Comments on Chess Vision: The killing fields of chess training

Hello Bleu Devil Knight,I agree that my scheme of ...

2008-02-25T22:59:00.000+01:00

Hello Bleu Devil Knight,

I agree that my scheme of learning training and memorising is a bit simplistic. But for the sake of clarity I chose for a very straightforward explanation. Also I am not completely against memorisation as such.

What I am trying to do, is to bring in nuances to the seven circles that save the important and good elements of the program, but filter out the superfluous and even contraproductive aspects.

I repeat execersizes myself. But I do this with a clear and defined goal, and not with the promisse that I will be a tactical genius as soon as the blood will come out of my ears.

At the moment for instance I am repeating the mate in 1 exercises out of Polgars 5234 combinations book. I do this to root all the mating patterns again in my long term memory. I noticed when solving the puzzle that I showed in my "deep level scanning" post, that I somehow had lost Pattern 1 that made me miss Rg7xh7.

Few Knights have followed MDLM's exact plan, mostl...

2008-02-24T00:30:00.000+01:00

Few Knights have followed MDLM's exact plan, mostly for the reasons you cite (it is so demanding it sucks the fun out of it, kills marriages, jobs, and cute puppies).

I understand what you are saying, but it isn't quite as simple as "On the first cycle you learn X, then Y, then finally ZZZzzzz". It depends on how you approach the problems. Each time I went through (until the last couple of cycles) I learned something new. First time though, I gained a somewhat superficial understanding of the position. Then each time I would force myself to explain more about the position to myself, what general features of the position made this tactic possible? How many pieces did I have attacking, how many did he have defending? I would build up a fairly detailed narrative about each position.

Then, in the later circles once I had them learned, I wasn't just recognizing superficial piece placement, but recognizing the higher-order structures (ah, I have X,Y, Z attacking his king, and he only has such and such defending, and this looks similar to the Arabian Mate). It was extremely useful and fun.

Though, I should admit, the final cycles of the final circles it began to feel like work.

Also, I'm not convinced simply "memorizing" 1000 positions is all that bad. It all depends on how well our brain integrates that knowledge into its chess procedures, e.g., does the brain unconsciously integrate these different memories into higher-level chunks? If so, the individual problems are like nodes in our brain that are initially implanted, but connections are formed among these nodes so ultimately it becomes a more general and useful integrated tactical skill set.

So, I'm not sure that happens, but it probably does to some degree, in which case while consciously we are merely memorizing 1000 problems, what our brain does with those problems is a much more interesting, and generalizable thing.

Hello darkhorse,I am a bit less sceptical about re...

2008-02-15T13:59:00.000+01:00

Hello darkhorse,

I am a bit less sceptical about repetition. As long as repetition helps you to remember the patterns it is an affective way to improve.

I fully agree with your assessment. Over-emphasizi...

2008-02-14T17:40:00.000+01:00

I fully agree with your assessment. Over-emphasizing memorization is a recipe for disaster. The number one enemy of an amateur is... boredom. Repeating the same problem seven times sounds awfully boring. Making training (and in general playing chess) fun should be the number one concern, or you will just give up the game. It can happen to anybody, believe me.

I also believe that repetition is unnecessary. You are learning patterns, not positions, so as long as so keep encountering the same set of tactical motifs, you are still training your long-term memory for pattern recognition. The brain is a wonderful machine capable of abstracting patterns, so don't misuse it. I'm not saying that repetition is always useless, but that it is the wrong foundation for a training program.