Chess theory

eastyz,

Some things you could do to fascinate us and maybe convince a few more people would be to describe your overall method in general terms, or to describe one piece of it in detail. Either way shouldn't disclose too much of your method, which I understand you want to publish. (Whether some people here are worth convincing is another question, entirely! )

For example, is your method a collection of simpler methods, or a collection of methods of the same magnitude that have to be correlated all at once, what type of scope does each individual method encompass (certain types of positions? certain combinations of pieces? a certain range of depths? etc.), or what?

Another interesting question, is how do you compress your process down to the point that it doesn't take far too long.  I'm guessing heuristic shortcuts within the process from just hundreds and hundreds of hours using it.

Most people are looking for a shortcut to chess ability, and I suspect will be disappointed that your process, while allowing such ability to be developed, will require a huge amount of work to master.  

In other words, there are no short cuts to mastery, but there are many ways to never arrive at all.

Sqod, the method has some similarities with other methods but of course that can be expected with methods that arrive at the same place.  However, the fundamental concept and process was so different that I had to invent a language for it which would be a turn off for some.  I tried avoiding that as much as possible but could not see how.  There you go.  Jargon becomes jargon because there is no avoiding it at times.  RobbieCoull is right.  There is no short cut to becoming good at something.  What there are is different training methods and approaches.  Look at any sport and that is what you will find.  Double handed backhanders in tennis were considered to be an oddity that Borg and Connors championed but not something that would endure.  Now every strong player has the shot in their armoury.  In my case, it all started off by asking myself why I missed the solution to certain tactical puzzles which objectively were much easier than other tactical puzzles which I had solved easily.  Is there some method that will at least alert me to the possible solution?  This all assumes that you can already move pieces in your head.  Without that, you can't do anything.  You also have to have the ability to organise variations in your head although the method helps with that a lot.  The method tries to bring a scientific but practical approach to something that many players, including many strong ones, approach somewhat randomly.

Of course, using a specific language is essential, and as you say off-putting to many.  

In my field (medical) we have to have a specialist language because you can't think quickly enough in non-medical English. 

The most interesting presentations of this phenomenon is Samuel R Delany's book Babel 17, which is classed as an SF masterpiece, so I'm fascinated to see you using it for chess.  Many of us do it in a minor way with mnemonic words:  I often say 'PK Dffms' and ''BS Plccti' to myself when evaluating tactics to go through Pawn Structure, King Safety, Development, Files/Diagonals/Key Squares, Material, Minor Piece inequalities, Space and both side's Pinned pieces, Loose pieces, Checks, Captures, Threats and Initiative.  

Presumably you have evolved a whole slew of those mental shortcut words.

(Of course, that needs to be distinguished from 'barriers to entry' language for the sake of it - for example when someone come in with an itchy butt and I tell them they have puritus ani, they may be impressed, but I'm not saving time with that language, that's just physicians trying to look clever by describing something in latin.)

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-to-analyze-position-scientifically-part-1

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-to-analyze-position-scientifically-part-2identification

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-to-calculate-tactics-scientifically-part-3

RobbieCoull, once again you have insight into the method.  I started off with a checklist just as you but then found that it was cumbersome and suffered from vagueness (and resulted in oversights).  I then recalled Capablanca's advice about studying endgames.  Capa was a great endgame player but he was also a master tactician.  I thought to myself if I am going to develop a system for the calculation of tactics, I should look at the tactics in endgame positions to get to the essence of the nature of tactics.  I doubt if Capa developed my system but perhaps the thought processes ran parallel.  I don't know if that is right but what I am trying to say is that good methods that reach the right result "scientifically" have to have similarities.  By scientifically, I mean by a certain amount of mechanism.  Earth64 has links to a method that is aid to be scientific.  As far as the tactics are concerned, the method suffers from vagueness to my mind.  Now, every method will have vagueness to some degree because chess is too complex.  What I am suggesting is that my method is less vague than any other I have seen, provided the user uses the method correctly and understands its purpose.  As to Earth64's method for positional analysis, I find it even vaguer still than the tactical aspect of the method but I won't say anymore except for the following: such methods work reasonably well if a person is already a strong player who understands positional play (putting aside the issue of randomness and therefore oversight because, after all, as Tomashevsky recently said, chess is a game of moves, not just concepts). My method (for tactics at least) is designed for the weaker player who is prepared to work hard at improving in a less traditional way and, if my method works as I claim it will, the player will improve much faster than the other methods out there.  Language developed as a medium of communication long before chess was created and it follows therefore that it is not necessarily suited for chess.  Traditional methods use the medium of language to teach chess.  The use of acronymns (which I try to avoid) is not the answer.  There is a fundamental deficiency in vocabulary for chess concepts.  That said, I have tried my best to avoid too many distortions to the English language.

Whew, that's overwhelming, at least at first glance. I think others are getting the same impression by the comments. I'm going to have to look at it a long time, and I might not have the time. I like the Steinitz checklist that TheGreatOogieBoogie posted, though.

Some of my first impressions:

You badly need a top-level view of the method, like with a diagram.

Your method of cutting down the reasonable squares for the bishop in the first example seems too detailed: I believe most everyone can see at a glance the safe squares for a piece. I suspect chess players do a lot of this analysis in parallel, which is what I was hoping eastyz's method involved. Parallelism means faster speed, which is a good thing in chess.

The strange terminology at the end was probably the same type of thing eastyz has developed: hard to understand and maybe off-putting due to possible connotations of religion, sex, politics, pseudoscience, or some other topic that will cause people to disregard the method because they don't see how those concepts are related to chess. I'm constantly coming up with new terms myself, so I know the situation firsthand. In fact I'm thinking about posting a thread on a new way to look at chess, with terms like mop-attack, wom-attack, coveragerially impede, etc.

Anyway, you might have some really good content, so thanks for the links, and I'll try to make time to go through those, and maybe I'll post some comments in those. All this stuff fascinates me. I suspect a lot of people out there like you and eastyz have some really good methods, and I'm not averse to trying nontraditional approaches if they get me to my goal faster or better.

P.S.--The old film "Sister Kenny" (1946) had an interesting true story about a lady who made some important discoveries for aiding polio victims, but she was disregarded largely because she didn't know the proper medical terms to communicate with the experts, so they thought she was a joke. She persevered, learned the proper terminology, and became respected and famous.

Sqod, my system is less complex but it requires learning certain things so that they become second nature.  The idea is that the checklist is relatively short because you are in command of certain concepts.  But, anyway, there you go, Earth64 created terms such as blik and blok which proves what I was saying that chess needs its own language.

The language issue is fascinating - I was kind of hoping there that you were going to tell me you actually developed a new chess language with syntax and grammar etc..

English is a higher level language we use for System 2 thinking, which our brains compile into our brain's version of machine code (what many today call System 1 thinking).  From a chess perspective, it's like trying to write modern computer games in BASIC.  You can do it, but it's not nearly fast enough.  Heuristics are system 1 (which runs at 'machine code' level), hence the reason that they appear to us intuitive - we can't explain how we came up with the idea because we don't 'speak' system 1.

You could argue that many people intuitively grasp that they are not playing chess using English (or their mother tongue System 2 language), but we don't have a detailed enough language to use for chess - like say, scientific notation.  I think we show this by using a funny voice or accent when doing 'running commentaries' of our thought process (thinking aloud - witness Danny doing his tactics trainer videos): I first noticed myself doing this when I studied pharmacology at university, with all it's strange names.  

We have algebraic notation, and - I would argue - the more efficient from a thinking perspective - standard notation, and Chess Informant has come up with an excellent - if very basic - hieroglyphic language it uses for evaluation of moves.  However, we lack a rich enough language.  

Thanks Easy, those are very interesting and detailed.  

I started thinking about this when I looked at some of the work the International Chess School were doing on positional evaluation, and wrote up a 'scoring system' which I found really helpful when studying.  However, it was too clumsy for OTB use.

Again, the clumsiness of your processes (when written down as opposed to when internalised!) is that it takes *so* long to write out chess concepts in English.  

I think of Danish/Norwegian with all their great words for psychological issues - there is a single Danish word for when you have a distressing image that you can't get out of your head, which just took me 14 words to say in English, so you can see how efficient that makes Danes in thinking about that topic.   Or German with its long concatenated technical words.  And what are both nation's known for - their philosophy and their technical acheivements.  This is not a co-incidence. (Although, I grant you, it could be an observer bias!)

This is a mighty strange thread.   Analyzing the op's stats his rate of TT problem solving is approximately 60 seconds per problem.   That seems like a pretty long time on average.    One thing we know for sure is that problems recur over and over again.  Perhaps he's been through the problems so many times he recognizes the repeats and is able to apply the solution very quickly.

Difficult to take the rest of what he says very seriously.  No meat whatsoever has been provided.  His high score is impressive but his percentage of correctness not so much. 

Let's pretend instead of you trying to persuade us you have system worked out for solving tactics, you instead are going to explain how to get rich.

After everyone reads this they will be on the road to wealth...or maybe not.

eastyz wrote:

RobbieCoull, once again you have insight into the method.  I started off with a small budget just as you but then found that it was inadequate and suffered from lack of purchasing power (and resulted in bounced checks).  I then recalled Scrooge McDuck's advice about saving money.  Ol Scroogie  was a great money earner but he was also rich.  I thought to myself if I am going to make any money for the spending on luxury items, I should look at ways to make money to get to enough not to feel like a pauper.  I doubt if Scrooge earned money my way but perhaps it was similar on a mini-scale.  I don't know if that is right but what I am trying to say is that earning enough money to reach the sense of not being poor has to have similarities.  By earning enough, I mean by a certain amount of labor as opposed to thievery.    

blah

blah

blah

RobbieCoull, chalking up a language was in fact not the hard part.  I started doing it and then said to myself nobody is going to be interested in this and dropped it.  One version of it turned out something like Basic as you suggest.  The harder part was formulating the concepts.  For example, just like Earth64, I needed to understand the concepts Earth64 calls blik and blok.  Without looking back, I suspect that blik and blok are a component of Earth64's positional system whereas in fact they are a fundamental aspect of many combinations, especially mating combinations.  Nobody I have seen so far teaches blik and blok.  If you have never thought about those concepts before or only looked at them casually, you would be more likely to miss the solution to many a mating combination.  I am now tackling the tactics in Lucas Chess which is explains why I don't use TT anymore.  In Lucas Chess the positions are taken from real games, mostly from master games, from what I can see for now.  I don't like the alternative of blah blah blah suggested in the last post. What I have discovered is that a position with a concrete solution can be tackled at more than one level.  Those of the blah blah blah school of thought can stick to the takes, takes, takes level which is the very basic level.  It works for a lot of combinations but you are going to miss a lot of solutions as well.  When I am feeling lazy that is also what I do but at a greater risk of missing the solution.  Incidentally, Earth24 quoted Steinitz.  He had many detractors in his day because he wanted to lift chess to a more scientific level.  It looks like nothing has changed over the years.

Easytyz,Robbie,Sqod

The information i shared in the forums, these are works of 2 years ago. Within this time i researched more & more and developed my concepts as well as my system. Still i am developing my system which is more advanced and more scientific. The recent works  are not shared yet, these are more organised & impressive. As it has professinal worthness, i can not share it all. But i can share the basic which is fundementally very much scientific. Moreover i converted the concepts into pure form to perform mathematical operation.

After six months, i will reach in a new height of chess skill.

We once tried to export the UK system of primary medical care to a Canadian province. When I explained how we did things - which had evolved over many years with added layers of complexity and new language to describe steps as they were assimilated - many people with no prior exposure to that sytem though the same as you of our explanations., and said so quite forcefully!  However, everyone fa,iliar with the system undertood quite quickly what we were talking about. 

What is being discussed makes sense to me, and has merit whether it has been acheived in actuality or not, but I understand that if you lack any reference points it may look like mere fiction. 

Earth64, yes that makes sense.  

Interesting. So if a player started from scratch and did what you did, namely finding similarities between chess puzzles he failed to solve, kept generalizing those discoveries, added an emphasis on principles from endgames, and developed his own terminology as he saw new terms were needed, would you say this general method would result in a system similar to yours? If so, then maybe that's what we all should be doing. I wouldn't mind having a 2000+ TT rating.

Agreed. The advice to analyse after play is key, abpnd repeated often. We are naturally doing all those things at a System 1 level (heuristics), but the idea of developing it consciously at a System 2 level is facinating, and in theory should be very effective if somewhat laborious to do. Perhaps Magnus is doing this...