Memorizing GM Games

Hey! Was that an insult?

Methink'st thou art a general offense and every man should beat thee. (From All's Well that Ends Well ;-)

It certainly is helpfull to have GM games remembered. Our chess intuition and understanding is all about remembered patterns which we saw from other games or our own experience. For example you play a game of chess against someone and sacrifice your bishop on h7 which is a typical tactical pattern. But in this game it wasnt working because his rook was on e8 and you were just ending up with a piece down and no compensation. Your brain remembered this and and you always have the thought in your mind "When the rook is on e8 the h7-sacrifice might not work". You gained chess knowledge and improved your intuition and understanding. This is how chess improvement works, as more you learn as better your intuition and play gets. The same is with memorizing strong players games. For example when the white player wins the game because he managed to trade all pieces except the opponents bad bishop (example opening: Dutch Stonewall) then your brain also secures this information. When you see this pattern very often you will be able in certain situations to not only see which piece of your opponent is bad but also how to make use of this and how to trade the other pieces. This are just some little examples but its important to understand how our brain works and why some players immediatly see good moves in a position. Its their intuition which tells them patterns or motifs they have already seen before.

No.

xD

Till-- I acutally memorizes games of Hans-Walter Schmitt and  Arkadij Naiditsch in order to impress you for our next lesson. You dare call me unappreciative?

No, you arent. It was just that you sounded like this in your one post but that was probably just your sense of humor. Cool that you remember their games, I also know some of them but not that many. Do you have a game collection book or do you just use chessbase and search their games?

Dude. I did more prep than I would do if I were meeting a hot girl. lol You blew me off man. You helped me with chess, but when I put forth effort to try to help you I was ignored. I spent TONS of time researching to impress you and you didn't have the session. It's OK. You had no way of knowing.

lol really?

okay dude, you know what I will continue the T(r)i(a)ck Story. But not yet.

OK no lol

okay no problem dude :D

My coach memorized twenty five games of Vishy Anand in the French Defense before playing an IM in a tournament. He played the whole game intuitively and when the IM resigned my coach was still trying to figure out why he resigned.

I did do SOME prep though. OK, no I did not memorize their games.

See it works. Does he now understand the reason his opponent resigned?

I respect your opinion, but how can you know when you never tried it? I personally have experience with it and I know many others who remember GM games. Its good to have an example game for every opening you play yourself so you get some understanding for the positions. Of course you should also analyse these games before you remember them because otherwise you wont know why the GM did the moves he played.

My biggest "upset" happened when I played a game (almost?) identicaly to Fischer (i had memorised this game and Fischer's analysis from his "60 memorable games" - now i don't even remember which game that was and where that book is, lol)

The guy got really upset!!! ...But it's hard to beat Fischer, he he he

No one knows. They are still trying to figure out if the old FSI methodology of teaching languages was the most efficient. Memorizing whole conversations. It works, but is it most efficient?

I can tell you from my limited expeience it works. it is not necessary to memorize ENTIRE games to gain benefit, however.