does memorizing master's games good???

Haha...Overheard in CoffeeShop:

A. "See that guy over there?"

B. "Yeah, what's up with him?"

A. "Well, believe it or not, he used to be really intelligent, that guy over there."

B. "Oh yeah? Is there something wrong with him now? He does look like maybe he battles some 'challenges' or something...What, he do alot of drugs or something, have a stroke or get in an accident?"

A. "Oh, no, no, no. Not even in the same ballpark. See, believe it or not, this guy was pretty smart, you know a normal, intelligent guy just like you or me...and then one day he decides to get better at chess and reading something off the internet, took it seriously and, wait for it, get this"...

C.  (Time passes)

B. "Yeah?, Well come on, come on now, don't just leave me hanging like that!..."

A. "So get this, he...memorized 20 chess games of grandmasters. All the moves, the ideas behind the moves -- everything."

B. "Yeah, and?...And??"...

A. "And? He fried his brain.    Right there on the spot.

Final move of the final game, he commits it to memory and...

KA-BLAMM-O! Instantly fried his brain."

Enjoying the game is the key to success.

i would say it's probably more helpful to first learn and memorize a lot of tactical themes to the point where you recognise them instantly, then to move on to familiarizing yourself with a bunch of strategic themes and ideas.

then you could start looking at whole games, memorize them and look for the tactical and strategic themes throughout the games.

It is not helpful to memorize games of grandmasters as you will still have no idea of what they were doing until you learn the basics and then a whole lot more. It is anti productive to memorize such games unless you can do it in a day or so.

mrguy888 wrote:

There is also the possiblity that the 3 students who did their work were much more serious about chess than their peers. The reason they reached master would more likely be the amount of effort they were putting into all of their chess study, not simply memorizing the master games.

Yep, people are confusing correlation with causation.

Memorizing the moves is more or less useless.  Memorizing the motifs, ideas, tactical maneuvers, etc is useful.

For a beginner I imagine this is impossible.  Better to play lots of games and talk to a coach or read a book.  After you have a general idea of what's going on it's useful to memorize a few games here or there.

IMO anyway.

Hmm, I've memorised a few games over the years, and forgotten most of them again.

However, a few stick with me. I think it's the ones I understand.

This sounds right. My only contention is you finally get an elephant that will talk for you...pretty extraordinary elephant, wouldn't you say?

And his name is "Dumb"-O. A word defined as someone who can't talk.

Tusk, tusk. Seems there's little justice for the elephant anywhere anymore.

I used to play 50 games at once per correspondence chess. At any time I could give the position of any game and what moves led up to each position.

BUT it was not because I was trying to memorize the games--it was, instead, because I had reasons for each move and to me each game was a logical sequence.

I do not believe it would be especially helpful to memorize 20 or more games of grandmasters.  What would be much more helpful would be to look at 20 such games and determine one way or another why the moves were made and what mistakes may have been made.

There is not enough information in 20 games to help you understand the hundreds of chess ideas you will need to learn to get better.

When first you start out you will need to learn a few ideas, then later maybe 20 ideas and then 100 and so on until you are world champ and know a few thousand.  By an "idea" I mean a kind of chess position which can occur again but in a slightly different form but the idea holds true.

An "idea" could be as simple as a knight fork.  Or some other tactic. And then later moves that will lead to a tactic. And then some general ideas--here is one from a vote chess game. "When you have two good candidate moves and you know for sure you will have to play one of them [eventually] then play the move you know for sure you will have to play."   

In short memorization of 20 grandmaster games will not be of much help because you need to know all the reasons for each move and memorizing moves will not give you that information.  

As I often say--the best way to improve at chess is to learn from your mistakes  [and thus you must know your mistakes or have them pointed out to you.]

i dont like anything that  is memorised,but i would rather say that its good to try to master the way the big men do things

why do you dislike anything memorised? that makes no sense....

concentration is key in this game

concentration and memorisation are not mutually exclusive. in fact, you have to concentrate in order to memorise things.

This strikes me as a very interesting topic, especially as it does appear that many top players do succesfully memorize games.

I think there are probably two things to consider, firstly by memorizing a game (providing you look at the notes and understand the ideas), you can be sure that you are getting a tangible result from your study, there is something afterwards that you can test, and therefore you know that you must have been concentrating.  Furthermore having recall of a game may help you when playing to understand an opening better, especially if the game is typical of plans in that opening.  

The second reason for memorizing games is that it is in fact a very rewarding process in itself, the ability to recall and play through games is often very enjoyable, and can help to increase your interst in chess.  

I think memorizing games is a waste of time unless you have a photographic memory. Go over master games, analyze them and then forget them! If similar positions come up in your own games they will appear in your mind  as if by magic!

This quote from @Ponz111 in post #32 is worth repeating--

"As I often say--the best way to improve at chess is to learn from your mistakes  [and thus you must know your mistakes or have them pointed out to you.]"

And save the "memorization" for another life. 

What is really difficult, in my mind, is not memorizing games (though I've only myself memorized a few) but in figuring out which games to memorize. 

As has been noted, you have to understand the "why" behind various moves. You need to understand the plans of the game, and not merely internalize moves. 

The games should be key games that demonstrate ideas in very clear ways. So, for example, memorizing some Kaspy-Anand Najdorf battle might not do much to help improve your game play (particularly if you don't play the Najdorf). 

But if you play, say, the Scotch, memorizing Karjakin-Kramnik from Dortmund  this year won't hurt you much at all. 

The title of this thread kills me a bit inside every time it's bumped.

Ditto with the spelling and grammar.

You can thank Google, and hand-held devices, for that.

The problem with memorizing games is that each game has only so many ideas and you limit yourself if say you memorize 20 games even if you can know all the ideas in the grandmaster game [which you cannot]  There are too many ideas to learn to limit yourself to the ideas you can find in 20 games.

The memorization itself, while it might be enjoyable to some--is not very productive in improving your chess. 

I would rather go over 20 great annotated grandmaster games and glean information from those games and then if you have not wasted time with memorization--you can go on to more games or more ways to improve.