In a recent episode of the Perpetual Chess Podcast, host Ben Johnson asked GM and trainer Jacob Aagaard about the biggest thing he’s changed in his coaching practice.
This article resonates with my experiences as a relative beginner. When I try to solve challenging problems, I struggle for the two reasons you've outlined.
1) I don't have the "reps" to recognize patterns. Every position seems completely unique and impenetrable.
2) As I begin to explore candidate moves, I find it difficult to keep the position in my head beyond a move or two. And I often overlook opponents' resources because I'm not practiced at seeing the whole board.
I have been dedicating myself to training tactics (using the Steps Method - level 1), and I find that my pattern recognition is increasing. My conceptualization is also improving as a result. But I will need to eventually begin doing more direct work on that.
As I finish the Step 1 books, I plan to start Step 2, and included in that set is a "thinking ahead" book, which I beleve addresses visualization.
Before chess.com and chessable.com, and similar, people studies chess from books. You had no choice but to visualize, because you'd have to play a few move in your head, until you reached the position shown on the page.
I've been playing a few years, computers only, and recently tried learning from books. Woah it's hard. I'm clearly not nearly good enough to do this. Yet. So I have this theory that computers help people reach, maybe 1500, quite easily. But without the visualization that people used to develop while learning from books, we might struggle to get past that.
Maybe anyone who really cares about progress should force themselves to always also be learning from a book.
After all, as you say Nathan, visualization is a prerequisite to calculation!
Indeed. And with books, once has no choice but to visualize. This makes it superior specifically in the sense that you have no choice but to visualize :)
On the given topic - visualization and calculation - you have probably seen and read an excellent piece by Nick Vasquez - "What it Takes to Become a Chess Master". It is interesting to see how similar ideas are literally flying around at the same time...
I do like this sharing from the coach as reporting from the field about theories of learning. And the accompanied question mode. This is informative now and later.
I used to think "pattern recognition" couldn't possibly work, I mean, "there have to be at least infinite patterns you can think of". So, beyond some patterns so basic that I wouldn't even consider really patterns (like staircase mate, back-rank mate or forks) I focused on calculation. It worked rather well but there were some positions in which I just don't know what to calculate.
I understood the importance of patterns when doing pawns endgames (these were clearly my weak spot at the time). When each side has more than 4-5 pawns, really I couldn't just calculate the possible 4-5 moves and then the reply and next move. It doesn't take a Math PhD to see there are like 100 possibilities just for these 3 moves. So there had to be some "shortcuts", and these were patterns. As a very basic example, I "discovered" two diagonally connected pawns are unstoppable by just the King, so if you can reach that position (or equivalent, like every other pawn blocked) it is a won game. Now I can start meaningful calculation.
I still think you can't master every possible pattern but, clearly, the more patterns you can recognize, the easier will be to find the possible outcomes for a given position.
I do agree that chess has many levels of problem solving cognitive "strategies" not all in a single game performance problem, but also during the study mode, where problems don't need to be necessarily that of the single game official performance expected to be useful to study for such performance later as well. So chess study (including performance, we might also learn there, on the spot or later in conscious and subsciouns ways), is indeed likely to be having modes, and subjective hard vs easy, moving word targets, might not cut it.
This article resonates with my experiences as a relative beginner. When I try to solve challenging problems, I struggle for the two reasons you've outlined.
1) I don't have the "reps" to recognize patterns. Every position seems completely unique and impenetrable.
2) As I begin to explore candidate moves, I find it difficult to keep the position in my head beyond a move or two. And I often overlook opponents' resources because I'm not practiced at seeing the whole board.
I have been dedicating myself to training tactics (using the Steps Method - level 1), and I find that my pattern recognition is increasing. My conceptualization is also improving as a result. But I will need to eventually begin doing more direct work on that.
As I finish the Step 1 books, I plan to start Step 2, and included in that set is a "thinking ahead" book, which I beleve addresses visualization.
Love this thought-provoking essay!
Before chess.com and chessable.com, and similar, people studies chess from books. You had no choice but to visualize, because you'd have to play a few move in your head, until you reached the position shown on the page.
I've been playing a few years, computers only, and recently tried learning from books. Woah it's hard. I'm clearly not nearly good enough to do this. Yet. So I have this theory that computers help people reach, maybe 1500, quite easily. But without the visualization that people used to develop while learning from books, we might struggle to get past that.
Maybe anyone who really cares about progress should force themselves to always also be learning from a book.
After all, as you say Nathan, visualization is a prerequisite to calculation!
Good point. In theory you can and should also visualize with online puzzles, but many people use the "guess and check" method.
Indeed. And with books, once has no choice but to visualize. This makes it superior specifically in the sense that you have no choice but to visualize :)
Hello Nate!
On the given topic - visualization and calculation - you have probably seen and read an excellent piece by Nick Vasquez - "What it Takes to Become a Chess Master". It is interesting to see how similar ideas are literally flying around at the same time...
s.
I do like this sharing from the coach as reporting from the field about theories of learning. And the accompanied question mode. This is informative now and later.
I used to think "pattern recognition" couldn't possibly work, I mean, "there have to be at least infinite patterns you can think of". So, beyond some patterns so basic that I wouldn't even consider really patterns (like staircase mate, back-rank mate or forks) I focused on calculation. It worked rather well but there were some positions in which I just don't know what to calculate.
I understood the importance of patterns when doing pawns endgames (these were clearly my weak spot at the time). When each side has more than 4-5 pawns, really I couldn't just calculate the possible 4-5 moves and then the reply and next move. It doesn't take a Math PhD to see there are like 100 possibilities just for these 3 moves. So there had to be some "shortcuts", and these were patterns. As a very basic example, I "discovered" two diagonally connected pawns are unstoppable by just the King, so if you can reach that position (or equivalent, like every other pawn blocked) it is a won game. Now I can start meaningful calculation.
I still think you can't master every possible pattern but, clearly, the more patterns you can recognize, the easier will be to find the possible outcomes for a given position.
I usually consider myself a "lazy calculator." Maybe I am "lazy" because I am "hazy" in my conceptualization.
I do agree that chess has many levels of problem solving cognitive "strategies" not all in a single game performance problem, but also during the study mode, where problems don't need to be necessarily that of the single game official performance expected to be useful to study for such performance later as well. So chess study (including performance, we might also learn there, on the spot or later in conscious and subsciouns ways), is indeed likely to be having modes, and subjective hard vs easy, moving word targets, might not cut it.