Spacious_Mind wrote:Ok I found it. It was actually an article written by Peter Frey, who worked together with Larry Atkin:
HOW HUMANS PLAY
What does a chess master have that you and I do not have? Many people have been interested in determining the psychological attributes of a chess champion. The strong chess player is often thought of as a formidable calculating machine with incredible memory capacity. Edgar Allen Poe denigrated the game because he thought it involved boring calculations rather than creative thought. Scientist have examined these ideas in a systematic way and have discovered some unexpected answers.
Around the turn of the century, the French psychologist, Alfred Binet, the father of the IQ test, investigated the memory capacity of many of the noted chess players of his time and was surprised to find that their memory span was essentially the same as that of less skilled chess players. Several Russian psychologists examined the IQ scores of their top ranking players in the 1920’s and found that the range of intelligence for this group mirrored the range of intelligence in the general population. Thus, the early systematic investigations indicated that highly skilled chess players are neither especially bright nor gifted with “photographic” memories.
A Dutch psychologist, Adrian deGroot, a skilled player himself, made a detailed study in the 1930’s and 1940’s of the cognitive processes involved in chess play. He traveled around Europe and across the Atlantic with most of the top players of his day. Using a battery of testing procedures, deGroot tried to discover what made the highly skilled player different from average ones. One of his tests involved complicated middle game positions which the chess players studied and then selected the best move. deGroot had his subjects report their thoughts as they worked on these problems. He carefully recorded each verbal protocol and later made a systematic analysis of each player’s thinking process. After several years of data collection, deGroot summarized his findings by presenting average values for several important measures. Top players and average players were very similar in the quantitative aspects of their chess thinking. They considered a similar number of future positions (about 35), had equivalent depths of maximum look-ahead (about 6 and 1/2 plies), looked at an equal number of moves of the first level (about 4), and made the same number of fresh starts (about 3). The top players were not considering hundreds of positions nor were they doing more or deeper analysis than the average player. The only clear difference seemed to be in their choice of what to analyze and their final move selection.
deGroot noted that all of his subjects were silent just after a new position was presented, and no matter how much he urged them to talk, this pause occurred. He surmised that some important nonverbal process was taking place when the player first began his analysis. Later research confirmed this hypothesis. A Russian experiment demonstrated by eye movement analysis that subjects made a global visual inspection of the position when it was first presented. This perceptual processing was apparently the crucial point where the strong and the average players began to diverge. Subsequent research by deGroot indicated that strong players can remember the location of almost all the pieces when they are briefly shown a complicated middle game position while average players remember far less. This advantage disappears if the pieces are randomly placed on the board. The superior memory is therefore chess specific. The most plausible interpretation of this finding is that experienced chess players develop special perceptual skills such that they “see” chess pieces in meaningful patterns. In the memory task, they remember 6 or 7 piece groupings while inexperienced players remember 6 or 7 pieces. Subsequent research in this country has confirmed this interpretation.
The current theory of chess skill is that player develop, through years of practice, a very specific set of perceptual skills in which chess pieces are perceived in meaningful patterns rather than as individual pieces, and they also learn what to do with these patterns to produce winning chess positions. Learning to play chess is like learning to read. For the child, writing consists of many unfamiliar letters mixed in confusing patterns all over the page. For an experienced reader, however, the letters are almost unnoticed. Instead, the page is perceived in terms of words and phrases, with the latter part of each sentence processed only briefly, because the reader had anticipated the general idea in advance from the context of the passage. Research indicates that a very similar process occurs in chess. The experienced player sees a familiar terrain populated by frequently encountered piece groupings. He knows what the patterns connote and what is required for skillful play. Chess skill is a perpetual skill, not a process of computation. Careful move-by-move analysis is used only as a confirmation that the opponent does not have a tactical shot which might refute the intended line of play.
I wonder if this was ever refuted.... this was written in the mid 80's.
Assuming that this might be true.... 6.1/2 plies.... I wonder when if ever an engine will become so advanced to beat a GM regularly at 6 or 7 plies.
I think David Levy made the wrong bet... it should have been that he would never be beaten by a computer that plays 6 plies
Best regards
Nick
I can only say that I believe that it is nonsense.
I see nothing about the playing strength of the players who are described to be "top players" so I doubt if they are really top players and not some strong player(like rating 2300 today or even 2500 that cannot be described as top players).
I believe that humans with average intelligence may be strong players but I do not believe that they can become top players(rating above 2700).
I am also sure that GM's calculate more than 6-7 plies in part of the positions because there are positions that even I calculate more than 6-7 plies including middle game position
Let take even the simple mate pattern that
I knew even at the time that I began to play chess in tournament
and was unrated.
Qc5+ Kh1 Nf2+ Kg1 Nh3+ Kh1 Qg1+ Rxg1 Nf2 mate
The number of plies is 9 plies forward
If a player is careful not to make a mistake because it allows his opponent to win in this way then he calculate 10 plies forward.
I also believe that many chess players do not describe correctly their thoughts in words
They may say that Qc5+ lead to a known mate without giving all the line but it does not mean that they do not calculate it.
Not calculating can cause them to lose by a wrong sacrifice because
the same idea can also fail after
Qc5+ Kh1 Nf2+ Kg1 Nh3+ Kh1 Qg1+ Ne2xg1 Nf2+ Ra2xf2
Uri
