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Science of Chess - Candidate Moves, David Marr, and why it's so hard to be good.

maybe you mean calibration of some putative metric. calibration of what else is there.

maybe you mean calibration of some putative metric. calibration of what else is there.

@Graque
Yep, that's exactly what I did with my legal move counting exercises. Not the exact same execution, but the action is exactly the same.

What I did was get a bunch of positions, and then got all their legal moves as the answer key. I went through each position one by one, just counting how many moves I have. The best (or worst) part is when I had this position where I counted 35, but when I looked at the answer key, it's 36. I spent several minutes counting and recounting, but I just couldn't get 36. After a while, I saw it. It's Q takes some protected pawn. My brain literally blocked that move in my mind. It's usually OK because most of the time, protected pawns shouldn't be captured by queens. But if it's so happened that it's a good sac, my brain wouldn't have allowed me to see it.

Counting is just used to verify that you saw the move. As long as you can objectively verify that you saw the move, doing arithmetic is unnecessary. I just did it that way since it seemed the easiest in terms of checking. If I saw 42 moves and answer key said 42 moves, then I probably saw everything.

The way you described it should work. Just do it for 50 to 100 positions. Pretty soon it will become automatic and quick. Your first reflex for every position will be to check all moves first instead of automatically spending time to calculate the first candidate that popped.

I'm still doing legal move counting exercises, just to keep the habit, but it's now just 10 positions per week. Too much blitz makes my brain want to resort to the same old bad habits shortcuts so I have to keep training the brain to look around first before moving.

@Graque Yep, that's exactly what I did with my legal move counting exercises. Not the exact same execution, but the action is exactly the same. What I did was get a bunch of positions, and then got all their legal moves as the answer key. I went through each position one by one, just counting how many moves I have. The best (or worst) part is when I had this position where I counted 35, but when I looked at the answer key, it's 36. I spent several minutes counting and recounting, but I just couldn't get 36. After a while, I saw it. It's Q takes some protected pawn. My brain literally blocked that move in my mind. It's usually OK because most of the time, protected pawns shouldn't be captured by queens. But if it's so happened that it's a good sac, my brain wouldn't have allowed me to see it. Counting is just used to verify that you saw the move. As long as you can objectively verify that you saw the move, doing arithmetic is unnecessary. I just did it that way since it seemed the easiest in terms of checking. If I saw 42 moves and answer key said 42 moves, then I probably saw everything. The way you described it should work. Just do it for 50 to 100 positions. Pretty soon it will become automatic and quick. Your first reflex for every position will be to check all moves first instead of automatically spending time to calculate the first candidate that popped. I'm still doing legal move counting exercises, just to keep the habit, but it's now just 10 positions per week. Too much blitz makes my brain want to resort to the same old bad habits shortcuts so I have to keep training the brain to look around first before moving.

@Ifmpty

  1. Yep. That's precisely the intention. To verify if one has seen everything. The lichess dots should suffice as @Graque suggested. What I did though was create a pdf with an answer key at the end. I give this pdf to anyone who wants. There could be other ways, as long as the objective is met. Ensure we train our brain to see everything available for us during our move / eliminate blind spots.

For the easiest mode - pattern recognition and good habits. I do both (forward and reverse) 20 to 30 easiest (just pattern recognition not much calculation) puzzles per session. Just one session per day. In my case mwf for reverse, tth for forward. Need to get perfect 20 for good habits.

  1. Forward, from our POV - so we don't miss tactics for our side.

  2. Reverse and then move back one ply - so we see what tactics are available to our opponent before making the move. Blunder avoidance.

The 4th exercise I regularly do is not as basic as the above 3, but I've noticed a decreased confidence in my calculation during games when I was just doing the first 3 exercises regularly. When there's a pattern, I'd see it and win, but when there's a complicated-looking calculation incoming, I avoided it. I added this 4th exercise to my regular exercises to fix this.

  1. One puzzle a day. Chess puzzle dot net. Normal difficulty. This site is hard. The logic for just one puzzle a day is to develop the discipline of having the mindset of getting it right. When I used to spam puzzles, my mindset was it's ok to make mistakes, I'll just make it up by getting the next 2 correct. But in a real classical OTB game, no such second chances exist. This exercise is designed to simulate that.
@Ifmpty 1. Yep. That's precisely the intention. To verify if one has seen everything. The lichess dots should suffice as @Graque suggested. What I did though was create a pdf with an answer key at the end. I give this pdf to anyone who wants. There could be other ways, as long as the objective is met. Ensure we train our brain to see everything available for us during our move / eliminate blind spots. For the easiest mode - pattern recognition and good habits. I do both (forward and reverse) 20 to 30 easiest (just pattern recognition not much calculation) puzzles per session. Just one session per day. In my case mwf for reverse, tth for forward. Need to get perfect 20 for good habits. 2. Forward, from our POV - so we don't miss tactics for our side. 3. Reverse and then move back one ply - so we see what tactics are available to our opponent before making the move. Blunder avoidance. ---- The 4th exercise I regularly do is not as basic as the above 3, but I've noticed a decreased confidence in my calculation during games when I was just doing the first 3 exercises regularly. When there's a pattern, I'd see it and win, but when there's a complicated-looking calculation incoming, I avoided it. I added this 4th exercise to my regular exercises to fix this. 4. One puzzle a day. Chess puzzle dot net. Normal difficulty. This site is hard. The logic for just one puzzle a day is to develop the discipline of having the mindset of getting it right. When I used to spam puzzles, my mindset was it's ok to make mistakes, I'll just make it up by getting the next 2 correct. But in a real classical OTB game, no such second chances exist. This exercise is designed to simulate that.

@GnocchiPup , great tips, thanks for all your posts in this thread! I've been doing a couple of these and think they are great and definitely worth doing daily.

BTW, about eye-tracking, here's a video comparing a 1700 and 2400 doing puzzles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9JEmj50OGc . Perhaps the puzzles simply aren't hard enough, but I was struck by how the 2400 doesn't really seem to see more of the screen than the 1700, they just seem to instantly know the right answer faster.

@GnocchiPup , great tips, thanks for all your posts in this thread! I've been doing a couple of these and think they are great and definitely worth doing daily. BTW, about eye-tracking, here's a video comparing a 1700 and 2400 doing puzzles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9JEmj50OGc . Perhaps the puzzles simply aren't hard enough, but I was struck by how the 2400 doesn't really seem to see more of the screen than the 1700, they just seem to instantly know the right answer faster.

@Graque
Maybe it's just confirmation bias on my end, but it seemed to me the 24 guy was also resting his eyes on the center (d4 to e5 squares). This behavior is very noticeable in Hikaru's eye tracking videos. This might explain somewhat why he needs to move his eyes less, vs 17 guy.

Coupled with better pattern recognition, he gets the answers right much faster. There was one puzzle though that the 17 got it earlier than 24.

The 17 guy also needs more pattern recognition training, an example of which is the endgame where QxQ is the solution. He was looking at the Q the whole time so he's not missing the move, he's just unfamiliar with the continuation. For me, QxQ was automatic, having played puzzle rush hundreds of times, that particular puzzle pattern is just burned into the brain.

That's my hypothesis. More efficient and habitual look around x Pattern Recognition = minimal missed tactics for our games.

@Graque Maybe it's just confirmation bias on my end, but it seemed to me the 24 guy was also resting his eyes on the center (d4 to e5 squares). This behavior is very noticeable in Hikaru's eye tracking videos. This might explain somewhat why he needs to move his eyes less, vs 17 guy. Coupled with better pattern recognition, he gets the answers right much faster. There was one puzzle though that the 17 got it earlier than 24. The 17 guy also needs more pattern recognition training, an example of which is the endgame where QxQ is the solution. He was looking at the Q the whole time so he's not missing the move, he's just unfamiliar with the continuation. For me, QxQ was automatic, having played puzzle rush hundreds of times, that particular puzzle pattern is just burned into the brain. That's my hypothesis. More efficient and habitual look around x Pattern Recognition = minimal missed tactics for our games.

On a final note

Troubleshooting

Whenever I miss simple tactics in my games

  1. Did I blunder into a simple tactic? Regardless if my opponent took advantage or not, then I do more exercise 3.

  2. Did I miss / fail to take advantage of a simple tactic?
    a. Did I completely overlook the move? Do more legal move counting
    b. Did I see the move, but didn't know how to continue? Do more exercise 2

I sort of keep a mental tally of my simple blunders and adjust the exercises I do accordingly.

On a final note Troubleshooting Whenever I miss simple tactics in my games 1. Did I blunder into a simple tactic? Regardless if my opponent took advantage or not, then I do more exercise 3. 2. Did I miss / fail to take advantage of a simple tactic? a. Did I completely overlook the move? Do more legal move counting b. Did I see the move, but didn't know how to continue? Do more exercise 2 I sort of keep a mental tally of my simple blunders and adjust the exercises I do accordingly.

So what are their eyes doing during blindfold chess?!o!
Maybe the elite players who can play blindfolded only need to focus on certain area's of the board for tactical reasons, as they already know their pieces are ideally placed, and lesser mortals are constantly scanning the board to see if anything is hanging?

So what are their eyes doing during blindfold chess?!o! Maybe the elite players who can play blindfolded only need to focus on certain area's of the board for tactical reasons, as they already know their pieces are ideally placed, and lesser mortals are constantly scanning the board to see if anything is hanging?