Genetics of Chess

Chess as a struggle of two wills

The essence of chess is a struggle between two independent and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. As Karl von Klausewitz put it in his venerable book on war strategy, Vom Kriege, it’s like two wrestlers locked in a hold, each exerting force and counterforce to try to throw the other.

Human will, instilled through your leadership over your chess troops, is the driving force for success in chess. The means of chess war is application of force, the form of organized and coordinated action of your chessmen which pose threats to the enemy and force him to do your will. As in all clashes of interest between two parties, you must act from the position of strength to get things your way and win. It’s a universal law all species obey for survival. To get food; to capture and control territory; or to protect it.

Physical and mental forces of a battle

This struggle is characterized by the interaction of physical and mental forces. Your chess pieces possess that necessary critical capability, the power, to help achieve your aim. Their role is twofold. For one thing, they provide combat power for attack. Secondly, they are used for defensive purposes.

The fundamental question is how you use your mental powers to lead your troops successfully in a chess battle. To wage the war effectively you need to grasp complex battlefield situations. As a brilliant general you need coup d’oeil, or power of the glance, an ability to immediately see and make sense of the battlefield in order to be able to make evaluations, calculations, and decisions. You need to plan tactics and strategies.

How do you do that? How do you decode the meaning of the situation on the chessboard? And how you make your decisions by encoding that understanding into your next move?

Key Situation, chess art by Samuel Bak. What is the key to the situation? Perhaps, there is a secret code?

Code

We use codes everyday. A code is a rule for converting a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, phrase, or gesture) into another form or representation.

All languages and writing systems are codes for human thought and ideas. Musical score is the way to encode music. Braille system is a method for blind people to read, based on tactile codes. In chess we have our own code system, the chess notation,  to record moves and games.

But there’s another code system in chess that we are mostly unaware of. And this one is vitally important for you to survive and prevail in chess. What is it?

Genetic code

To get there let’s first take a look at DNA’s alphabet to make a useful analogy for chess (as you know, our brain works by analogy and metaphor). Alphabets are also codes and DNA’s alphabet is written in only four letters, A, C, T and G. Genetic code is a set of rules by which information encoded in DNA sequence is translated into proteins by living cells. In other words, DNA code contains instructions for making proteins your body needs for survival.

In our cells, proteins are workforce – they get everything done. They break down food to release energy. They organize transport of chemicals between cells.

On the other hand, proteins are the building blocks for your body structure. In the same way a wall is made of bricks, your body is mostly made of proteins.

Now let me ask you this, what is the workforce in chess? Your chessmen. They get things done. They get everything done for you. They possess the power, the force, as the critical capability for your attack (through power effect – see more under basic piece effects here).

Equally important, through cooperation and integration of forces your pieces represent building blocks for creating a strong protective structure your army needs for defense (through body effect).

Knowledgeable, chess art by Samuel Bak. You don't need to read all these books. You just need to read 4 letters (A, P, R, B) properly to get most of the meaning in chess

Back to our question, how can you grasp complex battlefield situations made from intricate interplay of two armies locked in a hold, for you to wage a winning chess war? How do you develop and use that powerful battlefield vision that is the most prized asset of the brilliant war general?

Chess code

Well, in pretty much the same fashion living cells use genetic code for making proteins, you should use chess code for your pieces to become useful and be managed successfully. You need to train your mind’s eye to read the chess alphabet written in only four letters: A(ttack), P(rotection), R(estriction) and B(locking).

As, Ps, Rs and Bs are written there in every position on the chessboard for you to decode. Cognitive science says it is a basic perceptual process of interpreting incoming stimuli, or converting relatively objective sensory input (e.g., current spacial and functional interaction of pieces on the board as coded in the language of As, Ps, Rs, and Bs) into subjectively meaningful experience.

And knowing the alphabet you will be able to issue the right instructions to your troops (when to attack, or where to protect), very much the same way as DNA issues instructions for making proteins that do every job in your body.

BEEF UP YOUR GAME!! by learning the chess alphabet as early as possible (for best results in your chess kindergarten) and you will read any chess position like you are reading a book without being aware of individual letters in it – but meaning and ideas!!

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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

What Actually Happens Under Your Skull When You Read (a Chess Position)? How Your (Chess) Vision Works?

What chess experts see/recognize/understand effortlessly on the board and chess novices don’t?

What makes the difference?

How can you get a novice on the fast road to developing a good chess vision?

Persian bronze gaming pieces (6th-7th c. AD)

It is all about perception. We discussed last time that perceiving spatial and especially functional relationships between objects in a visual environment is the key to understanding the meaning of a situation and how to react to it.

To better understand where the problem lies let’s take a look at how perception occurs. There are three steps involved in visual processing:

Sensation: we capture external visual information and convert it into head-speak, that is brain-friendly electrical language.

Routing: once translated, the information goes to the supervisor center (thalamus) which in turn sends it off to the brain’s increasingly complex higher regions for further processing.

Perception: at this final step of sophisticated processing in association cortices we begin to perceive what our senses have given us. These regions use both bottom-up and top-down processing. The two work together to help us recognize the world.

Reading a sentence

Here’s an example which beautifully illustrates bottom-up and top-down interaction.

After your eyes read the sentence and the thalamus has spattered various aspects of the sentence all over your skull, bottom-up processors go to work by greeting the sentence’s visual stimuli, its letters and words. An upside down arch becomes the letter “U”, combinations of straight lines and curves become, say, word “Uagadugu” (by the way, this is my favorite vacation spot – just kidding).

Now comes top-down processing where the previous detailed “report” is interpreted and analyzed to get the meaning out of it in order to respond to the original stimulus, or a change in the environment (remember S->R, stimulus->response mechanism?). This is done in light of pre-existing knowledge, or stored patterns (schemas), mental representations of what we know and expect about the world. Schemas can bias our perception toward one recognition or another by creating a perceptual set, that is a readiness to perceive stimuli in a certain way. These expectations operate automatically, whether we are aware of them or not.

Given that people have unique experiences, they bring different interpretations to their top-down analysis, so two people can see the same input and come away with vastly different perceptions. Think a chess expert and a novice.

Pieces are just placeholders for certain functions. Playing Chess, by Brett Dugan

Chess analogy

In chess, what is analogous to words? Chess pieces.

During the bottom-up stage we scan the board to see how all pieces are positioned in their battling space. In our mind’s eye we need to see each piece together with its aura, or lines of power emanating from it, as one inseparable entity. Thus we are becoming aware of how pieces are interacting, with both friendly and enemy ones, and of spatial relationships and connections between them.

But what gives words and pieces their meaning? Where does this meaning come from?

What is the difference between playing well and aimlessly moving the pieces (pushing wood)?

The top-down process kicks in by recognizing functional relationships, or roles pieces have in the current context. Some pieces are attacking enemy pieces and/or important squares on the board restricting them, others are supporting friendly pieces, or blocking attack on them coming from opposing troops. This brings the meaning into the picture. Previous experience helps evaluate the situation adding up new layers of meaning.

Our motivation and expectations also get in affecting the perception. For example, if this is the last round and you need to win, you are likely to be in aggressive mode where you tend to perceive more of attacking aspects of the position, neglecting potential dangers.

With a growing perception your understanding deepens too. However, understanding a word is not a mental state, event or process, but an ability to use it in certain ways for certain purposes, just as knowing how to play chess is knowing how to move the pieces in conformity with the rules of chess in pursuit of the goal of winning. In both cases mastering technique is necessary (and this is where mastering strategy and tactics, as its building blocks, get in).

Log Chess Set, by Peter Marigold

Good 20/20 or protracted and poor chess vision? Which one?

We see now how chess experts and novices have different interpretations of what they see on the board. Ability to recognize visual patterns and unconsciously follow (previously learned and stored) action patterns associated with them makes the difference.

Now is crystal clear why we need to start teaching with contacts and not with chess moves as the traditional teaching does. We need to develop good spatial and functional recognition skills if we want to strengthen bottom-up visual processing and create a good chess eye and strong board vision real quick, early in the learning process. As vision is the key to understanding and acting in the world, everything else follows on from it.

Teaching how to move pieces does very little to develop a good chess eye. It actually sends wrong messages to the brain what really important is in the game. As the brain willy-nilly starts creating habits (bad ones, of course) in order to be able to respond with automaticity later on (economy of time and energy!), an ineffective, and sometimes even dead-wrong perceptual set develops.

We are all going through the first period of our chess education mostly unaware of what’s going on on the board, not seeing attacks raging all around the place with our Queen maybe lost at move three (remember the game we saw before: 1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3.exd5 Bxd1).

But this period should be fairly short and end within roughly two months of the start of learning. Sadly, the players from the above game had been in chess for more than a year when they played it back then.

Definitely, they had been infected with that widespread chronic disease: poor chess vision, which sometimes turns to chess blindness.

Looking at that game again, something’s really rotten in our chess kingdom… the early teaching in fact.

Good news is that there is an effective cure available: contacts treatment!

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SOURCES:

1) John Medina, “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School”

2) Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Understanding and Meaning”

3) Douglas Bernstein, “Essentials of Psychology ”

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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 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!

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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

Chess Structure of Hierarchy Levels [originally: How to Build a Better Chess Teacher?]

Why early teaching in chess seems to be so inefficient?

Case in point. Remember the game from the previous post? 1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3.exd5 Bxd1, where both players had been in a chess school program for more than a year?!

What is better teaching?

And how to build a better chess teacher anyway as there is no such thing as a bad learner?

The learner is always as good as we give them the chance to be. (Remember that the human brain is the most powerful learning machine in the known universe. While computer is a moron, your brain is the most amazing thing in so many ways. Stick to it. Use it. Don’t rely on technology which just is to serve you and your brain to make smarter decisions)

How does the Grand Scheme of Hierarchy in Chess Come to Life?

Let’s take a look at the hierarchy of various functional levels in chess in a bit more detail. Below five levels are defined, from basic pieces effects (A) and basic piece contacts (B) to piece cooperation (C) and tactics and strategy (D-E).

More attention is given to Levels (A), (B) and (C), in contrast with Levels (D) and (E) that are quite extensively covered in chess manuals and publications. Surprisingly, the basic levels are so important to teaching chess, yet one can find very little on the topic (go Google and check out for yourself).

The key to put the beginner on the fast track and start developing a strong board vision is mastering (A) and (B) levels. It’s the alphabet of chess on which the entire edifice rests upon. You can’t build up knowledge on shaky foundations.

Breaking things down this finely into the elementary contacts is indispensable before moving on, ensuring an effective start and better understanding at the micro-level for the unconscious primitive brain. It’s like the foundation of a house – it’s below the surface. And if you want a loftier building, the deeper must the foundation be laid.

Learning is like a ladder. If you miss a step, sometimes you can’t go on. Then you start losing confidence and you simply give up. That’s how chess has been losing a lot of people.

Again, we need to break chess down to its component parts first and build them back up. More than anything else, we love success. As we grow more confident, as we get more excited, we request harder challenges. We love getting to higher levels, like in video games. That way hierarchies emerge and develop. That’s how we become experts.

Hierarchy of chess. Shaky or steady? Dream world, by Jacek Yerka

Some layers below overlap across levels. For example, the piece coordination (C) may well be seen as stretching across multiple levels, from level (B), as protecting contact (B3), then all across levels (D) and (E).

I’d like to put up a call to readers for feedback on what follows, so we together may come up with the best possible scheme of hierarchy in chess.

A. BASIC PIECE EFFECTS

1. Control (power) effect

The effect by which pieces and pawns exert their power over the board

2. Body effect

The effect chessmen produce by mere occupation of squares on the board which reduces the power, activity and mobility of other pieces, both friendly and enemy ones.

3. Rule of capture

B. ELEMENTARY BOARD CONTACTS

The basic contact are made between chessmen of both sides, as well as chessmen and squares. It’s mere geometry, we just need to see and identify two points on the same straight line. It can’t be simpler than that.

This is the critical level for getting on the fast track and to guarantee an effective learning experience in chess. It gives the unconscious brain the meaning of how pieces interact and what roles they have in the chess conflict. Yet, this level seems to be mostly non-existent in early stages the way we teach chess now. And this is where the secret lies in how to modernize chess education to make it more successful for the 21-st century.

Once these basics are mastered by the subconscious brain and have become its second nature, you no more think about it. It stays under the surface allowing your brain to unleash its full potential elsewhere. Your chess vision is now strong and you are stepping into the realm of creativity, intuition and imagination. The most sophisticated and powerful tools of the power brain.

In the parentheses is the number of pieces involved in each elementary contact:

1. Attack, or attacking contact (2)

Contact established between a piece (or pawn) and another enemy unit in its line of fire (this is actually the only contact existing in chess – stay tuned for an upcoming post – but it is more efficient for human brain to talk roles of pieces, such as attacking, protecting, blocking, etc.)

2. Threat of attack (2)

Indirect, concealed attack, or the attack which is one-move away. GM Averbakh considers the threat of attack as one of elementary contacts – it is important to be aware of how enemy attack develops over time and see things coming as it gives you more time to react appropriately and put up your defenses in time

3. Protection (2)

Contact between friendly pieces for mutual support (friendly pieces kind of “attacking” each other)

4. Restriction (2)

Develops when both friendly or enemy units are lying in the line of fire of a piece, thus reducing its activity and mobility. Also between a piece and the squares within its scope of action when these squares are attacked by hostile troops

5. Blocking (3)

Occurs when one pieces is attacked and another friendly chessman shields it by stepping in the line of fire of an enemy piece. This is also known as the pin and may be considered as a combined contact, or double attack consisting of a direct attack on the pinned, or blocking piece and the threat of attack on the piece behind it lying on the same line of attack

6. Promotion square contact (2)

Contact pawns make with the promotion square

C. PIECE HARMONY/COORDINATION

“The main thing is the coordination of pieces, and this is where most players are weak. Many try to attack with one piece here and another piece there without any concerted action, and later they wonder what is wrong with their game. You must coordinate the action of your pieces, and this is a main principle that runs throughout“, Capablanca, My Chess Career.

1. Double attack

This term is broader than a “two-fold attack” where two pieces directly attack. It covers all various ways of attacking and threats of attack, even the combination of two threats (for example, the most famous K+P vs K+P study in chess by Reti w:Kh8, Pc6/b:Ka6, Ph5 is actually double attack consisting of two threats of second order, or two moves away, one being the threat to catch the h-pawn getting in its Berger’s square, the other being the threat to support white Pawn for promotion). Anything from direct attack to strong threats, including mate threats, stalemating and perpetual check threats may constitute a double attack. Basically, double attack can be of two flavors:

1a. Concentrated attack when two or more pieces are attacking/threatening the same target: a square, or an enemy piece.

“There is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one’s forces concentrated. In short, the first principle is: act with the utmost concentration”, Carl Von Clausewitz, On War.

1b. Multi-target attack . One piece, or pawn is attacking two enemy units (fork), or two pieces are attacking two or more targets (discovered attack).

The multi-target approach has obvious merits – instead of striving for single targets, strategy simultaneously aims at multiple aiming points. Very rarely can the opponent defend multiple targets successfully.

2. Combined attack

Coordinated attack against hostile army where one piece or pawn is attacking, while the other pieces of the attacking army restrict freedom of movement of the side under attack.

Averbakh points out  that all chess combinations basically depend on double and/or combined attacks.

3. Protection

This is mutual protection established between friendly units, basically the same as the basic protecting contact (B3)

4. Tactical cooperation

The three ways of piece coordination above are relatively simple. However, the coordinated action may be less obvious and show itself in a more or less complex set-up. Tactical coordination may be quite complex and disguised in the form of an indirect attack or protection of a key square. Here is a simple example of the tactical cooperation.

Tactical piece coordination

At first sight, the white pieces are dispersed and not well coordinated. But tactical coordination helps one of the pawns get promoted without the white King helping out. For example, 1. g5 Kf5 2.c5!  and so on.

5. Strategic cooperation

Let’s use an example to demonstrate:

Strategic coordination. Smyslov - Rudakovsky, 1945, after 13.f5 Bc4

White’s strategic plan aims at creating an outpost at d5 for the Knight. Strategic coordination here is ensured by coordinated action of white Bishops in two different directions with the idea of removing defenders of d5-square (exchanges at c4 and f6) with its consequent occupation by white Knight.

14.Bxc4! Qxc4 15. Bg5! Rfe8 16.Bxf6! Bxf6 17.Nd5 and White created a strong outpost in the center which would soon serve for a direct attack on the black King.

D. TACTICS

The tactical devices are well-known. Some are listed here:

1. Double attack (pin, skewer, discovered attack are all forms of double attack)

2. Drive-on (attraction)

With the aid of this tactical device a piece (or pawn) is pulled onto a particular square (the motives behind the operation may vary)

3. Drive-off (decoy)

A tactical device that forces the opponent’s piece or pawn to leave its position and give access to an important square (or line)

4. Removing the defender

5. Square and line clearing

6. Line closing and blocking

7. Giving over the right of move (zugzwang) etc.

8. Perpetual attack

E. STRATEGY

The main principle of strategy is to forestall the enemy plans. Whatever they try to do in the battle, you need to see it in advance, frustrate it from the onset, make it of no use for them and suppress it. Once enemy pieces under (some) restraint, you achieve the freedom and activity for your men to be able to gain some advantage and prevail.

A few other major strategic ideas are given below:

0. Selection and maintenance of strategic aim

1. Effective mobilization of pieces and central pawns (in the opening)

2. Improving position of pieces

Means increasing qualitative value of pieces, such as:

i. Mobility (freedom of movement)

ii. Activity (occupation of the center, important squares, open lines)

iii. Stability (vulnerability) of pieces on their posts

iv. Vicinity to critical battlefield sectors

v. Cooperation with other team members (see (C))

3. Stalling the enemy plans to achieve (2) above

4. Exchange of pieces

Trading your “bad” pieces for the enemy “good” ones.

“The process of chess is based essentially on interlinking exchanges. The objective of these interlinking exchanges is a relative gain of material or positional value. There are no other and cannot be any other objectives. At the end of the game these exchanges must lead to a gain of infinitely large magnitude (to checkmate)”, Mikhail Botvinnik

5. Strengthening the position

a. Creating strong points and their protection, and

b. Protecting or eliminating weaknesses in your position are important strategic tasks.

There may even be few weak points in your position, but without strong points no position can hold. You should always act from the position of strength. It’s your-strengths-against-their-weaknesses game as in any struggle, or conflict.

6. Weakening of the enemy position

7. Eliminating the opponent’s counter play, etc.

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Again, I put up a call to you, the reader, for feedback on this. We must change things for true progress in how we teach chess. We need to bring more people to this wonderful absorbing game. But that’s impossible with rotten teaching we have in place.

No more 1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3exd5 Bxd1 games!

We can do better than that!

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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