Of Mice and Men

Yes, nice to see you guys and be in the company of (still) thinking people here with @Batgirl as the host who always make us think and share beautiful ideas, learning on the way...

@bumiputra not familiar with the study on memory, should try to find it online.

Many studies on (chess) memory since Binet. Somehow it seems not so many on WHAT to store in memory and connect in the right brain compartments, and then retrieve when we need it and how to relate and merge it with the new content effectively and store back.

A big danger’s looming along the way, “garbage in, garbage out.”

For example, the piece relations that are the very fabric of (chess) life are out of the picture in the first and critical period of learning. Without them there is no meaning, understanding and judgement.

So what do we really teach them to memorize? 

Ok. Teach relations and not 'moves'.  Pins, forks, skewers and the like are the basic relations.

The next step, I believe, would then be: 'patterns'.

I don't have a definition right now, perhaps larger bundles of (significant?) relations that span over longer strings of moves.

As RoaringPawn noted, the Rook forks the Queen and the f7 square - a very difficult idea when thinking of forks.  Since the Rook on d7 also takes away the King's flight square, Black's best move is to swap his Queen for the Rook.  So the Q-square fork (that even sounds odd, doesn't it?) essentially wins the game. 

When looking for a Rook fork, I transposed the first example from that book. It was too convoluted for me to understand at all, so I tried the second example - the one given here - and saw the underlying rationale as well as the difficulty.  It satisfied my purposes.

@bumiputra Exactly. @Batgirl showed in the post the basic tactical weaponry based of the four basic piece relationships (even there there was no full agreement over, for example, real target in a pin, or the Rook’s fork).

and now, you’re right, we chunk these elementary contacts, patterns, into more complex patterns, into larger blocks. Sort of more sophisticated cerebral gaming.

Funny, Chase and Simon came up with the chunking theory and patterns (1973), but where are these basic piece relations? Did they mention them? No. The four key elementary patterns are out:

Attack (2 men involved)

Restriction (2)

Support (“protection”, 2)

Cover (pin, 3)

@bumiputra so Chase and Simon talk about chunks, seemingly not aware and w/o defining the four basic ones?!?

Chess mind of Master operates by chunking away a finite amount of fundamental, unchanging knowledge that can be used in evaluating the infinite number of unique scenarios that show up on the board.

So how can we build the grand edifice of chess without proper foundations?

@RoaringPawn @bumiputra @woollensock - nice to see you all together in one thread 

the title was a bit of a misnomer... or maybe high-brow clickbait?

Here in Canada it would be "Of Moose and Men".

cover  is blown time to disperse again thanks batgirl for hosting code name Brazil

oh no  wrong video again

@blueemu - thanks, I'll change my mind now. I was wrong with Canadian version "Of Moose and They" because of Bill C-16

Hey @batgirl, are you not a top blogger? I couldn't find your name on the list.

I was.
I quit blogging about 5 or 6 years ago to focus on articles.  When I decided to resumed blogging last year, my intention was to use the blog for a variety of areas of interest - not just chess.  I requested to be removed as a top blogger in order to allow that spotlight to shine where it belongs -- on the chess writers. 

Ah, that's a shame. I've always found your articles and blog posts fascinating.

Kittykat Kool, I would guess that MC is so good that he could make some incredible games for us. But he looks lazy 2me & he seems2play like he's scared2lose.