Coming a bit late to this one, fascinated by the topic, identify as a "reflector" - gravitate toward what those players do. Would love to hear more about this "positional sketches" technique.
Glad you find it interesting, flakefly! I was playing a tournament over the weekend where I talked a lot with my good friend GM Moulthun Ly, who I believe is a "refector" also—incredibly high level of understanding of ideas and concepts. The way he described working on the opening to middlegame phase really connects well with what Rowson mentioned in "positional sketches"—one of the clear differences between myself (IM) and Moulthun (GM) definitely comes out in the depth of understanding of particular structures due to deep study, which can be useful in knowing how to navigate positions with subtle differences to other reference points.
Interesting points. I am pretty sure my intuition is of little value in chess!
I am very much enjoying your chess blog btw. My chess is execrable (I played briefly at uni 30 years ago), but my 12 year old son is more keen; he and I are in a hiatus after winning an equal number of games each. I won the last 3 games, but he keeps talking about "Magnus Carlsen" and mentioned he has an Elo rating from playing online... so its pretty clear he wants to humiliate his dad in the next game.
Glad you found it interesting, Simon. If you're a neuroscience professor (as it says in your bio), perhaps you might have some useful knowledge about intuition from that angle.
Thanks Junta. Yes, indeed I am. I work on circuit mechanisms of cognition and memory in a brain area called the hippocampus, and it is interesting to think about how chess engages this! Probably quite a lot, I think. Unfortunately, we can only get at the actual mechanistic level in mice, for various reasons, and they aren't so good at playing chess. There must be some studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans though, I must do a literature search. I have been thinking a bit about commonalities in cognition between tasks like chess, learning Kanji, and math like Einstein-notation tensor calculus. (All having spatial cognition and memory aspects, but differences in the pattern space and what you do with the information).
I think I originally found your blog because I was looking for an old friend of the same surname, Emi, who I believe also now lives in Canberra. (And then just followed your twitter out of interest). I know its a fairly common name, but say hello if you come across her!
Fascinating! Would love to read if you write about something like on those commonalities. I'm personally very interested in experts in fields such as neuroscience, sports science and psychology sharing some of their expertise on a chess context. I'm reading a book by Anders Hansen on the effects of exercise on the brain at the moment, in the hope of motivating me to get back into exercising more again, for my chess.
Hmm, Emi, I don't think I know of her, but will do. The Japanese population is quite small here (perhaps a 1000?) so nice to know there's another Ikeda :-)
OK, I will definitely include that as one of the topics for a substack then. (Your stack, together with Brain Pizza by Shane O'Mara, has persuaded me that putting chapter tasters on Substack could be a good way to make myself resurrect my book project which has been on the back burner for far too long).
I don't know the Hansen book (but just googled it, and I think I agree with all his points). Sudoku, brain games etc are useless, except for getting better at sudoku. Few things transfer. I think the best thing we have that transfers is to just get as much blood flowing through the brain as possible, and that is exercise. Personally, I do this by run-commuting through London from the train station to work a few times a week. As a bonus, I find that you can think through problems while running. Instead when cycling the attentional demands are different, and I find I don't think through problems at the same time. (But sometimes, not thinking is what is needed too).
Yes, I figured the Japanese community in Canberra can't be that big. Emi-san was a huge positive influence on me, at a time long ago.
I'm always a bit conflicted when talking about intuition, because I feel it's one of the most important aspects of one's chess game, but at the same time the process for improving it is very slow and intangible (at least relatively to other areas of the game).
To most people, statements like "just trust yourself" seems a lot less actionable than "do more tactics".
I think that's probably also one of the reasons that there isn't much content on this topic (at least that I'm aware of) online.
Great points, Sam. Something as abstract as intuition is hard to work on in a tangible manner, and it's more something that just improves as your chess improves over the years. Not something most people even think about usually. I have a difficult relationship with my intuition so I wanted to write this one, and perhaps it's the kind of area in your chess you might only try to work on if you're the kind of person who thinks about improving your intuition in the first place!
Coming a bit late to this one, fascinated by the topic, identify as a "reflector" - gravitate toward what those players do. Would love to hear more about this "positional sketches" technique.
Glad you find it interesting, flakefly! I was playing a tournament over the weekend where I talked a lot with my good friend GM Moulthun Ly, who I believe is a "refector" also—incredibly high level of understanding of ideas and concepts. The way he described working on the opening to middlegame phase really connects well with what Rowson mentioned in "positional sketches"—one of the clear differences between myself (IM) and Moulthun (GM) definitely comes out in the depth of understanding of particular structures due to deep study, which can be useful in knowing how to navigate positions with subtle differences to other reference points.
Interesting points. I am pretty sure my intuition is of little value in chess!
I am very much enjoying your chess blog btw. My chess is execrable (I played briefly at uni 30 years ago), but my 12 year old son is more keen; he and I are in a hiatus after winning an equal number of games each. I won the last 3 games, but he keeps talking about "Magnus Carlsen" and mentioned he has an Elo rating from playing online... so its pretty clear he wants to humiliate his dad in the next game.
Glad you found it interesting, Simon. If you're a neuroscience professor (as it says in your bio), perhaps you might have some useful knowledge about intuition from that angle.
Thanks Junta. Yes, indeed I am. I work on circuit mechanisms of cognition and memory in a brain area called the hippocampus, and it is interesting to think about how chess engages this! Probably quite a lot, I think. Unfortunately, we can only get at the actual mechanistic level in mice, for various reasons, and they aren't so good at playing chess. There must be some studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans though, I must do a literature search. I have been thinking a bit about commonalities in cognition between tasks like chess, learning Kanji, and math like Einstein-notation tensor calculus. (All having spatial cognition and memory aspects, but differences in the pattern space and what you do with the information).
I think I originally found your blog because I was looking for an old friend of the same surname, Emi, who I believe also now lives in Canberra. (And then just followed your twitter out of interest). I know its a fairly common name, but say hello if you come across her!
Fascinating! Would love to read if you write about something like on those commonalities. I'm personally very interested in experts in fields such as neuroscience, sports science and psychology sharing some of their expertise on a chess context. I'm reading a book by Anders Hansen on the effects of exercise on the brain at the moment, in the hope of motivating me to get back into exercising more again, for my chess.
Hmm, Emi, I don't think I know of her, but will do. The Japanese population is quite small here (perhaps a 1000?) so nice to know there's another Ikeda :-)
OK, I will definitely include that as one of the topics for a substack then. (Your stack, together with Brain Pizza by Shane O'Mara, has persuaded me that putting chapter tasters on Substack could be a good way to make myself resurrect my book project which has been on the back burner for far too long).
I don't know the Hansen book (but just googled it, and I think I agree with all his points). Sudoku, brain games etc are useless, except for getting better at sudoku. Few things transfer. I think the best thing we have that transfers is to just get as much blood flowing through the brain as possible, and that is exercise. Personally, I do this by run-commuting through London from the train station to work a few times a week. As a bonus, I find that you can think through problems while running. Instead when cycling the attentional demands are different, and I find I don't think through problems at the same time. (But sometimes, not thinking is what is needed too).
Yes, I figured the Japanese community in Canberra can't be that big. Emi-san was a huge positive influence on me, at a time long ago.
がんばってください。
Sounds great, Simon.
Glad to hear another expert agreeing with Hansen's points, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I'm always a bit conflicted when talking about intuition, because I feel it's one of the most important aspects of one's chess game, but at the same time the process for improving it is very slow and intangible (at least relatively to other areas of the game).
To most people, statements like "just trust yourself" seems a lot less actionable than "do more tactics".
I think that's probably also one of the reasons that there isn't much content on this topic (at least that I'm aware of) online.
Great points, Sam. Something as abstract as intuition is hard to work on in a tangible manner, and it's more something that just improves as your chess improves over the years. Not something most people even think about usually. I have a difficult relationship with my intuition so I wanted to write this one, and perhaps it's the kind of area in your chess you might only try to work on if you're the kind of person who thinks about improving your intuition in the first place!