My Chess Hypothesis

I want to test the effects of attention/focus training on chess performance. In my own play, I've noticed that my playing ability is extremely dependent on my ability to concentrate and my mental stamina. Couple months ago, I played a tournament at Rose City Chess (time control: 25+5). There were 3 rounds, and all of them were played in the same day. The first game was against a 1500 and I played the game nearly flawlessly. Even the engine was happy with it. However, as I got more tired, my quality of play dropped dramatically. In my third game against a 1100, I played horribly. I made many elementary blunders. While I won all 3 of my games, I'm not proud of games 2 and 3. A couple days ago I beat a 2000 rated player in an OTB dual-rated game (25+5). It was the only game I played so my brain was very fresh. I've noticed while playing online that my play is always best at the beginning of a session.

I know from looking at some psychology research that attention is linked to working memory and mental processing speed. I also know that the brain remains plastic for our entire lives (though the degree of plasticity declines over time as we age). I wish to test whether focus meditation can improve the intensity and duration of my concentration ability and does that increase improve my ability to play chess.

While I am engaging in other form of chess studying (analyzing games, doing tactics, playing games, etc.), my progress from doing those things has slowed down. While this is not a proper experiment (I'm not controlling my variables), any significant change in my rate of progress is likely due to the meditation.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been thinking about this idea for a while and have done some meditating sporadically as a consequence. I have not done it regularly. My current plan is to meditate in the evenings on Sunday for as hard and as long as I can. I will also emphasize focus whenever I play games or practice tactics.

My USCF Classical Rating: 1527 (provisional)