How many rating points is a photographic memory worth?

I find that so strange though. When I do those training exercises that ask you to replay a whole game in your head (some voice tells you the moves), I would be ok for the first few moves, but would eventually struggle. I was not as strong as I am today -- I was probably under 1800 OTB -- but I'm not sure if a lot would change.

But you're saying that even if one not only had to simply play the moves out, but to actually be thinking about plans and strategies based on all this during a game, they might still be able to do it even as a low class player? I have never tried blindfold chess games, but I am assuming that it would be more difficult than the exercises I described above; am I mistaken? As a weak player one of my fundamental problems was specifically that I would freak out when trying to evaluate a position that is not on the board, but is a variation being played out in my head, resulting in a new imagined board position. That very thing only seems to become easier as a result of experience; maybe it depends on the kind of brain you are born with :)

I understand that on the other side of the coin a strong player needs to know what to calculate -- absolutely -- but they are still very good and accurate with what they do in fact calculate. I admit, it is hard to believe that a 1500 player could play a game of blindfold chess, at least without forgetting his position or making some really silly moves.

Not sure which is harder. If you play a game, there are long pauses between each move where you can review the position and make it stick in your mind. After that the position only changes one move at a time, so it's not terribly hard (in theory ;) . If a voice makes you play though a game you may not have time to make the new position completely clear to yourself.

I can barely play a whole game without messing up the position (unless my opponent is a complete beginner). So I also find it really amazing that apparently some players rated lower than me find it easier.

An expert at my club impressed me by playing two games at once blindfold (I was one of his opponents, and I was so sure he would forget the position I played passively and drew)... he even went into the endgame where both games were moving pawns on the same side of the board... I don't know how he kept track of it...

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I'm not.

And nobody reveals the secrets.

Like this line is ready on page 4 and the mayority of the people think a sharp memory is valueble, a litle bit or a lot, seams to be the debate. But nobody is talking on how to improve memory. Or how to learn to play blindfold.... ect.

How much is not worrying about that which you don't have(or aren't going to aspire for) worth?

Well, I expected someone to take at least a little bit of offense.

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So far in this thread, this post is the most useful, and builds on a few that were hopeful beginnings.

There's been a lot of discussion of this topic on other threads, and I don't have time to track it down there. Here are some bullets.

Photographic memory would be a liability, not an asset. Its effect on Elo can best be expressed as a negative number. Such a person might still develop chess skill, but this skill would develop despite the handicap of photographic memory, not because of it.

It is often said that Fischer had photographic memory. This statement is made by those who misunderstand the research and the terminology.

Susan Polgar participated in an instructive exercise for the documentary My Beautiful Brain. A truck drove by with a chess position painted on the side. The position was from a real game. After seeing it for the few seconds it took for the truck to drive by the sidewalk cafe where she was sitting, she was able to set the position up on the board. The truck turned around at the end of the street and drove by again. It had another chess diagram on the other side. The pieces were randomly arranged. She could not reproduce the position. A PERSON WITH PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY WOULD SEE NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A RANDOM ARRANGEMENT AND A PATTERNED ONE.

This truck episode mimics research done by Alfred Binet in the nineteenth century at the onset of his illustrious career in psychology. He hypothesized that strong chess players had photographic memory, and demonstrated that pattern recognition was something entirely different. Adrian de Groot built upon Binet's work in the mid-twentieth century.

Effective memory is necessary for chess skill. Photographic memory is ineffective and inefficient.

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Kasparov says in Kasparov on Kasparov (2011) that he knew most of the capitals when he was seven. Perhaps that's why Carlsen hired him as a trainer.

Kasparov learned this information because his father gave him a globe as a birthday gift.

I knew the capitals and flags of most nations six months after I started collecting stamps (i was nine when I got a stamp collection album for Xmas).

Does Carlsen remember what he eats for breakfast?

Memory is super-important for chess. At the very least, a person with a good memory has high potential to achieve a good rating.

lol

To think that a person with photographic memory would not ALSO be able to recognise patterns is ridiculous. To think that it would be a handicap is equally absurd.

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You clearly are wholly unacquainted with the professional literature on the subject for your assertion has been demonstrated through experimental science to be in error.

I am unacquainted with the professional literature on the subject, but not with common sense.

I don't think that anyone's saying a photographic memory prevents you from being able to recognize a pattern, but the two things are certinaly not the same -- i.e. a photographic memory does not automatically impart you with some kind of pattern recognition capabilities.

Yes, I'm not saying they're not two seperate things, I just believe the same person could possess both abilities, same as any two talents.

I think photographic memory will give me at least 500 points over what I have now. Maybe more.

Common sense is notoriously imprecise, and frequently horribly wrong. It serves us better when it avoids technical jargon. There is no question that a good memory is an asset in the development of chess skill. Likewise, calculation is an important skill. Photographic memory, on the other hand, is a specific talent, and it is one that fills the mind with non-essential distracting information. One major difference I'm beginning to understand between strong club players (my level) and Grandmasters is not so much the positions they examine that I overlook for these are fewer than they were. Rather, the amount of time that I invest in exploring bad ideas that they would never consider accounts for the difference in strength. Distraction by unsound notions is a liability. A photographic memory would have a tendency to increase this sort of distraction. Additional useful skills are necessary to mute its negative effects.

A photographic memory would be very useful for openings, for middlegame plans, and for certain types of endings. The openings portion alone, for me, would be worth about 100-150 ELO, is my guess.

Well, common sense is something the "Talent Theory" seems to rely on a bit too much. "He's so good at this, it must be magic." But I hope we know that magic doesn't exist and there is a process to any occurrence, whether it's easy to find or not. So I agree with Ziryab that "common sense" can be overrated, and presumptuous at times.

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Memory, yes. Photographic memory, no.

You should watch the documentary series My Beatiful Brain. It will help with your understanding of the kind of memory that seems to help chess players, and the inaccurate label that folks tend to use to describe it. The brief exercise they did with Susan Polgar and a truck with two chess diagrams on the sides highlights the difference between pattern recognition and photographic memory. Polgar trained the one that helps, and may have been born with abilities that aided the training.