Be a one-trick-pony
Robert Asked:
I'm curious about your training process. Do you work on the problems by just visualizing the solution (along with recognizing the patterns involved) without an actual board or do you set up a board with each position and shuffle the pieces around in order to "cement" the visual patterns into memory?
I'm glad you asked. After the fire 3.5 years ago, I haven't used a physical board in my house. I do everything digital. Except for playing, much to the frustration of my opponents who tend to search for my games when they know they have to play me.
Besides the trick, you must acquire some knowledge (System 2). But that is usually not the problem.
I'm curious about your training process. Do you work on the problems by just visualizing the solution (along with recognizing the patterns involved) without an actual board or do you set up a board with each position and shuffle the pieces around in order to "cement" the visual patterns into memory?
I'm glad you asked. After the fire 3.5 years ago, I haven't used a physical board in my house. I do everything digital. Except for playing, much to the frustration of my opponents who tend to search for my games when they know they have to play me.
The last two weeks I noticed a difference in my training approach. All of a sudden, I feel that my training becomes much more efficient. That was actually the reason for my previous post. Before anything else, I wanted to stress the fact that there is only one trick (System 1) that you must learn
Besides the trick, you must acquire some knowledge (System 2). But that is usually not the problem.
If you compare the previous post with an older post from 2023 you might notice that they have a lot in common, I hope.
So far, this blog has been a testimonium for the many ways to do the trick the wrong way. You need a lot of precision to apply it. So I will try to describe the essence again, hoping that I can bring it across. When you look at the latest posts, you might have noticed that the comparison with learning a new language at adult age starts to emerge. I think that is a precise comparison.
It is important to get rid of all the gobbledygook and myths that accompany chess training. There is a lot of paroting and folklore around.
The two posts that I referred to mention the method of MDLM and Stoyko. You can strip everything that is in one method but not in the other. Furthermore, you can strip everything that concerns the training of System 1 (like visualisation). Since System 1 works its own miracles.
If you do the same stripping for the way world champions like Capablanca, Botvinnik, Euwe, Kasparov, Carlsen, Gukesh and Sindarov acquired their skill, only one common factor remains: understanding. Think about this and see whether you agree.
In the following post I hope to make clear how this understanding looks like during training. But you have to start clean first.
Kids learn language through a process of total immersion with no formal education. Adults almost always attempt to learn a new language by learning the formal grammar “rules” without experiencing total immersion.
ReplyDeleteAs you noted, there is a very precise comparison between learning a new language and learning the chess ‘language’.
It should be obvious which approach seems to have better results for most people.