On skill
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Knowledge and skill.
Let's talk a bit about skill now. I never get rid of the feeling that training skills has a huge potential. Despite the fact that I have found 101 ways to train the wrong way. When you exactly know which skill to train and how to train it would be a breakthrough.
Skill is a strange phenomenon.
On the one hand an adult can learn the complex motorskills necessary to drive a car within about 50 hours.
On the other hand, when I'm in time trouble, I have very much problems to annotate my gamescore well. No matter the fact that I have written all my life and I have been in time trouble for way over 50 hours. It even litterally hurts to shift from thinking about the game towards coming up with the names of the pieces and the squares. At the end of the game my writings become unreadable and incomplete. Until the last 5 minutes come as a great relief. When I put my pencil down all of a sudden my chess performance boost when I can just crank out the moves.
Somewhere in the two stories above must be a hidden clue. Why is it that in the case of learning how to drive a car the training of the motorskills seems to be adressed so naturally and effortless while in the case of annotation the motorskills don't take over no matter how often I have been in a learning situation?
Is there an exact training method necessary to learn to annotate fast in time trouble? But why doesn't this exactness of training method seem to play a role in learning how to drive? Is it a matter of interference between thinking about the game and writing down the moves? After all when I talk during driving my driving performance degrades too. But if it is a matter of interference then why doesn't everybody have the same problem with annotating games in time trouble?
What kind of motorskill is adressed by playing blindfold chess? You learn to keep track of your pieces without seeing them. You know globally where they are. When you focus on a certain part of the board you are able to reconstruct the exact positions of the relevant pieces. Reconstruction is nature's way of economic resource management.
Is keeping track of your pieces without seeing them of help with calculating a move? After all, even when you play blindfold chess you have to calculate future positions too. I tend to say that it helps.
Questions, questions. . .
How did you start to play blindfold chess ?
ReplyDeleteany tips or useful links ?
I use Fritz for blindfoldchess. You can choose if you make all pieces invisible or just the white or the black pieces. I started with making my own pieces invisible.
ReplyDeleteIf you set Fritz in friendly mode, it adapts itself to your rating. In that case you will win in about 50% of the games, which makes it more fun.
Perhaps you need to figure out a way to introduce stress when you practice annotating your game score. Similar to military training, where they wake recruits from a sound sleep and have them clean and assemble their rifles in the dark. Unsure exactly how you would introduce stress... perhaps by annotating blitz games on the web ?
ReplyDeleteI guess what is bugging you is stress.
ReplyDeleteWhen driving a car you dont have stress. You actually feel free, free to go where you want.
But when playing chess, in timetrouble your brain already backfires in finding good moves. It goes so far that its almost not done for your brain to do two tasks at once namely finding a good move and writing.
Atleast that is what i think is happening. I can be completely wrong.
Stress. An interesting thought. Must think about it.
ReplyDeleteA few observations from Tata:
ReplyDeleteIn time trouble I have no problem to right down hyphens in stead of the moves. So the problem lies definitively in coming up with the name of the pieces and the squares.
In time trouble I have trouble to interpret the digits of the digital clock. With an analog clock I have no problem at all.
I have learned to use a digital clock much later in life than I have learned to use an analog clock.
So the problems arise where a conscious effort is needed for interpretation. For a conscious effort you need space in your short term memory. Which isn't available during time trouble.
When I find a way to train the automatic arise of the square names so that no conscience is needed, I will have found the essence of skilltraining.
As you can see in my previous comment, automatic means without discrimination. I used "right down" in stead of "write down". So your conscience must always keep an eye on the results of an automatic process, without interfering the speed.
ReplyDelete"Is there an exact training method necessary to learn to annotate fast in time trouble? But why doesn't this exactness of training method seem to play a role in learning how to drive?"
ReplyDeleteIs it not absolutaly normal that when you focus on the game and the time and the moves you should do and your oponemt might do, that you have problems doing something else, not important, to write the games in correct notation down? hwo can drive propper while handeling a phonecall on a mobil phone? Who can count down from 100 in 7 steps: 100,93,86,79... AND write a common poem down at the same time?
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman40.pdf
Blitzgames will help you to recognise the positions wich needs longer thinking ( or not ) and help to play quicker in general.
@Uwe
ReplyDeleteIs it not absolutaly normal that when you focus on the game and the time and the moves you should do and your oponemt might do, that you have problems doing something else, not important, to write the games in correct notation down? hwo can drive propper while handeling a phonecall on a mobil phone? Who can count down from 100 in 7 steps: 100,93,86,79... AND write a common poem down at the same time?
These problems arise when doing two things at the same time with different parts of the brain. I try to do these things in sequence, hence one thing at the same time.
About Heisman's article:
Playing too fast is just plain silly and beyond me why anyone would do that. That has nothing to do with the reason why someone plays too slow.
The problem I adress is not about time trouble but about how to learn a skill. Any skill.
The first problem is the question: which skill? Your remark about blitzgames reminds me of an old idea I once had: to write down the used time of my moves during a game. That way I can see which moves take too much time and hence which skills are lacking.
I immediately started with that yesterday.