Regular reader(s) will have noticed that I'm interested in relating discoveries about the brain and consciousness to chess. For the latest, see Chess Stories in Our Heads and Brain Folds and Memory.
An excerpt from a book by neuroscientist David Eagleman, Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize is also relevant to this interest of mine (if you're intrigued, the book is Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain). Eagleman makes an argument many of us have heard of, but we could use reminding:
The concept of implicit memory has a rich, if little-known, tradition. By the early 1600s, René Descartes had already begun to suspect that although experience with the world is stored in memory, not all memory is accessible. The concept was rekindled in the late 1800s by the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who wrote that “most of these experiences remain concealed from consciousness and yet produce an effect which is significant and which authenticates their previous existence.”
As almost everyone concedes, stronger players have more "skill" at chess than others, but they also have a lot more "intuition" (whatever, exactly, that means). They know when a move "looks right" most of the time. They are said to have 10,000 patterns in "memory" but this is the implicit memory referred to above. they can't sit down and tell you exactly what these 10,000 patterns are. I read somewhere that Najdorf, a world-class player, said that most of the moves he actually played were the first ones that his unconscious, his intuition, served up to his consciousness. It's interesting to note that Najdorf was known as a great blitz player and one of the greatest blindfold players of all time.
And now for some mild heresy...I think that blitz chess could be a very efficient way to develop your unconscious chess memory and improve results at all time controls, if done with conscious intent. That is, after each blitz game, take a few minutes to review any blunders (and sometimes, marvel at how nicely you played even though you took only a few seconds to move!). I use the engine that's available on FICS and often I learn something useful by spending about five minutes reviewing a game that took about five minutes to play. Look hard at the position and burn the RIGHT move into your memory and then...forget about it.
The opening moves are another area where blitz can give you a lot of useful experience and a storehouse of unconscious knowledge. I suggest that you stick to your main lines for as long as you know them and then briefly see where the players deviated from the moves in your favorite openings book. Again, just a couple of minutes will suffice to make an impression.
Blue Devil Knight wrote about this in relation to tactics exercises back in 2008:
I'm not convinced simply "memorizing" 1000 positions is all that bad. It all depends on how our brain treats those memories once they are implanted. The brain may (with no conscious effort on our part) integrate these different memories into more general categories, form cross-links among categories, striving to build an ever-more coherent picture of the chess world, even while we sleep our brain probably does this. If this speculation is right, the individual problems are like nodes in our brain that are initially implanted, but connections are formed among these nodes so ultimately it becomes a more general and useful integrated tactical skill set.
I am currently reading Roger Penrose's book The Emporor's New Mind and I expect to relate some insights from this fascinating volume to chess as well. Meanwhile, for my next posts I will do something I've never done before, share a few blitz games where something wild, entertaining and hopefully useful happened. I think my approach to blitz has some merit, and I would like to know what you think.
(NOTE: Dec. 1 is the last day to submit to BDK's Chess Carnival. Go here to submit.)
Showing posts with label Training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Training. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Willpower, Decision Fatigue and Practical Chess
In my last post, I reviewed a game where I played at quite a high level through the first time control, then made a string of weak moves before being offered a rather generous draw. This scenario, pretty strong play through 20-30 moves, an excellent or winning position followed by "blowing" a win or draw, is more common in my career than I would like. These kinds of games have always been much more painful to me than just getting a bad position from the opening and being steadily ground down to defeat. The swing from hope to tragedy is worse than just losing a game.
Of course this situation is not mine alone--everyone from Alekhine to Zug has had games go this way. But it's remarkable how often you see a game where a "stronger" (higher-rated) player gets in some trouble in the early part of a game and then defends tenaciously until the opponent finally cracks, and in the end the higher-rated puts a "1" on the wall chart.
Happily, I have gotten some new insight in to this phenomenon from science journalist John Tierney and psychologist Roy Baumeister.
Tierney's article "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" is an excerpt from Tierney and Baumeister's new book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. While I am excited about many of the implications and prescriptions for improvement at home, work and school that might come out of this book (which I haven't read yet), today I want to stick to chess.
The article may require a sign-up (it's worth it), so I'll quote a few applicable snippets:
The judges’ erratic judgment was due to the occupational hazard of being, as George W. Bush once put it, “the decider.” The mental work of ruling on case after case, whatever the individual merits, wore them down. This sort of decision fatigue can make quarterbacks prone to dubious choices late in the game and C.F.O.’s prone to disastrous dalliances late in the evening. It routinely warps the judgment of everyone, executive and nonexecutive, rich and poor — in fact, it can take a special toll on the poor. Yet few people are even aware of it, and researchers are only beginning to understand why it happens and how to counteract it.
(...)
Decision fatigue is the newest discovery involving a phenomenon called ego depletion, a term coined by the social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister
(...)
Willpower turned out to be more than a folk concept or a metaphor. It really was a form of mental energy that could be exhausted. The experiments confirmed the 19th-century notion of willpower being like a muscle that was fatigued with use, a force that could be conserved by avoiding temptation.
(...)
Once you’re mentally depleted, you become reluctant to make trade-offs, which involve a particularly advanced and taxing form of decision making. In the rest of the animal kingdom, there aren’t a lot of protracted negotiations between predators and prey. To compromise is a complex human ability and therefore one of the first to decline when willpower is depleted. You become what researchers call a cognitive miser, hoarding your energy. If you’re shopping, you’re liable to look at only one dimension, like price: just give me the cheapest.
(...)
The brain, like the rest of the body, derived energy from glucose, the simple sugar manufactured from all kinds of foods. To establish cause and effect, researchers at Baumeister’s lab tried refueling the brain in a series of experiments involving lemonade mixed either with sugar or with a diet sweetener. The sugary lemonade provided a burst of glucose, the effects of which could be observed right away in the lab; the sugarless variety tasted quite similar without providing the same burst of glucose. Again and again, the sugar restored willpower, but the artificial sweetener had no effect. The glucose would at least mitigate the ego depletion and sometimes completely reverse it.
(...)
Apparently ego depletion causes activity to rise in some parts of the brain and to decline in others. Your brain does not stop working when glucose is low. It stops doing some things and starts doing others. It responds more strongly to immediate rewards and pays less attention to long-term prospects.
(...)
Big decisions, small decisions, they all add up. Choosing what to have for breakfast, where to go on vacation, whom to hire, how much to spend — these all deplete willpower, and there’s no telltale symptom of when that willpower is low. It’s not like getting winded or hitting the wall during a marathon. Ego depletion manifests itself not as one feeling but rather as a propensity to experience everything more intensely. When the brain’s regulatory powers weaken, frustrations seem more irritating than usual.
(...)
His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions.
To sum up, making decisions draws on a finite supply of "energy," however defined, and causes measurable changes in the activity of parts of the brain. Supplying the brain with glucose helps recovery from "decision fatigue."
I expect that you, Gentle Reader, have already made the connection with chess, for what is a game of chess but a series of decisions, move after move after move?!
I no longer wonder why the quality of my play declines so often after 20-40 good moves and a few hours of intense concentration! I vividly remember a number of times when during the the critical portion of a tournament game I felt "out of it," "punch drunk," or some other vivid metaphorical state of weakness. Why, I think I'll go back and find a few right now...Garingo-Pearson 11.08.07 (a great chance to defeat an Expert):
"I had just missed that despite my current huge material edge, my queen would have to go. And most important, from now until the end Black played as if dazed, making seemingly forced moves and going down the path of least resistance. I still had 13 min. for 7 moves, but I needed to shake it off and play better than ever. Instead.."
A game from May 2008:
After the game I was remembering yesterday's post and its consideration of falsifying our own moves and plans, and it struck me how I'd done a pretty good job of this through most of the game, but as I got more tired and a little rushed there was a breakdown. Not like that hasn't happened before, but having just posted about it it occurred to me that not only do I need to train in calculation, vision, etc., I need to train these things to stay at a high level during the more stressful and/or later parts of the game when I'm excited, fatigued and under stress.
Pearson-Harrington 03.13.08 0-1:
(by the way, I need to republish some of these games with ChessFlash!)
"I must improve my physical and mental stamina if I'm going to play my way up into Class A again. Games against the higher-rated players often last a good long time at our 30/90, G/60 time control, and if I drop off like I did in this game I'll just score frequent, frustrating losses."
Enough, already! There are other examples in my career, and now I'm done with the explication. Time to move on to the presciption!
Training for more Willpower and less Decision Fatigue is going to get its own, future post. For now, what can the above material tell us? Something that strikes me is that physical fatigue is not decision fatigue. You can work construction all day and be mentally fresher than the person who has sat in an office running a business! A few things about how to conduct the game quickly come to mind:
1) Put off making decisions in the opening as long as possible. It will conserve the decision making capacity for later in the game. This ties in with something I've written about a number of times, including recently in a post on Soltis's Studying Chess Made Easy: the fascinating old book Secrets of a Grandpatzer, "Dr. G" (Dr. Kenneth Colby) made a great point in that playing a lot of book moves (he was talking around 6-10) quickly gets you to a position you know is good, with your mind still fresh and plenty of time on the clock." In other words, memorized openings can help delay the decision fatigue.
2) Don't double- and triple-check your calculations. Find a move, play it, and forget about it. I suspect that calculating a tactic, then spending several more minutes going over it again and again is like making a decision multiple times! And thinking about anything that happened earlier is the same. Not that I do the latter so much, but some people do, I know. And I remember that in the example games above, and others, I had spent quite a bit more time and mental energy than my opponents in reaching those great, "winning" positions that I eventually lost.
3) Before the game, recharge the ego from the depletions of the day. Obvious, and not always possible, especially at a two-games-per-day tournament or when rushing straight from work to a game. But do the best you can.
4) Keep the brain supplied with glucose. Another well-known piece of advice, but vital. It needs a steady supply, so don't eat a couple of doughnuts at the beginning and then, nothing. Probably fruits, nuts, sandwiches, even sips of energy drink, if taken a little at a time and evenly throughout the game will do.
This is a fascinating and important topic, and I'm sure you can think of other aspects. Next time, I'll talk about training and building up the will in the context of chess.
In the meantime, here's an interview of John Tierney on the subject, and the book, by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame. And here's a review of the book by psychologist Steven Pinker.
Of course this situation is not mine alone--everyone from Alekhine to Zug has had games go this way. But it's remarkable how often you see a game where a "stronger" (higher-rated) player gets in some trouble in the early part of a game and then defends tenaciously until the opponent finally cracks, and in the end the higher-rated puts a "1" on the wall chart.
Happily, I have gotten some new insight in to this phenomenon from science journalist John Tierney and psychologist Roy Baumeister.
Tierney's article "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" is an excerpt from Tierney and Baumeister's new book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. While I am excited about many of the implications and prescriptions for improvement at home, work and school that might come out of this book (which I haven't read yet), today I want to stick to chess.
The article may require a sign-up (it's worth it), so I'll quote a few applicable snippets:
The judges’ erratic judgment was due to the occupational hazard of being, as George W. Bush once put it, “the decider.” The mental work of ruling on case after case, whatever the individual merits, wore them down. This sort of decision fatigue can make quarterbacks prone to dubious choices late in the game and C.F.O.’s prone to disastrous dalliances late in the evening. It routinely warps the judgment of everyone, executive and nonexecutive, rich and poor — in fact, it can take a special toll on the poor. Yet few people are even aware of it, and researchers are only beginning to understand why it happens and how to counteract it.
(...)
Decision fatigue is the newest discovery involving a phenomenon called ego depletion, a term coined by the social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister
(...)
Willpower turned out to be more than a folk concept or a metaphor. It really was a form of mental energy that could be exhausted. The experiments confirmed the 19th-century notion of willpower being like a muscle that was fatigued with use, a force that could be conserved by avoiding temptation.
(...)
Once you’re mentally depleted, you become reluctant to make trade-offs, which involve a particularly advanced and taxing form of decision making. In the rest of the animal kingdom, there aren’t a lot of protracted negotiations between predators and prey. To compromise is a complex human ability and therefore one of the first to decline when willpower is depleted. You become what researchers call a cognitive miser, hoarding your energy. If you’re shopping, you’re liable to look at only one dimension, like price: just give me the cheapest.
(...)
The brain, like the rest of the body, derived energy from glucose, the simple sugar manufactured from all kinds of foods. To establish cause and effect, researchers at Baumeister’s lab tried refueling the brain in a series of experiments involving lemonade mixed either with sugar or with a diet sweetener. The sugary lemonade provided a burst of glucose, the effects of which could be observed right away in the lab; the sugarless variety tasted quite similar without providing the same burst of glucose. Again and again, the sugar restored willpower, but the artificial sweetener had no effect. The glucose would at least mitigate the ego depletion and sometimes completely reverse it.
(...)
Apparently ego depletion causes activity to rise in some parts of the brain and to decline in others. Your brain does not stop working when glucose is low. It stops doing some things and starts doing others. It responds more strongly to immediate rewards and pays less attention to long-term prospects.
(...)
Big decisions, small decisions, they all add up. Choosing what to have for breakfast, where to go on vacation, whom to hire, how much to spend — these all deplete willpower, and there’s no telltale symptom of when that willpower is low. It’s not like getting winded or hitting the wall during a marathon. Ego depletion manifests itself not as one feeling but rather as a propensity to experience everything more intensely. When the brain’s regulatory powers weaken, frustrations seem more irritating than usual.
(...)
His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions.
To sum up, making decisions draws on a finite supply of "energy," however defined, and causes measurable changes in the activity of parts of the brain. Supplying the brain with glucose helps recovery from "decision fatigue."
I no longer wonder why the quality of my play declines so often after 20-40 good moves and a few hours of intense concentration! I vividly remember a number of times when during the the critical portion of a tournament game I felt "out of it," "punch drunk," or some other vivid metaphorical state of weakness. Why, I think I'll go back and find a few right now...Garingo-Pearson 11.08.07 (a great chance to defeat an Expert):
"I had just missed that despite my current huge material edge, my queen would have to go. And most important, from now until the end Black played as if dazed, making seemingly forced moves and going down the path of least resistance. I still had 13 min. for 7 moves, but I needed to shake it off and play better than ever. Instead.."
A game from May 2008:
After the game I was remembering yesterday's post and its consideration of falsifying our own moves and plans, and it struck me how I'd done a pretty good job of this through most of the game, but as I got more tired and a little rushed there was a breakdown. Not like that hasn't happened before, but having just posted about it it occurred to me that not only do I need to train in calculation, vision, etc., I need to train these things to stay at a high level during the more stressful and/or later parts of the game when I'm excited, fatigued and under stress.
Pearson-Harrington 03.13.08 0-1:
(by the way, I need to republish some of these games with ChessFlash!)
"I must improve my physical and mental stamina if I'm going to play my way up into Class A again. Games against the higher-rated players often last a good long time at our 30/90, G/60 time control, and if I drop off like I did in this game I'll just score frequent, frustrating losses."
Enough, already! There are other examples in my career, and now I'm done with the explication. Time to move on to the presciption!
Training for more Willpower and less Decision Fatigue is going to get its own, future post. For now, what can the above material tell us? Something that strikes me is that physical fatigue is not decision fatigue. You can work construction all day and be mentally fresher than the person who has sat in an office running a business! A few things about how to conduct the game quickly come to mind:
1) Put off making decisions in the opening as long as possible. It will conserve the decision making capacity for later in the game. This ties in with something I've written about a number of times, including recently in a post on Soltis's Studying Chess Made Easy: the fascinating old book Secrets of a Grandpatzer, "Dr. G" (Dr. Kenneth Colby) made a great point in that playing a lot of book moves (he was talking around 6-10) quickly gets you to a position you know is good, with your mind still fresh and plenty of time on the clock." In other words, memorized openings can help delay the decision fatigue.
2) Don't double- and triple-check your calculations. Find a move, play it, and forget about it. I suspect that calculating a tactic, then spending several more minutes going over it again and again is like making a decision multiple times! And thinking about anything that happened earlier is the same. Not that I do the latter so much, but some people do, I know. And I remember that in the example games above, and others, I had spent quite a bit more time and mental energy than my opponents in reaching those great, "winning" positions that I eventually lost.
3) Before the game, recharge the ego from the depletions of the day. Obvious, and not always possible, especially at a two-games-per-day tournament or when rushing straight from work to a game. But do the best you can.
4) Keep the brain supplied with glucose. Another well-known piece of advice, but vital. It needs a steady supply, so don't eat a couple of doughnuts at the beginning and then, nothing. Probably fruits, nuts, sandwiches, even sips of energy drink, if taken a little at a time and evenly throughout the game will do.
This is a fascinating and important topic, and I'm sure you can think of other aspects. Next time, I'll talk about training and building up the will in the context of chess.
In the meantime, here's an interview of John Tierney on the subject, and the book, by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame. And here's a review of the book by psychologist Steven Pinker.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Some of the All-Time Chess Wisdom, Courtesy of Nigel Davies
I rediscovered this, which is more useful than any of my long-form blatherings:
It really doesn’t matter what you study, the important thing is to use this as a
training ground for thinking rather than trying to assimilate a mind-numbing
amount of information. In these days of a zillion different chess products this
message seems to be quite lost, and indeed most people seem to want books that tell them what to do. The reality is that you’ve got to move the pieces around the board and play with the position. Who does that? Amateurs don’t, GMs do.
Read the Whole Thing in the Chess Cafe Archives.
It really doesn’t matter what you study, the important thing is to use this as a
training ground for thinking rather than trying to assimilate a mind-numbing
amount of information. In these days of a zillion different chess products this
message seems to be quite lost, and indeed most people seem to want books that tell them what to do. The reality is that you’ve got to move the pieces around the board and play with the position. Who does that? Amateurs don’t, GMs do.
Read the Whole Thing in the Chess Cafe Archives.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tyler Cowen, Computers and What They Mean For Us (Amateurs)
Tyler Cowen, in case you haven't heard, is a chess master, food writer, world traveler, a blogger with 40 million visitors and, incidentally, an influential economist and Professor at George Mason University. In other words, a polymath.
But let's talk about the chess part.
As the noble Kenilworthian noted back in 2006:
As a youngster, Professor Cowen played at the Westwood and Dumont Chess Clubs in Bergen County. As he improved, he played more often at the Manhattan and the Marshall, where the competition was stronger. By the time he was 16-years-old he was rated about 2350 (which would have put him on the same pace set by Bobby Fischer in the late 1950s).
Then he gave up the game.
“I realized I wasn’t going to become a professional. There are no benefits, no retirement. It was not the life I wanted to lead. And I fell in love with Economics.” As an economist, of course, he knows a lot about diminishing returns....
Okay, all of this is quite interesting in itself, but it's a preliminary to why we should pay close attention to Prof. Cowen's take on computers, chess and the interaction between the two. I urge you to read the whole thing, but I want to focus on a few points that seem to me to be different for non-masters (I'll just say "amateurs" as shorthand for presumed reader of this blog), as his take is basically about computers and grandmaster chess:
1. Databases equalize preparation opportunities for the top players. Those who rise to the very top have very strong creative skills. In relative terms, being a chess “grind” is worth less than in times past.
Not necessarily for amateurs. By "preparation" he means openings, and the big difference here is that our games won't depend on opening finesses at move 15 or 25 that lead to an initiative. Our games will most often be decided by tactical errors. Databases can be fun and useful, but they're not critical. Being a "grind" always was worth less as an amateur. And honestly, blunder prevention is more important than great creativity.
4. Chess is an area where educational reform has been extremely rapid and extremely successful. Chess education today revolves around learning how to learn from the computer, and this change has come within the last ten to fifteen years. No intermediaries were able to prevent it or slow it down. Humans now teach themselves how to team with computers, and the leading human players have to be very good at this. The computers which most successfully team with humans are those which replicate most rapidly.
Not much applicable to me or my corner of the chess world. Certainly, we can learn from computers, but (thankfully) we can still play over Alekhine or Tarrasch out of a book and derive a lot of value from "slow food" chess! In fact, for amateurs this may be more effective.
5. There are many more chess prodigies than ever before, and they mature at a more rapid pace.
Unless you meet 'em at an Open where they're a nine-year-old rated 2157, this is N/A.
6. We used to think that computers would play chess like we did, only “without the mistakes.” We now know that playing without the mistakes involves a very different style from what we had imagined. A lot of human positional intuitions are garbage, and the computer can make sense out of ugly-looking moves. A lot of the human progress since then has involved unlearning previous positional rules and realizing how contingent they are. Younger players, who grew up playing chess with computers, are especially good at this. For older players, it is a good way to learn how unreliable your intuitions can be.
There is some value to this for amateurs, but not in trying to play "without the mistakes," which the world top 10 only occasionally achieve. But being open to "ugly-looking moves" as a way to expand your vision does have something to recommend it. When analyzing one of your games with a computer, note especially the moves it finds that you never thought of because they didn't look "right" positionally and open your mind to these possibilities.
7. Highly exact and concrete analysis, and calculation of variations, is now the centerpiece of grandmaster chess at top levels. We have learned how to become more like the computers. The computers have taught us well.
On this one, I think that Cowen may be off on his time line. This has always been true of grandmaster chess, at least from Lasker onward. Computers didn't invent exacting, accurate calculation (though obviously they do it very well). Going back to the previous point (6), I think that "positional rules" were more something grandmasters wrote about for the masses, as a way to help guide the beginner, than something they took seriously themselves as some kind of doctrine. The whole "Soviet School" was about concrete calculation rather than generalization, in my understanding.
Which is not to say that calculating well isn't important to amateurs. It is, but you're not going to be facing someone who can calculate "like a computer," so just do your best and have fun!
But let's talk about the chess part.
As the noble Kenilworthian noted back in 2006:
As a youngster, Professor Cowen played at the Westwood and Dumont Chess Clubs in Bergen County. As he improved, he played more often at the Manhattan and the Marshall, where the competition was stronger. By the time he was 16-years-old he was rated about 2350 (which would have put him on the same pace set by Bobby Fischer in the late 1950s).
Then he gave up the game.
“I realized I wasn’t going to become a professional. There are no benefits, no retirement. It was not the life I wanted to lead. And I fell in love with Economics.” As an economist, of course, he knows a lot about diminishing returns....
Okay, all of this is quite interesting in itself, but it's a preliminary to why we should pay close attention to Prof. Cowen's take on computers, chess and the interaction between the two. I urge you to read the whole thing, but I want to focus on a few points that seem to me to be different for non-masters (I'll just say "amateurs" as shorthand for presumed reader of this blog), as his take is basically about computers and grandmaster chess:
1. Databases equalize preparation opportunities for the top players. Those who rise to the very top have very strong creative skills. In relative terms, being a chess “grind” is worth less than in times past.
Not necessarily for amateurs. By "preparation" he means openings, and the big difference here is that our games won't depend on opening finesses at move 15 or 25 that lead to an initiative. Our games will most often be decided by tactical errors. Databases can be fun and useful, but they're not critical. Being a "grind" always was worth less as an amateur. And honestly, blunder prevention is more important than great creativity.
4. Chess is an area where educational reform has been extremely rapid and extremely successful. Chess education today revolves around learning how to learn from the computer, and this change has come within the last ten to fifteen years. No intermediaries were able to prevent it or slow it down. Humans now teach themselves how to team with computers, and the leading human players have to be very good at this. The computers which most successfully team with humans are those which replicate most rapidly.
Not much applicable to me or my corner of the chess world. Certainly, we can learn from computers, but (thankfully) we can still play over Alekhine or Tarrasch out of a book and derive a lot of value from "slow food" chess! In fact, for amateurs this may be more effective.
5. There are many more chess prodigies than ever before, and they mature at a more rapid pace.
Unless you meet 'em at an Open where they're a nine-year-old rated 2157, this is N/A.
6. We used to think that computers would play chess like we did, only “without the mistakes.” We now know that playing without the mistakes involves a very different style from what we had imagined. A lot of human positional intuitions are garbage, and the computer can make sense out of ugly-looking moves. A lot of the human progress since then has involved unlearning previous positional rules and realizing how contingent they are. Younger players, who grew up playing chess with computers, are especially good at this. For older players, it is a good way to learn how unreliable your intuitions can be.
There is some value to this for amateurs, but not in trying to play "without the mistakes," which the world top 10 only occasionally achieve. But being open to "ugly-looking moves" as a way to expand your vision does have something to recommend it. When analyzing one of your games with a computer, note especially the moves it finds that you never thought of because they didn't look "right" positionally and open your mind to these possibilities.
7. Highly exact and concrete analysis, and calculation of variations, is now the centerpiece of grandmaster chess at top levels. We have learned how to become more like the computers. The computers have taught us well.
On this one, I think that Cowen may be off on his time line. This has always been true of grandmaster chess, at least from Lasker onward. Computers didn't invent exacting, accurate calculation (though obviously they do it very well). Going back to the previous point (6), I think that "positional rules" were more something grandmasters wrote about for the masses, as a way to help guide the beginner, than something they took seriously themselves as some kind of doctrine. The whole "Soviet School" was about concrete calculation rather than generalization, in my understanding.
Which is not to say that calculating well isn't important to amateurs. It is, but you're not going to be facing someone who can calculate "like a computer," so just do your best and have fun!
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Physiological and Psychological Studies Applied to Chess
Fit for Combat: Maximum Strength AKA Old Man Strength
Yes: TOO MUCH AROUSAL.
I also see a connection here with GM Belyavsky, who in his book Uncompromising Chess states that he could only analyze a position at maximum strength during tournament games. While some people seem to analyze quite well at home, I too have always felt that personally I don't really hit my peak except under competitive conditions. When there is JUST RIGHT AROUSAL, anyway.
***
Easy=True
Excerpt:
This absolutely applies to chess positions and the choices we make about positions to aim for. I think most players like to get a "familiar" advantage in an opening they recognize rather than a somewhat bigger advantage in a strange setting. Going back a bit to my first post about whether amateur players care much about today's grandmaster games and tournaments, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason I didn't like this position as given by IM Mark Ginsburg (...)
(Black to move)
Excerpt:
THE STRENGTH CURVE
In his book Extreme Fear, Jeff Wise discusses the effect of the brain’s reaction to stimuli on strength and athletic performance.
Wise cites the research by Vladimir Zatsiorsky on three different types of strength--Absolute, Maximal and Competitive Maximum.
Absolute Strength is the total mechanical strength of a person, the force a person should be able to apply.
According to Zatsiorsky’s research humans can rarely apply all that force. A novice weight lifter can apply 65%, an experience athlete can apply 80%. This lesser number is called Maximal Strength.
But, in competitive situations Maximal Strength can be increased by as much as 12%--hence the term Competitive Maximum.
(...)
If the pressure of competition is too much, the arousal goes to far along the curve and performance decreases. But if a person is at or near the top of the curve, they can approach the force of Absolute Strength.
In an earlier ACIS of Caissa post I wrote:
Have you ever been kibbitzing a game and seen good moves that the players (sometimes much higher-rated than you) missed? Have you ever played a move in a (non-blitz) game and instantly seen, as soon as you took your hand off the piece, that it was a blunder? Have you ever seen a Grandmaster blunder? (if not, see my "Homer Nods" series). I'll wager a bundle you answered "Yes, yes and yes."
Have you ever asked yourself how these things are possible?
Have you ever asked yourself how these things are possible?
Yes: TOO MUCH AROUSAL.
I also see a connection here with GM Belyavsky, who in his book Uncompromising Chess states that he could only analyze a position at maximum strength during tournament games. While some people seem to analyze quite well at home, I too have always felt that personally I don't really hit my peak except under competitive conditions. When there is JUST RIGHT AROUSAL, anyway.
***
Easy=True
Excerpt:
If something feels notably easy to decipher, whether it’s a piece of text or the shape of an object or the particulars of a person’s face, there’s a good chance it’s because we’ve previously done the work of processing it, and that it’s something we’ve encountered before. Cognitive fluency signals familiarity - some psychologists argue that the eerie experience of déjà vu is simply when we’re fooled by the unexpected ease of taking in a piece of sensory information, and interpret that as a memory of having been there or seen it before.
An instinctive preference for the familiar made sense in the prehistoric environment in which our brains developed, psychologists hypothesize. Unfamiliar things - whether they were large woolly animals, plants we were thinking of eating, or fellow human beings - needed to be carefully evaluated to determine whether they were friend or foe. Familiar objects were those we’d already passed judgment on, so it made sense not to waste time and energy scrutinizing them.
This absolutely applies to chess positions and the choices we make about positions to aim for. I think most players like to get a "familiar" advantage in an opening they recognize rather than a somewhat bigger advantage in a strange setting. Going back a bit to my first post about whether amateur players care much about today's grandmaster games and tournaments, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason I didn't like this position as given by IM Mark Ginsburg (...)
(Black to move)
(...) is because it seems so random, outside of my usual experience, so messy and dangerous.
All that old Botvinnik advice about studying openings not to memorize (oh, no), but to become familiar with "typical middlegames" makes sense in light of this perspective, no? But it could also benefit your chess strength by "breaking out" and deliberately playing into the unfamiliar, the messy, even the dangerous from time to time.
Friday, January 01, 2010
ACIS 2010
I'm back, I'm excited and let's get right to it--to really be one of the ACIS, by Blunderprone's definition, one must post about goals, plans and methods and then follow up with progress reports. So here I go, taking the plunge...
True Confessions
First off, some brutally honest history. I've mentioned here a number of times that I'm really into human performance and "self-help" books and materials. Back in 1995 I was in Northern California, working at a low paying job and basically just getting along when I revisited Tony Robbins' book Unlimited Power, a book I'd owned for several years and had read, but hadn't taken much action with. Rereading the book one night, I sat down and started doing some of the exercises, including thinking about what I really wanted and how to get it. I decided to move back to Juneau, Alaska, go to the university and get a degree, get married and have children and get into politics and government. It took longer than it might have, there were some bumps in the road along the way but I did all of those things, and now enjoy a great job, pretty good income and a great family. You may well think of Tony Robbins as some guy on late night infomercials but lo, he has put out some things that work, if you actually do them. And he learned a lot of them from NLP and through the pioneer Richard Bandler. I'm currently working with Bandler's latest book, Get the Life You Want, which I highly recommmend.
That's all fine, you may be saying, but where's the brutal honesty? Here: I've never faithfully, consistently applied these methods and techniques to chess improvement! Most of my improvement came from playing good players from 1982-90, and that's it! Oh, I have plenty of chess books, and I've intermittedly studied endings, done tactical exercises and looked at some master games, but I've never really applied what I know about performance psychology to my chess in a consistent way. Perhaps chess improvement is not quite as important as work, health, marriage and family, but now is the time, friend, now is the time. I think that I must either just play chess and enjoy it, which is great, or go for the gusto and do the improvement thing to the utmost of my ability:
I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. (Rev. 3:15-16). I will not let that be me!
So here goes.
My Personal ACIS Program
As I noted in my last post, I have decided to base my ACIS plan on Jeremy Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess (3d. ed). A funny coincidence--this is one of the few well-known chess books I've never owned, but while I was in Anchorage, Alaska recently I dropped in at the fabulous Title Wave used book store and browsed the book for awhile, finally paying just $7.95 for a nice copy. It struck me that one of my weak points as a chess player is the lack of a consistent, cogent thinking process as I consider my move. Though I'm experienced enough to know about weak pawns, weak squares, dropping in a killer knight at d6 to paralyze Black's position, etc., I all too often go pretty much straight to "What threats can I make and how must he repsond to them?" and choose my moves almost exclusively on that basis. Also, I've been playing mostly internet blitz over the last months since I left Reno and its strong club tournaments. The "Reassess Your Chess" method does not lend itself, nor really apply, to blitz. It's about taking the time to really look at the "imbalances" in a position and considering how to nurture the ones favorable to your side, and to neutralize the opponent's. As I browsed through the book it dawned on me that perhaps this was just the approach I needed in my own unique situation--other people may best be served by another book or focus.
While there is a thorough and quite critical review of the book on the Amazon page that might give one pause, I decided that the reviewer's (apparently) legitimate criticisms of some errors in the book shouldn't really be a problem with my intended use of it. I will work my way through every line of "Reassess Your Chess" on a board, and perfect the thinking process presented, and any errors and ommissions I find on my own will just be great practice. After I have made it through the book (and can finally say that I have done so with at least one chess book) I will apply the process to games and positions from other books--games collections, opening books etc.
One other thing that struck me as I looked into the book is a Silman recommendation that I've seen in one form or another many times in many places: to take a rich position from a master game, set it up on a board and really get into it deeply, for 20, 30, 40 minutes or more, writing down all your thoughts, plans and calculated lines. Blue Devil Knight called it Rowsonalysis (see Chess for Zebras), Michael Goeller and Dan Heisman have called it the "Stoyko excercise" after Massachusetts FM Stephen Stoyko. By any other name, this is something I've never really done. I am going to do it as much as time allows and publish the results here.
Playing games is, of course, the other thing one must do to actually improve, well, results in actual games! I'm going to try to play at least two games on FICS at 15/5 or longer each week. That may be all I can fit in. I am going to avoid blitz for three months as an experiment, and see if the ACIS work will result in some significant improvement at blitz. As Heisman says, the best blitz players are the best slow players. I am intrigued by the possibility that this may or may not happen in this case.
Measuring Progress
Only ratings can really say whether one's strength has increased over time. My current ratings:
USCF - 1629 (all-time best 1825)
FICS Standard - 1606 (all-time best 1800+)
FICS Blitz - 1328 (all-time best 1442)
I plan to post something once a week about the ACIS plan and what I actually accomplished. If I miss a week I'm not going to freak out, however. From mid-January to April I am extremely busy in my professional capacity. Any time studying or playing chess will, however, be quality time.
Isn't that really what this is all about?
True Confessions
First off, some brutally honest history. I've mentioned here a number of times that I'm really into human performance and "self-help" books and materials. Back in 1995 I was in Northern California, working at a low paying job and basically just getting along when I revisited Tony Robbins' book Unlimited Power, a book I'd owned for several years and had read, but hadn't taken much action with. Rereading the book one night, I sat down and started doing some of the exercises, including thinking about what I really wanted and how to get it. I decided to move back to Juneau, Alaska, go to the university and get a degree, get married and have children and get into politics and government. It took longer than it might have, there were some bumps in the road along the way but I did all of those things, and now enjoy a great job, pretty good income and a great family. You may well think of Tony Robbins as some guy on late night infomercials but lo, he has put out some things that work, if you actually do them. And he learned a lot of them from NLP and through the pioneer Richard Bandler. I'm currently working with Bandler's latest book, Get the Life You Want, which I highly recommmend.
That's all fine, you may be saying, but where's the brutal honesty? Here: I've never faithfully, consistently applied these methods and techniques to chess improvement! Most of my improvement came from playing good players from 1982-90, and that's it! Oh, I have plenty of chess books, and I've intermittedly studied endings, done tactical exercises and looked at some master games, but I've never really applied what I know about performance psychology to my chess in a consistent way. Perhaps chess improvement is not quite as important as work, health, marriage and family, but now is the time, friend, now is the time. I think that I must either just play chess and enjoy it, which is great, or go for the gusto and do the improvement thing to the utmost of my ability:
I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. (Rev. 3:15-16). I will not let that be me!
So here goes.
My Personal ACIS Program
As I noted in my last post, I have decided to base my ACIS plan on Jeremy Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess (3d. ed). A funny coincidence--this is one of the few well-known chess books I've never owned, but while I was in Anchorage, Alaska recently I dropped in at the fabulous Title Wave used book store and browsed the book for awhile, finally paying just $7.95 for a nice copy. It struck me that one of my weak points as a chess player is the lack of a consistent, cogent thinking process as I consider my move. Though I'm experienced enough to know about weak pawns, weak squares, dropping in a killer knight at d6 to paralyze Black's position, etc., I all too often go pretty much straight to "What threats can I make and how must he repsond to them?" and choose my moves almost exclusively on that basis. Also, I've been playing mostly internet blitz over the last months since I left Reno and its strong club tournaments. The "Reassess Your Chess" method does not lend itself, nor really apply, to blitz. It's about taking the time to really look at the "imbalances" in a position and considering how to nurture the ones favorable to your side, and to neutralize the opponent's. As I browsed through the book it dawned on me that perhaps this was just the approach I needed in my own unique situation--other people may best be served by another book or focus.
While there is a thorough and quite critical review of the book on the Amazon page that might give one pause, I decided that the reviewer's (apparently) legitimate criticisms of some errors in the book shouldn't really be a problem with my intended use of it. I will work my way through every line of "Reassess Your Chess" on a board, and perfect the thinking process presented, and any errors and ommissions I find on my own will just be great practice. After I have made it through the book (and can finally say that I have done so with at least one chess book) I will apply the process to games and positions from other books--games collections, opening books etc.
One other thing that struck me as I looked into the book is a Silman recommendation that I've seen in one form or another many times in many places: to take a rich position from a master game, set it up on a board and really get into it deeply, for 20, 30, 40 minutes or more, writing down all your thoughts, plans and calculated lines. Blue Devil Knight called it Rowsonalysis (see Chess for Zebras), Michael Goeller and Dan Heisman have called it the "Stoyko excercise" after Massachusetts FM Stephen Stoyko. By any other name, this is something I've never really done. I am going to do it as much as time allows and publish the results here.
Playing games is, of course, the other thing one must do to actually improve, well, results in actual games! I'm going to try to play at least two games on FICS at 15/5 or longer each week. That may be all I can fit in. I am going to avoid blitz for three months as an experiment, and see if the ACIS work will result in some significant improvement at blitz. As Heisman says, the best blitz players are the best slow players. I am intrigued by the possibility that this may or may not happen in this case.
Measuring Progress
Only ratings can really say whether one's strength has increased over time. My current ratings:
USCF - 1629 (all-time best 1825)
FICS Standard - 1606 (all-time best 1800+)
FICS Blitz - 1328 (all-time best 1442)
I plan to post something once a week about the ACIS plan and what I actually accomplished. If I miss a week I'm not going to freak out, however. From mid-January to April I am extremely busy in my professional capacity. Any time studying or playing chess will, however, be quality time.
Isn't that really what this is all about?
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Priceless Chess Training Video
Via Liz Vicary, who credits Jason Luchan, who I don't know...anyhow, only the creators of this priceless chess training video deserve the credit. And we get to see it for free. How cool is that Internet thingy?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
On Giving Up Internet Blitz (Again)
Since I last played in the five hour marathons at the Reno Chess Club (see here for my rather whiny farewell) most of my chess activity has consisted of blitz on FICS. While I've certainly gotten some satisfaction and enjoyment from these games, I've also gotten into some pretty bad habits.
As James Stripes writes in this post at his excellent Chess Skills blog, "Blitz and rapid chess involve a lot of smoke and mirrors, while standard chess is a quest for truth." I have seen that in the evolution (devolution?) of my "style" over the last months; I developed the typical blitzer's habits of playing trap chess and "hope chess," always pushing forward and doing very little consolidation, rarely playing for an "edge" or going for a superior endgame. I have had some nice artistic successes, learned a lot about the openings...and hung a lot of pieces.
Last night I had a good winning streak, ran my blitz rating up to a reasonably respectable 1377, and having a desire to get back to the "quest for truth" have decided to play only 15 0 or longer (the minimum for standard rated games) for the present. My FICS rating at that is 1686, and I figure I could get that quite a bit higher by playing serious, real chess.
Meanwhile, I've gone to a couple of meetings of the Juneau Chess Club, which is a laid-back affair for two hours at the library, once a week. There are several pretty decent tournament players in my town, in the 1400-1600 USCF range, so I'm going to get busy organizing a "stimulus package" and start playing rated games again. Game in 90 minutes to be the maximum, if I have my druthers. There are also several tournaments a year up in Anchorage and starting next summer I expect to have the time and money to travel to something in the "Lower 48."
So right now I'm headed off to get back to "real chess," because I've gotten a bit shallow, and hope is not a plan.
As James Stripes writes in this post at his excellent Chess Skills blog, "Blitz and rapid chess involve a lot of smoke and mirrors, while standard chess is a quest for truth." I have seen that in the evolution (devolution?) of my "style" over the last months; I developed the typical blitzer's habits of playing trap chess and "hope chess," always pushing forward and doing very little consolidation, rarely playing for an "edge" or going for a superior endgame. I have had some nice artistic successes, learned a lot about the openings...and hung a lot of pieces.
Last night I had a good winning streak, ran my blitz rating up to a reasonably respectable 1377, and having a desire to get back to the "quest for truth" have decided to play only 15 0 or longer (the minimum for standard rated games) for the present. My FICS rating at that is 1686, and I figure I could get that quite a bit higher by playing serious, real chess.
Meanwhile, I've gone to a couple of meetings of the Juneau Chess Club, which is a laid-back affair for two hours at the library, once a week. There are several pretty decent tournament players in my town, in the 1400-1600 USCF range, so I'm going to get busy organizing a "stimulus package" and start playing rated games again. Game in 90 minutes to be the maximum, if I have my druthers. There are also several tournaments a year up in Anchorage and starting next summer I expect to have the time and money to travel to something in the "Lower 48."
So right now I'm headed off to get back to "real chess," because I've gotten a bit shallow, and hope is not a plan.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Global eBook Middlegame Collaborative
SECRET PROJECT SPRINGS FORTH!
Phaedrus of Chess Vision and dk-transformation of Chess Improvement have announced their
Global eBook Middlegame Collaborative!
The full announcement is here and here:
Phaedrus, and Transformation, have organized themselves as a cooperative effort, to create an eBook generated from the lesser known--but perhaps the most comprehensively useful--of Lazlo Polgar's three books often referred to as Bricks. To do so alone would exhaust most mortals, so we purport to accomplish this by combined and shared efforts upon Polgar's comprehensive book: 'Chess Middlegame, 77 Types in 4,158 Positions'.
Ardent students of systematic chess improvement are invited to join. We only ask for your time, and necessarily of course, confidentiality as to our communications such as email and identities.
***
If interested, get in touch with these fine gentlemen! I believe this project can only help to improve the chess of those who participate.
Phaedrus of Chess Vision and dk-transformation of Chess Improvement have announced their
Global eBook Middlegame Collaborative!
The full announcement is here and here:
Phaedrus, and Transformation, have organized themselves as a cooperative effort, to create an eBook generated from the lesser known--but perhaps the most comprehensively useful--of Lazlo Polgar's three books often referred to as Bricks. To do so alone would exhaust most mortals, so we purport to accomplish this by combined and shared efforts upon Polgar's comprehensive book: 'Chess Middlegame, 77 Types in 4,158 Positions'.
Ardent students of systematic chess improvement are invited to join. We only ask for your time, and necessarily of course, confidentiality as to our communications such as email and identities.
***
If interested, get in touch with these fine gentlemen! I believe this project can only help to improve the chess of those who participate.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Progress Report, Plan Iteration 2, Week 1
Original post on the new Plan for World Conquest was here.
The results:
1) Two hours of analyzing my own games, getting into the backlog of the last six weeks and posting them here, then once caught up, analyzing the current week's game or an older one I never looked at when it was played.
Done. I posted the first game here and am working on my Round 2 game.
2) One hour looking at two master games (30 minutes each) in openings I play, trying to "guess the move." As little as it is, this at least touches on all phases of the game.
Done. I looked at two games from Emms' The Scandinavian. I'm not telling which ones, however.
3) One hour of tactics study, starting with the 203 positions not grouped by theme (in other words, no clues) in Neishtadt's Test Your Tactical Ability. I'm going to go through them, writing the lines in pencil, not looking at the answers in the back until I've worked through all 203. Besides tactics, this will train patience, perseverance and "backbone." I need all three.
Done. Solved 13 positions.
Overall grade: A.
Excelsior!
The results:
1) Two hours of analyzing my own games, getting into the backlog of the last six weeks and posting them here, then once caught up, analyzing the current week's game or an older one I never looked at when it was played.
Done. I posted the first game here and am working on my Round 2 game.
2) One hour looking at two master games (30 minutes each) in openings I play, trying to "guess the move." As little as it is, this at least touches on all phases of the game.
Done. I looked at two games from Emms' The Scandinavian. I'm not telling which ones, however.
3) One hour of tactics study, starting with the 203 positions not grouped by theme (in other words, no clues) in Neishtadt's Test Your Tactical Ability. I'm going to go through them, writing the lines in pencil, not looking at the answers in the back until I've worked through all 203. Besides tactics, this will train patience, perseverance and "backbone." I need all three.
Done. Solved 13 positions.
Overall grade: A.
Excelsior!
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
A Clear-Eyed Analysis of My Shortcomings
The time has come for a reality check.
Liquid Egg Product had a thought-provoking post a few days ago, How bad do I want it?:
Right now, I’m 1600-ish, the same as 10 years ago without putting effort into improvement. What would happen if I tried? Does the thought of “maybe there’s an Expert somewhere in here” motivate me enough to work?
More likely, the “I’m sufficiently skilled so most people can’t dismiss me; that’s good enough” win out (again).
This is something to be considered seriously; I'm pretty confident I could just play a tournament game most weeks at the Reno Chess Club, play a few blitz games at FICS when I have the time, and still have a lot of fun with chess while maintaining my rating at approximately its current level. Hell, I have a 1600 USCF floor, so I could go to the club and play gambits and weird, wild openings all the time, move fast and get the game over with in a couple of hours and go home to a good night's rest. As everyone who's tried it knows, to maximize your score in tournament play you've got to be willing to sit and sit and sit, grinding out tiny edges for a win or grimly defending lost positions with chances, you've got to use most or all of your clock time and be willing to play out the full five hours (at my club) if necessary.
Sometimes, it's a lot more like work than playing a game.
Drunknknite makes some great points:
I am REALLY tired of players who will blame a loss on one move or even worse, the opening. Sentences like "Well I blundered and then the game's pretty much over." really mean 'and then I pretty much stopped playing'. "I messed up the opening" means 'He surprised me and I stopped playing chess and watched him beat me'. A won position does not equal a win. No one loses when they deserve to win. Every point is earned. If you are not willing to own up to mistakes then you will never correct them and your development as a player will be severely stunted. Everyone makes mistakes, that's part of the game.
Okay, accept the fact that if you really enjoy playing tournament chess (and I do) then it's a titanic struggle, with yourself and your fatigue and your personal weaknesses as well as with an opponent that would like to (symbolically) chop off your head. I believe I've improved that part of the equation lately, in that I'm trying hard, I'm not being lazy at the board, never saying "The hell with it, let's just get this over with!" after a long, grinding struggle (admit it, you've said this to yourself at least once in your life if you play long games!).
Away from the board, I've fallen down on the job.
For the last two months of 2007 I had a Plan (thanks dk, for the gentle prodding), I was posting weekly on my working of the Plan, then I fell down on the job once I got back to playing in tournaments every week. Besides the sins of omission, there have also been sins of commission; I have gone back to playing occasional blitz sessions at FICS (the horror, the horror). I've been scattershotting around, solving occasional tactical diagrams sitting on the john, playing over the games of my rivals on their blogs and worst of all, for the last six weeks not analyzing and posting each tournament game as promised.
Making a plan and sticking to it has never been one of my strong points, which is too bad since it is probably the most important factor in long-term success; "studies prove" and all that. I've fallen back into old habit-patterns.
So, this is a decision point, right here, right now--do I just go "chess for fun" and play around and enjoy it and not worry too much about improvement? Or do I get back to writing down and posting my plan, staying with it, striving to rise through the ranks despite any and all challenges, setbacks and disappointments?
Ad astra per aspera!
Despite my laziness, my other failings and shortcomings, the weaknesses of the flesh, I'm still up for having written goals and plans, and reporting progress here. Look for an update every Tuesday.
Improvement (to the stars!) is a long (rough) road. There's probably nothing I can do to drastically increase my chances to win my game this Thursday except to get physically prepared, play over a few games and do some tactical exercises just to get in the flow. It's how much better I can get six months, a year, two years out that will pay off the steady, consistent work.
I have 3-5 hours, most weeks, to study and a game at the Reno Chess Club to put it into practice. This 8-10 hours of chess a week is a precious resource, not to be squandered.
After careful consideration, I'm going to (with an average of four hours/week) spend:
1) Two hours of analyzing my own games, getting into the backlog of the last six weeks and posting them here, then once caught up, analyzing the current week's game or an older one I never looked at when it was played.
2) One hour looking at two master games (30 minutes each) in openings I play, trying to "guess the move." As little as it is, this at least touches on all phases of the game.
3) One hour of tactics study, starting with the 203 positions not grouped by theme (in other words, no clues) in Neishtadt's Test Your Tactical Ability. I'm going to go through them, writing the lines in pencil, not looking at the answers in the back until I've worked through all 203. Besides tactics, this will train patience, perseverance and "backbone." I need all three.
I'm also going to use a board and pieces rather than the computer where possible--at this point, I'm still playing my serious games the old fashioned way, and I've rarely studied without the computer recently. Seeing and feeling the pieces can only help when real game time comes. I rarely have a chance to use them at home, but I'm going to devote two lunch hours to study per week, and that is a nice opportunity to find peace and quiet and work with the "real thing."
I've got my score sheets, board and set and books with me today.
Reports here next Tuesday.
Excelsior!
Liquid Egg Product had a thought-provoking post a few days ago, How bad do I want it?:
Right now, I’m 1600-ish, the same as 10 years ago without putting effort into improvement. What would happen if I tried? Does the thought of “maybe there’s an Expert somewhere in here” motivate me enough to work?
More likely, the “I’m sufficiently skilled so most people can’t dismiss me; that’s good enough” win out (again).
This is something to be considered seriously; I'm pretty confident I could just play a tournament game most weeks at the Reno Chess Club, play a few blitz games at FICS when I have the time, and still have a lot of fun with chess while maintaining my rating at approximately its current level. Hell, I have a 1600 USCF floor, so I could go to the club and play gambits and weird, wild openings all the time, move fast and get the game over with in a couple of hours and go home to a good night's rest. As everyone who's tried it knows, to maximize your score in tournament play you've got to be willing to sit and sit and sit, grinding out tiny edges for a win or grimly defending lost positions with chances, you've got to use most or all of your clock time and be willing to play out the full five hours (at my club) if necessary.
Sometimes, it's a lot more like work than playing a game.
Drunknknite makes some great points:
I am REALLY tired of players who will blame a loss on one move or even worse, the opening. Sentences like "Well I blundered and then the game's pretty much over." really mean 'and then I pretty much stopped playing'. "I messed up the opening" means 'He surprised me and I stopped playing chess and watched him beat me'. A won position does not equal a win. No one loses when they deserve to win. Every point is earned. If you are not willing to own up to mistakes then you will never correct them and your development as a player will be severely stunted. Everyone makes mistakes, that's part of the game.
Okay, accept the fact that if you really enjoy playing tournament chess (and I do) then it's a titanic struggle, with yourself and your fatigue and your personal weaknesses as well as with an opponent that would like to (symbolically) chop off your head. I believe I've improved that part of the equation lately, in that I'm trying hard, I'm not being lazy at the board, never saying "The hell with it, let's just get this over with!" after a long, grinding struggle (admit it, you've said this to yourself at least once in your life if you play long games!).
Away from the board, I've fallen down on the job.
For the last two months of 2007 I had a Plan (thanks dk, for the gentle prodding), I was posting weekly on my working of the Plan, then I fell down on the job once I got back to playing in tournaments every week. Besides the sins of omission, there have also been sins of commission; I have gone back to playing occasional blitz sessions at FICS (the horror, the horror). I've been scattershotting around, solving occasional tactical diagrams sitting on the john, playing over the games of my rivals on their blogs and worst of all, for the last six weeks not analyzing and posting each tournament game as promised.
Making a plan and sticking to it has never been one of my strong points, which is too bad since it is probably the most important factor in long-term success; "studies prove" and all that. I've fallen back into old habit-patterns.
So, this is a decision point, right here, right now--do I just go "chess for fun" and play around and enjoy it and not worry too much about improvement? Or do I get back to writing down and posting my plan, staying with it, striving to rise through the ranks despite any and all challenges, setbacks and disappointments?
Ad astra per aspera!
Despite my laziness, my other failings and shortcomings, the weaknesses of the flesh, I'm still up for having written goals and plans, and reporting progress here. Look for an update every Tuesday.
Improvement (to the stars!) is a long (rough) road. There's probably nothing I can do to drastically increase my chances to win my game this Thursday except to get physically prepared, play over a few games and do some tactical exercises just to get in the flow. It's how much better I can get six months, a year, two years out that will pay off the steady, consistent work.
I have 3-5 hours, most weeks, to study and a game at the Reno Chess Club to put it into practice. This 8-10 hours of chess a week is a precious resource, not to be squandered.
After careful consideration, I'm going to (with an average of four hours/week) spend:
1) Two hours of analyzing my own games, getting into the backlog of the last six weeks and posting them here, then once caught up, analyzing the current week's game or an older one I never looked at when it was played.
2) One hour looking at two master games (30 minutes each) in openings I play, trying to "guess the move." As little as it is, this at least touches on all phases of the game.
3) One hour of tactics study, starting with the 203 positions not grouped by theme (in other words, no clues) in Neishtadt's Test Your Tactical Ability. I'm going to go through them, writing the lines in pencil, not looking at the answers in the back until I've worked through all 203. Besides tactics, this will train patience, perseverance and "backbone." I need all three.
I'm also going to use a board and pieces rather than the computer where possible--at this point, I'm still playing my serious games the old fashioned way, and I've rarely studied without the computer recently. Seeing and feeling the pieces can only help when real game time comes. I rarely have a chance to use them at home, but I'm going to devote two lunch hours to study per week, and that is a nice opportunity to find peace and quiet and work with the "real thing."
I've got my score sheets, board and set and books with me today.
Reports here next Tuesday.
Excelsior!
Friday, May 02, 2008
Losing Streak Over (Barely)
A quick report on last night's game in Round 5 of the Reno CC Ch. Swiss: I drew with Chris Harrington, the ChargingKing (though I see he has name on his profile now--it's still a cool handle).
As Black in a Center-Counter, as I like to call it (why the heck should I use Eurospeak? They also call the Ruy Lopez the "Spanish"), I unleashed a speculative gambit after 1. e4 d5 2. exd4 Nf6 3. Bb5+ Bd7 4. Bc4 Bg5 5. f3 Bf5 6. Nc3 c6!?; the Shredder database has only two examples. For the pawn I did get what I felt was sufficient compensation, and it was a tense battle right up to the first time control (30/90), when, still with four or five minutes for the last two moves, I turned down a slightly inferior ending and allowed a lightning attack on my king! Bad choice, dude! In turn, however, he missed the killing shot and we went in to a rook ending where he had an extra pawn but I had more active pieces, and I was pleased with the choices I made in this phase that ensured the draw.
After the game I was remembering yesterday's post and its consideration of falsifying our own moves and plans, and it struck me how I'd done a pretty good job of this through most of the game, but as I got more tired and a little rushed there was a breakdown. Not like that hasn't happened before, but having just posted about it it occurred to me that not only do I need to train in calculation, vision, etc., I need to train these things to stay at a high level during the more stressful and/or later parts of the game when I'm excited, fatigued and under stress.
I do have a few ideas which I'll post soon. Meanwhile, whatever the circumstances, it was a pleasure to go home with something other than a zero in the score table.
As Black in a Center-Counter, as I like to call it (why the heck should I use Eurospeak? They also call the Ruy Lopez the "Spanish"), I unleashed a speculative gambit after 1. e4 d5 2. exd4 Nf6 3. Bb5+ Bd7 4. Bc4 Bg5 5. f3 Bf5 6. Nc3 c6!?; the Shredder database has only two examples. For the pawn I did get what I felt was sufficient compensation, and it was a tense battle right up to the first time control (30/90), when, still with four or five minutes for the last two moves, I turned down a slightly inferior ending and allowed a lightning attack on my king! Bad choice, dude! In turn, however, he missed the killing shot and we went in to a rook ending where he had an extra pawn but I had more active pieces, and I was pleased with the choices I made in this phase that ensured the draw.
After the game I was remembering yesterday's post and its consideration of falsifying our own moves and plans, and it struck me how I'd done a pretty good job of this through most of the game, but as I got more tired and a little rushed there was a breakdown. Not like that hasn't happened before, but having just posted about it it occurred to me that not only do I need to train in calculation, vision, etc., I need to train these things to stay at a high level during the more stressful and/or later parts of the game when I'm excited, fatigued and under stress.
I do have a few ideas which I'll post soon. Meanwhile, whatever the circumstances, it was a pleasure to go home with something other than a zero in the score table.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
While I Was Out
Occasional breaks from chess and blogging have a refreshing effect; if you're open to it, you can sometimes see things "with new eyes," the way you see a place you've never been when you arrive there for the very first time. If you work at it and pay attention, you can partially attain this "refreshment" without actually going anywhere, by actively remembering that first time, the way it looked then, the feelings you had, the kinesthetics and the smells and the sounds.
I've read and digested a good number of fine posts in the last few days, and combined with my vacation and a week without playing (a full-point bye in the Reno CC Ch. Swiss) I have some new insights about what I'd like to do, what I need to do, and what I'm actually going to do to learn, grow, improve and have fun in chess.
Originally I planned to put a whole bunch of stuff into one megapost, but after hacking away at that it seemed to me much better to break up this Epic of Our Times into more manageable bites. So first, let have a look some recent work by the chess blogosphere's resident neuroscientist.
Blue Devil Knight, during his extended retirement farewell tour, unleashes some of his best-ever posts, a real feat considering that he has one of the best-ever chess blogs. Check out:
Part the Last (8) of his book reviews.
Chess memorization and seed planting--let the neurons do their job!
Two academic papers of great interest to chess players--as far as learning 10,000 pictures, and why it might be much more difficult to learn 10,000 chess positions, well that's my next post. Perhaps most directly related to our favorite subject (winning more!), Chess Masters' Hypothesis Testing; if you've never heard of "confirmation bias" you really need to get out more often.
I thought I'd posted about this somewhere previously, but for the life of me I can't find it right now; anyway, the important point is that stronger players usually make the successful effort to "falsify" their own plans, finding the opponent's best responses, while weaker players see a lot of variations that are good for themselves, often missing good moves for "the other guy." While this isn't a brand-new insight that's never been noted before in the history of chess, it is one of the main reasons for the differences in strength between players, and it's not exactly an ability to calculate better or to "find" winning combinations, it's in a different category; it's what we mean when we say we don't "see" a one-mover that loses a piece, in a certain way it might be said that this is the basis for almost all blunders, this failure to seek and find the opponent's best reply to the move we want to play.
So if it's that important, how do we go about working on it? It occurs to me that first of all, solving "White to move and win" positions, where we know a crusher is there, might almost be counterproductive in this regard! We're given that Black has no good defense, so all we have to look for is the "shot." As much as I enjoy, for example, Chess Tempo, this is the only kind of problem provided there, and I'm wondering if it's not doing me that much good to find all those wins...
Seems to me that what's needed here are exercises of the type, "White has three plausible moves, Nb5, Bb3 and Qxd4. Find Black's best response to each." I don't know if I've ever seen a set of exercises in precisely this form, though GMs Hort and Jansa had a book out many years ago called The Best Move that might have been close. Currently Ray Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises has gotten a lot of great reviews, and though I don't own it (yet) it might suit the bill as well as anything out there.
Otherwise, we're just going to have to do it ourselves, Dear Readers, playing through games, whether our own or masters', and looking at everything with a critical and "falsifying" eye. Almost all of us, even masters, do have this weakness to some degree, always on the lookout for what we can do to the opponent; it seems we'd be better off spending a lot more time and effort finding out what the opponent can do to us!
I've read and digested a good number of fine posts in the last few days, and combined with my vacation and a week without playing (a full-point bye in the Reno CC Ch. Swiss) I have some new insights about what I'd like to do, what I need to do, and what I'm actually going to do to learn, grow, improve and have fun in chess.
Originally I planned to put a whole bunch of stuff into one megapost, but after hacking away at that it seemed to me much better to break up this Epic of Our Times into more manageable bites. So first, let have a look some recent work by the chess blogosphere's resident neuroscientist.
Blue Devil Knight, during his extended retirement farewell tour, unleashes some of his best-ever posts, a real feat considering that he has one of the best-ever chess blogs. Check out:
Part the Last (8) of his book reviews.
Chess memorization and seed planting--let the neurons do their job!
Two academic papers of great interest to chess players--as far as learning 10,000 pictures, and why it might be much more difficult to learn 10,000 chess positions, well that's my next post. Perhaps most directly related to our favorite subject (winning more!), Chess Masters' Hypothesis Testing; if you've never heard of "confirmation bias" you really need to get out more often.
I thought I'd posted about this somewhere previously, but for the life of me I can't find it right now; anyway, the important point is that stronger players usually make the successful effort to "falsify" their own plans, finding the opponent's best responses, while weaker players see a lot of variations that are good for themselves, often missing good moves for "the other guy." While this isn't a brand-new insight that's never been noted before in the history of chess, it is one of the main reasons for the differences in strength between players, and it's not exactly an ability to calculate better or to "find" winning combinations, it's in a different category; it's what we mean when we say we don't "see" a one-mover that loses a piece, in a certain way it might be said that this is the basis for almost all blunders, this failure to seek and find the opponent's best reply to the move we want to play.
So if it's that important, how do we go about working on it? It occurs to me that first of all, solving "White to move and win" positions, where we know a crusher is there, might almost be counterproductive in this regard! We're given that Black has no good defense, so all we have to look for is the "shot." As much as I enjoy, for example, Chess Tempo, this is the only kind of problem provided there, and I'm wondering if it's not doing me that much good to find all those wins...
Seems to me that what's needed here are exercises of the type, "White has three plausible moves, Nb5, Bb3 and Qxd4. Find Black's best response to each." I don't know if I've ever seen a set of exercises in precisely this form, though GMs Hort and Jansa had a book out many years ago called The Best Move that might have been close. Currently Ray Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises has gotten a lot of great reviews, and though I don't own it (yet) it might suit the bill as well as anything out there.
Otherwise, we're just going to have to do it ourselves, Dear Readers, playing through games, whether our own or masters', and looking at everything with a critical and "falsifying" eye. Almost all of us, even masters, do have this weakness to some degree, always on the lookout for what we can do to the opponent; it seems we'd be better off spending a lot more time and effort finding out what the opponent can do to us!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Some Points to Ponder
Can Testosterone Make You Rich? (a small study of London stock traders)
***
The hormone testosterone (T) has a central role in recent theories about allocation of status ranks during face-to-face competition. It has been methodologically convenient to test the hypothesized T mechanism in physically taxing athletic contests, where results have been supportive, although their generalizability to normal social competition is questionable. Competition among chess players is a step closer to normal social competition because it does not require physical struggle, and it is the arena for tests of the T mechanism which are reported here. We find that winners of chess tournaments show higher T levels than do losers. Also, in certain circumstances, competitors show rises in T before their games, as if in preparation for the contests. These results generally support recent theories about the role of T in the allocation of status ranks.
(Courtesy of Elizabeth Vicary's cool blog [original post here])
***
Representative of a number of articles, this one says that to raise testosterone levels naturally:
All of which sound intriguing on their own merits, as methods of feeling good AND possibly raising your USCF rating through means other than tactical training.
***
The hormone testosterone (T) has a central role in recent theories about allocation of status ranks during face-to-face competition. It has been methodologically convenient to test the hypothesized T mechanism in physically taxing athletic contests, where results have been supportive, although their generalizability to normal social competition is questionable. Competition among chess players is a step closer to normal social competition because it does not require physical struggle, and it is the arena for tests of the T mechanism which are reported here. We find that winners of chess tournaments show higher T levels than do losers. Also, in certain circumstances, competitors show rises in T before their games, as if in preparation for the contests. These results generally support recent theories about the role of T in the allocation of status ranks.
(Courtesy of Elizabeth Vicary's cool blog [original post here])
***
Representative of a number of articles, this one says that to raise testosterone levels naturally:
- Eat eggs, whey, meat and nuts, especially peanuts.
- Lower body fat percentage.
- Weight-bearing exercises, especially low-reps with max weight.
- Limit alcohol consumption.
- Get sufficient sleep.
All of which sound intriguing on their own merits, as methods of feeling good AND possibly raising your USCF rating through means other than tactical training.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Read for Yourself
On reading the excellent dk-transformation's post at Chess Improvement titled Raming GM-Ram I was directed to a series of articles by GM-Ram author Rashid Ziyadinov over at Jeremy Silman's site. Apart from the merits of GM-Ram as outlined by dk, I recommend you too peruse these articles; they have some different and unorthodox views on chess and chess improvement compared to most, and whether you agree with any or all of the author's contentions I think you'll be stimulated and look at things in a new light.
Here's one statement that really struck me (see Part 3, "Concrete Chess):
Students sometimes lament that they cannot apply their knowledge during a game. They cannot apply their "knowledge" because they really don't have any knowledge! What they have instead are shortcuts to chess language, what I call "chess magic spelling" (like "open the position if you are more developed", "the two bishop advantage", "don't move the queen out too early", etc.). These shortcuts are useless generalities. Chess can only be expressed with concrete variations. This often-ignored concept is so crucial to mastering chess that it bears repeating with emphasis: chess can only be expressed with concrete variations!
To sum up, I note that my game annotations here often have some pleasing verbal description, but only a modest amount of "concrete variations," while the stronger the player, it seems, the more the annotations consist mostly of variations. Which is cause, and which effect? Any opinions, Dear Reader?
Here's one statement that really struck me (see Part 3, "Concrete Chess):
Students sometimes lament that they cannot apply their knowledge during a game. They cannot apply their "knowledge" because they really don't have any knowledge! What they have instead are shortcuts to chess language, what I call "chess magic spelling" (like "open the position if you are more developed", "the two bishop advantage", "don't move the queen out too early", etc.). These shortcuts are useless generalities. Chess can only be expressed with concrete variations. This often-ignored concept is so crucial to mastering chess that it bears repeating with emphasis: chess can only be expressed with concrete variations!
To sum up, I note that my game annotations here often have some pleasing verbal description, but only a modest amount of "concrete variations," while the stronger the player, it seems, the more the annotations consist mostly of variations. Which is cause, and which effect? Any opinions, Dear Reader?
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
The Next Big Thing
It turns out that despite my devastating, heartrending (blah, blah) loss in the last round of the Reno CC Ch. Qualifier I'm not going to be taking six weeks off after all; due to a player dropping out I've been invited to join the fun in the Swiss that will determine who makes the "Elite Eight" and the match play portion of the event. The first round is Thursday, the pairings are up on the RCC site, and behold, I get to take on Kevin Gafni, aka drunknknite, in two days. Awesome! Playing with the best players in the club is and has been my goal, and now the opportunity is at hand.
I've been thinking about and working on the problem I had with "running out of gas" in the game mentioned above, and have come to some conclusions and taken some actions. First, I resumed running three miles three times a week; second, cut down on overall food and sugar consumption, and; third, have generally reduced my daily stress level through the use of various mental disciplines.
Even more important I've decided there will be:
!!!
In my Secrets of a Grandpatzer series I quoted the late, great Dr. Kenneth Mark Colby:
To be a master one needs good physical and mental stamina. But health, mental or physical, is not necessary for the grandpatzer.If you look at a group of us in a chess club tournament, you will observe what wrecks we are...Having problems is not the problem; it's what you do in spite of them that counts. To rise above physical illness and pain, to strive for your best in spite of these distressful states, represents a challenge for the aspiring grandpatzer with artistic goals.
There you have it--my opponents are probably tired, too! Whatever issues are going on before the game will be forgotten during the game, and will no longer be reported here. Having done what we could, let the chips fall where they may.
I'm really excited about my "second chance" to play in this tournament, and I'm going to give it everything I've got.
I've been thinking about and working on the problem I had with "running out of gas" in the game mentioned above, and have come to some conclusions and taken some actions. First, I resumed running three miles three times a week; second, cut down on overall food and sugar consumption, and; third, have generally reduced my daily stress level through the use of various mental disciplines.
Even more important I've decided there will be:
!!!
In my Secrets of a Grandpatzer series I quoted the late, great Dr. Kenneth Mark Colby:
To be a master one needs good physical and mental stamina. But health, mental or physical, is not necessary for the grandpatzer.If you look at a group of us in a chess club tournament, you will observe what wrecks we are...Having problems is not the problem; it's what you do in spite of them that counts. To rise above physical illness and pain, to strive for your best in spite of these distressful states, represents a challenge for the aspiring grandpatzer with artistic goals.
There you have it--my opponents are probably tired, too! Whatever issues are going on before the game will be forgotten during the game, and will no longer be reported here. Having done what we could, let the chips fall where they may.
I'm really excited about my "second chance" to play in this tournament, and I'm going to give it everything I've got.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Chess Inputs, Filters and Results (Part I)
In my post on my last round game in the Reno Chess Club Ch. Qualifier I promised an exploration of "other factors in the final result of a chess game" and today we'll take a shot at this; in the meantime the excellent Phaedrus of Chess Vision has provided a post and chart that will be helpful, so perhaps you'll hit the link and review that before continuing...
Back already? Okay, first, I hope he doesn't mind my linking his very useful chart so that you can refer to it without jumping back and forth:
In the comments I suggested that it might be instructive to have the green boxes placed in between the "transfer" and "playing" boxes; as I said there:
[T]he green boxes (concentration, stamina and time management) almost act as a filter or "bottleneck" to showing the level of patterns, calculation and visualization (after transfer). So the green boxes might be placed in line with and after transfer; if they are all 100 percent "open" then the player's full strength is available (and this would be rare or impossible); the more any one of these physical/psychological factors is "constricted" the smaller percentage of strength is showing in the play on the board.
___________________________________________________
I've read a lot of chess books over the years (probably too many), played over master games and done tactical exercises (probably not enough) and yet I've seen very little specific, useful material in the chess literature on the important topics, the filters that attenuate your results, of concentration, stamina and time management.
Now these things are not totally neglected, but some of the advice is obvious and trite, ("Eat well, exercise and get enough sleep"), some is conflicting ("Don't get up from the board often, it takes time to refocus, but do get up and stretch, keep blood flowing to the brain"), and some is confusing ("don't study openings, but if by studying openings you get into a playable middlegame having saved time and energy for later, why, DO study openings!").
I'm going to use my game with Chris Harrington, mentioned above, as an illustration of how all of these factors affect the results of the game, because for our purposes here it's going to be only the results that count; "playing well" for most of the game, getting "good positions" and so on are for all practical purposes useless. The concentration, stamina and time management "boxes" are where playing well becomes playing poorly and good positions are turned into losses. I'll be focusing on these things from that perspective.
For reference, here's my game with Chris:
On the surface, here's a one-paragraph description of the game (from my perspective): We both played the opening by the book for 13 moves which left me 83 minutes for only 17 more moves; on move 21 he overlooked my tactical idea and I won a piece for two pawns with a "winning" (heh) position; on move 26 and 29 I don't play the good move Ne4 despite the fact that I looked at it, and lose most of my advantage; and after the time control at move 30 my play is pretty weak, my moves 33, 34 and especially 36 are all (?), meanwhile he plays well, knowing he's down material he activates his pieces against my draughty king position and takes advantage of the openings I give him to play a winning combination.
Under the surface: During the four days before the game my wife was working out of town and I had the entire responsibility for taking care of the home and our son, and though I got a decent amount of sleep the night before the game I had had less than adequate rest the two previous nights. As noted, I played the first 13 moves quickly but having plenty of time available I spent 7-12 minutes on several of the moves between 14 and 25, some of which could have been played more quickly, but I was sometimes looking at the same lines over and over, checking and rechecking since I was starting to feel tired and "vacant" and this led to even more fatigue. I felt pretty decent during the first part of the game, but even though my opponent was playing quite quickly (less than 50 minutes for the whole game) right around the critical point of move 26-30 I was already feeling dopey, though less than 2.5 hours had passed since the beginning of the game.
When we reached this position with White to make his 36th move:
I was sincerely trying my best, but I felt rather like there was a fog before my eyes; my focus was no longer on the whole board and my opponent's possibilities. As best I can remember I was looking at a small area of the board, roughly just his checking pawn, my king, his rook and his queen, and my confused thinking went something like "There are only two moves, after king takes I don't see anything immediately devastating but my king looks exposed there, his queen checks on h8 and he controls the file, whereas if I take with the queen my queen controls the file." Something shallow like that, not even considering his very next move, Rg2+ and wins.
So to sum up, the concrete results of declining stamina and concentration were scattered, completely inadequate calculation and the overlooking of the opponent's possibilities in a position where the result of game was in the balance.
Here's the post I wrote right after I got home from the game, (something I've never done before) a heartfelt expression of fatigue and frustration, not with the intention of excusing or alibiing my loss, but a genuine account of the way I felt at the time. I'm glad I gave credit to my opponent, where credit was due, because he played better and deservedly won; but I was just a little angry that this important game had been lost not because of any defects in my chess armory but because I hadn't been able to play up to the ability I knew I had. After all the work and planning and study, I hadn't been able to show what I was capable of.
Now that in my own long-winded fashion I've given some background and an example of the problem, in Part II we'll have a go at identifying what can be done about it.
Back already? Okay, first, I hope he doesn't mind my linking his very useful chart so that you can refer to it without jumping back and forth:
In the comments I suggested that it might be instructive to have the green boxes placed in between the "transfer" and "playing" boxes; as I said there:
[T]he green boxes (concentration, stamina and time management) almost act as a filter or "bottleneck" to showing the level of patterns, calculation and visualization (after transfer). So the green boxes might be placed in line with and after transfer; if they are all 100 percent "open" then the player's full strength is available (and this would be rare or impossible); the more any one of these physical/psychological factors is "constricted" the smaller percentage of strength is showing in the play on the board.
___________________________________________________
I've read a lot of chess books over the years (probably too many), played over master games and done tactical exercises (probably not enough) and yet I've seen very little specific, useful material in the chess literature on the important topics, the filters that attenuate your results, of concentration, stamina and time management.
Now these things are not totally neglected, but some of the advice is obvious and trite, ("Eat well, exercise and get enough sleep"), some is conflicting ("Don't get up from the board often, it takes time to refocus, but do get up and stretch, keep blood flowing to the brain"), and some is confusing ("don't study openings, but if by studying openings you get into a playable middlegame having saved time and energy for later, why, DO study openings!").
I'm going to use my game with Chris Harrington, mentioned above, as an illustration of how all of these factors affect the results of the game, because for our purposes here it's going to be only the results that count; "playing well" for most of the game, getting "good positions" and so on are for all practical purposes useless. The concentration, stamina and time management "boxes" are where playing well becomes playing poorly and good positions are turned into losses. I'll be focusing on these things from that perspective.
For reference, here's my game with Chris:
On the surface, here's a one-paragraph description of the game (from my perspective): We both played the opening by the book for 13 moves which left me 83 minutes for only 17 more moves; on move 21 he overlooked my tactical idea and I won a piece for two pawns with a "winning" (heh) position; on move 26 and 29 I don't play the good move Ne4 despite the fact that I looked at it, and lose most of my advantage; and after the time control at move 30 my play is pretty weak, my moves 33, 34 and especially 36 are all (?), meanwhile he plays well, knowing he's down material he activates his pieces against my draughty king position and takes advantage of the openings I give him to play a winning combination.
Under the surface: During the four days before the game my wife was working out of town and I had the entire responsibility for taking care of the home and our son, and though I got a decent amount of sleep the night before the game I had had less than adequate rest the two previous nights. As noted, I played the first 13 moves quickly but having plenty of time available I spent 7-12 minutes on several of the moves between 14 and 25, some of which could have been played more quickly, but I was sometimes looking at the same lines over and over, checking and rechecking since I was starting to feel tired and "vacant" and this led to even more fatigue. I felt pretty decent during the first part of the game, but even though my opponent was playing quite quickly (less than 50 minutes for the whole game) right around the critical point of move 26-30 I was already feeling dopey, though less than 2.5 hours had passed since the beginning of the game.
When we reached this position with White to make his 36th move:
I was sincerely trying my best, but I felt rather like there was a fog before my eyes; my focus was no longer on the whole board and my opponent's possibilities. As best I can remember I was looking at a small area of the board, roughly just his checking pawn, my king, his rook and his queen, and my confused thinking went something like "There are only two moves, after king takes I don't see anything immediately devastating but my king looks exposed there, his queen checks on h8 and he controls the file, whereas if I take with the queen my queen controls the file." Something shallow like that, not even considering his very next move, Rg2+ and wins.
So to sum up, the concrete results of declining stamina and concentration were scattered, completely inadequate calculation and the overlooking of the opponent's possibilities in a position where the result of game was in the balance.
Here's the post I wrote right after I got home from the game, (something I've never done before) a heartfelt expression of fatigue and frustration, not with the intention of excusing or alibiing my loss, but a genuine account of the way I felt at the time. I'm glad I gave credit to my opponent, where credit was due, because he played better and deservedly won; but I was just a little angry that this important game had been lost not because of any defects in my chess armory but because I hadn't been able to play up to the ability I knew I had. After all the work and planning and study, I hadn't been able to show what I was capable of.
Now that in my own long-winded fashion I've given some background and an example of the problem, in Part II we'll have a go at identifying what can be done about it.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Using "Computer Eyes" for Human Progress
A few fine posts by others have caused me to think more deeply about chess and computers lately--mostly from the point of view of my personal goal of improving my results against humans in tournament play. This goal was an important clarification when I wrote that post last July--it may be entirely coincidental, but since then my standard rating has climbed (if sometimes only slightly) in each tournament I've played. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with computers, but my point then was that cutting down or eliminating internet blitz, less opening study and more tactical training, and in general more mental focus and application of practical success psychology were the tickets to results, even if I did enjoy the blitz and delving into my favorite openings.
Anyway, the other chess bloggers referred to above have got me thinking about how best to apply computer models to my own stated goal of improving results against humans (and its equivalent, continuing my USCF rating's upward trend [and for that matter my standard FICS rating's]).
It started when Soapstone referred to a Dana Mackenzie post on Bronstein on Computers and Humans, which was followed by More on Computers and Humans. Then Wang advised "Step away from your computer!" and Drunknknite responded by Speaking up for Those Who Can't.
Somewhere along the line (ah yes, thanks Edwin Meyer!) I heard about FM Charles Hertan's Forcing Chess Moves: Using "Computer Eyes" to Improve Your Tactical Vision and read the sample generously provided, and I had a modest flash of insight about what my next steps need to be. (The excellent Phaderus commented on this post where I first mentioned the book, and had a lucid critique of the idea of trying to think like a computer, but wait a moment and we'll connect these dots to something hopefully useful)
I haven't seen the whole of Hertan's book, but the sample has some very thought-provoking ideas that bear directly on the current weaknesses in my game. It triggered a memory of Andy Soltis' book The Inner Game of Chess, and sure enough there is a chapter there entitled "Force"; it even includes one of the same examples (Fischer-Sherwin) given in the Hertan extract. But this is the part that really got me thinking:
"The first goal of any player aspiring to find more winning forcing moves in his/her games should be to CALCULATE TWO MOVES AHEAD WITH ABSOLUTE PRECISION."
Now that hit me pretty hard; do I currently calculate two moves ahead with absolute precision? Hmm...usually, but let's just look at the last game I posted; at least three times (moves 10, 30 and 35) I did not accurately calculate 2 moves (4 "ply") ahead, and this in a game I won! Hell's damn bells, two of them were advantageous captures that led directly to material gain and I didn't play them. I, you, we've all been told over and over, "Checks and captures, checks and captures..." meaning that we need to try and look at all checks and captures as a starting point for our calculations--if one of them wins, there's no need to search any further! I'm still not doing this with the consistency that will allow me to take on and defeat stronger players with any regularity.
In the Soltis book mentioned above he quotes World Champion M. Botvinnik saying after a loss to that he needed to perfect his calculation of three-move variations. Trying to think like a computer isn't exactly the answer, but modeling the computer's perfection in the calculation of two-move variations is already a step in the right direction. Instead of just "studying tactics" or doing exercises, I'm going to think about and research the best ways to do this and put them into practice. Maybe going over my own and other's game with only this in mind, all other considerations being ignored; maybe some of the mate-in-two problems that Hertan says he enjoys (and that can be surprisingly difficult to calculate with absolute precision).
Thinking and writing about this has in itself been good exercise, and I invite your ideas and comments on the subject.
Anyway, the other chess bloggers referred to above have got me thinking about how best to apply computer models to my own stated goal of improving results against humans (and its equivalent, continuing my USCF rating's upward trend [and for that matter my standard FICS rating's]).
It started when Soapstone referred to a Dana Mackenzie post on Bronstein on Computers and Humans, which was followed by More on Computers and Humans. Then Wang advised "Step away from your computer!" and Drunknknite responded by Speaking up for Those Who Can't.
Somewhere along the line (ah yes, thanks Edwin Meyer!) I heard about FM Charles Hertan's Forcing Chess Moves: Using "Computer Eyes" to Improve Your Tactical Vision and read the sample generously provided, and I had a modest flash of insight about what my next steps need to be. (The excellent Phaderus commented on this post where I first mentioned the book, and had a lucid critique of the idea of trying to think like a computer, but wait a moment and we'll connect these dots to something hopefully useful)
I haven't seen the whole of Hertan's book, but the sample has some very thought-provoking ideas that bear directly on the current weaknesses in my game. It triggered a memory of Andy Soltis' book The Inner Game of Chess, and sure enough there is a chapter there entitled "Force"; it even includes one of the same examples (Fischer-Sherwin) given in the Hertan extract. But this is the part that really got me thinking:
"The first goal of any player aspiring to find more winning forcing moves in his/her games should be to CALCULATE TWO MOVES AHEAD WITH ABSOLUTE PRECISION."
Now that hit me pretty hard; do I currently calculate two moves ahead with absolute precision? Hmm...usually, but let's just look at the last game I posted; at least three times (moves 10, 30 and 35) I did not accurately calculate 2 moves (4 "ply") ahead, and this in a game I won! Hell's damn bells, two of them were advantageous captures that led directly to material gain and I didn't play them. I, you, we've all been told over and over, "Checks and captures, checks and captures..." meaning that we need to try and look at all checks and captures as a starting point for our calculations--if one of them wins, there's no need to search any further! I'm still not doing this with the consistency that will allow me to take on and defeat stronger players with any regularity.
In the Soltis book mentioned above he quotes World Champion M. Botvinnik saying after a loss to that he needed to perfect his calculation of three-move variations. Trying to think like a computer isn't exactly the answer, but modeling the computer's perfection in the calculation of two-move variations is already a step in the right direction. Instead of just "studying tactics" or doing exercises, I'm going to think about and research the best ways to do this and put them into practice. Maybe going over my own and other's game with only this in mind, all other considerations being ignored; maybe some of the mate-in-two problems that Hertan says he enjoys (and that can be surprisingly difficult to calculate with absolute precision).
Thinking and writing about this has in itself been good exercise, and I invite your ideas and comments on the subject.
Monday, February 04, 2008
The Inner Game of Chess
Since I haven't tracked down my score book quite yet, I won't be posting my game from last week for at least another day or so; but not having the moves in front of me has had an unexpected bonus. Reflecting on this game and my recent run of fairly good results, plus a few things I’ve read in the wonderful and ever-expanding chess blogosphere, has had led me to some insights that might otherwise have been lost in the details of “21. f4? (Ra4! Bxc3 22. Rxh4 and White wins)” or whatever. Having concentrated on my games for the last few posts, let’s get into something with wider application, and more universal interest, than just mememe—though since I’m intimately familiar with them, these provided the jumping-off point.
I’m +5 -3 =1 starting with the Western States Open in October, with a performance rating of about 1810 over those games. Not overwhelming, but a pretty good run. It just occurred to me that by an unusual string of circumstances, 7 of these 9 games had me playing Black, an oddity of taking some byes in the Swiss system events. As I go back over these games in my mind I’m struck by a couple of things; I feel like I’ve been “lucky,” for want of a better word, in several of the games, but I really don’t believe in luck, especially in chess. In my Chess for Humans post in October I wrote:
We all know, intellectually, that chess is just too hard for anyone not to make mistakes, and plenty of them, during a game, yet so many of us have a tough time really feeling that, and just looking at the position in front of us and doing the best we can, regardless of how we got there.
During this tournament I did a pretty good job of just playing the position--and I also noticed that there were more and longer periods during the games when the rest of the tournament room, and the world, sort of faded away, and all I saw was the board in front of me.
Now this didn’t have anything to do with studying openings (of which I’ve done little lately), endgames or tactics. These are valuable and important, especially the tactics, and I’ve definitely cut down on blunders lately partly due to tactical training. Out of the 9 games I count one real screamer (hanging queen), two “two-movers,” and one game against an Expert where I missed a winning shot and then, punch-drunk, a draw a few moves later. In 5 of the 9 games (4 wins and a draw) I made no serious mistakes, as far as I can see within my own limitations. Here’s the big insight, the common denominator that can teach me (and you) a lesson; most of the blunders came in the period between moves 22 and 30, and in all cases they came as I was beginning to tire from the calculation that had come earlier; also in most cases I had less than the ideal amount of time on my clock, though I rarely get into “serious” time pressure, which for me is less than one minute per move. The one blunder or serious mistake that was different came on move 10 of a game when I was pretty ill, and I later “woke up” and won that one.
I suppose my pattern of errors is different and unique, so maybe I can’t teach anyone else a “lesson,” but this examination has been really useful. It relates closely to something that the excellent Blunderprone referred to in a recent post about one of his own serious blunders, and a comment from FM Jon Jacobs that “anyone” will find useful:
This is related to how strong you are: At 1600 and above, most people already know enough chess principles that they probably defeat themselves (lose by making moves they already know enough to recognize were wrong) more often than they lose due to either lack of knowledge or an opponent's superior play.
And above 1900 or so, I am convinced that nearly everyone is knowledgeable enough that they'd get far more benefit from working primarily on understanding and improving their own psychology so as to maximize their use of what they already know - rather than continuing to try and suck up still more and more book knowledge (which always seems to flee from a player's mind at the exact moment you need it during a game).
I've summarized the above line of thinking into a catchy slogan I intend to copyright: "Fire Your Coach. Hire a Shrink!"
YES. There may be more gold regarding improvement here than doing 1000 problems on CTS. Chess tactics study is useful, there can be no doubt, but in my case after 25 years of (sometimes sporadic) tournament chess I already know quite a bit, consciously and subconsciously, about pins, forks, double attacks, the King’s Indian and Queen’s Gambit Declined, space advantages, etc. etc. My recent run of modest successes seems mostly due to a good attitude at the board, trying hard and concentrating (relatively) better, not worrying unduly about earlier events in the game and (usually) striking when the winning chance finally presents itself. My opponents make mistakes, too, and I’ve done pretty well at just doing my best and then knowing when they’ve made a serious mistake and what to do about it.
The pattern of my bad errors that I’ve identified here leads me to the following actions that might minimize them: 1) Use less time and energy on the opening, and really concentrate on getting to move 20 (in my usual 30/90, G/60 time controls) with at least 30 minutes left, and plenty of energy left, as well. It seems I very rarely blunder now when I’m physically okay and don’t rush, so a formula for success would seem to be to avoid these circumstances. I can't always have a perfect night's sleep and a peaceful day before a game, but I do control how long I take on each move. 2) When I’m in the situations where I’m prone to blunder, be aware of it, don’t sweat it, and just try to play my best. I don’t get very upset about losses anymore (admittedly, the blown win against the Expert was a slight exception) and so I will just take it easy when tired and short of time, and thereby avoid the stress and rush that almost guarantees blunders, for me and most everyone else.
One more thing—when I had a study plan and posted about it every week I think it was good for me, whether I hit the targets or not, so here is my new one: One hour of Chess Tempo standard per week (my rating there dropped from 1801 to the high 1600s, so it’s a good time to start back up and show “progress!”), one longish internet game per week (probably the LEPers FICS tournament), and two hours of studying Grandmaster games or annotating my games (depending on circumstances). This will occupy my current available time to the full, or more. I still haven’t started the project of putting all my tournament games into ChessDB, but maybe I can sneak a few in here and there. Inputting these from the beginning of my career 25 years ago should provide some amusement and also some insight into my unique chess psychology and approach, and provide a lot more material for me to improve my “inner game.”
(ADDENDUM: After reading this again, it still seems to be mostly about me despite the statement in the first graph. Oh well, I hope it's still of general interest).
I’m +5 -3 =1 starting with the Western States Open in October, with a performance rating of about 1810 over those games. Not overwhelming, but a pretty good run. It just occurred to me that by an unusual string of circumstances, 7 of these 9 games had me playing Black, an oddity of taking some byes in the Swiss system events. As I go back over these games in my mind I’m struck by a couple of things; I feel like I’ve been “lucky,” for want of a better word, in several of the games, but I really don’t believe in luck, especially in chess. In my Chess for Humans post in October I wrote:
We all know, intellectually, that chess is just too hard for anyone not to make mistakes, and plenty of them, during a game, yet so many of us have a tough time really feeling that, and just looking at the position in front of us and doing the best we can, regardless of how we got there.
During this tournament I did a pretty good job of just playing the position--and I also noticed that there were more and longer periods during the games when the rest of the tournament room, and the world, sort of faded away, and all I saw was the board in front of me.
Now this didn’t have anything to do with studying openings (of which I’ve done little lately), endgames or tactics. These are valuable and important, especially the tactics, and I’ve definitely cut down on blunders lately partly due to tactical training. Out of the 9 games I count one real screamer (hanging queen), two “two-movers,” and one game against an Expert where I missed a winning shot and then, punch-drunk, a draw a few moves later. In 5 of the 9 games (4 wins and a draw) I made no serious mistakes, as far as I can see within my own limitations. Here’s the big insight, the common denominator that can teach me (and you) a lesson; most of the blunders came in the period between moves 22 and 30, and in all cases they came as I was beginning to tire from the calculation that had come earlier; also in most cases I had less than the ideal amount of time on my clock, though I rarely get into “serious” time pressure, which for me is less than one minute per move. The one blunder or serious mistake that was different came on move 10 of a game when I was pretty ill, and I later “woke up” and won that one.
I suppose my pattern of errors is different and unique, so maybe I can’t teach anyone else a “lesson,” but this examination has been really useful. It relates closely to something that the excellent Blunderprone referred to in a recent post about one of his own serious blunders, and a comment from FM Jon Jacobs that “anyone” will find useful:
This is related to how strong you are: At 1600 and above, most people already know enough chess principles that they probably defeat themselves (lose by making moves they already know enough to recognize were wrong) more often than they lose due to either lack of knowledge or an opponent's superior play.
And above 1900 or so, I am convinced that nearly everyone is knowledgeable enough that they'd get far more benefit from working primarily on understanding and improving their own psychology so as to maximize their use of what they already know - rather than continuing to try and suck up still more and more book knowledge (which always seems to flee from a player's mind at the exact moment you need it during a game).
I've summarized the above line of thinking into a catchy slogan I intend to copyright: "Fire Your Coach. Hire a Shrink!"
YES. There may be more gold regarding improvement here than doing 1000 problems on CTS. Chess tactics study is useful, there can be no doubt, but in my case after 25 years of (sometimes sporadic) tournament chess I already know quite a bit, consciously and subconsciously, about pins, forks, double attacks, the King’s Indian and Queen’s Gambit Declined, space advantages, etc. etc. My recent run of modest successes seems mostly due to a good attitude at the board, trying hard and concentrating (relatively) better, not worrying unduly about earlier events in the game and (usually) striking when the winning chance finally presents itself. My opponents make mistakes, too, and I’ve done pretty well at just doing my best and then knowing when they’ve made a serious mistake and what to do about it.
The pattern of my bad errors that I’ve identified here leads me to the following actions that might minimize them: 1) Use less time and energy on the opening, and really concentrate on getting to move 20 (in my usual 30/90, G/60 time controls) with at least 30 minutes left, and plenty of energy left, as well. It seems I very rarely blunder now when I’m physically okay and don’t rush, so a formula for success would seem to be to avoid these circumstances. I can't always have a perfect night's sleep and a peaceful day before a game, but I do control how long I take on each move. 2) When I’m in the situations where I’m prone to blunder, be aware of it, don’t sweat it, and just try to play my best. I don’t get very upset about losses anymore (admittedly, the blown win against the Expert was a slight exception) and so I will just take it easy when tired and short of time, and thereby avoid the stress and rush that almost guarantees blunders, for me and most everyone else.
One more thing—when I had a study plan and posted about it every week I think it was good for me, whether I hit the targets or not, so here is my new one: One hour of Chess Tempo standard per week (my rating there dropped from 1801 to the high 1600s, so it’s a good time to start back up and show “progress!”), one longish internet game per week (probably the LEPers FICS tournament), and two hours of studying Grandmaster games or annotating my games (depending on circumstances). This will occupy my current available time to the full, or more. I still haven’t started the project of putting all my tournament games into ChessDB, but maybe I can sneak a few in here and there. Inputting these from the beginning of my career 25 years ago should provide some amusement and also some insight into my unique chess psychology and approach, and provide a lot more material for me to improve my “inner game.”
(ADDENDUM: After reading this again, it still seems to be mostly about me despite the statement in the first graph. Oh well, I hope it's still of general interest).
Monday, January 14, 2008
A Brief Excuse for My Lameosity, Plus Points to Ponder from Polly and Wang
In the comments to my last, Liquid Egg Product rightly asks for the promised game post but I must admit I didn't bring it with me today and also, I haven't got it in the kind of shape I require to make it public...it's embarrassing to post an annotated game and have someone comment something like "Nice game, but if he plays 14. . h6 you're absolutely, completely, totally busted!" and not have said that yourself. Anyway, I don't think it will be posted until Wednesday.
I did have enough time to note that it was a pretty lucky win, on the order of some game I read about from like 1907 where the guy got the brilliancy prize for his "extraordinary deep pawn sacrifice" and after he'd safely pocketed the gold coins he 'fessed up that he'd outright blundered a pawn and then attacked his ass off in pure desperation. I already noted that this was the case here, but now that I looked at the game a little, even more so! Well, it was one of those games where I made all of my mistakes at the beginning and he made his at the end, and we all know which of those is better!
Meanwhile, a couple of thought-provoking posts that I wanted to direct your attention to:
Wang on Searching for the truth (be the next you, part 1, chapter 2). Great exploration of the questions of: What is chess, and why do we play it?
What I’m saying is that we should be personalizing our chess experience and not try to monkey what someone else has done before. It is good to gain and from what someone else has done before you, but that should be the beginning of your journey of self discovery, not the ending.
Absolutely right on, beautifully said! I've noted before here on this blog that various players have used seemingly radically different methods to achieve big ratings gains as adults, and that tells me that no one has "The Answer" about training; you really do have to work it out for yourself. A really good trainer might assist, but there aren't many of those available (and affordable).
Do what feels right to you, check the results, and adjust your approach accordingly. Herein lie the seeds of all wisdom, Grasshopper.
Polly of Castling Queen Side has a very interesting post on the psychology of the draw offer:
I think when a player changes his goal from trying to beat his higher rated opponent, to simply drawing the opponent his play changes. Turning down the draw seems to unsettle the player.
In my own career I haven't offered very many draws, usually only when the position is sterile, but I certainly turned down quite a few when I was younger and went on to lose. I now accept draws as a normal part of the game, and also firmly believe nowadays that a draw is always better than a loss, though how I could ever have thought otherwise is a mystery to me...
As far as the psychological component I note that the last couple of times I turned down draw offers, in this game from the Western States Open and last week, the opponent did play some weak moves pretty soon afterward. I think draw offers from a position of hope (I sure hope he takes it!) are a bad idea, because when turned down they leave the offerer in a bad position psychologically; "Drats, my easy draw is not coming and now I have to tough it out!"
There are lots of reasons that a draw may the logical result of a game of chess, but the fact that you're hoping for one isn't among them!
I did have enough time to note that it was a pretty lucky win, on the order of some game I read about from like 1907 where the guy got the brilliancy prize for his "extraordinary deep pawn sacrifice" and after he'd safely pocketed the gold coins he 'fessed up that he'd outright blundered a pawn and then attacked his ass off in pure desperation. I already noted that this was the case here, but now that I looked at the game a little, even more so! Well, it was one of those games where I made all of my mistakes at the beginning and he made his at the end, and we all know which of those is better!
Meanwhile, a couple of thought-provoking posts that I wanted to direct your attention to:
Wang on Searching for the truth (be the next you, part 1, chapter 2). Great exploration of the questions of: What is chess, and why do we play it?
What I’m saying is that we should be personalizing our chess experience and not try to monkey what someone else has done before. It is good to gain and from what someone else has done before you, but that should be the beginning of your journey of self discovery, not the ending.
Absolutely right on, beautifully said! I've noted before here on this blog that various players have used seemingly radically different methods to achieve big ratings gains as adults, and that tells me that no one has "The Answer" about training; you really do have to work it out for yourself. A really good trainer might assist, but there aren't many of those available (and affordable).
Do what feels right to you, check the results, and adjust your approach accordingly. Herein lie the seeds of all wisdom, Grasshopper.
Polly of Castling Queen Side has a very interesting post on the psychology of the draw offer:
I think when a player changes his goal from trying to beat his higher rated opponent, to simply drawing the opponent his play changes. Turning down the draw seems to unsettle the player.
In my own career I haven't offered very many draws, usually only when the position is sterile, but I certainly turned down quite a few when I was younger and went on to lose. I now accept draws as a normal part of the game, and also firmly believe nowadays that a draw is always better than a loss, though how I could ever have thought otherwise is a mystery to me...
As far as the psychological component I note that the last couple of times I turned down draw offers, in this game from the Western States Open and last week, the opponent did play some weak moves pretty soon afterward. I think draw offers from a position of hope (I sure hope he takes it!) are a bad idea, because when turned down they leave the offerer in a bad position psychologically; "Drats, my easy draw is not coming and now I have to tough it out!"
There are lots of reasons that a draw may the logical result of a game of chess, but the fact that you're hoping for one isn't among them!
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