Pattern Recognition - Why I Never Fully Bought into the Pattern Acquisition Advice

There are a couple of books by Van de Outeweetering about Pattern Recognition, Improving PR and Training PR.  I haven't bought them, and I may do so in the future, but I haven't yet.

Here's why.  But first, a short prologue.  I have read a good deal about chess improvement since joining chess.com in early 2017.  I have read many comments about pattern recognition (thus pattern acquisition), and how important it is to obtain, ingrain, integrate, and internalize various chess patterns into your chess intuition which in turn will help you in making good moves on the board in your games.  This, in turn, affects your study master games.  Do you go over them rapidly?  More patterns in a short time.  Or do you go over them slowly, guess-the-move, and ingrain the patterns more deeply, choosing quality over quantity?

What about the 7 Circles method?  Rapidly blasting tactical patterns in your brain in accelerating fashion.  

Moreover, there's a commenter, FieldsofForce who strongly advocates building up your pattern memory bank for Openings, Endgames, and Tactics.  He's the Apostle of Pattern Recognition and Acquisition.

But here's what I didn't understand.  Take an old SuperGM World Champion like Karpov.  He has to know way more patterns than almost anyone else.  Yet I think if there was a 6 game match between him and GM Sam Shankland, Sam would win pretty easily.  Why?  After all, Sam knows less patterns than Anatoly.   Or let's take a more mundane example.  Let's take a 50-year old 1800 Class A player who plays an 1800 9-year old player who's been studying a lot.  Quite often the 9-year old will beat the 50-year old even though the 50-year old has way more patterns memorized.  

Why?  What does this tell me?  Simply that pattern recognition and acquisition, while important and vital, is not everything.  There are other things.  Like DeirdreSkye likes to say, it's Chess Skills.  Pattern Recognition and Acquisition is Chess Knowledge.  Knowledge is vital, but problem-solving and decision-making skills at the board with the relentless clock ticking away in ever more rapid time controls is just as vital, if not more so.

Here's a very recent chessbase article which substantiates my respectful reservations about pattern recognition:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/pattern-recognition-fact-or-fiction

I think patterns in chess are just simple ideas the players should be familiar with. In Van de Outeweetering's book, he simply explains how powerful the Knight on d3 or d6 can be. So, in the examples, he showed how GM sacrificed this and that to create the so-called "octopus" Knight. So basically, what I got from that book is that Knight on d3/d6 or f4/f5 .... is worth to invest.

Let's take Boden's mate. This is a relatively simple configuration of two pieces that can move diagonally, one on the dark squares, and one on the light squares. It happens to occur frequently when your opponent has castled queenside. At least for me, once I knew this, I was far more likely to see it was available. It isn't that I could not find it before, but I was less likely to do so. Also the amount of time I would have to spend to find it would tend to be more as well.

But certainly it is true that you need to still do the calculation to back up that it works in the current position.

I believe in patterns, regardless of what they are called, simply because after doing tactics and positional puzzles for a while, I become much quicker at recognizing certain commonly occurring things that happen.

For example, one way or another, most players of any quality learn not to place their queen in line with their king with no other pieces between them.

I really don't care if you call this a pattern, a theme, a absolute pin, or a man from mars.

Some how you recognize that this configuration means danger or opportunity, and you are more likely to exploit it, or avoid it. Are there times you need to do it? Of course. But at least you'll be on the alert that you should calculate very carefully.

Pattern recognition just comes naturally. Do not worry about pattern recognition.

The way to improve is by learning the mistakes you make over and over again and then try to avoid making the same mistakes.

The reason most players rated below class A do poorly is that they make the same mistakes over and over again. Now it is fairly obvious that most players do not know they make the same mistakes over and over again--so what should you do if you are rated under class A?

It is simple--get a high rated player--at least 400 to 500 rating points stronger than you--to point out your mistakes.

Then make a list and try hard to not make the mistakes on the list.

 This will require that you play at the rate of at least 15 minutes for each side--actually 30 minutes for each side is better. And longer is ok.

By the way this making the same mistakes over and over again does not just happen in chess. I play duplicate bridge and see players making the same mistakes over and over again--even 20-40 years making the same mistakes over and over again. [and they never improve]

And I agree with you that it isn't everything. A pattern or whatever you call it, is just a short cut calling your attention to a potential opportunity or problem. The skill to use it/survive it still needs to be developed.

This is an interesting topic to me. Thanks Senior Patzer for pointing the article out.

As for mistakes, I'm certainly below class A, and I certainly make more than a few. What I have found is that mistakes come in different varieties. One of my huge mistakes and impediments to getting better is the desire to over rely on intuition.  I see a pattern and just believe it is going to work. "Pinning the Queen to the King" has to be right. Meanwhile I've missed the point of why they allowed it in the first place. Sometimes, I have to force myself to calculate things.

Pattern recognition usually mostly comes or starts at the class A level. There is some pattern recognition before that but there is a lot more at class A and higher.

If you are below Class A you might see patterns that are incorrect?!

In Boris Gulkos book "Lessons With A Grandmaster" A friend that is a pyschologist explains why chess players ablity decreases with age.  What decreases is tactical ability, while strategy stays roughly the same.  I do not remember the exact terminology used, but one part of memory "chrystalline" and the other which i do not recall the name of.  But the part of the memory that holds tactics starts to decrease with age.

Is the pattern like Knight on d3/d6 a tactics or a strategy. Or in general, is the pattern recognition book a tactical book or a strategical book?

Thanks Ponz.   

The thrust of my post was simply that in my research into Chess Improvement, I had come across Pattern Recognition quite a bit.  I was going to exaggerate a bit, and say that some advocates touted it as the Holy Grail, but that wouldn't be either fair or accurate.  Suffice to say, that I would agree with you that Pattern Recognition is important and comes naturally, but like Botvinnik and others claim, the regular self-analysis of games, and diligently pulling out the weeds out of your game, i.e., the mistakes, will help one's game immensely.

Botvinnik, for example, highly advocated going over one's games.  And he exclaimed, that in one of his losses, his calculation skills were an old weakness of his and it reared up again in the game he lost.  So the obvious take-away is that he recognized early on in his career that he was a weak calculator, relative to his peers, and he worked extremely hard to improve in calculation, ..., so much so that he became World Champion!!

I know that personally, when I was younger I was able to play blindfold chess with some facility. Now that I am older, I can still work with a position in my mind without the position in front of me, but it has to be a position that I am intimately familiar with. That has to affect my ability to calculate.

Sometimes a pattern can be both. For example, pins can be exploited both to win material or to secure a positional advantage. There is an absolutely lovely example of this in Yusupov, "Build Up Your Chess, The Fundamentals" (Book 1). It is in Chapter 11, diagram 12. In that position, you use a pin for the strategic purpose of tying up 2 of your opponents pieces. That leaves you effectively a piece up in the ending, with a winning advantage.

It's when you call up a fancy restaurant called Pattern Recognition, and politely and respectfully ask for a table reservation at the time you want for the number of people in your party.

Fluid memory? Working memory?

I'd guess working memory has a lot to do with it. You have to be able to hold a lot of positions and their evaluations in your mind for comparison to do proper analysis. If the position is complicated, then you'd have to be able to hold a lot while doing your calculations... and calculations also tax your working memory as you decide what to prune and such.

I mean... maybe.

But also maybe the kid knows more. It's not like the guy has been studying chess intensely for 50 years. If he has, he'd be above 1800.

As for the Karpov thing, that's just age. Prime Karpov would **** all over Shankland

I don't understand the point of this threat. If OP wants to discuss cognition in psychology, chess.com is an inappropriate site. If OP wants to know how to improve his pattern recognition or whatever the right word is, he should stop talking about how old Karpov cannot beat younger GM. It is way off the topic

Folks have touted pattern recognition and pattern acquisition as the key, or a key to chess excellence.  I.e., the more patterns memorized, the better the chess player.

That's not always the case.  That's the point of this post.  In general, it's probably true that the player with more patterns stored in memory will be the better player, BUT there are other factors which will mitigate against the player with the greater pattern recognition, and they'll still lose to the player that recognizes less patterns, even sometimes knowing substantially less patterns than the more experienced player.

And, you want to use van de Oudeweetering books on Chess patterns as examples of "pattern recognition" training method?