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From: ziane@nuri.inria.fr (ziane mikal @)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Another chess question
Message-ID: <2041@seti.inria.fr>
Date: 29 Mar 91 18:18:11 GMT
References: <1991Mar26.162003.7849@swift.cs.tcd.ie>
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In article <1991Mar26.162003.7849@swift.cs.tcd.ie>
jeclarke@swift.cs.tcd.ie says

>        I remember reading somewhere (possibly years ago) that chess
>        Grandmasters did not gain their advantage over lesser players
>        by being able to look more moves ahead than them (I think they
>        used only look 3 or 4 moves ahead), but by the fact that they
>        could eliminate all the "useless" moves from any position, and
>        so have more time to concentrate on possibly useful moves.

One grandmaster (who ?) that was asked how many moves he used to look ahead
replied 20 and another grandmaster (Reti ?) replied 2 !
Actually it depends a lot on the position, that is whether it is open or closed,
whether you can judge safely at a deep level or not ...
But the point is that good players do not only think in terms of moves !
They analyze the position, make abstract plans like "take advantage of
my pawn majority on the Queen side to ...". Looking for candidate moves
comes only after. Of course there are usually only a few moves that make
sens with respect to a given stragegic plan or to a tactic scheme.

>        I seem to remember that this process was so unconcious that when
>        these useless moves were pointed out to them they didn't reply
>        that they had seen them and realised that they were no good, but
>        that those moves had never even occured to them.

>        Does this ring a bell with anyone? If so, I'd really appreciate
>       the reference.

De Groot (I think) has studied how grandmasters and masters perceive a position
differently than weaker players. He showed with nice experiments 
that they perceive a position in terms of chunks, that is patterns,
and not simply as a collection of figures and pawns.
In a way this is uncouncious but planning is certainly not completely
unconcious.
I do not have the reference handy, but if nobody does it sooner I will
post it later on.

Mikal.