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From: bl@hplabsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.chess
Subject: Re: The Secret of being a Chess Master
Message-ID: <3228@hplabsb.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Jan-86 20:39:59 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsb.3228
Posted: Fri Jan 10 20:39:59 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 13-Jan-86 08:07:08 EST
References: <269@ihlpf.UUCP> <102100005@haddock.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA
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> 
> /* Written 11:06 am  Jan  7, 1986 by bill@milford in haddock:net.games.ches */
> 
> > I vaguely remember some psychological studies which indicated some
> > unlearned traits which good masters possess but are relatively lacking
> > in the rest of us.  The term I remember is "eidetic memory" and the test
> > was how well the subjects could reconstruct chess positions after
> > examining it for a short time.  It's seemingly obvious that this should
> > correlate with the ability to mentally calculate variations and imagine
> > possible 'successors' to a given position.  How could someone 'learn'
> > this except through repetition by playing again and again?
> 
> This seems misguided.  If the test positions were sensible chess
> positions, then a master would see them the way you would see
> sentences.  Remembering a sentence, or a sensible position, is much
> easier than remembering a jumbled string of letters or a nonsense
> position.  Dancers develop an ability to store dance combinations
> quickly; I'm sure that other students develop similar powers of
> recognition.
> 
> A chess master is more facile at recognizing sensible patterns in
> chess positions than the average player or non-player is, but I don't
> suspect it is due to natural ability.

Correct.  The experiments were done with three subjects, an amateur,
a medium strength player, and a master.  They were asked to reconstruct
positions taken from grand master level games after viewing them for
a short period of time (seconds).  The amateur could get about seven
pieces correctly placed, the medium strength played would do a bit
better.  The master player could reconstruct the positions almost perfectly.
The experiment was also tried with randomly placed pieces.  The master
player did worse than the other two subjects!  The theory is that the
human short term memory can hold about seven "chunks" of information.
As to what the "chunk" of information is depends on the subject.  For
the amateur, it is a piece placements.  For the master, it is piece
relationships and patterns.  For some of the positions, the master
could not only reconstruct the position but could also recite the
tournament from where the game came, who the players were, and what
the next move was!  In one position where Hans Berliner was the master
subject, he reconstructed the position perfectly except that he placed
a rook on the same column of a piece that it was attacking instead of
the same row.  He remembered that the rook was attacking the piece but
forgot from where.

Learning chess has been compared to learning a language.  The longer
you work at it and the younger you start, the larger your vocabulary
(chess patterns) will be.  The number of patterns that a chess master
knows has been compared to the vocabulary size of a college graduate.
When a master looks at a position, he is able to instantly "understand"
the position and knows what the important issues are.