Understanding meaning
 |
| Meaning of life |
We have found out that it is meaning that we want to transfer from the study room to the tournament hall. Let's investigate this a bit further.
Today I talked to Phaedrus and I said about the position in my previous post:
"When I use trial & error I don't use logic and when I use logic reasoning I don't see the variations."
Trial & error is an highly automated activity which is semi intelligent.
It turns out that this semi intelligence is from a much lower quality than my normal reasoning.
Verbalization seems to be the only method to build understanding and meaning in the study room. At the same time we know that this verbalization is not going to make it to the tournament hall. And even it is not going to make it to the next problem most of the time.
We must find a method to assist the encoding of verbalization into something more automatic. I tried to imagine the logic findings from the position as geometrical patterns with meaning. From verbalization to mentalization, so to speak. I don't know if it works.
I wonder if child prodigies need this step of verbalization too, or that they can encode the knowledge directly without words.
http://chesstempo.com/chess-forum/training_diaries/uri_blass_trainings_diary-t1848.0.html;msg32731#msg32731
ReplyDeleteI would say: no. If you ask children why they chose a move you will seldom here something what we adults would accept as "explanation".
A growing list of meanings.. i dont think that will do it.
I think children learn by playing (around). What do you think about using the engine ( maybe as aftermath ) and "experience" the good and the bad moves too?
At CT this playing against an engine as aftermath is already implemented.
@Aox,
ReplyDeleteno growing list of meanings. That wouldn't work. Before you move on to the next problem, the meanings have to be digested. Encoded into intelligence that is added to your trial & error.
If I watch my son playing chess, I see that he does a bit more Null-Move thinking than I do.
ReplyDeleteA typical Null-Move is for instance the move 1...Rd4 in the puzzle of your last post.
"If I had two moves at once, then I could move my rook to d4 and then to c4."
Unfortunately, my son often hangs his pieces with this method: "if I move my bishop to attack his queen, and he does not move his queen (because he does not see that I attacked his queen), then I can take his queen in the next move.
But I guess that is how children think - they look for a good move and if they cant find such a move, then they look for 2 moves in a row with ignoring the right to move of the opponent.
So I agree with Aox, that children would probably not come up with a good answer if you asked them why they moved a move, other than "I hoped I can trap him" or simply "I thought this is a good move" (cause it threatens to threat s.th.).
We adults on the other hand play chess much more with Action-Reaction "I move - he moves - I move - he moves".
So we see checks and captures well, but threats we dont see so well, while (at his low range) my son seem to have less trouble in trying to threat s.th. with "quiet" moves.
In tendency that is what I feel I have observed with my son. I dont know if that is a general rule.
It could be explained by many ways. Maybe my son is simply weak, and thus his filtering for moves isnt so restricted than my selections, leaving him to think about moves I would not even bother to think about - and every now and again it turns out that his move is indeed a good move. Once his experience on selecting moves is more advanced, he might be blind to threatening moves, too?
I'm not so much interested in how "ordinary" childs do it, since they suck at chess. I'm interested in how child prodigies do it.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a prodigy child in terms of chess?
ReplyDelete"Genius are made - not born." I totally agree with that.
Judith Polgar is not neccessarily gifted (though it could be that she is). It could just as well be, that she started early and was working hard to become a real chessplayer.
Probably you mean youths, who became already a master? You wont find any masters below 10 years of age.
@Munich,
ReplyDeletethat means that they use the verbalization of the coach and they thus bypass the verbalization state. Their trial & error semi intelligence is of much better quality since it is the intelligence of their coach.
Well, I am the coach of my son, and I told/taught him how to play chess.
ReplyDeleteMy son sometimes did say the words I told him when he was doing chess puzzles.
I told him: "These puzzles have all s.th. in common. They are all 'check - check mate!'.
So you give first a check, and then you check mate him."
The set was a "check mate in 2" set.
While solving these puzzles he said:
"check - check mate!". He did this like a war cry a karate or so.
With a different set I told him: "these puzzles are about: check - and then take s.th. with the piece that just gave check. Hint: it is often the knight, but not always, and it is not always a check. But most of the time it is.
And then my son said: "check - and now I taking s.th."
There were 2 sets: one was a fork set and the other a skewer set.
He even refined these words with:
"check, often with a knight - and now take s.th., often it is a rook!".
Which is by the way true if you look at CT Puzzles ranged 800-1000.
But later he did not talk anymore this aloud.
When I told him: "this time you need to sac a piece that is in the way of an other piece of yours. For instance you could take his queen with your rook, but your bishop is in the way. So you move the bishop with a check away - and then take his queen."
Probably I formulated this too long, so no wonder he wasnt repeating any word nor talking much when he did a set made of discoveries.
Is this what you are looking for?
What is telling us all this? I dont know. Maybe nothing?
@Munich,
ReplyDeletefor a moment I feared that the found theory was inconsistent with child prodigies. Now it turns out to be not. About which I'm very happy.
I'm in the process of finding out what goes wrong during the process of creating a combination and I try to find ways to correct it. That's called deliberate practice, if I'm not mistaken ;)
Dont know if it helps, but here is the link to his Training Diary at chesstempo:
ReplyDeletehttp://chesstempo.com/chess-forum/training_diaries/diary_of_little_joe_5-t2544.60.html
There you can read about his progress from lowest levels up to 1250 within appoximately 1-2 years.
He did not improve much since he becames 6 and a half years old.
This is so, because he does not train much anymore. No training - no improvement. So he is now 7 years old and he is still around 1250 elo (=weak club level).
He solved around 1500 puzzles at CT. Richard unfortunately deleted his first account because I guess Richard saw that the user "Munich" and "Joey" use the same IP adress, so he suspected a double account of one and the same person.