Concept building

Transfer of knowledge from one position to another

We found that concepts are the way to transfer knowledge from one position to another. I can imagine this might sound rather vague and abstract for most of you. Let's see if we can concretise this a bit.

I have started with the study of "100 endgames you should know" from New In Chess. I studied the first 11 chapters for the first time. It took me 11 days. I feel that this is the right time to study these chapters again before doing the remaining chapters.

Endgame as perfect realm for concept building

Endgames might be the right vehicle to study concept building in depth.

The book is published on Chessable. Chessable provides an AI assisted way of spaced repetition learning. I learned 68 endings with 161 variations of 892 moves in total.

To be more precise: I learned the moves of 161 variations. With some variations I know what I'm doing, with other variations I have no idea. Moves form the lowest level of abstraction. Moves are bundled in series, which we call lines or variations. Variations are geared around a goal. Some purpose what is intended to be reached. Variations are bundled in procedures. For instance in the Luceena procedure, which is a technique to promote a pawn in a rook vs rook endgame.

Procedures are bundled in a method. With a method there arrive conditions. Conditions decide which procedure to follow to make progress. Conditions are met by the constellation on the board. Different constellations of the pieces lead to different fulfillment of the conditions. And hence to different procedures to proceed.

Hierarchical structure of concepts

And so we find a hierarchical structure in the level of abstraction of concepts. I started with the lowest: moves. I didn't bother too much about the purpose of the moves, I just learned them. I think that is the easiest way. The following step is to give every move its rightful purpose. For that I need to conceptualize the move. More about that in a following post.