CCC Couch Car Computer

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The past 25 years my physical strain consisted mainly of dragging my body between my couch, car and computer. Since I feel less fit lately I (we) decided to become a member of a local fitnessclub. Today I had my first workout. I wonder if it is possible to combine chess visualisation exercises with cardio workouts?

Two track policy

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I'm now 3 weeks busy with visualization exercises. It basically boils down at the moment to doing DLM's microdrills with no board and no pieces. I'm making considerable progress. It is already easier to evaluate a position away from the board. This is going to be a long process so it is ideally suited to do it for 15 minutes a day over a long period of time. In general two weeks would be enough for any visualisation exercise, I guess, so I can do a lot of different exercises in a year or so. Right now I'm busy with knightvision exercises. After the basic visualisation exercises I intend to continue with visualisation of long lines with no branches. Slowly adding complexity to the exercises, step by step.

While playing I noticed that after visualisation of a future position, evaluation is dearly needed. In order to evaluate, I must be able to recognize the patterns in the position first. Since most positions during a game are of positional nature I have restarted in Aagaard's excelling at positional chess, which has great positional exercises. I add consciousness feedback to the training by writing the characteristics of the position down in the form of little narratives before I compare them with the annotation of Aagaard. I'm preparing for a tournament at Witsuntide.

Answering Wormwood

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Wormwood said:

I wonder how motion patterns fit into all this. I have no idea what the english term for them are, but I mean the procedural muscle memory related to any complex physical movement. like throwing a ball. - studies show those patterns develop roughly before you turn 14 or so, after which it becomes very difficult to acquiring new patterns. which is the reason why a right-handed adult has extreme difficulties learning to throw with his LEFT hand.

so, when we work these chess things right into muscle memory, we're actually offloading the task from our conscious mind, much like what you're talking about, but into a different type of unconscious memory.

now, the question is, are visualisation drills neglecting this resource completely, as the processing of problems happens without physically moving any pieces. or, are the drills still having the same effect motion pattern-wise, due to simply THINKING of moving the pieces. I'd be inclined to think the latter is true, as we do know simply even watching someone throwing a ball excites the very same areas of brain as if we threw the ball ourselves. but it's a question to be asked, and a distinction to be made. there is a difference, and in some type of training it might matter.

loosely related to that, I went on ICC today, and tried mating KQ vs KR. it's been months since I've seriously drilled it the last time, maybe even half a year. so I thought I'd probably fail miserably, since I can't really say I have it in my active conscious mind anymore. but the results were quite surprising: straight from the start I realized I couldn't really visualize much any of the important squares anymore. I couldn't see which squares were controlled etc, instead it was a sea of square confusion with the pieces floating in the middle. just like when you're really tired and just can't force yourself to see the board properly. -but oddly enough, the moves actually came to me without much trying. I won more than half of the endings, which is quite close to when I'd been drilling the ending daily for a couple of months. and the weird thing is, I mostly couldn't rationalize WHY I made the moves, but they just came out correct. I couldn't see properly, nor give reasoning for moves, yet I kept mating the computer. it was almost like my hand was possessed, and something outside me made the moves. and I think it must've been muscle memory from drilling the mate hundreds (thousands?) of times.

As usual you penetrate to the core of the matter right away. The ultimate consequence of my reasoning is that there is no such thing as automatic learning by repetition. There are:

• Training. The application of the exercise at hand.
• Feedback. The correction of errors with consciousness of sufficient intensity.
• The Miracle. The mysterious unconscious hence automatic adaptation of your brain to the task. It happens complete out of sight.
  

If you look at my improvement "career" of the past years I consider it to be proven that unconscious automatic feedback doesn't work. Since it doesn't correct anything. No matter the kind of exercise. The fact that bishops are much harder to visualize than rooks even after thousand or more games illustrates that automatic feedback isn't feedback at all. How could it be?

The fact that you can learn how to drive a car in just 40 - 100 hours shows that little repetition is needed for feedback. And indeed, if feedback is conscious, why should it be more?

So where does multiple repetition fit in the story? There are the following possibilities:

• Adding precision. Feedback itself needs little repetition when performed with consciousness of sufficient intensity. Maybe 7 - 10 times or so. But there are all kinds of details to be discovered. And every detail needs seperate training. You must follow the right melody. You must sing the right pitch. You must sing the right pitch with each of your 3 voices. The overtones must resonate. Your tone must blend it with your neighbour. Your tones must blend with the choir. You must adjust your vowels. You must adjust your breath etc. etc.. Good technique is infinite. So repetitions are infinite. But not more than 7-10 times per subject.
• Partly obsolete. When you train on autopilot, every now and then you will train conscious by accident. Especially when matters are new to you. But overtime the repetitions will become more and more obsolete when they become more automatic. But since you act on autopilot you don't notice that.
  
• Multiple repetitions are necessary to work miracles. I don't know how the miracle of unconscious adaptation is worked, but since people claim that multiple repetitions are a necessity maybe it's here where they do their mysterious work.

Please pick your choices!

You probably already sense that I think that multiple repetitions (100+) are pretty obsolete. In my reasoning there doesn't emerge a necessity for multiple repetitions. But can that be true? When I played Troyis I got better without much conscious effort. Is there a self organizing capability that adds intelligence to unconscious brain activity? If you hit a ball with tennis which you not can see because it moves too fast the brains seem to perform unconscious goniometric calculations at lightning speed. Yet there is no unconscious discrimination added. If you do a useless exercise, your unconscious brain will adapt to perform a silly task in an intelligent way. Discrimination can only be added by consciousness. I never have thought about how to play Troyis well. I didn't develop a strategy for it. So I learned to move the knight in my mind in a pretty random way at high speed. That high speed was what brought me points. The intelligence of unconscious brain activity seems to be based on simulation and imitation. Yet it is miraculous!

Information is lacking for a final verdict on multiple repetitions. But I have little to show for the multiple repetitions I have done in the past years.

Intensity of consciousness

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In order to transfer a task from conscious processing to unconscious procedural processing, a certain degree of intensity is needed. When you are young it is easier to learn things since your level of consciousness is somewhat higher. When you grow older more tasks are done on automatic pilot. Transfer will not take place when operating on automatic pilot. Yet it is perfectly possible to learn new things when you grow older. The only thing is that you have to maintain a higher level of consciousness during learning.
























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It will feel a bit out of your lazy comfortzone, but it is not impossible at all. You can compare it with the intensity of consciousness you felt during learning how to drive a car. If you think about it, is amazing how many tasks you learned to perform automaticly in the 40-100 hours or so that you had driving lessons.

Usually when you learn something quite new it is easy to maintain that high level of intense focus. But when the automatic pilot takes over, plateauting sets in. No matter the amount of repetitions.

Wax in, wax out

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Remarkable that nobody commented on the picture of my previous post. That illustrates the power of pattern recognition!

Probably I would gain the most points if I followed the road that Phaedrus mapped out. And I sure will once. Yet at the moment I'm amusing myself with visualization exercises. For the following reasons: I want to settle this issue once and for all, the Chess Exam pointed out that I'm bad in calculation and I'm curious if my assumptions will stand the test. Besides that it's fun.

Ok, now where are we standing? Let's stretch matters a bit.
Plateauing starts when automatic training takes it over from conscious training.
Automatic training results in no transfer of conscious tasks towards the procedural memory.
So the training is automatic, but in the real OTB deal you remain dependend on conscious actions.
Conscious training OTOH, does lead to transfer of tasks.
So the training will be conscious, while the real deal will be greatly automated.

Past two weeks I have made considerable progress in board visualisation. We all know EXCEPT J'ADOUBE by now that board visualization is of no use in games with a real board, but it is an excellent laboratorium to test hypotheses and trainings methods.

The method I used is to rebuild the bord from its diagonals. Yesterday I started with a new exercise: I try to imagine a knight on a random square on the board and to see all the squares it can go to. It is quite difficult for me and I really have to force myself to complete a whole circle of 8 squares around the knight. And I try to relate every square to the diagonals it is on.
To imagine the moves of a bishop is more difficult than the moves of a rook. But the moves of a knight are really hard to imagine for me. Especially the backward knightmoves. Maybe that's the cause that I find knights hard to handle on the board!

Key criterium is to enlighten the burden of the short term memory. Those tasks with details that you have to repeat consciously over and over again to prevent them from fading away from memory. The exercises above point out exactly which tasks need automation!

One word about maintance of skills. I don't think much effort is needed to maintain a skill once the transfer is complete. Just like swimming or riding a bike you tend to never get rid of it.

Besides board visualisation exercises I redo exercises from papa Polgars brick with the aid of a real board but with no pieces. That goes extremely well. Usually I'm a bit faster than I was a few years ago when I did them for the first time with the aid of real pieces.
I make heavy use of narratives during solving and that helps me to get much more out of an exercise.

The losses in my games lately point out that the bane of pattern recognition will be the most profitable. Yet bad calculation plays a role in almost every game of mine, allthough it seldom is the sole reason to lose a game. For the time being I continue with visualisation exercises.

[to be continued. . .]

Curiosity killed the cat

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From elsewhere on the web:

George Koltanowski, probably the best blindfold player ever, gives the following hints to playing blindfold chess:

1. Cut up a (paper) chess board into four parts ... and memorize the squares.
   (Pay special attention to the color of each squares and diagonals.)

2. Take an empty board and try to play over very short games of chess.

3. Set up positions ... and work very hard at VISUALIZING the next 2-3 moves. |
   (DON'T move the pieces!)

4. Practice your new craft whenever you get the chance! (Three times a week.)

5. Don't be afraid to lose.

Of course I couldn't restrain my curiosity to have a look at what would be my next challenge in case I manage to obtain perfect board vision. So I simulated perfect board vision by using an empty board and I solved the following exercise from papa Polgars first brick.

diagram 1






















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White to move. Mate in two.

Solution: [1.Qd4]

While I was working my way through the brick the first time, I developed the good habit to write down the time I needed to solve the problems. This one took me 15 minutes the first time. Now, with an empty board, I needed about 20 minutes.

I had no problem at all to remember where the pieces are. Which means that I store the position in my long term memory. I can prove that with the following story (which I have told before): once I was playing blindfold chess against the computer while the telephone rang. After an hour I resumed playing without the need to lookup the actual board position.

The one thing that I had to repeat continuously though, is which squares were protected by which pieces. I already suspected I was bad at that here. Well, conscious repetition to prevent short term memory wipe out is a clear sign that there is a task that needs transfer into procedural memory. So I will have to devise a training for that.

(BTW have a close look at the first picture until you understand what you see.)

Conscious transfer

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This week I have been busy with board visualization exercises. It is quite difficult to maintain a non-distorted picture of the board in my head. The details continuously fade away so I must constantly refresh them. My rule of thumb is that everything that has to be maintainened consciously by repetition has to be transfered to procedural memory. Thus freeing the short term memory for more intelligent tasks.

The brains are quite efficient and they don't like to transfer tasks from the conscious part of the brain to the procedural part. From our youth on we are much more familiar with rows and columns than with diagonals. This makes it much easier to imagine rook moves than bishop moves. Even the playing of a zillion chessgames doesn't inspire the brain to transfer the visualisation of the diagonals into procedural memory. Conscious reconstruction of the diagonals seems to be "cheaper" than unconscious visualisation.

I started to consciously "build" the dark diagonals in my head in many different ways. For instance by drawing a bunch of dark squares with my eyes shut. Or by imagining the dark squares on this board:























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Or by these exercises etc.. I even studied the diagonals when I was not to move during a chessgame. At the beginning of the week the board was a fading cloud of fuzzy squares while now some parts of the board have become persistent. I don't need conscious repetition to maintain these parts of the board anymore. The board even starts to have some resemblance with a square in stead of a cloud.

What does this tell us? The transfer is done in a conscious way with effort. Once the transfer is completed, the task is no longer effortful. (Quite) a few conscious repetitions are needed to hammer the task down. The transfer cannot be done in an unconscious way. That is why playing bishops diagonally in zillion games doesn't work.

The same is true for the pattern recognition department. The recognition of the patterns happens effortlessly, but the building of the list of items to be recognized requires conscious effort. Hence I tend to generalize this conscious transfer system as the main method to get things into procedural memory. To add some controversiality: it even points in the direction that a baskettball player should do better to make a few really conscious throws than to do the same over and over again automatically. But maybe I'm overstretching matters now.