Spacious_Mind wrote:I read somewhere a little while back about a research where someone (a Dutchman I think) followed top chess players and club players in tournaments for several years. His findings were, if I recall, that there was no difference in the depth of analysis between a top player and a regular chess player, no proof of additional intelligence, no deeper searches into positions, nothing like that. What he did find, was that the top chess players could see positions on a board better than a normal player. Both based on his research (if I recall correctly) would search the positions in a game with about the same depth. I think he stated it was something like 4 - 6 ply. Therefore a top player rated at ELO 2800 how does he do that, why do they get to be so strong if their intelligence and search analysis is no deeper than a normal club player's? Is it just natural talent or loads of practice or what?
What are your thoughts on this. Taking speed (and endgame tablebases etc) aside what do engines (programmers) still have to do to get to this level of chess with the same depth (say 6 ply max) of thought as a human ? Is it possible will it someday be possible?
Best regards
Nick
ps... I thought this might make a nice change to discussing the other topic over and over again
I'm very skeptical of those findings. All you have to do is look at some of the combinations that a top player would play and ask yourself whether an average player could visualize that far ahead, even if there are given the move notation. I'd say no. IMO Grandmasters can calculate deeper than c-class players, although you are right that some of that is because chess understanding helps them when it is apppropriate to calculate deeper.
But the result was that it isn't about if you can calculate far enough ahead, it is about what moves you select to ponder.
The difference between a Master and a GM is that the GM actually considers some good moves that the Master overlooks.
It is not that some moves are rejected by the weaker player, it is that they are never considered in the first place.
Steve B wrote:
i.e. the more experienced the player(years playing) the more likely to come across familiar positions or themes in positions(Bxh7+ sacs ..etc..etc) which then guided the players thought process in move selection
Thougtless Regards
Steve
Such a conclusion does not explain how child prodigies produce the goods, nor does it explain why they don't always continue to improve as they gain experience. Perhaps those who fail to improve as their pattern recognition becomes more complete, lose something at the same rate at which they gain experience. If that is the case, the only thing that I can suggest that they lose is lack of inhibition. There are however plenty of intelligent, enthusiastic and uninhibited youngsters who are not particularly good at chess.
I think that there is a simple explanation
People who do not continue to improve simply do not learn from experience more than they forget.
People who continue to improve have a better memory for chess.
If people train to learn words in new languages then I also expect to see the same.
At some point people are going to stop to improve because the number of words that they forget will be not smaller than the number f words that they learn.
People with a better talent for language will be able to learn more languages.
I believe that special traing of memorizing chess positions may help people to improve more than they achieve today but different people have different limit for their memory.
I am sure that people who do not improve in chess usually do not remember all their tournament games and the mistakes that they did in them when I believe that top players remember all the details.
Uri
Thank you for your input. I don't think that intelligent people forget ideas and concepts, especially when they have an ego involvement with those ideas and concepts because they appeared in their own games. Those ideas and concepts will also be reinforced by players recognising them when looking at the games of other people.
I watched a TV programme some time ago in which they tested the memory of Judit Polgar. They did it by first showing her for a second or two a "normal" position from a game, castled kings behind fianchettos etc and then a random position. Her memory of the random position was no better than average. She remembered concepts. As I said, I don't think you forget concepts. In addition I think that they are held in a different part of the brain, in a different way to spatial and numeric items and I think that there may not be a limit to the number held in the brain.
Hi; Some years ago I read that Capablanca was asked how many
moves he thinks ahead. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact
number, but it was surprisingly low, maybe 4 or 5.
Spacious_Mind wrote:I read somewhere a little while back about a research where someone (a Dutchman I think) followed top chess players and club players in tournaments for several years. His findings were, if I recall, that there was no difference in the depth of analysis between a top player and a regular chess player, no proof of additional intelligence, no deeper searches into positions, nothing like that. What he did find, was that the top chess players could see positions on a board better than a normal player. Both based on his research (if I recall correctly) would search the positions in a game with about the same depth. I think he stated it was something like 4 - 6 ply. Therefore a top player rated at ELO 2800 how does he do that, why do they get to be so strong if their intelligence and search analysis is no deeper than a normal club player's? Is it just natural talent or loads of practice or what?
What are your thoughts on this. Taking speed (and endgame tablebases etc) aside what do engines (programmers) still have to do to get to this level of chess with the same depth (say 6 ply max) of thought as a human ? Is it possible will it someday be possible?
Best regards
Nick
ps... I thought this might make a nice change to discussing the other topic over and over again
The maximal depth of chess players is clearly bigger than 6 plies even when you talk about club players.
I agree that the one advantage of top players relative to weaker players is more knowledge about chess but I think that they are also better in calculating lines and calculating lines is not about how many plies you see forward but if you see clearly the final position and if you pick the right lines to calculate.
If you calculate a long line that is full of blunders then your calculation worth nothing and
I remember that in one of my games I talked with my opponent after I won the game and he told me that he calculated some long line but missed shorter line that I saw and this was the reason that he lost.
In the game I also thought about the long line as something interesting but decided that it is too complicated for me to see things clearly so I simply spent my time to search for alternatives.
The target is not to see more plies than your opponent but to see correctly.
Uri
I think that chess is an example of a complex problem for which there are many ways of reaching an acceptable solution. You chose to focus on analysis. However, it is possible to reach a very high standard in chess while carrying out relatively little analysis. In the 1950s, Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner would play some fascinating positional chess. Occasionally he would lose very quickly and badly against weaker opponents. I understand that the reason was because he did so little analysis. Perhaps those who were strong tactical players when young and who continue to play at a high standard until well into their seventies gradually change their approach. It would be quite simple to find out.
I remember reading several articles about this subject over the years and to my understandng it was not the depth of search that gave them superior abilities but the knowlwdge of postional chess. their knowledge of makng stronger postions no matter how the board was configured is what gave the human masters the edge of computer programs and weaker players.
Today, this is still the greatest advantage that masters have over chess programmers and that is how to turn almost any chess layout into a postional advantage.
I hope that I have not forgotten all the facts or misconstrewed those that I remember.
Bill
Steve B wrote:
i.e. the more experienced the player(years playing) the more likely to come across familiar positions or themes in positions(Bxh7+ sacs ..etc..etc) which then guided the players thought process in move selection
Thougtless Regards
Steve
Such a conclusion does not explain how child prodigies produce the goods, nor does it explain why they don't always continue to improve as they gain experience. Perhaps those who fail to improve as their pattern recognition becomes more complete, lose something at the same rate at which they gain experience. If that is the case, the only thing that I can suggest that they lose is lack of inhibition. There are however plenty of intelligent, enthusiastic and uninhibited youngsters who are not particularly good at chess.
I think that there is a simple explanation
People who do not continue to improve simply do not learn from experience more than they forget.
People who continue to improve have a better memory for chess.
If people train to learn words in new languages then I also expect to see the same.
At some point people are going to stop to improve because the number of words that they forget will be not smaller than the number f words that they learn.
People with a better talent for language will be able to learn more languages.
I believe that special traing of memorizing chess positions may help people to improve more than they achieve today but different people have different limit for their memory.
I am sure that people who do not improve in chess usually do not remember all their tournament games and the mistakes that they did in them when I believe that top players remember all the details.
Uri
Thank you for your input. I don't think that intelligent people forget ideas and concepts, especially when they have an ego involvement with those ideas and concepts because they appeared in their own games. Those ideas and concepts will also be reinforced by players recognising them when looking at the games of other people.
I watched a TV programme some time ago in which they tested the memory of Judit Polgar. They did it by first showing her for a second or two a "normal" position from a game, castled kings behind fianchettos etc and then a random position. Her memory of the random position was no better than average. She remembered concepts. As I said, I don't think you forget concepts. In addition I think that they are held in a different part of the brain, in a different way to spatial and numeric items and I think that there may not be a limit to the number held in the brain.
I can say about myself that I certainly forget and I have stable rating near 2000 in the last years.
I analyze every game that I play to see what are my mistakes but it does not mean that I remember all the mistakes and I do not use my time to repeat old games that I played.
I believe that I can improve by using time for memorization of games and the mistakes but I certainly have my limits and people with better memory than me do not need to repeat in order to remember.
people who train in tactics have clear problems of memorization and the following site is an example
tacticians practically can get only 10,000 problems in their rating range so you could expect people with perfect memory to improve for the simple reason that they remember the solutions to the problems and can show them out of memory in less than 3 seconds but people who train in that site have not perfect memory and even people who got every problem in their rating range many times often fail and some of them have rating below 1600(see the rating of people with many tries in the following link).
People usually improve after some training in the site and get to some limit and in order to break the limit they need to implement special training methods(that most of them do not do)
Spacious_Mind wrote:I read somewhere a little while back about a research where someone (a Dutchman I think) followed top chess players and club players in tournaments for several years. His findings were, if I recall, that there was no difference in the depth of analysis between a top player and a regular chess player, no proof of additional intelligence, no deeper searches into positions, nothing like that. What he did find, was that the top chess players could see positions on a board better than a normal player. Both based on his research (if I recall correctly) would search the positions in a game with about the same depth. I think he stated it was something like 4 - 6 ply. Therefore a top player rated at ELO 2800 how does he do that, why do they get to be so strong if their intelligence and search analysis is no deeper than a normal club player's? Is it just natural talent or loads of practice or what?
What are your thoughts on this. Taking speed (and endgame tablebases etc) aside what do engines (programmers) still have to do to get to this level of chess with the same depth (say 6 ply max) of thought as a human ? Is it possible will it someday be possible?
Best regards
Nick
ps... I thought this might make a nice change to discussing the other topic over and over again
I'm very skeptical of those findings. All you have to do is look at some of the combinations that a top player would play and ask yourself whether an average player could visualize that far ahead, even if there are given the move notation. I'd say no. IMO Grandmasters can calculate deeper than c-class players, although you are right that some of that is because chess understanding helps them when it is apppropriate to calculate deeper.
But the result was that it isn't about if you can calculate far enough ahead, it is about what moves you select to ponder.
The difference between a Master and a GM is that the GM actually considers some good moves that the Master overlooks.
It is not that some moves are rejected by the weaker player, it is that they are never considered in the first place.
Fair enough, I have not expressed any disagreement with that aspect. But just to clarify, the comment to which I expressed skepticism wasn't about which moves you select for deeper analysis, it was about, and I quote...
His findings were, if I recall, that there was no difference in the depth of analysis between a top player and a regular chess player, no proof of additional intelligence, no deeper searches into positions, nothing like that...
which is something different than than the valid point that you have raised. about which moves are considered.
Spacious_Mind wrote:I read somewhere a little while back about a research where someone (a Dutchman I think) followed top chess players and club players in tournaments for several years. His findings were, if I recall, that there was no difference in the depth of analysis between a top player and a regular chess player, no proof of additional intelligence, no deeper searches into positions, nothing like that. What he did find, was that the top chess players could see positions on a board better than a normal player. Both based on his research (if I recall correctly) would search the positions in a game with about the same depth. I think he stated it was something like 4 - 6 ply. Therefore a top player rated at ELO 2800 how does he do that, why do they get to be so strong if their intelligence and search analysis is no deeper than a normal club player's? Is it just natural talent or loads of practice or what?
What are your thoughts on this. Taking speed (and endgame tablebases etc) aside what do engines (programmers) still have to do to get to this level of chess with the same depth (say 6 ply max) of thought as a human ? Is it possible will it someday be possible?
Best regards
Nick
ps... I thought this might make a nice change to discussing the other topic over and over again
The maximal depth of chess players is clearly bigger than 6 plies even when you talk about club players.
I agree that the one advantage of top players relative to weaker players is more knowledge about chess but I think that they are also better in calculating lines and calculating lines is not about how many plies you see forward but if you see clearly the final position and if you pick the right lines to calculate.
If you calculate a long line that is full of blunders then your calculation worth nothing and
I remember that in one of my games I talked with my opponent after I won the game and he told me that he calculated some long line but missed shorter line that I saw and this was the reason that he lost.
In the game I also thought about the long line as something interesting but decided that it is too complicated for me to see things clearly so I simply spent my time to search for alternatives.
The target is not to see more plies than your opponent but to see correctly.
Uri
I think that chess is an example of a complex problem for which there are many ways of reaching an acceptable solution. You chose to focus on analysis. However, it is possible to reach a very high standard in chess while carrying out relatively little analysis. In the 1950s, Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner would play some fascinating positional chess. Occasionally he would lose very quickly and badly against weaker opponents. I understand that the reason was because he did so little analysis. Perhaps those who were strong tactical players when young and who continue to play at a high standard until well into their seventies gradually change their approach. It would be quite simple to find out.
I think that good positional chess may be result of good memory
and I suspect that Donner simply remembered good positional moves from other games and understood that they are good positional moves.
Without a good teacher a talent to understand by yourself what is good and what is bad may be important and not only memory but
I guess that memory for chess is the main deciding factor about improvement assuming that you get a good teacher to explain things to you and assuming that you have no problem to concentrate.
When you talk about old players then if old players have weaker memory for chess or concentration problems then they can become weaker in tactics but I do not think that old age has to cause these problems.
I think that they are also better in calculating lines and calculating lines is not about how many plies you see forward but if you see clearly the final position and if you pick the right lines to calculate.
...
Uri
You are probably correct, the points you make are more relevant to chess strength. But you aren't clear on the specific point of whether a strong player can search deeper. I think it is an important part of chess strength, although I wouldn't say it is the most important, And if one can't clearly see the final position then we can't very well say that one has searched to that depth, can we?
