What Messi Soccer Genius Can Teach Us about Board Visualization Skills in Chess

Did you know that the best soccer players rely on maths and scientific principles to reach the top of their game? Actually, any expert in any field, be it other sports, chess, or classic warfare, depends on it. For example, Lionel Messi, the five-star Soccer General of FC Barcelona, by many the best soccer player ever, uses geometry, aerodynamics and probability to best his opponents.

Lionel Messi: General that soccer battlefield may have never seen before. Does he have eyes in the back of his head?

What we are interested in here is to find out underlying mechanisms of expert performance. How does the expert’s brain makes, mostly unconscious, intuitive decisions? We want to find out how experts do it in order to use this knowledge in teaching the skill to the beginner. We need to include this key skill early in the learning process, because if the game is not taught well at the beginning level, “it just doesn’t matter,” as Bill Murray would say. It’s not how to kick the ball, but where to kick it. Or you get learners trying to figure out how to play better after months, or years or so of bad habits. Alas it is then usually too late to break the old habits and change behavior. They are convicted to stay mediocre, or even worse, to give up the game altogether.

The vision is fundamental to all our actions in the world – everything follows from it. We monitor the environment all the time so as to be able to react to it in ways conducive for survival and success in all struggles of life.

Power of the glance

The fact is, experts see more. They have a bigger picture of the game than anyone around him and get more information from the field than less-skilled players. What kind of information are we talking about here? It is the positions of their opponents and team-mates at any one time. It is a current line-up of of all players on the field, a structured network of their interconnections.

Messi has a better game overview because he uses his powerful coup d’oeil (or power of a glance) to get the sense of more connections between players on the field than less-skilled players.  This supports the chunk theory, based on the discovery that the best chess players sense any board position, not in terms of a unconnected set of individual pieces, but as five or six groups of pieces with their functional relations.

The genius of Lionel Messi uses this understanding of players’ geometry intuitively to map this information out and get understanding and meaning of what is going on on the field. This is not a static view. It is very important to anticipate how this dynamic system may evolve in space and time.

Geometry of the battlefield helps the sixth sense. "Chess pieces," chess art by Peter Funk

Power of sixth sense

We see how Messi, like a trained hunter, possess an increased visual awareness. Not only that, his rich experience and larger knowledge base help him discover the relevant information in the current situation, which then directs his attention to the most pressing issue. Once all this visual information has been processed from a single gaze, the brain combines current visual input with pre-existing knowledge, concepts and patterns, already stored in it, to grasp the meaning of the situation and respond to it.

That is what we usually call the  sixth sense – the ‘expert intuition’, an instinctive method of solving a particular problem. For example, firefighters search for cues that lead to the heat source. In chess, everything comes from spatial relationships between pieces and their four basic roles, or functions. You need to identify critical, while ignoring irrelevant piece contacts. The cues then lead to the recognition of patterns.

Decision making: what move to make

Messi uses his exceptional anticipation abilities and probability to select from few possible choices of stored patterns and mental images which helps him solve the complex problem in the best possible way: he decides where to go and what to do with the ball in a single moment, whether to make the right run (to escape from a marking, for instance), or play the right pass over to a team mate.

Strong chess vision is a guarantee of your success! "Chess board in the misty gorge," chess art by Peter Funk

How to improve board visualization skills in chess

Now replace the word Messi in the previous text and put, say, Capablanca, or Fischer. You will see that the same applies and explains the exceptional expert visualization skills in soccer and chess, or any other domain, for that matter.

There is no question that we need to use this knowledge to teach chess more effectively. Obviously, every one needs to spend those proverbial 10,000 hours to become good at something. But we need to have them build a knowledge base with such methods that will at the same  time help discover the relevant information in the current situation. They need to develop ways of more efficient information pick-up from the board. In training less skilled players, it would be extremely helpful to orient their attention to the relevant features of play.

They need to be taught where to look at and what to look for first.

A more efficient way of teaching chess must start with piece contacts, not aimless woodpushing moves.

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Related articles:

1. Messi’s sixth sense explained (UEFA.com)

2. Scientists try to explain Messy Genius (www.espnstar.com)

3. A game of two halves, played with maths and science skills: Top footballers have high intelligence, study suggests (www.dailymail.co.uk)

4. Why Ask Why? Just Enjoy Messi (www.nytimes.com)

What Learning Chess and Thing Enabling Companies and Governments to Steal Your Secrets Have in Common?

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” — Aristotle

Carnival in Nice. Create good habits from the start - have fun while learning chess!

First we form some chess routines, then they form us and the way we play

Most of our daily actions are not the result of well-considered decision making. Rather, habits shape large part of the choices we make every day.

Habit learning is going on all the time. Brain will try to make any repeated behavior into a habit. Why? Because habits allow our minds to conserve effort in terms of time and energy. Which, in turn, is essential for survival.

“The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue (or stimulus), a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic,” Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do And How To Change It, in his How Companies Learn Your Secrets article in New York Times.

Understanding this loop is the key to more efficient teaching, faster learning curve, or becoming more productive at whatever you do in life.

Suppose you just got started learning how to play chess. Most likely, they show you a chessboard full of pieces and how they move individually. Is that the right thing to do? Doesn’t seem so. Many counter-arguments speak against it: psychology and cognitive neuroscience, the theory of complex systems, the authority of Nimzovich…

Any beginnings in chess must first pay attention to interrelationships (“contacts”), coordination and roles (functions) pieces have. After all, pieces move along the same lines they exert force over, but the impact of teaching moves first has far-reaching consequences on how we learn and acquire new knowledge.

Yet, we still push the traditional method of how to start teaching chess to the beginner. The result? Habits not so beneficial for a fast progress start forming. With damaging consequences.

As brain cell connections are physical, the new patterns are hard-wired and become permanent. Slow learning curve and poor chess vision set in early. You’re not seeing any progress, losing too many games and therefore motivation and interest. Chances are you simply give up so as not to humiliate your ego. You go someplace else to feed your natural hard-wired instinct to triumph.

To build strong chess vision, start with the right habit to spot piece contacts and functions

Conquer your bad chess habits, or they’ll eventually conquer you

To disrupt the old bad habits that the chess player has gotten into is a difficult task. Once the loop is established and a habit has emerged, the pattern will unfold automatically. If you want to break a bad habit, you need to fight it deliberately by finding new cues and rewards. You need to grow a new alternative neural pathway. The thing is though, you don’t actually get rid of old, unwanted behavior patterns. You may shift to the new routine giving you better results, but you piggyback on an existing habit. Obviously, as Benjamin Franklin put it, it is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

The task of the chess coach is to use right methods to insure development of the right habits from the onset. You can grow stronger by simply doing the right things consistently over time. Sometimes, tweaking even one habit, as long as it’s the right one, can have dramatic effects.

Learn the right habits from the start and your chess performance will take off.

“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.” — Aristotle

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Are You Ignoring the Power of Your Sixth Sense? Too Bad for You

Living in the world needs quick and sensible decisions. Every minute of every hour – you have to make a decision. Every move of every game of chess – you have to make a decision. But did you know that experts use intuition 90 percent of the time in their decision making? [1] They don’t make conscious effort to consider all the options before taking action. Instead, they quickly gather information, follow their instinct and act.

Humans are programmed with “mental shortcuts”

We are preprogrammed with a whole set of unconscious behaviors that move us through life. If we were required to consciously consider every decision we made, we would quick become paralyzed. As humans have evolved, we have developed a set of “mental shortcuts”, split-second decisions being one of them. This helps us to deal with the onslaught of choices we constantly face and to function more effectively.

Tough decisions start early

Of course, when  faced with important, life changing decisions (say, taking a new job), we should reflect on it. But most of the time we should trust and use the vague hunches we receive from the cavemanslike “primitive” brain.  This gut feeling is difficult to articulate, but it’s very important that you attune to this unconscious mental process.

How to strengthen the muscle of intuitive thinking

So what can we do about it? Well, to improve this unconscious routine we need a teachable framework. These two things provide the basis for the model: filtering cues and developing patterns.

Decision making model starts with the situation as a whole. First you look for cues. For example, firefighters search for cues that lead to the heat source. In chess, everything comes from spatial relationships between pieces and their four basic roles, or functions. You need to identify critical, while ignoring irrelevant ones. The cues then lead to the recognition of patterns. At that point your brain starts running “action scripts” in which you simulate an effort and evaluate potential options until you find a satisfactory answer. With a decision made, you act and start the process over again.

Crossroads, by István Orosz (1999)

At the expert level in any field there’s almost no evaluation of alternatives before making a decision. For example, chess grandmasters, in most situations, experience a compelling sense of the issue leading to a move which is the best fit for the position at hand. They can play at the rate of 5 to 10 seconds a move and even faster with typically no much degradation in performance. At this speed they must depend almost entirely on intuition and hardly at all on analysis and comparison of alternatives.

Superior teaching methods develop snap judgments and intuition

Intuition is not some magical power or extraordinary mental attribute that some have and others don’t. A superior teaching method in any domain should include a framework for improving it. In chess, this means an early focus on developing superior board vision, filtering cues and pattern recognition combined with purposeful “action scripts.”

Use and tune  up your magnificent brain, the most wonderful gift Mother Nature has given you. You think technology and rational thinking can do it better? No way! It’s all about unleashing extraordinary power you keep back within. Your sixth sense.

Teachers seem to discourage quick judgments (“look before you leap,” “think (or measure) twice before you cut,” “take your time”).

Yet, not only careful analytical thought, educators would do well to encourage quick judgments and intuition development as it may be a more efficient route to expertise.

Think twice about it:)

1. Klein, Gary, The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions

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What is Contacts Examination? Is It a Medical, Optical or Chess Issue?

Every chess position is coded by four elementary contacts representing functional relationships between pieces. These are four letters of the chess alphabet: attack, protection, restriction and interposition.

But seeing individual letters during the initial analysis of the position doesn’t mean an understanding of the whole. In very much the same way seeing and recognizing 26 individual letters of the English alphabet in a sentence doesn’t help decode its meaning.

Yet, ability to read is required underlying processing skill for you to understand the context of a written sentence or a chess position.

Her Majesty's arrival on D8. Chess cards, published by R. Schmidt Schiks library Homburg v. d. Höhe,1909

A sentence normally has S-V-O structure, Subject, Verb, Object. Verb indicates an action or a state. Nouns show who performs (subject) and receives the action (object). In order to understand the meaning of the sentence one must consciously or unconsciously identify its parts and establish their relationships.

The same goes in chess. Like nouns in a sentence, chess pieces carry the action (attack, protect, restrict, block) and can also be objects of action. Any disciplined approach to thinking more effectively and creatively must include reading of these elements.

Let’s take a look at an example:

Smyslov-Taimanov 19 USSR ch, Moscow, 1951, after 29...Rxd6

When facing any chess position, the first order of business is to break things down and examine the contacts (A, P, R, B) for all pieces on the board. The contacts examination reads the individual piece relationships as the first stage of the thinking pattern in chess. It’s sort of check list that helps the beginner become aware of what’s going on on the board and avoid oversights. Later things become routine, but  they need to work methodically on what will become automatic one day.

All this doesn’t restrict you creativity and originality. On the contrary, it’s the basis for it.

The contacts examination takes a close look at connections each piece on the board has established:

• whether a piece is attacking, or is itself under attack,
• is it protected or unprotected; maybe its current duty is to protect a friendly piece – is it perhaps overloaded  if protecting more than one?
• how restricted it is in its movements, due to physical interference of other pieces, or hostile enemy fire,
• is it pinned against a friendly piece behind it, and therefore restricted,
• or it is perhaps lined up with another friendly or enemy piece (this typically may trigger some tactics),
• how the status of this piece relates to other interconnected pieces,
• what would be the status of this piece if it moves to a new square and how that would change the status of other pieces

Stalemate on H1.

So, what we see in the Smyslov – Taimanov position? Two pairs of the minor pieces has just been traded as black wanted a position with opposite-color bishops to reduce pressure due to Raf1 and Bh5 threat. However, he missed a tactical subtlety.

When we evaluate a chess position the first thing we should look at is the position of Kings. As they are the number one target we check not only the king’s current post out, but also squares around it. In this position the kings don’t seem to be under immediate threat for the moment. We can spot that the white king shares the same diagonal with its rook. Luckily, the e3-pawn does a good defensive job closing the diagonal and controlling the d4-square from which the black bishop may potentially strike. On the other hand, the f7-square in the black king’s vicinity may be put under more pressure along the open f-file (Raf1 and Bh5). However, the defensive resources seem to be adequate to repel this threat.

Next, we may take a look at the queens. We see them forming a pin set-up. The black one is unprotected while the white counterpart is protecting b2-pawn being pinned by the g7-bishop against the white a1-rook  – many of these relationships may be quite irrelevant for assessing the situation.

We also see that the black queen is lined up on the long diagonal with her a8-rook. We may continue on examining the status of other pieces, like the black d6-rook is unprotected etc., but for an experienced eye the mere fact that black queen and rook are sharing the same diagonal (a common precondition for a pin or skewer)  may be a signal to stop further analyzing the position and start creative synthetic thinking process by looking for possible tactics.

What white piece may possibly be used to exploit this situation? The e2-bishop is a natural candidate to carry out the role by launching attack from f3-square. Good thing is it would be protected there by f2-rook.  Unfortunately, the long diagonal is closed. But wait, how about line opening, e4-e5? The d6-rook is already within the reach and under threat of attack by the e-pawn. Yes, the diagonal can be opened forcefully with a tempo — e4-e5! The idea was born! Now the white player wants to make sure this is going to work and checks possible replies on the e5 thrust, like Black closing the big diagonal with the d6-rook etc.  If it doesn’t work for some reason after position evaluation, the player may resume the contacts examination…

30.  e4-e5! Bg7xe5

31. d3-d4 In place of a simple 31.Bf3, Smyslov wanted to get rid of  his weak d3-pawn and he in his turn became victim of tactics…

31. …Rd6xd4!

32. e3xd4 Be5xd4

and White eventually won at move 58 (seeing players of this caliber miss things may bring some comfort to the rest of us while discussing contacts examination and chess vision issues)

* * *

Is there a way to find out which interactions in the current position are the most relevant? Sometimes we simply don’t have time to delve into a full examination. What do we look for then to pinpoint the most significant relationships? Well, that is something that comes with experience. It’s like telegraphic reading. We need to identify the most important words of the message that convey the meaning.

Without these shortcuts, selecting a move in chess from so many possibilities would seem an impossible task. Another approach to economize with time is to look at what changes in the position have been created by the last opponent’s move and narrow down the examination to affected pieces only. And you may just quickly refresh the status of the remaining pieces based on previous examinations. Again, all these processes go pretty much automatic.

* * *

The contacts examination helps learn how to read the chess code quickly and efficiently. It is a solid foundation that will enable the student to continue developing still greater chess fluency in the future and an essential part of developing a strong chess vision if taught appropriately and brought to an automatic level.

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Everybody Has Their Answer – What Is the Basic Chess Principle Anyway?

“Mais c’est quoi ce jeu?”

Chess is a product of a complex interplay between chessmen. This complex system is different than sum of isolated pieces that collectively make it up. Through interactions of pieces, entirely new qualities emerge (hence, emergent system). From a relatively small number of pieces and simple interactions between them, based on few basic principles, a surprising complexity is generated and a rich and beautiful world of chess rises up.

However, knowing the basic laws of the emergent system is insufficient for us to fully understand its functioning. Yet, mastering the basic principles in any domain (chess, music, literature, etc.) is the first, indispensable step for us if we really want to get beyond the boundaries of the ordinary and into the realm of creativity. This is what Prof. Csikszentmihalyi is considering as a necessary precondition for any creative enterprise.

So what are the basic principles of chess? If you ask someone about it, you may have very different answers.

In fact, the core principles of chess are contained in:

1) piece properties (power and body effect)

2) elementary piece contacts (representing four functions or duties pieces have: attack, protection, restriction, and blocking)

Surprisingly, that’s all. That’s the foundation upon which the entire edifice of chess resides.

Aside from these basic principles, there is a set of arbitrary chess rules that really don’t change the essential nature of the game (for example, en-passant, castling, stalemate rule, and so on.)

What is this game, anyway? Chess art by Miss Boll

As an emergent system, chess has to be studied as a whole and as a nested network of elementary relationships. It’s top-down and bottom-up at the same time.

Now, when you’re thinking for your next move, some mental functions are at work:

First, by observing the position, you break things down into elementary relationships mentioned above (you “read” the position by help of the four letters of the chess alphabet: A, P, R, B). This should come before anything else. You should analyze these elementary contacts for every piece on the board. We may call this contacts examination, or piece status examination. For example, you want to see whether a piece is under attack, how restricted it is in its movements, is it protected or hanging, etc.

If you don’t see all this basic information, it’s like flying your jet with eyes closed.

Next, out of these separate elements you begin building up the big picture to form a coherent whole. It’s bottom-up part, sort of synthesis that involves putting together the parts you analyzed before, but now combined with other information kicking in, basically your previous knowledge and experience. This is creative and mostly intuitive process. But again, it won’t be possible without breaking things down at the first phase of the process which also runs mostly automatic.

Finally, you evaluate the situation by judging it on scales of relative values.

You make the decision and you act – you make your move.

Chess art by Miss Boll

Again, the above mental process is mostly automatic. Our brain runs largely on autopilot.

The left side of the brain, “the interpreter” is where codes for meaning and understanding of the world around us are stored.  Codes serve to convert the visual input of the outside world taken by the right side of the brain, our visual-spatial expert. If the right side of the brain “seeing” a chess position has no language, or code in the left brain, to name it, you can’t really grasp the meaning of the position on the board, you are kind of blind to it.

Imagine that you are trying to figure out meaning of what’s printed on a page of a book written in a language you’re not familiar with. As you’re unfamiliar with the code, in other words, with the alphabet of that language, you’re unable to see the meaning.

The same goes in chess. If you are not familiar with the chess alphabet, which consist of only four letters, A, P, R and B, you’re severely impaired to understand what’s going on on the chessboard. Your chess vision is all but disabled.

You cannot fly your jet with eyes closed.

* * *

All this shows how important it is for elementary contacts to be included in the process of teaching and learning as early as possible (again, Nimtzovich showed that clearly back in 1929). Yet, the entire contacts approach flies in the face of the way chess is typically taught.

Next time we are going to take a concrete chess position and use the contacts method to break things down into elements before building them back up.

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Follow @chessContact

I give a 30-minute free consultation on how to get started in chess most effectively to get your game on the fast track. Forget about a boring and confusing 30-page introduction with all those rules on how pieces move, en-passant, 50-move draw, threefold repetition rule etc., most chess books start with.

Let’s go right away to the heart and core of the whole chess thing…

You may contact me at iPlayooChess(at)gmail(dot)com

Better Chess Vision with Contacts. A Manifesto

It is becoming necessary for the attention of chess teachers, instructors and educators to be drawn to one circumstance which seems to be so slight that they do not even consider it their duty to notice it. That thing is the following: they are responsible for the unchecked spread of a virus infecting an entire population. Where? In the mind of the chess beginner, causing a severe condition, called poor chess vision.

And chess educators, do they see it? No, they do not. Is this intentional? No, it is professional.

This what the human race in the 21-st century knows, cognitive neuroscience, brain-behavior relationships, educational psychology, learning theory, pedagogy, chess educators ignore.

Pablo Picasso, Blind Minotaur Led by a Girl through the Night (1934)

How is the infection caught? We are being infected during the very first hour of learning. Our teachers unwittingly infect us when using the traditional way which is slow-pace, ineffective and “fundamentally false” (Nimzovich). If then, one day, we ourselves teach someone chess, we are spreading the virus to them the same way.

This virus infects our mind, it takes over parts of our brain, programming us with habits and directions that point us away from where we should go. The virus direct us from what would otherwise give us a good chess vision and ultimately a life-time enjoyment in the game.

The infection and the resulting disease slow down our early progress in chess. Since this happens unconsciously, all we’re aware of is that as we go, chess becomes less fun, more of a drag, and less meaningful. We all love success with our hard wired impulse to triumph. Without it, we may feel our motivation slipping away. We may get less excited about things than we used to. Finally, we may totally lose our confidence and interest in the game and consequently give up altogether.

The moment has come for us to raise our voices. There are moments when even the human conscience can take the stand and order chess educators to listen.

We can certainly begin to disinfect ourselves. What we need is a paradigm shift. This happens when one of the basic, underlying assumptions we’ve been living changes. Every paradigm shift takes some time and a bit of effort to penetrate the community to teach itself the new paradigm and even longer to become accepted by the general public.

The time has come for this old way of teaching to be replaced by a new one. No matter how dark the night may be, the horizon at the end must bathe in daylight.

Better chess starts with better chess vision. Better chess vision starts with contacts. I have made out my case here, and here, and here and here.

It is there that the entire future lies.

And the future will, what is being done, come to pass.

This is the aim, this is the harbor. Until yesterday, it was only the truth, today it is a reality.

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The manifest is structured after Victor Hugo’s manifest Pour la Serbie, 1876

“Il devient nécessaire d’appeler l’attention des gouvernements européens sur un fait tellement petit, à ce qu’il paraît, que les gouvernements semblent ne point l’apercevoir. Ce fait, le voici : on assassine un peuple. Où ? En Europe. Ce fait a-t-il des témoins ? Un témoin, le monde entier. Les gouvernements le voient-ils ? Non…”

Your Brain is Much Smarter Than You Think – Here’s The Proof!

What do you mean – I hear you ask?

Well, again, your brain knows more than you think it does. And I want to prove it to you today.

As discussed in past posts, the vision is fundamental to all our actions in the world – everything else follows on from it.

Your chess brain

We don’t see with our eyes though – we see with our brains. “Many people think that brain’s visual system works like a camera, simply collecting and processing the raw visual data provided by our outside world. We actually experience  our visual environment as a fully analyzed opinion about what the brain thinks is out there,” (Brain rules, John Medina). The brain combines current visual input with pre-existing knowledge, concepts and patterns, already stored in it, to grasp the meaning of the moment and respond to it.

“Rather than using the predictive logic of a microchip, the brain is an analog processor working by analogy and metaphor. It relates whole concepts to one another and looks for similarities, differences, or relationships between them,” (A User’s Guide to the Brain, John Ratey)

In order to understand any spatial-visual system we need to:

(a) know its parts,

(b) recognize spatial and functional relationships between them (we want a proof of this today!),

(c) know what purpose and goals of the system are.

Here’s the proof.

First, forget all we said about what modern cognitive neuroscience tells us about how brain works and how we act in the world. Forget about what philosophers, like Wittgenstein, have told us about understanding and meaning. Forget about Nimzovich and his 1929 article in a Russian paper.

Forget all of that for a moment!

His excellency, your brain!

Instead, think football, or soccer, or basketball, or a warfare battle in full rage. In American football, think the quarterback, in soccer and basketball, think the playmaker, in a war battle (the one from the past, not a modern-era one, as now it’s just coming to you from the sky from an invisible enemy), think the general, in chess, think the master.

What do they all have in common? You brain knows the answer. And the answer will be the proof.

They all have instantaneous grasp of the problem they are up against:

• A good quarterback not only needs a good arm, they must also have a great field vision with the ability to quickly scan the field for open receivers, that is he must instantaneously capture the current line-up of all players on the field, who is being blocked, who is open, etc.
• A good playmaker in soccer is someone possessing not only abilities such as master technique, precise pass (long and short), first touch, stamina, influence, concentration, team work, but also a great game overview combined with creativity and decisions. Someone like Messi, Xavi, Kaka, or Gerrard.
• A good basketball playmaker is one who is said to have “court sense” and who can take in and comprehend all that is happening around him without conscious effort.
• A brilliant general possesses coup d’oeil, or “power of the glance”, an ability to immediately see and make sense of the battlefield.
• A master with a great chess eye sees in no time all piece contacts and relationships on the board, together with their functions (attack, protection, restriction, blocking). After a quick and automatic understanding of the situation, he starts working on the solution.

They all have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the game. They all share a perfect sense of all spatial and functional relationships existing on the battlefield. How men on both sides are positioned, how they are lined up right now and what their roles are. Of course, they also know what their overall strategy is and what current tactics should be.

You see the point? Of course! Thanks to your smart brain (I told you!). Your brain works by analogy and uses all its previous knowledge and concepts buried deeply within, to see things.

No psychology, no philosophy, no Wittgenstein, no Nimzovich, your brain outsmarts them all! It just created mental picture and come up with a snap judgement of what we wanted to prove, in just few moments, compared to years of work of the former.

* * *

Fortunately, I’ve got a good news for you: good field/board vision can be practiced.  There are drills that will sharpen your eagle-eyes.

In early chess teaching, it’s contacts drills! I keep repeating this, don’t start with teaching moves, no matter how paradoxical it may sound at first.

And quite logically, as spatial and functional relationships between pieces is definitely the most important thing in chess, it is to be taught first, before anything else.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Follow @chessContact

I give a 30-minute free consultation on how to get started in chess most effectively to get your game on the fast track. Forget about a boring and confusing 30-page introduction with all those rules on how pieces move, en-passant, 50-move draw, threefold repetition rule etc., most chess books start with.

Let’s go right away to the heart and core of the whole chess thing…

You may contact me at iPlayooChess(at)gmail(dot)com

Here’s How Poor Chess Vision Sets In Early… And How to Fix It

– What is the difference between playing the game and aimlessly moving the pieces?

– What stays in the way of developing strong chess vision early?

– Why chess doesn’t get traction with majority of learners?

– Why a bit too many consider chess as too difficult to learn and often give up in the process?

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944), Chess Theory

Chess visualization skills

We see not with our eyes, but with our brains.

The ability to interpret, process and integrate incoming (sensory) information allows us to act in and on the world. Visual perceptual skills are the basic building blocks of all functional activity. No human activity is performed without  the use of these skills. In chess we call it chess visualization skills, or board vision. All else follows on from the visual input and its processing.

Perceiving objects and spatial and functional relationships between objects is fundamental to understanding visual environments. It’s experienced internally and is related to our ability to recognize and construct patterns. Pattern is nature’s means of communicating and translating information. We need to look “patterns that connect” in order to reveal the secrets and meaning of things. The loss of pattern is the loss of information.

Chess is a complex cognitive activity that rests on the recognition of chess objects, or pieces. The form of a chess piece is not directly related to its function, but the form and function are firmly coupled through chess rules (e.g. how pieces control the board and make movements). The functions are then linked to actions, that is movements associated with pieces (executing a move).

The flawed traditional method of teaching

Let’s now take a look at the traditional method of teaching which starts with “showing the moves first”.

What does executing a move represent in the S->R model of behavior? Just the end of a sequence including the last opponent’s move (the stimulus), understanding the context, visual processing with pattern recognition, decision-making.

Of course, the beginner is not supposed to get started with all of it. Nevertheless, what we do when we start teaching chess is that everything preceding the move execution is actually out of the picture, it’s amputated. What is left is just aimless woodpushing which sets in a detrimental habit formation early in the learning process. Bad habits setting in, the understanding of the game, enjoyment of it, fast learning curve and future success are all likely to suffer. Probabilities of giving up the game completely? — very high.

Wassily Kandinsky, Orange Composition with Chessboard

Neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience findings

A research team led by Merim Bilalic at the University of Tuebingen of Germany used behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to uncover cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying skilled object recognition.

The main conclusion of the study is that expert chess players are faster than novices in identifying chess objects and their functional relations.

In particular, chess masters are superior over novices when they have to retrieve a piece function and how to relate it to another chess pieces (functions are roles pieces have when contacts between them and with squares on the board are established: attack, support, blocking, etc. — see Section B here).

Traditional vs Contacts method. The Verdict

Traditional method of teaching chess with “showing the moves first” develops an inappropriate perception which takes form of misinterpretation and distortion of chess reality. This leads to poor judgment and inadequate chess vision. The traditional approach is characterized by:

1) Isolated piece movements

2) Only R from the S->R behavioral model is left — meaning is amputated

3) Poor chess vision

4) Slow learning curve (remember the game of two second graders having practiced chess for more than a year given here? 1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3.exd5 Bxd1)

In contrast, Chess contacts method features:

1) Spatial and functional relationships between pieces

2) Meaning as a critical ingredient for developing any skill

3) Good chess vision/pattern recognition

4) Faster learning curve

* * *

The big question now is:

Why traditional method of “showing the moves first” is still pervasive despite the fact that all of the following talks against it and in favor of the contacts method:

• Psychology and cognitive neuroscience (see the study above) and what they tell us about how we humans act and behave, how the brain works and how learning occurs,
• Theory of emergent and complex systems,
• Works by Wittgenstein, Saussure and the likes who used chess as a key metaphor to illustrate how meaning is produced — chess pieces are just placeholders for certain function that bring the meaning in,
• Nimzovich (in the Shakhmatny listok article “How I became a Grandmaster”, in 1929) who as one of greatest theoreticians in chess knew a thing or two about chess

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I give a 30-minute free consultation on how to get started in chess most effectively to get your game on the fast track. Forget about a boring and confusing 30-page introduction with all those rules on how pieces move, en-passant, 50-move draw, threefold repetition rule etc. most chess book starts with.

Let’s go right away to the heart and core of the whole chess thing…

You may contact me at iPlayooChess(at)gmail(dot)com

What is the First Thing to Teach an Absolute Beginner in Chess? Part II

What is it that matters most when one starts learning chess?

Yet nobody is teaching it and the last place you’ll see it is a chess book!

Strong Chess Board Vision is the Key. Tablero de ajedrez, Juan Gris, 1917

We live in a world of systems of various complexity. Organisms, families, countries, sport teams, chess, they are all complex systems. A system is characterized by its:

1. Parts
2. Interconnections between parts
3. Purpose

For example, beehive. Bees are the parts of the system. The interconnections are the interactions of the bees in their daily pursuit of survival, like the waggle dances that show other bees where food sources are. The function of the beehive is the function of all organisms: to survive and continue. If we isolate a single bee, we will miss the hive behavior that emerges when bees are together. A single bee has no one to dance for. Complex systems emerge from the interactions of their parts and a beehive is no different (from Understanding complex systems).

In chess, the chessmen are the parts of the system. They interact and establish multitude of interconnections during the game. The purpose of the game is to play and win.

Chess only emerges from these interactions. This happens at different levels of complexity. The pattern of interaction at each level produces new properties and higher levels appear. For instance, from the basic piece relationships (levels A and B, the link above) emerge the piece harmony and coordination, the most important aspect of the game (levels C, D, and E).

The emergent systems are thus bottom-up and top-down at the same time. They have to be studied differently as wholes and as nested networks of relationships.

Complexity simplified

An important component of understanding complex systems is the ability to take systems apart into their component parts and levels to see how the parts behave, and how to connect the parts and levels to understand the overall system dynamics and structure.

To better understand inner-workings of the “chess system” we need to break things down to the basic relationships between pieces (levels A and B). Of course, the team members must be able to focus on the system as a whole and how they will integrate and work together in a desired direction using strategy (levels C, D and E).

Yet, without being aware of what is going on at the lowest level, and without studying the basic relationships between pieces first and foremost (there are just few: attack, protection, restriction, blocking) we are not able to fully grasp how chess as a complex system works (by the same token, without knowledge of chemical elements and how they connect we don’t have full understanding of how life is emerging on inorganic molecules).

The basic contacts are the bread-and-butter of chess. And there’s no one single thing in chess that matters more in the first stages of learning. The contacts actually give piece interaction the meaning revealing the roles of pieces and their functional relations.

Only after these core relationships are mastered and used consistently, they can provide a framework for accelerated progress in chess. They should rapidly lock into the primitive brain before moving on.

The brain is a pattern recognition machine and when focused properly it can quickly grasp any concept. Perceptual knowledge builds automatically and subconsciously and there is no reason one cannot develop an intuition for board contacts, given a little interest or motivation.

Traditional house of teaching chess is upside down - it doesn't start from foundations

It’s quite clear now how we should get started in chess – with elementary contacts (levels A and B). And yes, it’s in the face they have been teaching chess now with the “showing the moves first” approach. The approach which is, as per Nimtzovich, “fundamentally flawed”. But it seems there’s no one to care (stay tuned for Nimtzovich’s first chess lesson using contacts in an upcoming post —  as far as I know it’s never translated in the West in full).

Contacts first is the key to modernizing chess teaching and speeding up learning curve, so the first period of chess education becomes more effective and successful.

How to build a strong board vision in chess?

Expert chess players develop a strong board vision the old-fashioned way through years of study and practice. But proper kind of perceptual training – as cognitive science teaches us is possible – visual, fast-paced and focused on the elementary relationships between parts can build intuition quickly.

Once the brain has a goal in mind, it tunes the perceptual system to search the environment for relevant clues. In time your chess vision engine learns to isolate those signs and ignore irrelevant information, in turn sharpening thinking.

With practice, neurons specialize to identify these signature visual patterns. Recognizing patterns effortlessly frees up mental resources to move on to solving harder problems of the situation, such as piece cooperation, tactics and strategy.

If millions of children can develop a trained eye for video combat games, they can surely do the same for mastering basic relationships in chess. And that’s how they can get their chess on the fast track.

Get started with “contact chess” – the martial art of mind!

* * *

Part I is here:  What is The First Thing to Teach an Absolute Beginner in Chess? Part I

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Comments and suggestions welcome.

I give a 30-minute free consultation on how to get started in chess most effectively to get your game on the fast track. Forget about a boring and confusing 30-page introduction with all those rules on how pieces move, en-passant, 50-move draw, threefold repetition etc. every chess book starts with.

Let’s go right away to the heart and core of the whole chess thing…

You may contact me at iPlayooChess(at)gmail(dot)com

Follow @chessContact

What is “Chess Pendulum”?

The main principle of strategy has been known (at least in written records) since VI century BC: Forestall the enemy’s plans, fight their own strategy, Sun Tzu, our venerable consultant on matters of strategy.

Then in the year 1645, a Japanese samurai warrior, Miyamoto Musashi, expressed the very same idea this way:

Whatever the enemy tries to bring about in the fight, you will see in advance and suppress it. When the opponent attempts to execute his (sword) move, frustrate it from the onset, make whatever the opponent is trying to accomplish of no use, and achieve the freedom with which to lead the opponent about.

He might have played Shogi, but all the chess strategists should now stand up and bow down to this man:

Miyamoto Musashi, The Master

Hey, those guys did know a thing or two about strategy, huh?

This principle has never ever failed in any conflict: war, business, sports, chess, you name it.

Any expectation, any intention by the opponent, any sign of activity that may develop into something harmful is to be disrupted at the root by all available tactical means (tactics are just building blocks of strategy).

Quite naturally, we should just follow this golden rule in chess, the game of strategy, right?

Yes, but not many of the rest of us do.

Why is it? Why we don’t start teaching this simple cardinal principle from the onset, so it becomes part of our chess instinct? The concept has already been known to the powerful subconscious brain (they also call it “primitive”, o sancta simplicitas! it’s much, much smarter than you ever thought it could be). Buried deeply inside your subconsciousness, acquired through past experiences from sports, war movies we watched without a blink – at least boys – it’s been just waiting there for you to activate it. For you to become a winner.

(I’m afraid, I must keep repeating this over and over again as this is the single most important thing that you will ever need in chess, business, or sports, and, for that matter, any other competition for a life time!!)

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Okay, we know what’s the main principle. But what’s the “chess pendulum” anyway?

Actually, it’s one of many “small” strategies. We need to learn them too. FM Anatoly Terekhin has collected more than 120 (in Strategic Methods in Chess, Samara, 2005, ISBN 5-9900489-1-2, he presented nine of them).

In my latest post on grand scheme of hierarchy in chess few major strategies were mentioned in the strategic level (E).

One of them was weakening of the enemy position (E6). It’s a potent weapon with different flavors and today we’re going to demonstrate a method called “chess pendulum”. Chess what?

I’ve asked IM Ashot Nadanian, the second of the #3 in the world, GM Levon Aronian, to best translate Russian “маяатник” in this context for us. In my mother tongue (Serbo-Croatian, an old relative of Russian) there’s a similar verb with a meaning “to annoy someone”. But pendulum fits in perfectly.

At the same time we’ll take a quick look at another strategy: trading your “bad” pieces for the enemy “good” ones (E4). Also very, very important, another biggie (there’s hardly ever an equal trade in chess. One side or another almost always gains some advantage. If only we could learn how and when to do it, we all would be much better players. So train your subconscious brain engine to watch closely whenever an exchange happens in a GM game you may go over. Try to figure out why they went for it and what kind of advantage they may have gained. That way you will learn a lot).

* * *

Back to the pendulum. It’s a close relative of the “vanishing move” strategy, with the same goal – to weaken the opponent’s position. In a different form though:

The piece returns to the original square, giving over the right of move to the other side, but the position has changed favorably (in contrast with the vanishing move, all pieces may do the pendulum, not just Bishop).

To demonstrate, here’s a position two chess legends played almost hundred years ago (just en-passant, study primitive classics!):

Capablanca - Alekhin, St Petersburg 1913, after 11...Nb6

12. Ng5!

“Forcing the Black to play g7-g6, which will weaken his K-side and make holes for the White’s dark-squared Bishop”, Capablanca, My Chess Career.

12. …g6 13. Ngf3

Capablanca - Alekhin, after 13.Ngf3

The pendulum operation carried out. Weaknesses inflicted. At the same time “this move is making room for the Queen’s Bishop. White could have also played 13.Qe2 and if  13…Qxd4 14.Ngf3 followed by Bh6  and Ng5 with a violent attack”, Capablanca.

13. …Kg7 14. Bg5 Nbd5 15. Rac1 Bd7 16. Qd2 Ng8 17. Bxe7 Qxe7

Capablanca - Alekhin, after 17...Qxe7

18. Be4!

“This move I considered a very long time. It looks very simple and inoffensive, yet it is the foundation of the whole attack against Black’s position. The fact is that the Bishop is doing very little, while the black Nd5 is the key to Black’s defense, hence the necessity of exchanging the almost useless Bishop for a most valuable Knight”, Capablanca.

18. …Bb5 19. Rfe1 Qd6 20. Bxd5 exd5 21. Qa5 a6 22. Qc7 Qxc7 23. Rxc7 h6 24. Rxb7 Rac8 25. b3 Rc2 26. a4 Be2 27. Nh4 h5 28. Nhxg6 Re8 29. Rxf7+ Kh6 30. f4 a5 31. Nh4 Rxe5 32. fxe5 Kg5 33. g3 Kg4 34. Rg7+ Kh3 35. Ng2 1-0

***

Let me be perfectly clear. There are two things that should become your first instinct in chess, an indispensable part of everybody’s subconscious, strong chess vision engine, so you never ever again even have a slightest thought about it:

1. Strategy #1

2. Basic chess contacts

Period.

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Comments and suggestions welcome.

I give a 30-minute free consultation on how to get started in chess most effectively to get your game on the fast track. Forget about a boring and confusing 30-page introduction with all those rules on how pieces move, en-passant, 50-move draw, threefold repetition etc. every chess book starts with.

Let’s go right away to the heart and core of the whole chess thing…

You may contact me at iPlayooChess(at)gmail(dot)com

Follow @chessContact