Calculation vs Pattern Recognition

@juliegirl1999 said in #20:
[...]
> Before his simultaneous chess exhibitions, Pillsbury would entertain his audience with feats of memory that involved accurately recalling long lists of words after hearing or looking at them just once. One such list, which Pillsbury repeated forward and backward, performing the same feat the next day, was:
>
> Antiphlogistine, periosteum, takadiastase, plasmon, ambrosia, Threlkeld, streptococcus, staphylococcus, micrococcus, plasmodium, Mississippi, Freiheit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, athletics, no war, Etchenberg, American, Russian, philosophy, Piet Potgelter's Rost, Salamagundi, Oomisillecootsi, Bangmamvate, Schlechter's Nek, Manzinyama, theosophy, catechism, Madjesoomalops[4]

Memorizing words (even in the right order and backwards) is not such a difficult task as it seems first, if you know some appropriate memory techniques. I often do this with my shopping lists - and btw. i have a really bad memory.

You can do it too, find out here and have fun:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsC9ZHi79jo

@juliegirl1999 said in #20:
@derkleineJo said in #21:

so it that a mind palace thing? Does it allow venturing out of the list and having a chess continuation from that as strong as the hypothetical strong memorized sequence through the mind palace scaffold which seems able to work without any inherent correlation between the associations, other than the personal stickyness of the palace pillars being used to superpose ad-hoc associations to it, so as to keep the order...

I mean there may be associative memory processes involved in mind palaces, but are they not independent of the meaning of the memorized words, possibly about some aspects of the words that would fit the existing personal palace scaffold, but not necessarily about the meaning.

I may be wrong, and possibly thinking of chess meaning (position information) too much.. and likely don't know much about what you meant above. I did not look at the video, i would rather ask and receive specific reply to my question or misunderstanding. (might be more to the point).

@dboing maybe youusebit too abstract pondering on relatively concrete problems. linked vide0 did not use memory palace technique. But key to these techniques is ability to make concrete images of things to rememer. No one can memorize word like "object" in memory palace or story line. that imagination part it the key.

such techniques may have place in openings study. though rote learning of variation may not give too much anyway. But when something needs to recalled really fast like in chess calculation to pick moves to consider needs to be in you automated memory. which means huge amount repetitions not using memorizing tech. And furthermore as no one really knows what is these patterns are that help top players to achieve the results they get as they are subconscious and only way to learn them is via repetition wiht real positions

and why magnus (and all other top players) can no so many games by heart? Because the games do no consist meaningless abstract things like coordinates but very concrethe chess thingies like adding pressure, protecting piece etc.

@dboing said in #22:
> so it that a mind palace thing? Does it allow venturing out of the list and having a chess continuation from that as strong as the hypothetical strong memorized sequence through the mind palace scaffold which seems able to work without any inherent correlation between the associations, other than the personal stickyness of the palace pillars being used to superpose ad-hoc associations to it, so as to keep the order...
>
> I mean there may be associative memory processes involved in mind palaces, but are they not independent of the meaning of the memorized words, possibly about some aspects of the words that would fit the existing personal palace scaffold, but not necessarily about the meaning.
>
> I may be wrong, and possibly thinking of chess meaning (position information) too much.. and likely don't know much about what you meant above. I did not look at the video, i would rather ask and receive specific reply to my question or misunderstanding. (might be more to the point).

I'm not sure if i100% get the point of your previous posting, but i try to explain what i know so far from my own experience.

The key to memorize chess moves is not a one-dimensional (like using one memory technique) but the combination of at least two memory-techniques. And there are different possibilities to achieve the goal of memorizing moves or even complete positions.

I personally tried a combination of "Memory Palace" and "Major-System" for a few months and had good results with it, but i stopped after understanding, that i have other more important areas of my game, that need to be improved first. => Remember, memory-techniques need to be repeated (to keep them in long-term memory) and so are also very time consuming, the more variations/positions you try to memorize.

There is also a very interesting blogpost-series on Chessbase, which also covers that topc - have fun reading it:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/memory-techniques-an-introduction
http://en.chessbase.com/post/memory-techniques-memory-palace-from-roman-times-to-today
http://en.chessbase.com/post/memory-techniques-creating-a-memory-palace-dos-and-don-ts
en.chessbase.com/post/memory-techniques-the-peg-system-part-one
en.chessbase.com/post/memory-techniques-the-peg-system-part-two
en.chessbase.com/post/memory-techniques-the-chess-equation

Have fun!

@derkleineJo I like the video, and I liked your reply a lot. I failed to mention that Pillsbury would not only recall these words the day after learning them, he would also play 4-8 game blindfold exibitions and perform a multitude of other tasks. I really thnk some people are wired differently.

@michuk said in #1:
> Which is better to be a super strong calculator of chess positions or to have Carlsen level knowledge of chess patterns? Please don't say both. lol

The answer is the latter.

Consider the thinking of two players, low and high level. They see a position, and determine 2 to 5 candidate moves, then do calculation of variations of the candidates. The majority of the time is spent on calculation but the quality is in the selection of the candidates A high-level player's candidate moves are going to be of much high quality due to acquired learning and training.

Another way of saying this is players' variation in calculation quality is much smaller than the quality of the candidates move selection. It's the latter that makes a GM a GM and a woodpusher a woodpusher. Also note that the calculation variation is likely to involve biological restrictions outside the ability to train, for example short term memory capacity.

It's for this reason that the quality of GM gameplay doesn't degrade when playing Blitz as opposed to Classical but most definitely degrades in proportion to the strength of the player. Hence why beginners should stay well away from excessive blitz playing and follow learning methods to develop better candidate selection (no easy task).

As an aside: Although GMs can develop powerful memories for chess positions etc this ability doesn't transfer over to any other memory feats outside chess.

It's true pattern recognition and calculation go hand in hand.

But for lower rated players, I would argue pattern recognition is much more important. At that level people are hanging pieces or getting into 1 or 2 move combinations that win or lose pieces. Pattern recognition lets you quickly assess when those situations arise.

If you don't know the patterns, then you have to act like a computer and calculate lots and lots of possible moves without starting with a good candidate immediately based on knowing the patterns. You don't have the time or the CPU power to do that efficiently, especially if you are a low rated player.

Sure you'll mis calculate some situations but just recognizing the obvious patterns will will you a lot of games at the lower rating levels. More than being able to calculate but having no idea what you're looking for when you start the calculation.

@petri999 said in #23:
> such techniques may have place in openings study.

I think that people who are likely to be wired for easy sticking of memory chunks to another memory chunk without the need for those chunks to be inherently associated with each other by their state (such as position information), might actually enter the world of opening data that way, and long term full chess practice with many accidents would complete their intuitive (and idea) understanding of that data through games.

People like me, who can't keep on task unless there is an inherent curiosity reward on frequent basis, such as positon information (or the characteristics I am able to perceive given my possibly evolving level) at different time scales (of my cognition/thinking/learning/etc) and different depth scales of chess....

I think once we admit that there is a diversity of cognitive styles or just ways to absorb information from the environment, there might me more adaptive methods of learning to those diverse aspects.. Wanting one model to rule them all, may be just a matter of administrative costs. Given that not all chess players enter the chess world through OTB tournaments nowadays, there might be opportunities to explore different paths to chess..... (ok goals might differ, but they might intersect).

I can see people learning opening data one long line at a time, ending up at the same place in the long run as others who might rather play from endgames, then from middle game, then skip opening data and goto 960 (half-kidding)....

well i might never get to opening data the way those entering it frontally (but line by line, paradoxal), but it is not forbidden...

I just can't compete that way.. so I don't. But I agree there are pathways like that, that obviously are suitable to a sizable cohort of chess players, I would guess even more in OTB or tournament chess than in amateur or general chess (say online chess maybe).

@Jebotto said in #27:
> It's true pattern recognition and calculation go hand in hand.
>
> But for lower rated players, I would argue pattern recognition is much more important. At that level people are hanging pieces or getting into 1 or 2 move combinations that win or lose pieces. Pattern recognition lets you quickly assess when those situations arise.

Actually I was under the impression that the more experienced a player, the more that player would rely on pattern recognition, a.k.a. intuition, which although slow on the uptake, is way faster than conscious logic, in other words calculation.

Maybe lower rated players become more aware of the difference as they evolve, not that they rely more than higher levels, would that fit with your idea?

Edit: actually we all have some intuition already there from the start of playing chess, it is just that it is a bit misinformed without experience, so we rely on calculation to feed the thinking.....

@dboing said in #29:
> Actually I was under the impression that the more experienced a player, the more that player would rely on pattern recognition, a.k.a. intuition, which although slow on the uptake, is way faster than conscious logic, in other words calculation.

Rely is wrong word. With more pattern/chunks/whatnot top player can zoom in into interesting moves. But they do no play guessing games. some sort concrete analysis is key verifying intuitive findings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriaan_de_Groot
made the most famous study of subject. I think interesting finding that good player spent quite bit of time after choosing the move trying to prove it to be wrong. Obvioysly not to applied in net chess as 5minute chess does not have luxury for that

and their intuition is pretty good. Young chess friend on mine player once on physical board game so that opponen has 10 minutes on clock and he had 1 minute and he had ongoing discussion with other people in the room about some unrelated subject and won every game with ease. So I would say his fingers are better at chess than most of other chess players.