3 layers of invisibility

After doing lots of visualisation exercises I came to the following reasoning:

If you can't solve a problem while looking at the board and moving the pieces around with your hand, you certainly aren't going to solve it with with your eyes closed before your mind's eye only. So the best you can hope for as result of visualisation exercises is that it is as if you are looking at the board with your eyes open. But it doesn't shift your boundaries as problemsolver.

There is more to it though.
Yesterday I introcuded the 3 layers of chess vision:

• 1. The squares covered by my present pieces (part of the present cage)
• 2. The squares covered by a piece of me in the future (part of the future cage)
• 3. The squares covered by the enemy (limits the places where I can put my pieces hence my ability to create the future cage)

Here I have a diagram that perfectly demonstrates these features.
























White to move

This is a problem of masterlevel. You can't say that it is a very difficult problem though. The goal is this: mate the king. And every move is a check.
The tree of analysis isn't very big at all.

The problem is purely caused by the visualisation of the squares and the volatility of the memory. I now see a flaw in the reasoning that working on visualization can only have very limited results: even if you allow yourself to move the pieces by hand, you still have to visualize the cage. Otherwise you are going nowhere. Moving the pieces by hand relieves your problem to see the future cage, but you still have the visualise the current cage.

So the question is, again, how can we ease the task of the short term memory which is overloaded by coping with all those invisible squares?
I know the theoretical answer on this: make chunks and store them in your long term memory.

But the question is: how to make that practical? Or in other words: solve the diagram above and ask yourself "what must I learn to relieve this task and how must I train it?"

Narratives and chess vision II

Now I have formulated the narrative of the cage, there are a whole lot of chessproblems that fall into this description. Every mate, to be precise.

I'm well aware that what I try to tell now probably will sound very vague, but since it is important I hope you are willing to put some effort in it to understand what I'm trying to say. Feel free to ask.

There is a close relation between narratives and chess vision. A narrative is the first stage of learning something new, chess vision the second. Take for instance the narrative of the king in the cage. The narrative tells that there are 3 types of fabric of which the cage is made:

• The edge of the board (physically visible)
  
• The pieces of the opponent (physically visible)
• The squares covered by your own pieces (chess vision needed)

The narrative supplies the idea of the king in the cage. The idea of the cage limits what you need to see. You don't need to see the whole rim of the board, you need only to see that part of the rim that is part of the cage. The same is true for the pieces of the opponent. You don't need to see all of them, only the ones that are part of the cage. The same is true for the squares covered by your own pieces. The narrative describes in words the pattern you must learn to recognize. In this case the cage. This makes it logical to assume that there will always be needed a certain form of chess vison in order to visualize the pattern as defined by the narrative.

Due to the idea of the cage I was able to run through the advanced problemset of the CD intensive course tactics II of Renko. The whole CD contains only problems with forced lines. That is to say, every move is a check. Every CD of Renko focusses on one or a few tactical themes.
Now I started with the forced checkmates of masterlevel. These are more complex than the advanced level. Hence it forces me to create new narratives which must explain why these problems are more complex. This is what I found:

Sofar I encountered 3 layers of chess vision:

• The squares covered by my present pieces (part of the present cage)
  
• The squares covered by a piece of me in the future (part of the future cage)
• The squares covered by the enemy (limits the places where I can put my pieces hence my ability to create the future cage)

At masterlevel the last two layers cause the problems. They are hard to see and easy to forget. The problem with chess vision is simple. The suares you see are visible only for the minds eye. That makes them very volatile. If you can only use your short term memory, the amount of squares you can handle are limited to 7 or so.

It is not quite clear how to work around this limitation in a practical way.

Narratives and chess vision

A few posts ago I mentioned an improvement of chess vision due to mumbling narratives while solving chess problems. In the previous post I mentioned chess vision as one of the elements of calculation.

What on earth is the relation between narritives and chess vision?!
Chess vision is defined as the ability to look at the covered squares in stead of the pieces. Narratives play a role in defining which squares play a crucial role in the position. An example will clarify matters.
























White to move

This is halfway a combination, so the position looks pretty nonsensical. Blacks only hope can be that white's cellphone goes off, or white gets an heart attack, or, less likely, he can give eternal check at some moment. But that is irrelevant. The point is to find the fastest way to checkmate black and what is of help for white to find it.

I think the main reason why we are so bad at chess is because we fall for the temptation of looking at candidate moves without defining the criteria first. You can follow any sequence of logical looking but randomly selected candidate moves. But there is a whole tree of variations and only if you are very lucky you will find the correct sequence within a reasonable time and without error. If you found it, or looked it up you have the solution to the problem. If you leave it there, and only repeat the problems and their solutions, you can hardly hope that it will effect future solutions of different problems.

That is where narratives come in. You must ask yourself questions about the position like "what can I do to make sure that I will solve this problem easily in the future?", "What are the characteristics of this position?", "What are the criteria for a candidate move?" etc.. In formulating the answers you create the narratives that contain new knowledge. When I did this for this position, I noticed that the king is in a cage. But there are two escape possibilities: c6 and c8. This defines two criteria for a candidate move: It must close a gap in the cage and it must gain a tempo. The criterium to gain a tempo is a general criterium for all combinations (except for the very rare occasion of a silent move). You can only gain a tempo with a check, capture or threat. c8 can be closed by the rook or the knight. c6 can be closed by the knight only.

The additional knowledge created while formulating the narrative transforms your view. In stead of being candidate-move-driven you are going to work towards a well defined goal. In this case, closing the gaps in the cage so the king can't escape. That trims the tree of candidate moves to a manageable bonsai tree. In stead of calculating you see.

Learning to formulate a goal in stead of learning solutions by heart by repetition is the way to go. Seeing which moves suit the goal.

Solution: [1.Rxf8+ (closing the first gap with tempo) Kd7 2.Ne5+ (closing the second gap with tempo) Kd6 3.Rd8+ Qxd8 4.Qxd8+ Bd7 5.Qxd7#]

About calculation

The idea of narratives is so flexible that you can use it for almost anything. Even the first problem of my new problemset unveils an abundance of new information when pried open with narratives. Some information on important elements of calculation is revealed. What is it what you do exactly when you calculate? If you know that than you can devise a method how to learn it.

So be patient, the position itself is not specific important or interesting, the implications are, though.






















White to move.

White is an exchange and a pawn down. Black's kingposition is unsafe though.
If you have been on a diet of 6 queensacrifices before breakfeast during the past years, like me, then you will see a red flashing "Bxh7" appear in neon-letters above the board.

I'm sure there are a lot of chessplayers who will just play the move by intuition and "look what happens". If you are less lazy, you look if there is a forced mate somewhere. Since you are a full rook down after the bishop sac, you are not interested in or worrying about material compensation, unless black must give his queen to prevent mate.

So what are you trying to calculate? You try to drive the king into a place where he is with his back against the wall. Into a matingnet so to speak. The fabric of the matingnet can consist of 3 types of material:

• Squares covered by your pieces
• Hostile pieces
• The rim of the board

We always talk about patternrecognition. But there are no pins or skewers or forks here. So what is actually the nature of the patterns we talk about? I will show you.






















To see the rim of the board will cause you no problem. Nor will the opponents pieces, since you physically see them. But the squares that you cover, that radiate from your pieces, that is much more difficult to see. When you drive the king to his demise, you must know where that is. This is one of the aspects of calculation. I call this chess vision in it's broadest sense. If you are training calculation, it must cover the aspect of chess vision at the least. There is more to it, of course, but this must be learned in any case.

There are 3 main lines in this position, each with increasing difficulty. More difficult to calculate.

The first variation goes as follows:
1.Bxh7+ Kxh7 2.Qh3+ Kg6 3.Qg4+ Kh7 4. Qh4+ Kg8 5.Qh8#
So you drive his king simply back to g8. Look how inert the black pieces seem to be. The same for most of your own pieces. They just form the rigid background of the action.

If you enter this solution Renko will not count that has a correct answer. His line is
1.Bxh7+ Kxh7 2.Qh3+ Kg6 3.Qh6+ Kf5 4.g4+ Kxg4 5.Qg5+ Kf3 6.Qg3+ Ke2 7.Qd3#

It's not clear why this is preferred by Renko. It has to do with the amount of useless sacrifices black can do to delay the mate, I belief. For the essence of the story this is irrelevant.There are 3 flavours in this line with the pawn sacrifice on 4.g4+ with the black king going mate on e2, e4 or h3.

If you look at the moves white make they are all checks, captures or threats. That are the only 3 tools you need. When you move your pieces around, you must be well aware of the radiation coming from your opponents pieces, so you will not place a piece en prise.

Rybka comes up with a quiet move. A tool usually too difficult to use for mortals. That is hard to calculate for a human, since it gives black actually a tempo for free and you must check all candidates for their harmlessity. Which is a hard thing to do for a human. That line goes as follows:
1.Bxh7+ Kxh7 2.Qh3+ Kg6 3.Qh6+ Kf5 4.Re1

So how does your chess vision improve? When you know you can work on it consciously.

Powersolving

Phaedrus, the dutch chessplayer who act as a sounding board for me lately, has suggested to me that the problems of Chess Tempo aren't difficult enough for my goal. Today I thought about this and I did some measurements and I think he might be right. The average solving time is 1m 42 s per problem. 16% of my answers are wrong. That means roughly that for 84% of the time I'm doing exercises that don't are a problem for me. In this stage of my development that doesn't seem a useful thing to do. It must be the other way around, 84% of the problems must go wrong. Otherwise I simply spill too much time. I didn't found a practical way to get more difficult problems with Chess Tempo.

CTS is even worse. Due to the fast mouse handling of my fellow solvers the presented problems are very leightweighted. If you forget the clock your rating will drop and the problems will become even leighter. As if you are powerlifting with 2kg a dumbell.

I decided to settle for Intensive Course Tactics II from George Renko, the advanced- and masterproblemsets. Those have suitable problems aplenty.

It's funny how I go around in circles. Years ago I stopped doing these because I found them too difficult. I didn't want to spill my time with problems so unique that I wouldn't encounter them in a thousand years. That was the moment I decided to start with CTS. And now I'm back with these problems. The difference is that I now have an idea how to make such training fruitful. We will see. I'm glad I'm not bound to methods or idea's.

Becoming a mumbling chessplayer

In my previous post I concluded (if you read between the lines) that the only training that actually worked made use of the verbal capacities of the brain. In order to check my findings I started to solve problems at Chess Tempo while describing the characteristics of the position and the moves by speaking out loud.

"Ok, here I see that the king can be driven away towards my own pieces. I must prevent that he escapes via d6. I can prevent that by Nc4+. I can safely play that since his knight on b6 is pinned" etc., etc..

I take ample time to describe everything that is going on in the position before I play through the solution. After all what I want to learn is to recognize the elements of a combination in every position. Of course the experiment isn't conclusive yet. But I noticed 3 intrigueing things.

• In the period I had my greatest ratinggrowth I felt sharp. During the circles I have hardly felt that. But during these new exercises I felt sharp again for the first time again after long.
• My "chess vision" was empowered again for the first time since long. The last time was during the period of ratinggrowth. With chess vision I mean that I look at the invisable patterns at the board instead of at the pieces. The patterns formed by the covered squares that is.
• I noticed characteristics of the problemset that didn't appear to me before. The problemset of Chess Tempo contains a lot of traps in the form of driving the king or the queen into a matingnet. Sometimes winning pieces if the opponent tries to defend that. In comparison: I have no idea what kind of problems are the most common on CTS, allthough I have done 70,000+ problems there. So I get important meta-information.

As said, no conclusive evidence. But suggestive indications aplenty.

I got an e-mail of a british player of approximately 2200 who said that he had learned to play chess according to the following method:

"I started playing games against myself. Soon after this, I started to try and create brilliant finishes to my games. These you would call chess problems. Problems which I created myself. So I taught myself tactics, I discovered ideas well before I ever heard their names. I would bet that this is what other boys had been doing throughout history."

That is an interesting idea. It's my take you need the verbal aspect when you create your own problems from your own games. I will first continue my current experiment before I'm going to try the suggested approach. I don't want the results to get intermingled.

Not for persons with an easy to shake faith

I was somewhat reluctant to post this article. But what the heck, truth is more important than dogmas!

I'm rethinking everything that has happened during the last 3 years of blogging.

The greatest improvement in rating I made in the 3 years before I started with the circles. I gained about 170 points in that period. I studied TCT and Polgars brick without repetition.
The last 3 years, while I did the circles, I gained only 65 points. There are people who think this is due to the law of diminishing returns. I have ingrained all important tactical patterns, it boosted my rating with 235 points and that's it. I have to live with that. Any efforts in that direction aren't going to bring me much further. I have to learn to live with the limits of my brain.

I simply can't belief that. Since a simple test at Chess Tempo shows that I'm not so good at tactical pattern recognition at all! I'm sure I operate way below my potential. If I'm right that means that the methods I have used were faulthy. Or I used the right methods in a faulthy way.
This are the methods I have used:

• Solving tactical problems without repetition.
• Solving tatical problems with explanation of the motives.
  
• Solving tactical problems with repetition.
• Solving complex tatical problems with repetition.
• Solving simple tactical problems with repetition.
• Solving simple tactical problems at high speed with repetition.
  
• Solving an enormous amount of problems with repetition.
  
• Solving tatical problems with explanation of the motives with repetition.
  
• Chess vision exercises.
  
• Visualisation exercises.
• Playing blind chess.
• Playing blitz chess.
• Playing OTB chess.
• Playing correspondence chess.
• Imagining the solutions before the minds eye.
• Solving problems while looking through only one eye.
  
• Playing against the computer a tempo.
• Describe the solution as a narrative.

Maybe I have forgotten a few experiments.
It is of course difficult to know exactly to what methods the actual rating gain must be attributed, but most of the methods gave a clear zero return. If I had to guess then the points must be attributed to the methods with the explanations and the narratives. Incidently that were methods without repetition.

That is why I wrote my previous post about the indirect influence of conscious information on the unconscious brainprocesses.

On the other hand there is some contradictory evidence that points in a quite different direction. If I look at the ratingprogress chart of the Knights Errant then it are the guys who I consider to be the most instinctive players, guys who are willing to do a move where they didn't think about, who have benefitted the most of the Circles. While the conceptual thinkers, the systembuilders and the logical engaged have benefitted little or not at all from the Program. Since I obviously don't belong to the intuitici I intend to work out a method to consciously influence the unconscious processes. I think that the intuitici are still somewhat closer to the child prodigies for who almost everthing works as long as it is vaguely chess related.

Disclaimer: I might color the remembrance of my experiences towards a logical reasoning.

Soon coming in a theatre near you

Let's use the following metaphor for conscious and unconscious work in the brain.
There is a stage on which a piece is played. There is a beam of light, which resembles the focus of attention. The public resembles the unconscious brainprocesses which take place in the dark. From time to time different messengers from the public act as a prompter to influence the piece on the stage. 5% of the processes play in the light, while 95% take place in the dark.

With a child prodigy, it doesn't matter what piece is played. As long as it is vaguely chess related his supple brain has unconscious processes that create skill from almost everything. When you are a non-prodigy-adult, life is more difficult. You have to take great care with what you bring on the stage. If the quality of the piece isn't high enough, the resulting skillbuilding will be close to useless. It is almost impossible to find pieces of sufficient quality, since all pieces are written by former child prodigies, who know nothing about a good piece since they never looked at one themselves. And the public isn't very forgiving for a non-prodigy-adult.

Of course a non-prodigy-adult will never reach the same quality of chess play as the child prodigy. Yet he can come very close. If you learn a foreign language as an adult, you will never reach the same level as somebody who speaks it as his native tongue. Yet you can come close if you are willing to put effort in it.

At the moment I'm rethinking all I have learned during the past 3 years of blogging. There is a dutch chessplayer who is willing to act as soundboard. He has a rating of 2000+ which is helpful and he teaches children with the "stappenmethode" of TCT. That is very inspiring. I will let you know when the coöperation yields its first results.

My first rated Polar Bear ever

Update:
At move 14 I played Qa4 after thinking long. That was a typical position I had no idea what to do. I was not too happy with the move. But I couldn't find a suitable plan for the position.



















Yesterday I played for the first time the Polar Bear with white in a rated game against serious competition. It took me a month or two before I felt confident enough to dare this, but now the bear is loose. You can find the game here. It's obvious this style of play suits me well. I'm sold.

Sudden enhancement

All of a sudden my strategical framework is enhanced by 45%. From 22 to 32 topics to take into consideration. When you are consciously building your framework, you have a reference to compare new information with. The book of Horowitz presented 10 quite new topics which I had never heard of before. All new topics concern pawn play. This is the missing link to turn the Polar Bear into a powerful weapon! There is no way I could have devised this on my own.

The book Pawn Count Chess is fairly underrated. The reason for this is, I think, that it is written by someone who wasn't of masterlevel, allthough the book obviously was approved by Horowitz, who signed it as co-author. Horowitz was an international master. Allthough his play was of grandmaster level to nowadays standards he was never granted the title of grandmaster.

For us mere amateurs the fact that the book is written by a non-master act as a recommendation! The main author, Mott-Smith, is capable to bridge the pedagocial gap that usually exists between grandmaster and amateur. The book doesn't contain irrelevant material and doesn't focus on exceptions. It explains the heart of the matter and the summaries at the end of each chapter hit the nail on the head.

His idea behind the counting method is simply put that 3 positional advantages is worth a pawn. Of course you can wait until some grandmaster will frown upon this idea saying, "yeah, but sometimes an advantage is worth 0.1 of a pawn and sometimes it is worth 0.4 of a pawn. It depends on the position" These objections are well met by the additional information that the book provides. It tells you when to count and when not. I think that the method quite suffices for amateurs. It provides a framework, and of course you will learn in practice when an advantage or disadvantage is worth counting and when not.

I'm very surprised that the book contains 10 new topics I had never heard of or if I had I never used it in my games. All new topics are about pawn play. I'm surprised that books about strategy like the ones of Euwe, Seirawan and Aagaard don't talk about it. That PCT had no problems that adressed these topics. Maybe these books and software did cover the 10 new topics. But in that case I must have forgotten it the moment I encountered it. Due to lack of a framework of course:)

I have read the following books about pawnstructure and pawn play: Pawn Structure Chess of Soltis, Winning pawn Structures of Baburin and Understanding pawn play in Chess by Marovic. Pawn Count Chess does a much better job to explain the basics of pawn play, not bound or limited to specific openings, the endgame or the isolani.

What I have learned as quite new:

• What kind of occupation of the center can you count as an advantage and under what conditions is this advantage useless?
• When does the pawnpush to the 5th rank count as an advantage and what conditions are needed? What is the effect of the structure this van pawn is imbedded in? (chain/salient/reverse salient). When can you count an extra bonus for the van pawn?
• When is a pawn storm on one of the wings considered to be an advantage?
• What is a hanging phalanx and when to count it as a disadvantage?
  

What I had forgotten to use in my games:

• Offside pawn majority.
• Crippled wing majority.
• Weak square complex.
  

The count method itself is of course useless for OTB play. There is no time to count 2x32 assets in a game each move. Even for a cc-game I consider that too much work. But it is helpful when it is not quite obvious what candidate move to play in a game. If you can count as follows:

• Move x only improves the position of my bishop counts as 1.
• Move y gives me space advantage plus it chases away an important defender counts as 2

it is a helpfull method. Of course after experience you will forget to count and just weight those moves. But untill then the method helps you to not forget to take into account all important issues.

What I don't consider

When building a frame it is good to work together.


From the 32 points of Point Count Chess I am used to take 22 into consideration during a game. That means that there are 10 points I don't take into account. I'm not even acquinted with the ideas. Which is a pretty shocking discovery, btw. All 10 are related to pawns (well, the weak square complex only indirect). For convenience I only write about these 10 points. Since it is my take that if I reach a position in which I don't know what to do, the 22 points I do take into account are probably fairly balanced. So the difference must be made by the other 10.

Plus points

• Mobile pawn wing
• Qualitative Pawn majority
• Offside pawn majority
• Pawn on 4th vs 3rd
  
• Advanced pawn
• Advanced chain
• Advanced salient
  

Minus points

• Hanging phalanx
• Crippled majority wing
• Weak square complex

The book works out these points and I'm studying it. At first sight it looks like a far more practical approach to pawns then I have seen in any other book. I'm very curious. This looks like the knowledge I need to make the Polar Bear a success.

Point count chess

The framework of chess probably looks more like a tree than a bicycle. At the higher cognitive levels I suspect it to be fairly limited. Say there are 10-15 tactical ideas, 10-15 positional ideas and 10-15 endgame ideas. About 30-45 ideas in total. The point is to recognize these ideas in your games and to value these ideas against each other in case there are more themes in one position. How difficult can that be?

It's my take that it is very important to think for yourself. With ideas of your own, you will learn more from books. Since most books will provide information conflicting with your own ideas you are forced to think about it. Without ideas of your own it is easy to read books on the autopilot. Thus missing a lot.

I have investigated a lot middlegame positions. The main positional point I learned from that was the importance of piece activity. I found all positional ideas to boil down in the end to piece activity. Further research learned me that piece activity means nothing without weaknesses. I must cultivate target consciousness.

In search for the ultimate frame I decided to read the book of Horowitz and Mott-Smith Point Count Chess. I looked at it in the past, but it made no impression by then. But now I have some ideas of my own and I was struck by the conflicting ideas of the book. Hence this post.

The idea of the book is to give plus points for good characteristics of the position and minus points for bad characteristics. To give an idea of the units: 1 pawn = 3 points. The goal is to find moves that lead to the most pluspoints. The division in piece activity, pawnstructure and endgame pawnstructure is mine, in order to compare it with my ideas. They talk about positions that are strategical by nature, since all becomes different if there is a tactical shot, of course.

Plus points

Piece activity:

• Superior development
• Strong outpost
• Bishop pair
• Bishop vs knight
• Rook on 7th
• Control useful open file
• Half open file
• Better king position

Middlegame pawnstructure:

• Control of the center
• Pawn on 4th vs 3rd
• Mobile pawn wing
• Greater space
• Qualitative Pawn majority
• Offside pawn majority
• Advanced pawn
• Advanced chain
• Advanced salient

Endgame pawnstructure:

• Passed pawn
• Outside passed pawn
• Protected passed pawn

Minus points

• King held in center
• Cramped position
• Compromised kingside
• Bad bishop

Middlegame pawnstructure:

• Backward pawn
• Hanging pawns
• Hanging phalanx
• Crippled majority wing

Endgame pawnstructure:

• Doubled pawn
• Isolated pawn

Weak squares middlegame:

• Weak square complex
• Holes

From the 32 topics mentioned there are 21 about pawns, 8 about piece activity and 3 about king safety. I only consider pawns in sofar they influence piece activity or they be a targed. That means that I neglect about 11 topics concerning pawns. That is remarkable, to say the least.

The importance of being blunt

In case you wondered why I blog so much while chess is on the backburner due to the calling of life, I use blogging as a break from the things I have to do (ok, I mean to postpone them). Don't underestimate the amount of free time that is released by no study and no play. Besides that, I blog about topics that fill my mind. This way I get them out of the way (ok, that's just an excuse for postponing).


Polly created a nice metaphor which is worth repeating here:

An interesting picture to use with this article, but without the necessary components and wheels that will simply be a bike frame, and not a bicycle to travel on. We're like the frame, but without the different components of the game we will not be able to move forward in our quest to become better chess players. The coach or mentor is like the guy in the bike shop who helps us decide what we're going to put on that frame to make it go from expensive piece of titanium to a functioning bike. If we're doing it on our own we may look through parts catalogues and pick what we want ourselves, or get recommendations from our peers. We still have another step once we picked what we want to put on that frame. It needs to be built. We may choose to build it ourselves, or may may have the mechanic help us. Chess study is the same way. We may slug it out on our own using books, trainer servers, software, or we may have the coach help us put it all together. Just like the cyclist who decides he wants a lighter set of wheels, or make other changes to improve the ride, we do the same thing as chessplayers. Maybe all the tactics stuff was a good starter kit, but now to improve we need to swap out the tactics server for more intense opening or end game study. Maybe we need junk the 30 games of blitz a night for 1 game played at a traditional time limit. The possibilities are endless.

Sciurus asked the following question:

What makes a good framework? Is it a collection of important concepts and a coach aids with the selection to distinguish important from unimportant stuff? Or merely a bunch of important pattern that guide you to an answer via pattern recognition, which would bring us back to a very old topic? Or something else?

Let me try to explain.

Every conscientious chess author warns us to stay sharp. What often is forgotten that it is necessary to become blunt first. Only when you know the mainstream ideas the appeal to beware of exceptions make sense. The chess author of course knows the mainstream ideas very well already. So his appeal to stay sharp is due to a lack of empathy with amateurs. Amateurs need to learn the mainstream ideas first. They need to become blunt. That is where the framework comes in.

It is easy to become vague at this point. A term like framework invites to that. I will try to avoid that. To get the right picture we must ask ourselves the following question: What exactly is it that makes the endgame position of the previous posts simple for Likesforests while it looks like a mess where everything seems to be possible for Wormwood and me? The answer to this question gives the right idea what a framework is all about.

A framework helps to see a position as simple. It provides the clue to a position. Let's assume a position where the clue is the principle of two weaknesses. Let's assume we are not familiar with this principle. The chance that you find the right move by trial and error of logical looking candidate moves is probably close to zero. If you don't know that you have to induce a second weakness, you have to try the right move by accident, and mere calculation must show you that that is the right move to go. As said, the chance that that happens is close to zero, the fact that such random calculation costs time and energy makes matters even worse.

So the ultimate framework is the system that provides clues that make the positions simple. Maybe you have noticed that when you look at a grandmaster game for the first time, there are lots of mysterious moves. But when someone explains it to you, the moves look really simple. Or maybe you have noticed that if you think you have played a great game, and you come home and show it to somebody, all moves look so trivial? It only happens very seldom that a move remains difficult and non-trivial even after the underlying idea is explained.

As amateur you have one very big disadvantage. Before you study something, you have no means to decide if the study will be profitable. So you must gamble.

The ones who do know what will be profitable and what not, I mean the coaches, the authors of chessbooks and the grandmasters, lack the imagination which is necessary to know what the amateur needs. Despite the fact that they can provide the knowledge, they don't. Since they don't realize what is important for the amateur. While the amateur doesn't know what he is missing. So he can't ask.

So to build your framework from knowledge provided in chessbooks is a daunting task. Even if you have gathered all important parts, there is still something needed to make it work. You have to know which part is important and which is not. Only practice can help here. After working for 6 months on pawnendings with SOPE, PCT endgame module and Polgars endgame brick I was acquainted with all elements of pawnendings. But I had hardly ever used it in practice. I had no idea of the relative priority of the consecutive elements, as Marty pointed out in one of the comments. The study was unbalanced. With way too much focus on exceptions while I had no idea what was common in practice. I had never thought about the cohesy of the knowledge. The post of Polly was the first confrontation after a long time of the acquired knowledge with reality. Nothing came up in my mind. I must admit that firing up Rybka before thinking yourself is a bad habit. But why didn't anything came up? On some place in literature the importance of "an active king" was emphasized. But for me that was rather abstract. Now for the first time in practice I realized that an active king means that it can help a pawn to promote. I realized that in this position that was more important than anything else. The active white king made that the attack was stronger then to defend against the promotion of the black pawns. It was a reality check of theoretical knowledge.

So:

• You have to gather the elements of the framework from books etc..
  
• The elements need to undergo a reality check. That is not the same as doing exercises of which you don't know if they are actual common in practice.

Only if the framework is put to the test and is sunken in, you can hope that it enlightens the task in a real game.

I noticed that in almost all my cc-games there comes a moment where I have no clue about what to do next. Actually that is a perfect indicator for lacunas in my framework. A pity that it is so difficult to find out what is the indicated way to go in such positions. For that, a coach would come in handy. Or maybe we should start a studygroup via the internet and comment on each others clueless positions?

No frame no gain

After solving a problem there is a gap. To bridge that gap it is necessary to have a framework on which you can hang your just found new knowledge. Without a framework the new knowledge is maybe or maybe not stored into your memory, but you will have difficulty to retrieve it anyway.

Usually you don't work consciously on your framework. People differ. If you put much effort in the solution, less energy is left to bridge the gap. If you often fail to bridge the gap, you don't learn from your experiences anymore. When that's the case, when you plateau, it's time to start to work consciously on the framework.

It's very unlikely that you can build a referential framework from scratch without aid. Life is too short for that. You must base your framework on the work of our predecessors. The easiest way is to copy the framework of a coach. Without a coach you have to gather little pieces from grandmasters where ever you can find them.

Before you start to work consciously on your framework, you have build little pieces of the framework that have no relation to each other. A few tactical idea's here and there, some positional knowledge, openings lines and some endgame knowhow. How to build a framework?

First the balance must change between solving a position and bridging the gap. It is not at all sure that the time and energy to find a solution to a problem is well spend. That may or may not be the case, but in any circumstance there must be considerable time and enregy devoted to bridge the gap. How does that look like?

I have spend about 6 months to study pawnendings intensely. Yet the pawnending of yesterday at first sight looked like a complete mess to me. Not before I had started to randomly calculate variations I had any clue what the position was about. Maybe that is difficult for you to imagine, but that is how I experience it. I guess that everybody has different areas where he feels not at ease/lost. How can it be that after 6 months of study I still drown in a pawnending which with hindsight is simple?

All the time I have focussed on details and solutions. But I didn't work on bridging the gap. Hence the knowledge I gathered is difficult to retrieve. In order to bridge the gap you have to ask yourself "what is needed that I will recognize this position in the wild?" What is it's essence? How does it relate to the rest of the game?

This example is limited to pawnendings. But the same is true for any problem.

So there is:

• The solution of the problem.
• The creation of a framework (copy from a coach or GM's).
• The hanging of the solution on the framework (bridging the gap, make sure you will recognize similar positions in the future)
  

To the core of chess improvement.

To the core












Polly posted an interesting article about an endgame position. For your convenience I repeat the diagram here.
























Black to move

I must make myself perfectly clear: I don't want to talk about this position again. But when I compared the comments of Likesforests and me, I noticed something that is very important. I might misinterpret LF's comments, but that doesn't change the outcome of this story.

I entered the position quite blanco, while LF immediately sensed what the essence of the position was. For me it was not evident at all that white was winning. Why not black?

If I had remembered some rules about pawnstructure I could have thought that black is winning since his structure is better: less pawn islands, les isolated pawns and no double pawn. But in stead of remembering I choose the lazy man's solution: I fired up Rybka with the Nalimov tablebases. Since I had no clue I investigated a lot of different variations. After quite some time it started to dawn what this position was about. Only after finding the right plan in the position I was able to calculate the relevant variations.

I sensed that LF immediately saw the right plan, so the position was simple for him from the beginning.

Let me recapitulate:

Me:

• I started the position blanco.
• I did a lot of trial and error to find the right plan of the position.
• The trial and error consisted of calculating all kinds of candidate lines.
• After finding the plan, the previous calculation is more or less down the drain.
• After finding the plan, I have to calculate the relevant lines to execute the plan
• After finishing the position I don't expect that this is going to enhance my endgame skills since I have no referential framework where I can fit in this experience. So future retrieval will be impossible.

LF:

• He immediately senses the right plan due to familiarity with this kind of positions, he is an endgame lover.
• He immediately starts to calculate the line that executes the plan. Since he hasn't lost energy with calculating irrelevant lines he hasn't lost calculating energy.
  
• He senses immediately that a move like h5 for white (which is counter intuitive for mere mortals) deprives black from all counterplay.
• Maybe he even learned something from the position since he has a referential framework to hang on his experiences.

The difference between us is the existance of a referential framework which can be summarized under the term "familiarity with the position".

The question is: how can I bridge the gap?
This translates to: how do I get a referential framework?

I must transform the solution of the problem to an element of the framework. After I exhausted myself (Rybka) with solving the position I'm not ready yet. I must add a conscious effort to transform the position. This is done by creating a narrative like the following:
The main trump of white is his king position. His king is ready to clear the road to promotion of the a-pawn. This supersedes all other considerations about the pawn structure. Black can try to stop the a-pawn, but then you have the familiar situation of stopping an outside passer, which will be won by white. So the question is, has black a counterattack? From the position on the right wing alone black could force a passer. But it takes too much time.

The interesting thing is that all elements in the narrative are already familiar! But recognizing the elements consciously in this position is what makes the difference. In practice it is very tempting to put all energy in the solution and stopping short to transform the solution into an element of the referential framework. Especially under time pressure if you intend to do x problems in y time.

Now let me try to extrapolate this example to the difference between a grandmaster and an amateur. The difference between a grandmaster and an amateur like me is based on the fact that he is familiar with more positions than me. Not with all positions, mind you, but relatively more positions. Be it in the opening, the middlegame or the endgame. This familiarity makes that he sees more positions as simple, while he doesn't spill time and energy to calculate irrelevant lines in order to find the plan.

Sticking to one master

When I started out with the Kings gambit, I bought a book of GM Joe Gallagher. Since I liked his approach to the KG very much, I bought almost all his books with opening repertoires.
That has definitely a big advantage. I adapted a lot of his style in my games.

Now I have thrown out the window my complete opening repertoire, I realized it is a good idea to stick for a certain time to one master. Since I have the adopted the Polar Bear, it is logical to look at the games of GM Henrik Danielsen. Since he has more than 100 blitz games with comment available on video for free, that is easy to do. I'm now going through them for the third time. Besides that, I have found 700 games of him in my database. An e-book about the PB seems to be underway.

I have played quite some Polar Bears lately, but I never sacced the f-pawn by pushing it intensionally. Danielsen does that pretty often though. This means that I don't use a certain power whuch is immanent to the Polar Bear. By sticking to one master this knowledge reveals itself while otherwise it would remain hidden. I can especially learn much of his way of treating the pawns.

Life is calling so I expect chess and blogging to be on the backburner the coming time. No worries, I will be back.

Who the heck is. . .

I got a vote advice for the US president based on my dis-/agreement with 25 statements. The graph shows how much I have in common with the candidates.












Since I don't know anything about the candidates (well, I heard the names of Hilary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani before) can somebody tell me where I stand in the US politic spectrum?

A happy 2008 to everybody!!

I play more blitz (10/0) games at FICS lately, but I encounter a few annoyances. The interface of Babaschess is as clear as coffee grounds so I have difficulty to work around those annoyances.

The first one, being offended by opponents who chat, is already solved (by setting all chat notifications off and ignoring them).
Now I want to put a few people on the noplay list. But how do I do that?
Further I don't want adjourned games. That is just silly for blitz games. Some oppenents who are about to be mated adjourn their game. If I have only 5 seconds left to execute a mate in two, that is irritating. So now I'm obliged to resign the adjourned games and put the guys on the noplay list (but I don't now houw to do that). I have noescape=1, but that doesn't effect adjournments. Can anybody help?