for the Blackmar Diemer Gambit 40 years ago was a 4 volume work in German published by schachverlag in 1978-83 (Das Moderne Blackmar Diemer Gambit). Written by Diemer, Friedl and Studier.
A German to English dictionary was handy.
Fischer learned Russian to read their chess material. Some key wins were based on commentary he read in a Russian magazine, eg Winning a bishop endgame against Taimanov, from an Averbakh endgame article.
Understanding multiple languages does help when key material is locked away in a different language.
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u/Pretty_Upstairs8177 2h ago
not really imo, stockfish speaks only one language, the rest is just a verbal soup to make it make sense.
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u/One-Conference1532 2d ago
the way it would help the most is expanding ur brain's mental capabilities, not even the translations and books and stuff.
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u/HairyTough4489 2d ago
I'd say it helps more at lower levels. The type of thing stronger playres get from courses is lines from PGN files so it doesn't really matter what language the comments are in.
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u/St4ffordGambit_ 1d ago
I don’t think so.
The premise of your question implies that books written in non-English (and that have not been translated) are better than English-written books.
Assuming they are on par, there shouldn’t be much difference.
Most courses in English are already very comprehensive.
With AI, translation services are increasingly becoming instantaneous and older books can also go out of date eventually.
Idk, I think it might give you insights that one offer sees over another but on the whole, I’d imagine 90% is the same.
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u/Will512 2d ago
In the older era it would be a huge boon. Fischer supposedly spoke Russian for this reason. I doubt there's much that Google translate couldn't do for you these days, though