Temposchlucker

. . . I didn't exactly wanted to show the world how I blundered. I gave this example in my previous post in order to investigate how the mechanism of the choice of moves works. I thought this was a clearcut example. But the blunder element turned out to be distractive. I tend to overfocus somewhat when thinking about something. Such focussing seems to work by means of suppressing the signals that could interrupt. Or by raising the threshold. Nevertheless, certain signals manage to exceed the threshold and certain do not. This determines which move we chose. Guidance of focus seems to manipulate these signals or thresholds. Whether this guidance is conscious or not. This guidance seems to be driven by habits when its not conscious. Besides that, those patterns that are stored with strong cues for retrieval seem to produce stronger signals. Forgetfulnes dampens the signals overtime. Especially those that are acquired on automatic pilot. I estimate the amount of patterns you need to ...

. . . Black has just given a check. I played black. After a wild game with a mutual kingside attack I couldn't find the winning combination and traded off towards this ending. We both had about 5 minutes left on the clock. I was blissfully unaware of the danger of the passer on the h-file. I was still biased by the previous moves and felt I was slightly better. But if you aren't aware of the danger you can easily lose. Which I did. Why wasn't I aware of the danger of the h-pawn? My teamleader saw it long before, he declared later. Wasn't such a position in my database? It sure was. There just wasn't a cue that retrieved the pattern from memory. What missed in my system was an evaluation of how dangerous such passer can be. That is what I meant by "So what we need is a database with evaluations, my friend." in my previous post .

. . . Phaedrus said: "Reading this post I do get the feeling that it does seem to imply that good positions are created. I tend to believe that this is more or less a false assumption. We only achieve an advantage if the opponent allows [himself making] mistakes (or "creates" weaknesses). There is a strong case to be made however for the assumption that it is possible to create imbalances, and with them the targets that can be attacked. My feeling is that if one tries to understand endgame play, it is better to talk about imbalances than about advantages." Tempo said: It is tempting to talk semantics about advantages versus imbalancies, but that would obfuscate anything to be learned from these erudite words, my dear Phaedrus. Let us see what's the fabric of which imbalancies are made. In order to get an imbalance, the opponent must make a mistake, you said. Implying that you cannot force it, the opponent must cooperate. A mistake can happen when there is a...