Wednesday, March 02, 2005

The blind spot

If there where no opponents there was no reason to be in doubt about your own pure judgment.
You see what you see in a position and that are the only things to be seen.

How often do we hear our opponents who did just loose from us say: "I stood better during the whole game"? With a grin on your face you think "what an idiot, he was worse after move two".
How often do we hear ourself say after loosing a game :"I stood better during the whole game" and when you look at your opponent you see an idiot grin on his face?
Only in an indirect way you can get a notice of something that is there but is not seen by you.

Once you realize that you have a blind spot, with things in it that are seen by other people but not by yourself, the question arises: how big is this blind spot?
Do you miss only 1 % of the things to be seen or do you miss 99%?

I'll try to adress this question.
Against me, Fritz has a score of 100%. I have never won a single game when Fritz played at his highest level.
So for simplicity I state that from my point of view Fritz has no blind spot.
Let's say that Fritz has a rating of 2500, about a (beginning) grandmasters level.
When I let Fritz analyze my games he proposes in 50% of the moves a better one. Which means that in 50% of the cases Fritz "sees" something in the position that I didn't see.

You can only guess what Fritz doesn't see in comparison to "the absolute ultimate moves" of a game.

If we have a blind spot in chess then we have probably a blind spot in life too.
You can get a notice of this when you are aware of people with an idiotic grin on ther face looking at you...

1 comment:

  1. Your right! I often suspect my opponents are not thinking much about defense or sacrifices. There are plenty of things I miss too.

    Fritz sounds tough! Chessmaster 8000 will agree with any move that doesn't lose .5 pawns worth of advantage. Many positional errors, like losing a tempo, are often agreed with. My goal for several months was to get 86% agreement or better in my games. Unfortunately that percentage drops in sharp, short games where one's mettle is being tested, and goes way up in very shallow, accurate positional games that go on for 50 + moves.

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