How Chess Players Relate to the Elephant and the Rope

This is a story my karate sensei told me.

The Story

A zookeeper births a baby elephant. The baby elephant is tied to a stake by a piece of rope soon after. The zookeeper tells the elephant that they cannot break the rope. The little elephant obeys and does not break the rope. As the elephant grows up, they become one of the largest mammals on Earth, easily able to break tree limbs with their mighty trunk. But the rope remains intact!

"Why?" asks the patrons to the zoo. "Why can't the elephant break the rope? Surely, the elephant can rip it apart easily."

The zookeeper smiles, "Of course, the elephant can break the rope. But when the elephant is told its entire life that it cannot break the rope, it gives up, and it never tries, never questioning if it can, indeed, break the rope."

The Elephant and Chess

This story is how I relate to the idea of chess improvement. We often set rating goals and they feel impossible to achieve. We put up walls in our mind saying, "We cannot cross this rating threshold." For example, I, as a USCF 1750 player, sometimes feel that beating a 2000 rated opponent is impossible. They have better move orders in their opening. They understand imbalances better. Their endings are clean and crisp with good technique. They are, overall, a better player. There's no way.

Chicago Chess Center. Monday Slow Game. 60+30 (lichess.org)

This is one of my losses that illustrates how much better of a player I perceive my opponents to be. In this game, I made a move order error as Black on move 6 (6...Nf6), and, for the rest of the game, I was struggling to remain in the game, eventually succumbing to a worse ending.

But what could I have done after my slip up to keep Black's game from collapsing?

After 19. Bc1, Black is about to lose a pawn. Black played 19...Rab8 and lost the b7 pawn soon after. The point of 19. Bc1 was so that White could play 20. Bxb7 without worrying about 20...Rab8, poisoning the b2 pawn. Knowing this, the correct way to save the pawn is 19...Ra7 and White has to figure out another way to win the pawn. Of course, the position is still tough for Black to hold as White is better due to the presence of 2 bishops in an open position. It was better to remember the correct move order on move 6 (6...e6) and not let the game get to this position.

The reason the elephant gave up on breaking the rope when they were young was because the elephant did not recognize their own potential. They could only see what was in front of them which was a rope they could not break. In chess, if we do not believe we can break the rope holding us back from crashing through rating goals, what hope do we have to achieve them?

We should challenge ourselves to believe we can achieve our chess goals. Improvement requires practice, patience, and perseverance over a long period of time. Most players improve slowly over time, but some develop faster than others. And, this is most important, we should not be discouraged because of someone else's success. We have to play our own game and stick to our plan. The most important chess game we have is our next game, not anyone else's. In one year, we may discover we are stronger players than we were the year before.

In the end, chess and improvement are mental fortresses we construct in our mind. To break through them, we should question the rope that holds us, the elephants, back. Is it really as strong as we perceive it to be?