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The Art of Noticing
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The Art of Noticing

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Renate-Irene
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Noticing is a very common thing; we notice things all the time, then how can it be the core of creativity, as Perkins[1] asserts? Isn't creativity an unusual ability, given to only a few?  In this blog, I will explore these ideas as they relate to chess.  

Overview

Introduction – What Do We Mean by 'Noticing?'

What is noticing?  It is the sudden awareness of something.  It goes beyond seeing, as we "see many things" without these things gaining our attention.  In chess, we may see a knight, but not notice the potential of a knight fork, ouch.

It also differs from deliberately looking for something, such as searching the chessboard for a possible knight fork.  Deliberate search often requires intense concentration and, at times, calculation, consuming extra energy.  If we focus on the wrong idea, as is often the case, this turns out to be a waste of cognitive resources.

One of the great assets of grandmasters is their ability to know when and where to expend their energy.[2] A part of their secret is to recognize critical positions and threats intuitively.  Intuition developed through study and play over time.

But what helps them notice a critical position?  How do I start to develop these skills?  Start by mastering the secret of the art of noticing.

Chess and the Power of Noticing

There are different aspects of a situation that encourage us to either notice something or not notice something.  What people do or do not notice differs based on their abilities, knowledge, and skill level.  If we fail to notice an important aspect of a position, we may fail to assess a position accurately or miss a tactical opportunity. 

In chess, failing to notice something relevant to the position is often referred to as chess blindness and results in blunders.  Thus, while noticing enables us to explore chess creatively, the absence of noticing may seriously hinder our game.

So, the solution to all our chess problems is to notice, notice, notice!  Right?

Not quite, as every chess player knows, chess is not that simple.

Excessive noticing overloads your cognitive resources; it's like throwing a huge number of puzzle pieces in front of someone and asking them to put them all together without providing them with a picture.  The challenge of sorting them by color and shape makes the task unwieldy and very time-consuming.

The key is to notice the things relevant to a particular position.  Not noticing the relevant features can lead to a lost game.  For example, you may have a great plan for a mating attack, but your opponent may have defenses you did not notice.

The Art of Noticing

Before discussing the art of noticing, I would like to tell the story of Alexander Fleming,[3] which illustrates the creative power of noticing.  The story is well-known, but generally, the focus is on the importance of discovery and the related creative aspects.  I want to revisit this story in terms of noticing.

 I will focus on the anecdotal version, which attributes the contamination of the bacteria culture to an open window, which Fleming forgot to close.  Taking a creative license, I'll pretend that Fleming worked for a company and was not lucky enough to be an independent researcher, which allowed him to follow his interest.  Here is a possible scenario.

Hypothetical Conversation:

Boss: How can you be so careless and leave the window open?  You contaminated the culture!  All the work and money wasted.

Flemming: But, Sir, please notice, there are rings around the mucus, and the bacteria are dead.

Boss: That is the point, the bacteria are dead, and you were supposed to grow healthy bacteria.

Flemming: But isn't the reason for the experiment to learn how to reduce infections by killing the bacteria?

Boss: That may be so, but there are procedures, there is protocol, and the first procedure is to grow healthy bacteria, and you failed miserably in this task.  Learn to follow procedures first before going off half-cooked ideas.

Flemming: But, but –

Boss: There are no buts.  Remember, there are no shortcuts.

Now, go and start over again, and this time close the window!!

Luckily, that was not the case, as the quote illustrates:[4]

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.  When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer.  But I suppose that was exactly what I did.

— Alexander Fleming

 

 And as chess players, we do not have any bosses who tell us how to play.  So, we are free to follow any idea that fascinates us.  Chess is an entrepreneurial enterprise.  But be careful, don't let the computer become the boss.  Computers, like the boss in Fleming's story, are programmed to find the "best" move based on current knowledge.

Looking at the story above, what was the difference between Fleming's focus and that of his boss?  Why did Flemming see the potential of the unexpected "dead bacteria" and his boss did not?  A simplistic answer is that Flemming was a genius, and his boss was not.  But let us think deeper.  As Mencken noticed:

 "There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.[5]"

Flemming may have been a genius, but maybe the reason he was a genius was that he perfected the art of noticing unexpected information in terms of a specific goal and the willingness to follow new ideas when they occurred.  We can develop our noticing skills by practicing.  Different strategies can be used to develop and discipline your noticing skills; we will discuss those in a future blog post.  But you don't have to wait.  Take a challenging tactics position and look at it and write down what you notice – no analysis – no calculation, no following of insights, just things you notice.

Start by looking at a position for 30 seconds and increase your time.  Your goal is to notice as many things as possible.  Think of it as visual brainstorming.  When the time is up, you can start to synthesize and evaluate the information, but not before.  Put your brain to work and remember, computers can calculate, but they can't notice.

 

[1] The Minds Best Work by David Perkins (1881), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

[2] Toward a General Theory of Expertise (1991) Ericsson, K.A., Smith, J. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming

[5] H. L. Mencken https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/17/solution/

 

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Bill Lombardy and Bobby Fischer Poem

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I have decided to start a series of blogs in the new year. As I thought about it, many ideas presented themselves. I may pursue them later, but as it is Christmas time, I thought I would start with a series of blogs honoring three people who have deeply and profoundly affected my attitude toward chess and life. The first blog, today’s blog, will set the background. 

Toward the end of his life, William  Lombardy visited the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco, California. I remember when he came in and sat next to me on the first day of the Imre Koenig event. This was a special two-day round-robin event where invited grandmasters competed against each other. If I remember correctly, there were only four players, Daniel Naroditsky and Sam Shankland among them.

I did not recognize the stranger who sat next to me, but John Donaldson, the MI chess director, did. He greeted him and brought out an old picture of a chess event with Lombardy sitting in the front row. Handing the picture to Lombardy, he asked Lombardy if he remembered. Lombardy smiled. Then John invited him to join us the following day for a special grandmaster luncheon.

After the luncheon, while I was cleaning up, Lombardy and I talked. I asked him what I could do to improve in chess. I told him I studied games by analyzing them, but It was a very slow and time-consuming process. He suggested that I spend 10 minutes a day going quickly through as many games as possible. “That won’t work,” I responded. So he tried a different track; he asked me if I stopped it every few minutes to analyze it when I listened to music. Hmm, he had a point; I do not stop the music every few minutes while listening. Lombardy and I spent an hour or two that afternoon discussing many things. We had a wonderful time.

After that event, Lombardy often visited the MI, especially on Tuesday nights when the place was buzzing with people. Tuesday is the night of the historic Tuesday Night Marathon, which often draws more than 100 players.

As participants finish, they gather in the skittles room, a special room with walls covered with pictures of famous chess players. A tall picture of Tal smoking his cigar is on one side, a photograph of Spassky giving a simultaneous exhibition at the Mechanics Institute on the other side. Over the door to the office is a framed picture of Bobby Fischer on the cover of Time magazine. Additional pictures are scattered over the walls, such as Frank Sinatra and Walter Browne playing chess, giving the room the comfortable feeling of a home rather than a club. The room is filled with solid wooden chess tables, each with its history.

On Tuesday nights, the room is full as the players of the Tuesday night marathon stream in. “What would you have done if I played this?’’ “Why did you play this move?” “What were you thinking here?” “You nearly got me there.”  “Why didn’t you play this move?”

These questions, asked quietly at various tables as players analyze their games at each table, give the room a quiet buzz of fellowship and camaraderie. Lombardy and I were sitting at one of the tables across from each other. He had been talking to one of his friends, who just had left. So I set down across from him, handing him a poem I wrote about Bobby Fischer. I always wondered if my portrayal of Bobby Fischer was accurate, and here I had someone who knew him well. I was not going to let this opportunity slip by.

At first, he was reluctant to read it, but he agreed. As he started reading the poem, I heard him comment, “I like this….” “The wording here needs to be changed…” etc. When he had finished, I looked eagerly at him. “Did I capture Bobby Fischer?” He nodded; there was a pause, and then I heard him quietly say, “It could have been me.”