Mindsets Conference keynote speakers Grandmaster Peter Wells and Dr. Barry Hymer posed a provocative question: Can competitive chess align with educational values? The following article is distilled from their address which you can view here.
The Growth Mindset Revolution in Chess: Lessons from Hymer and Wells
The chess players who need growth mindset most aren’t necessarily the ones struggling—they’re the ones winning. Dr. Barry Hymer, a leading UK authority on mindset theory and education, and Grandmaster Peter Wells, an accomplished chess player and experienced coach for England’s national teams, have forged an unusual but powerful collaboration to prove it. Their keynote presentation at the Mindsets Chess in Education Conference drew upon their co-authored book, Chess Improvement: It’s All in the Mindset, to explore how the principles of growth mindset apply not only to chess improvement but to education more broadly.
Beyond the Myths of Mindset
Dr. Hymer opened the discussion by addressing the widespread misunderstandings surrounding Carol Dweck’s mindset theory. Having had the privilege of touring Europe three times with Dweck herself, Hymer has witnessed firsthand how the theory’s very success has led to its dilution. In the UK particularly, mindset theory became so dominant that it risked becoming oversimplified.
One of the most persistent myths is that naturally talented or high-achieving students are more likely to love learning. The reality, Hymer explained, is quite different. Many of our most capable students are far more passionate about performing than learning. While at their best these two impulses align, they are rarely synonymous. Students focused intensely on performance may never develop the deeper love of learning that ultimately sustains long-term growth.
This distinction matters profoundly in chess. A naturally talented young player who experiences early success may develop fragility rather than resilience. When they eventually face defeat from an opponent they expected to beat, their response reveals everything. Will they dig deeper, seek better strategies, develop new repertoires? Or will they assume they’ve hit their ceiling and consider abandoning the game? Initial self-confidence, Hymer cautioned, doesn’t always translate to long-term stamina.
The Paradox of Praise
Hymer shared a deeply personal insight about the limitations of praise, drawing from his own experience as a parent. When his first child was born 32 years ago, he and his partner believed their job was to praise everything she did. The result was predictable in hindsight: their daughter developed tremendous ego but became increasingly fragile. He recalled her asking at age five what she could be when she grew up, and after he encouraged her to dream big, she paused and asked, “Can I be God?”
That moment crystallized for Hymer what research has consistently shown: indiscriminate praise doesn’t build resilience or foster genuine love of learning. Instead, it can create students who avoid challenges for fear of failing to live up to inflated expectations.
Grandmaster Wells reinforced this point with observations from elite chess. He noted that among both grandmasters and highly successful businesspeople, praise wasn’t what drove them forward. In fact, many expressed skepticisms about being praised for things that came naturally to them. What mattered was the challenge, the struggle, and the opportunity for genuine improvement.
Growth Mindset for the Gifted
Perhaps most provocatively, both speakers challenged the common assumption that growth mindset is primarily a tool for supporting struggling students. Wells stated emphatically that growth mindset is probably most needed by high achievers. In chess, this becomes particularly evident because the game constantly presents fresh challenges regardless of skill level. A grandmaster faces the same fundamental experience as a novice: struggle, failure, and the need for reflection and metacognition.
Wells emphasized that chess proves especially valuable for high achievers precisely because it presents challenges they may not encounter in other domains. Where some subjects might come easily, chess demands continuous engagement with difficulty. This makes it an ideal vehicle for developing the resilience and learning orientation that characterize true growth mindset.
The Problem with “You Never Lose, You Learn”
The presentation took a critical turn when addressing the popular mantra that “you never lose, you learn.” Wells shared an anecdote about Jonathan Wilson, who told Russian-Israeli grandmasters Ilya Smirin and others that after losing, he had “learned.” Their response was blunt: “The time for all this learning stuff was university. Now you’re a chess professional, you need to start winning.”
Wells found himself sympathizing with both perspectives. While he appreciated the intention behind framing defeats as learning opportunities, he warned against using growth mindset language as virtue signaling or excuse-making. Simply experiencing defeat doesn’t automatically generate learning. Whether you learn from a loss depends entirely on how you handle it—whether you engage in honest, objective reflection about what went wrong.
Wells admitted his own struggles with certain aspects of defeat, noting his poor clock handling over 50 years of competitive play. Yet he emphasized that defeats have been invaluable to his development, provided he approached them with genuine analytical rigor. The key is not to assume that losing equals learning, but to actively extract lessons through careful reflection.
Metacognition: The Secret Weapon
If there was one quality that most distinguished elite chess players in Hymer and Wells’s research, it was metacognition—the ability to think about one’s own thinking. Players like Matthew Sadler and others they interviewed were experts at reflecting on their games, analyzing not just the moves but their decision-making processes, emotional states, and strategic choices.
This capacity for metacognitive reflection, Wells argued, is irreplaceable. It cannot be cultivated by removing the competitive element from chess. The stakes, the jeopardy, the importance of outcomes—these actually enhance the reflective process. When a game matters, when defeat stings, the motivation to understand what happened deepens proportionally.
False Binaries: Competition vs. Education
Perhaps the most important contribution of the presentation was the rejection of a false binary between competitive chess and educational chess. Both speakers pushed back firmly against the notion that competitive chess somehow embodies a fixed mindset while educational chess represents growth mindset values.
Wells noted that their book originally focused on taking ideas from education and applying them to chess improvement. But through their research and reflection, they’ve increasingly recognized how lessons from competitive chess can transform educational practice. The constant seeking of challenge, the focus on learning as a path to results rather than results as an end in themselves, and especially the practice of deep reflection—these are gifts that competitive chess brings to education.
The key insight is that focusing on mastery and learning doesn’t mean ignoring outcomes. Rather, it means projecting those outcomes further into the future. Elite chess players care intensely about winning, but they understand that sustainable success comes from prioritizing the learning process.
Serious Play: A Synthesis
Hymer concluded by proposing “serious play” as the synthesis between competitive chess and educational chess. Both elements matter equally. Competitive chess without educational values risks becoming brittle and performance obsessed. Educational chess without competitive stakes may fail to generate the intensity needed for genuine growth.
The jeopardy that competition brings isn’t opposed to growth mindset—it can actually amplify it. When outcomes matter deeply, when challenge levels are highest, when failure has real consequences, that’s often when the qualities associated with growth mindset become most essential: resilience, strategic thinking, metacognitive reflection, and the determination to improve.
Implications for Chess Educators and Coaches
What practical wisdom can chess educators and coaches draw from Hymer and Wells’s insights?
First, recognize that your most talented students may need growth mindset interventions more than anyone else. Early success can breed fragility. Help strong players embrace challenge and view plateaus or losses as normal parts of development.
Second, be judicious with praise. Praising natural talent or easy achievements can undermine motivation. Instead, recognize effort, strategy, and improvement. Acknowledge the process, not just the outcome.
Third, make metacognitive reflection a regular practice. Don’t let students leave a loss behind without mining it for insights. The learning doesn’t happen automatically—it requires deliberate, structured reflection on what happened and why.
Fourth, don’t shy away from competition. The stakes and intensity of competitive play aren’t obstacles to growth mindset—they’re often catalysts for it. The key is helping students process competitive experiences with a learning orientation.
Finally, resist false binaries. Competitive chess and educational chess aren’t opposed traditions that must choose sides. They’re complementary approaches that, when properly integrated, create something greater than either could achieve alone: serious play that develops both chess skill and human capacity.
Conclusion
As Hymer and Wells demonstrated, the intersection of mindset theory and chess improvement offers profound insights for both domains. Growth mindset isn’t just about encouraging the struggling student—it’s about helping high achievers sustain their development over the long term. It’s not about replacing competition with cooperation, but about approaching competition with the right mental framework. And it’s not about empty slogans like “you never lose, you learn,” but about the disciplined practice of extracting genuine lessons from both victories and defeats.
Their work reminds us that chess, at its best, teaches more than tactics and strategy. It teaches us how to think about our thinking, how to embrace challenge, how to learn from failure, and how to persist in the face of difficulty. These are the capacities that define not just strong chess players, but successful learners in any domain. When we recognize the deep connections between chess improvement and mindset development, we unlock chess’s full potential as both a competitive pursuit and an educational tool.
