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| Posted by wadvana uskidscompute.com 11/30/2003 10:57:50 Play online chess |  Subject: VisualizationMessage: Visualization is quite an interesting subject. I just wanted to start a discussion on different techniques used by players. Can you play blindfold chess? If so, then do you really see a clear board in your mind. Do you visualise a 3D board with pieces or a simple 2d board? Do players split the visualised board into smaller parts (4x4 squares) or do they see the full 64 squares. I'm lookign forward to the comments. Thanks |
| Posted by dysfl uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 07:19:15 Play online chess | If you have the gift.... Message: wadvana, I'm not a good chess player, but I had to ask "Does it really matter?" I'm not talking about your chess strength, but if you have the gift of visualization. If you have the gift, you know how it happens, if not, you'll be told something that you should just accept whatever it is. As an intermediate Go player, I can repeat the whole game after playing the game, which is 120-150 moves with just all same black and white stones. I think it is a little harder than repeating a chess game. However, I cannot visualize any part of the board in my head even I was able to 'see' the patterns vaguely overlayed on the board. Actually, I cannot visualize anything in my head. Just try this, look around your room for a couple of minutes, then close your eyes. Could you visualize it? If you can do that, you're gifted. I can't, but many people have the gift. It is a "gift", (sigh), so it is not a thing that someone can teach others that easily, if ever possible. I really want to know if someone out there who made it possible, without years of fasting and meditation. Even without this gift, I might be able to play chess with checker pieces, and it would be at least years later from now. |
| Posted by ampersand uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 08:55:21 Play online chess | visualisation Message: Cognitive psychologists have studied the memory/visualisation process. Several famous experiments have been carried out on chess experts. They were given memory tests on the position of chess pieces placed on a board. When the pieces were placed at random, the experts performed no better than complete novices at remembering where the pieces were. However when the pieces were placed in plausible game formations, the experts could memorise the layouts with remarkable ease. ——— Ugandan girl, Phiona Mutesi leads chess revolution from the slums — Despite background the 15-year-old girl is already country's number two chess player and has competed at World Chess Olympiad. In a rickety church in a Ugandan slum, a girl's hand thrusts forward and a black bishop falls. The girl shows no emotion, though she knows the end is near. Striking quickly, silently, the black queen is toppled, and then the king. Only then does she smile. "You attacked too much," she tells the boy sitting opposite her on the wooden bench, a homemade board between them. Phiona Mutesi is 15. She has just finished primary school and is still learning to read. Her family is so poor they have been evicted from tiny, rented shacks more times than she ... |
| Posted by drgandalf uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 09:08:56 Play online chess | Visualisation vs Tempoisation Message: There are two distinct skills. Visualisation, as ampersand notes, is the ability to remember a position. Another skill is the ability to remember the moves of a game up to that position, which I call tempoisation. Visualisation can be thought of as a static skill, while tempoisation can be thought of as a dynamic skill. Master players may not have any special visualisation skills. Instead, they may possess past-game memory skills, in which they remember their past games and those of other masters so well, as to remember the natural constrains and potential consequences of substructures in any given "real" position. This skill comes from deep analysis of one's games, which we can all develop. It is called work. ——— First Came the Machine That Defeated a Chess Champion — Before there was Watson, there was Deep Blue. In 1997, Deep Blue, another computer built by I.B.M., defeated the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a six-game match. At the time, it was considered a stunning achievement and a significant step forward in the field of artificial intelligence. Some people said that a new era would be ushered in, one in which computers would perform many tasks — like air traffic control — that it once seemed only humans could do. That era has not quite materialized. But almost 14 years later, chess programs running on an average desktop computer can play better than Deep Blue, making its victory no longer seem as implausible. And while the research that ... |
| Posted by chesskid22000 uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 10:37:47 Play online chess | visualisation Message: visualisation does not have to be a gift, you are born with. their is a way to gain board vision, make a flashcards, lable the front a1 on the back of the card write black . do this with the 64 squares on the chess board. study the flashcards daily and this will help your vision of the board. also take your board out and lable the board, then study the board, after get a blank chess board and visualize a chess piece and place it on the board of the square you would like.(note please visualize your chess piece.) do this until you are familar with the board.also try to play a few blindfold chess games, but first i recommend that you study the chess board. Their is plenty other ways, that you can do it. =) good luck! tell me if this helps you or anyone. ——— Chess: How to play like a world champion — The latest study of Vishy Anand concentrates on the world chess champion's outstanding strategic judgment. We'd all like to play like a world chess champion. So what's Vishy Anand doing that's so special? Last week we highlighted his depth of calculation, this week we focus on his strategic judgment. RB: I have no idea what to do here. I have no idea if Black is better or worse and I have no idea what Black's plan might be. Is the white queen trappable? It certainly looks locked in, but without a light-squared bishop it's hard to see how to exploit this. Is there anything in 1...Nc5...? No, apart from a lost piece. Opening the a-file with 1...axb4 might be an option, but ... |
| Posted by fmgaijin uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 12:23:22 Play online chess | De Groot, Simon, etc., etc. Message: The concept of "chunking" in cognitive psychology made itself known in experiments by Simon and others at Carnegie-Mellon (I got to be a guinea pig for several CMU experiments, BTW <grin>). The reason stronger players can visualize and remember meaningful positions better is not an inherently better memory but rather a better organized memory. While most of us can hold 5-7 pieces of data in short-term memory at once, the "skilled" performer "chunks" more into each piece of data. For example, while a weak player remembers 7 single pieces, a master might remember a whole group of pieces (such as a castled K with Ps at h2, g2, f2 and N at f3) and hence can often reproduce the entire board after only seeing it for 5 seconds. Skilled performers in any field have similarly better-organized memories. For example, my father (a plant geneticist) could walk through the lab fields and recite gene lines, yields, etc., for dozens of varieties. I can't do that, but I can play 10 games blindfolded simultaneously (at least I used to be able to <LOL>) or 50 sighted games and remember them afterwards. Consequently, most cognitive psychologists agree that the memory can be trained (for example, studying typical tactics such as Bxh7+ or Bxf7+ sacrifices will improve our ability to recognize those patterns when they occur in our games). However, there may be some degrees of inherent ability which allow some to learn more from the same study of a data set . . . so it's not a simple question of nature vs. nurture, eh? BTW, when playing blindfold, I alternate between visualizing a game in 3D totality with my favorite set and focusing on (visualizing) just one section of the board, but other masters have told me that the former is rare; most use the second technique almost exclusively. ——— One Coach, Many Young Chess Champions — In the last five years, two Americans have won world youth chess championships: Daniel Naroditsky, who took the under-12 title in 2007, and Steven Zierk, the under-18 champion last year. Both are from Northern California, and at one point or another, they both had the same coach, Michael Aigner. They are not the only chess champions who have been trained by Aigner. Others include Gregory Young, who tied for first in the 2008 United States Junior Championship, and Yian Liou, who tied for first in the United States Cadet Championship (for players under 16) last year. He has also coached Saratoga High School to six straight California chess titles. Aigner, 36, is a master, and ... |
| Posted by dysfl uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 13:37:35 Play online chess | Wow, some nice feedbacks Message: Thanks fmgaijin and others for sharing your experiences. About visualization, I'm still in doubt if it can be trained to get it. I think it is just natural to believe that it can be trained to be better, if you already have it. Maybe I'm part of a minor group who just cannot do it, like colour-blinds. I really wanted that I could do some visualization when I was playing Go, another board game much more popular than chess in Japan, Korea and China. If I spent one hour to play through a master's game, I was able to put the pieces in exact same sequence from start to the end. And it is not a simple task for a casual player. However, I could not do that more than 10-15 moves without the pieces, with an empty board in front of me. Without the board, totally lost. And Go masters can play each other without the board for sure. Anyway, I don't need visualization yet at my chess level (about 1450-1500 for now in GK). Usually, I defeat myself by playing so poorly without seeing the very next 1 or 2 moves. ——— Solving Bobby Fischer (book review) — In the summer of 1972, the world’s attention was directed toward Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, to watch a championship chess match. Called “the Match of the Century,” the contest between the Russian chess champion, Boris Spassky, and the American challenger, Bobby Fischer, attracted that attention because of its cold war implications. But people were also fascinated by the mercurial Fischer — a prototypical genius whose incessant demands and unpredictability were more associated with the behavior of a diva than with what one expects from a master of a demanding game of logic. Fischer won the chess match in brilliant style, setting off a wave of enthusiasm for ... |
| Posted by anaxagoras uskidscompute.com 12/01/2003 15:47:45 Play online chess | Message: "Can you play blindfold chess?" I've played through twenty moves before, but it becomes much more difficult as you go. Anyone can "play blindfold chess" through a few moves, and completing a game blindfolded (no less winning one) is a progression of the same exercise. "If so, then do you really see a clear board in your mind. Do you visualise a 3D board with pieces or a simple 2d board?" Neither. I believe that "seeing in your mind" is a dead metaphor. Drgandalf made the most lucid point in the whole thread when he brought up the distinction between visualizing pieces placed at random versus visualizing a position in a game. It's not that you see a board "in your mind," but you have an understanding of the potential and relationships between the pieces, blindfolded or not. So what we are looking for here is something more like deliberating instead of seeing, and hence a better question: "can you deliberate over a chess game without seeing the pieces in front of you?" |
| Posted by than77 uskidscompute.com 12/03/2003 16:49:16 Play online chess | Visualization Training Message: www.janmatthies.info/chess/cvt/cvt.htm This is a great (and free!) web site dedicated to chess-visualization training exercizes. I have found it to be extremely helpful though I am not a particularly strong player. I have noticed an improvement in my calculational accuracy in tournament play since studying these exercizes periodically along with lots of tactical puzzles. I agree with others that the ability to visualize is more situation-specific and can be improved over time. For example, when I began playing chess, I often played kind of randomly without a plan and as a result I couldn't remember much about positions because I wasn't attuned to the salient features of each position. As I have learned to try to develop an idea and follow a plan throughout the game I find it easier to visualize because the various factors of the position actually add up to something in my mind, whether that be a combinational possibility or simply adding pressure by piling up on a weak pawn. I have also noticed that it is easier for me to recall positions that are very sharp where the play is very combinative and the moves are close to forced...but then, I suppose that makes perfect sense ;-) |
| Posted by jean-marc uskidscompute.com 12/03/2003 17:15:49 Play online chess | Great site ! Message: Thanx to than77. It's a great suggestion. I highly recommend the site... |
| Posted by than77 uskidscompute.com 12/05/2003 08:14:03 Play online chess | Re: Visualization training site Message: I forgot to add that the types of exercizes range from relatively simple, i.e. "What color is the square e4?" To a little more complicated; "Are the squares e4 and and g6 on the same diagonal?" to the more advanced exercizes where a description of a position is given and you have to answer whether the position is a mate or not. Some of those are really challenging but they are extremely helpful. Glad to hear that others are making use of this wonderful resource, NW |