My Brilliant Brain

I just watched the second episode of the documentary series "My Brilliant Brain", dealing with Susan Polgar. The episode contained a lot of familiar concepts, like 'paralysis by analysis', chunking, pattern recognition by repetition and the like. All concepts which most of us chess improvement freaks are used to dealing with. And without going into details, the documentary agreed with most of the philosophical grounds for my training, which is heavily based on training intuition and subconscious processing instead of a structured rule-based approach. Feed the brain, and let it work it all out as it sees best. Also my layman 'theory' of a specific neural 'sub-processor' being developed into the brain was confirmed by neurological scanning of Susan's brain. So, all is nice & good on the pedagogic front, and therefore there's no reason to adjust my learning methods.

Naturally I'm aware this line of reasoning has nothing to do with scientific rigour, but then again, I'm not looking to publish a paper on chess improvement theory. Lack of theoretical proof doesn't concern me, only the practical results. "It works" is close enough for me.

Also, during the latest batch of blitz craziness, I've also come to the conclusion that my paradoxically weak blitz vs. strong tactics -problem has one quite probable cause: Although I've developed the ability to spot & execute tactics very efficiently (compared to my other abilities), I haven't developed the ability to improve the position similarly. I never think about how I can improve my position while solving tactics, instead I completely ignore that aspect. And although I can think my way through all that in slow games, I need to develop my intuition and do it without thinking, just like I when I solve tactics. Thinking just isn't fast enough, I need to recognize and 'feel' the right moves. Well, 'right enough' moves to be more exact.

The way I'm planning to go about this, is to start going through master games once again. Just grinding the games in, over a long period of time. I'll start gathering games in my pet openings, handpicking them as I go, and going through them exactly the same way like I would proceed with tactical problems. I should probably keep a game count here also, to prevent the typical lapse of effort after the initial excitement wears thin.

One last thing about the documentary: Once again I'm dumbstricken by the sheer amount of work Susan has gone through already as a small child. Up to 6 hours of hard studying daily, with pops watching over in the background. That's not some half-assed doodling with the study material, watching telly at the same time, but instead sitting down and working at your desk. Somehow that's very inspirational to me. -If a little girl can have that kind of dicipline, I have a lot of room for improvement there.



Master games: 1

Kicking Ass Threshold

Another motivational post. TommyC just posted this link on RHP, How to be an expert, and the relevance of 'talent' and starting young in it. I've never believed in the concept of talent, and it now appears there's some scientific evidence to back that up. I find the graph especially hilarious.

Concrete Chess

I ran into something Rashid Ziatdinov has said about chess. It's pretty much what I've been thinking, when I've seen people analyse games far more convincingly than I ever could, yet they're rated hundreds of points lower than I, so I thought I'd post it here.

"Students sometimes lament that they cannot apply their knowledge during a game. They cannot apply their "knowledge" because they really don't have any knowledge! What they have instead are shortcuts to chess language, what I call "chess magic spelling" (like "open the position if you are more developed", "the two bishop advantage", "don't move the queen out too early", etc.). These shortcuts are useless generalities. Chess can only be expressed with concrete variations. This often-ignored concept is so crucial to mastering chess that it bears repeating with emphasis: chess can only be expressed with concrete variations!

Imagine a musician who had never heard music, only descriptions and theories of music; Imagine a dancer who had never physically performed a pleat or twirl, only read instructions on how to dance. How is a chess player who relies on ideas expressed in words and theories any less ridiculous? A musician makes music, a dancer dances, and a chess player calculates variations!"


Although Ziatdinov seems a bit, umm, 'passionate', even crazy, I do think he has a strong point here. Procedural knowledge instead of theoretical knowledge. And the only way to get there is to get your hands dirty, sweat blood, and slam down variations. It doesn't matter if you were born a Kasparov or a Fischer, hard work for a decade or two is the only way to get there. Talk is cheap, 'BAM! BAM! BAM!' is what counts. :)

Now I'm gonna go eat a raw, bloody steak, chug some beer, burb, and get back to slamming down endgame variations. BAM! BAM! BAM!