Complex motorskills and target-awareness.

Before I took a break in blogging I had during a few weeks a lengthy discussion with Phaedrus. At the end of the discussion I reached a definite conclusion. That's why I felt comfortable to take a break in the first place. Now the time has come to put the idea's to the test. The idea's are not new, I experimented with them in the past more than once. If I reach the same conclusion after three different routes of reasoning, there must be something in it. The fact that the following experiments based on the conclusion proved unsuccesful so far shows that I was not precise enough and missed the real point.

Besides the renaissance choir I attend weekly I subscribed to sing in a close harmony quartet. Since close harmony singing is quite new to me it will take me some time to catch up. That are the risks of taking a break from blogging:)

So I have to be careful with my spare time. That's why I limit my research to only one subject: target-awareness. My goal is to train the motorskills that govern target-awareness. These motorskills steer your eyes when initially scanning the board.

Takchess provided a very interesting diagram:
























White to move.

It took me quite a few minutes to find the first move. Why does this take me so long? There must be people out there who find the move within seconds. The tactics involved aren't very complicated and the tree of analysis is rather small.
Yet it took me ages.

The fact that I have done a lot of exercises in the past didn't prepare me for this one. So the question is, what kind of exercise would? I need a scanning method that leads to the move 1.Qf1.
Let me investigate the position.
There are two relevant targets:

• the black rook on g2.
• invasion point or focal square f6

The targets g2 and f6 intersect with the attacking Queen on d3 at square f1.
The target g2 is easy to spot, the square f6 isn't.
There are two reasons why target f6 is difficult to spot:

• the path between f1 and f6 is obstructed by knight f5.
• f6 is an empty square

f6 is in fact the intersection between f1 and the black King. The human mind has difficulty to see empty squares as targets. Since a target square always derives it's meaning from a "real" target (in the case of f6 the black King) it is probably best to use the following classification:

• attacker
• target piece
• intersection squares

Let us take a look at all possibilities with the white Queen as attacker and the black King as target. What are the intersectionsquares?
Applied to the position:






















White to move.

While drawing this diagram I noticed how much possible intersection squares are dismissed automatically. To find the intersection squares you need to ignore the obstructing pieces in the first place. Otherwise you wouldn't find f6 because of the obstructing black knight.
But when you ignore the obstructing pieces, why would you dismiss a6 and b7 as intersection squares? After all, when the Queen goes to a6-b7 it would directly attack the black King (ignoring the pawns). Or, in other words, what is so special about the intersectionsquares f1, f6 and h7? They have in common that they are covered by another white piece.

Summarizing, the scan I try to invent must comprize the following:

• attacking piece
• target piece
• intersection squares that are on the route from attacker to target and that are covered by another piece of the attacking party.
• ignore an obstructing piece if it there is only one.

Those intersectionsquares that cover two or more targets are dominant.
Now it becomes clear why scanning experiments in the past didn't work.
Such experiments were for instance the micro-drills of MDLM.
Those micro-drills are too simple. They don't cover:

• the ignoring of obstacles
• multiple intersection squares on the route from attacker to target
  
• intersection squares that are protected once by the enemy (where you need another attacking piece to converge with the intersection square)

Another experiment was my x-rake-jogging which didn't cover:

• multiple intersection squares on the route from attacker to target
  
• intersection squares that are protected once by the enemy (where you need another attacking piece to converge with the intersection square)

Those scanning methods were just too simple to adress the situations in real chess. I'm going to investigate if this new kind of scanning will do the job.