Does any one dream of positions?

Yes. I drew a game by perpetual check when I was a rook down. My queen was on f7 and I had a pawn on f5. My opponent had his king on h7 and pawns on g7 and h6. I played 1. Qg6+ Kh8  2. Qe8+ Kh7  3. Qg6+ Kh8

I went to bed that night very pleased at salvaging a draw. I woke up in the middle of the night and shouted 1. f6! He would have had no defense to mate on g7.

Aside from that, I have several times dreamt that I was playing a chess game. In those games the pieces mysteriously move into new positions as soon as I try to analyze, so all of my combinations fail.

I've had more and more chess dreams lately. Sometimes they are just me maneuvering a knight/bishop to a more beneficial square, othertimes they're semi-lucid full game playing against an opponent that absolutely destroys me (which brings the question where the moves that keep beating my moves are coming from.....)

Then there's the nightmare chess games where I can never maneuver a knight to a square no matter how hard I try. I eventually wake up with an intense headache. This has happened to me twice.

Yes, I often dream of positions. Most of the time they look really.... well.. strange. I mean they are all possible in theory but not very probible. Another thing I get is when I shut my eyes I see chess positions. However when ever I try to solve them the posiiton I see with my eyes shut modifies to work with the first solution I think of. Apparently this is called the tetris effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

I'm guessing the moves that keep beating your moves come from you. In effect you are thinking of positions with obvious solutions (at least to you) and then the side you are playing against executes them.

In truth its actually more of I make a good move but then out of no where my opponent has a hidden rook or bishop that I hadn't seen because its on the i9 square. This has happened to me more times than a legitimate position being played.

Dreamed about a position? Not exactly, but something close to it.

Two summers ago, I played 50 games on my tabletop computer on its highest level, goal being, if I won them all, to reward myself by buying a superior model. I won the first 48 games but got myself in a terrible position in the 49th game. I had come a long way and didn't want to blow it, so I looked for hours at one particular position. (My computer imposed no time limits on me.) I closely inspected several candidate moves and tried to evaluate them all as deeply as I could. I searched and thought and analyzed from 6pm until 1am that evening and went to bed exhausted. When I woke up at 6:30 the next morning, the current position popped back into my head as clear as day, and the move Bxe5 screamed to be played. Still, I analyzed the candidate moves even more deeply before finally playing the move at around 2pm... after more than 14 hours of analyzing that one critical position.

Interestingly, Bxe5 was not only insufficient to win, it was, as I discovered later, a losing move that led to a mate in about 10-11 moves. Fortunately, the computer I was playing on couldn't see that far, and I went on to win the game and the following game. I finished 50-0-0 against my computer that summer.

No one knows why do humans even dream. But i found this theories .

 Ernest Hoffman , a director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston, Mass., suggests that

 "...a possible (though certainly not proven) function of a dream to be weaving new material into the memory system in a way that both reduces emotional arousal and is adaptive in helping us cope with further trauma or stressful events."

Matt Wilson, at MIT's Center for Learning and Memory, largely defends this view. He put rats in mazes during the day, and recorded what neurons fired in what patterns as the rats negotiated the maze. When he watched the rats enter REM sleep, he saw that the same neuron patterns fired that had fired at choice turning points in the maze. In other words, he saw that the rats were dreaming of important junctures in their day. He argues that sleep is the process through which we separate the memories worth encoding in long-term memory from those worth losing.

Francis Crick (who co-discovered the structure of DNA) and Graeme Mitchison put forth a famously controversial theory about dreams in 1983 when they wrote that "we dream in order to forget." They meant that the brain is like a machine that gets in the groove of connecting its data in certain ways (obsessing or defending or retaining), and that those thinking pathways might not be the most useful for us. But, when we sleep, the brain fires much more randomly. And it is this random scouring for new connections that allows us to loosen certain pathways and create new, potentially useful, ones. Dreaming is a shuffling of old connections that allows us to keep the important connections and erase the inefficient links. A good analogy here is the defragmentation of a computer's hard drive: Dreams are a reordering of connections to streamline the system.

Can dreaming of positions be a way that some players develope their chess intuition?

I remember when i first was learning a opening that involved the King's bishop i would always dream of the bishop moving across the board over and over again.

3 days ago. I did 24 hours non stop blitz marathon in NYC and i have yet to have any dreams of any chess positions . So , i think this just happens in random or there might be a reason behind it.

But am glad am not the only one who has dreams  associated with chess.

i have dreams of positions fairly often. usually for correspondence games that i am currently playing. can't say that i always remember the lines i dream about, or even if they are legitimate lines at all. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->

 That's interesting because it seems that alot of people do not remember the positions . I surely do not remeber but just a certain chess piece or pieces.

I am starting to think they become part of your chess intuition or database....

Interesting! i have never see them bats in forum.... but i guess he wants to beat you with it. It's called a "Amenaza".

njall ... yes ... dreams and nightmares (nothing "scary" yet)

Lisa ... lol

I wish I knew more about dreams, I find the subject very interesting! thank you to all for sharing, I enjoyed reading.