Sunday, December 17, 2006

The role of understanding

What is the role of understanding in chess?
In the pre-strategical era of my chess development, life was easy. Just do as much tactical problems as possible et voila. After about 80K+ problems from different difficulty, I have reached the end of that road.

Where am I standing on the path to mastery?
If I had to make a guess it would be something like this:

Tactical skills: 70%
Positional skills: 20%
Strategical planning: 10%
Endgames: 10%
Openings: 30%

So there is a lot of room for improvement.

Once I have analized about 100 sacrifices on f7. Ca. 40% worked via an identical system. Ever since I found out, it's much easier to know when a sac on f7 is going to work and when not.
Understanding is a way to bundle a lot of seemingly different patterns into one system.
Such systems give the memory grip on a vast amount of data.

In the past I have ignored these explicit systems of understanding in the hope that exposing my brain to a vast amount of patterns would generate implicit systems all by itself. It doesn't seem to work this way.

I hoped that even if I had no system of explicit understanding- aqcuired in the study room - I could find it by intelligent calculation OTB. This hope proved to be in vain. A clueless mesmerized state tends to be the result of such positions where a system is desperately needed.

Take for instance rook endgames (chapter 3 of HTRYC treats this, so I work my way thru this again). If I try to memorize the positions without a system of understanding behind it, I forget it very easy. So I have to rework the data until I find a suitable system. I'm pretty confident that I will manage to do so, but life would be easier when the authors of endgame books had done that work for me. After all, that's why I pay money for a chess book.

I guess it doesn't work the same with everybody. I noticed that people approach problems in different ways. If I try to find an answer of a problem in a complex environment, I work step by step. Verifying every step. I exclude coincidence and gambling in the process. After processing all steps, I rebuild the data to an (for me) understandable system. In the end I will have an overview of the whole complex area, and whith that overview I can answer any question related to that area fast, without error and reproducable. And I can explain it to everybody.
This method is certainly not the best fit for complex problems, since it takes an enormous amount of time. Once the system is build, it is unsurpassed though. But often life is too short.

An other approach is what I will call "intuitive". Maybe there is a better word. I can't explain that to you since my step by step approach bans intuition as being too uncertain. An intuitive person is prepared to take the element of uncertainty for granted. An intuitive approach has for me a whiff of magic. If I ask Margriet the answer of a mathematical problem, she often gives me the answer right away. But when I ask how she comes to it, she has no idea and cannot reproduce it.
Such an approach to complex problems is often a better fit in daily life. Since it is seldom necessary that an answer is 100% correct as long as it is good enough to deal with the situation.

In chess the same is true. Even Deep Fritz doesn't come up with 100% correct moves, but the moves are good enough to beat the world champion (which indicates that the word "intuition" isn't right, since Fritz has no intuition). In general I believe that the best chess players are the ones who use the pragmatic intuitive method of problem solving and not the systembuilders.

13 comments:

  1. most impressive. this is what i was trying to say in my 'Open Note To Tempo' in my Saturday, October 07, 2006 post: "Saying What is NOT being said: simple, middle, or complex", which you surely remember but now say better than i can.

    im sincerely glad you are on hiatus from CTS. you can get more juice from 80% of a 20 potatoe than 20% of a 70 carrot. the law of deminishing returns engulf and overwhelms all learning and discovery.

    sometimes we need new learning, in new areas--of course, founded on enormously large foundations in other neighboring areas, in this case: tactics which you did as few others did there.

    surgery for me in a week or two is likely. hopefully get my two outter fingers to operate well again. power was out for 1mm people in the last day or two in seattle. terrable wind and rain, and many folks were affected. i got my power back, and after a good nap: chess study!

    warmly, david

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  2. Did you know that Tiger Woods, already being one of the best golfers, realized that his swing technique was not optimal? He decided to change it completely, even though he knew that his rating and his income would drop. Which they did. But now he is back on top, stronger than ever. So do not worry losing games and rating, the change will pay later (if it is the right one, of course).

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  3. Rowson in Chess for Zebra has some interesting things to say about understanding. He has found that the Master Level players when asked to analyze a position were far more likely to expess themselves in a flexible manner talking about the position pluses and minuses and comfort with not having to make a judgement as to which side is better. The lower rated players were more certain about what side is better and the reasons why. Perhaps an ability to be comfortable with the mystery of chess and not feeling the need to fully understand it (rationalize that we understand it )may be a important aspect of becoming a better player.

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  4. Tak,
    Perhaps an ability to be comfortable with the mystery of chess and not feeling the need to fully understand it (rationalize that we understand it )may be a important aspect of becoming a better player.

    It's hard to imagine that my mind can be deprogrammed from the step by step method after so much years, but if so, what would be the road to improvement?

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  5. I don't have a clue. I just wanted to share Rowson interesting observation.

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  6. let your intuition guide you, my vulcan friend. :)

    for me, it's always been more intuition guided by reasoning. if I can conceive a half-assed reasoning behind why something might work, and it seems to do so after a while, it's enough proof of it working. - my studies with the neural computation have given me firm belief in the self-organizing properties of the brain, and the confidence of it creating far move efective processes to solve certain problems than we ever could with our usual linear rationalizing. all it needs is training data and feedback, and it'll sort it all out by itself. a black box filled with gray matter.

    so I don't really worry myself too much with getting waterproof evidence on every little thing clicking like clockwork, instead I'm fully pleased as long as I get progress. if it works, it works, and I'll rather put most of my energy in the actual work instead of thinking about the work.

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  7. Chess is a very Zen thing. You have to really be in the moment to enjoy the game.

    Thinking about thinking just kills it.

    Think hard. Think very hard if you need to. But don't think too much about thinking.

    --funkyfantom

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  8. > your never going to be bobby fischer

    Hello bobby, is this you? Glad your fine but, I'm sorry. Nobody actually wants to be like you anymore.

    So Tempo, don't shut up you hear. Continue your posts. Tis an interesting read.

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  9. Anon insults suck, so just forget them. Why not turn anon comments off?

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  10. That was the first troll within 2 years. I put him in his righteous place. He helped me with a synonym for redundant: superfluous.

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  11. Tempo, many times you say that you learn from others feedback. Have you ever consider to hire a coach ? I did, and the results are great in one year.

    Best Regards,

    Shakhmat.

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  12. Shak,
    I will think about a coach when I have the feeling I'm stuck. At this moment my path lies quite clear before me. As usual.

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  13. "Take for instance rook endgames (chapter 3 of HTRYC treats this, so I work my way thru this again). If I try to memorize the positions without a system of understanding behind it, I forget it very easy. So I have to rework the data until I find a suitable system. I'm pretty confident that I will manage to do so, but life would be easier when the authors of endgame books had done that work for me. After all, that's why I pay money for a chess book."

    And if only more chess books did that! This is very much the way I feel. When I look at endgame problems I find that if they are explained to me in a way that describes a basic theme, it's easier for me to adapt it to play. This is where a good coach can help. My best chess lessons have been ones in which complex situations are brought down into bite sized chunks of themes.

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