Every move has its logic
Now I have a method to transform knowledge into skill, it stands to reason that I have a closer look at in which areas I can use the method as well, beyond the obvious.
The obvious areas are:
- Opening
- Middlegame
- Endgame
- Tactics
- Positional
- Strategy
And I have installed a daily training regimen for every obvious area already. Observations of my own games, and the playing of grandmasters have shown me there is another area as well, though.
Every move has its own logic. That logic is often very trivial, since that logic is often why we move a piece in the first place. To bring a piece out, to protect a pawn, to restrain an opponent's piece et cetera. What I noticed though, is that not all simple logic is seen by system 1. Not all simple knowledge is transformed into skill. It is more like learning a second language, where you often need to use a dictionary or have to google how an expression is used.
The latest discovery is the change in order during training. For the actual skill forming, it is necessary that system 1 takes the lead. System 1 sees the salient cues, while system 2 follows by verbally speaking out loud what the move actually does and why it is played. I'm experimenting with different formats, but it seems that looking at analysed master games comes very close.
Only when the knowledge of even the most trivial move is absorbed as a skill, you can hope that you can visualize a line into a decent distant future. Trivial knowledge that is not absorbed, can not be visualized with accuracy.
The test is simple: can you visualize it, then you have absorbed it. When it takes time, you know that system 2 is at work and not system 1.
The recent example I gave (the LINK to the YouTube video of the Khalilbeili-Lipnitsky 1954 game) seems to follow the approach you outlined above. During the opening moves, the narrator tends to give a simple reason for each move, with very little in the way of alternate variations. After White’s 16th move, he then goes into significant analysis of WHY Lipnitsky played what he did. FWIW: the name of the YouTube video is How to Find Greatest Chess Moves: Secret Strategy and Tactics.
ReplyDeleteTemposchlucker wrote (in part):
The latest discovery is the change in order during training. For the actual skill forming, it is necessary that system 1 takes the lead. System 1 sees the salient cues, while system 2 follows by verbally speaking out loud what the move actually does and why it is played.
Perception MUST occur first – if you can’t SEE the salient cues, you can’t train the necessary level of pattern recognition. Without perception, you are limited to surface-level analysis and can never penetrate to the essence of the position.
One aspect of perception that is ignored is the surrounding context for the cues. Emphasis is placed on the positive image (the active agents; foreground) with little (or no) mention of the surrounding context, which plays the role of negative space (background). Why? Because the surrounding context is passive and unnamed, and logical step-by-step training is focused on the positive images. After recognizing the context, the positive images tend to stand out much more easily in any given position.
Totally off-topic: Do you use the Logicly app to produce that diagram or did you copy it as-is from the Logicly site? Seeing that logic circuit diagram took me WAY back in time: I cut my professional electronics technician chops (11 years in the field) on digital/analog circuits used in flight simulators. My most ambitious and successful project was single-handedly redesigning a twin-jet utility aircraft (Lear jet) simulator to fly like a B-52 for the USAF. That was prior to learning trigonometry and calculus in engineering classes.
Usually, system 2 must PREPARE the material first before you can present it to system 1. That's why an author often says "you can pause the video now".
ReplyDeleteWhich is an invitation to system 2 to produce its word salads.
By simply telling what is going on, the author has done the preparation, giving the student the chance to absorb the cues.
This invites a passive approach in the student, though.
So somehow the student must engage in ACTIVELY seeing the salient cues and describing them verbally.
On the one hand we must avoid losing time by PREPARATION. On the other hand we must engage ACTIVELY in seeing the salient cues and describe them.
I spend 23 years to PREPARE a method how to acquire a skill. This was done by a combination of observation and thinking. After these 23 years I had only a THEORETICAL method how it must work. Logical thinking is destructive by its very nature. It can only tell you what does NOT work. You have to experiment (fiddle around) to be creative. To generate new things that MIGHT work.
After that, it took me 1.5 year to convert the THEORETICAL model into a PRACTICAL one by experimenting with it and seeing what works.
So we must AVOID the preparation BY OURSELVES as much as possible, by making use of the preparation of other people (or Stockfish, for that matter) as much as possible, and we must ACTIVELY copy what they have prepared.
I just copied a picture from the Logicly site by chance. I used to have electronics as a hobby when I was eleven.
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