"Pattern recognition" DEBUNKED

yep its a game all said and done ,bar cheating and or abuse,everything else is fair ' tactical manipulation', its nessessary in combat,Chess is based around traps ,its the ultimate wargame and alls fair ..etc

Optimissed wrote:

I sometimes deliberately pretend to think for several minutes in an opening where I know exactly what I'm going to play. I don't waste the time because I'm genuinely analysing weird replies my opponent might make, which gets me thinking better. By hesitating for a couple of minutes otb I'm sending a false signal. Is this gamesmanship?

my standard time is 3m. Now I don't see it. How can i fix it. I'm a free user

excellent

It's great strategy is what it is.

That @Urk makes a lot of sense.  i've often wondered how someone could learn a 1000 or so patterns and recognize them.   i often just figure it out a tactic but do recognize some.  Like when to attack with the Greek Gift - Queen, Bishop and Knight in the right spots and opponents Knight not.  A beginner would never see that.  i'm still learning.  Does anyone know, how many 'pattern recog's' there actually are?  (didn't read the whole thread)   i have a book by Garry K. that says there are only about 3 patterns, pins, skewers and forks.    What were we talking about?  Something @Urk said.  Never mind.  

 

We were talking about casting pearls before swine.

 

...and monkeys with typewriters.

Horvath-Vigus?
WTF?
I've pulled off far better combos than that that I had never seen before.

Ziryab's students are being lied to by a simpleton.

 

Yea. Me too. I never said that pattern recognition was everything, nor even the main thing. But it is useful, powerful, and most important, easily developed.

You did say it was the main thing.

 

Corrrection. I posted a quote from Magnus Carlsen saying something that you could take this way. Carlsen, of course, has never been observed to speak in hyperbole.

I see.
It was somebody else's fault; you never said that "pattern recognition" was the main thing, and when somebody else said it, it was just hyperbole.

Get stuffed.

You cannot extrapolate from the way you play chess and assume that this is how everyone (or "GMs") does it. I have a hard time visualizing the board, and I certainly cannot close my eyes and remember the position. This has not stopped me from becoming a decent player, but I would never make the argument that visuazliation or board vision is a myth. Most chess players have much better spatial skills than I do, and they clearly use them to their advantage.

Here's the thing: chess skill is not something monolithic. We're all different. Some players rely hevaily on pattern recognition, others on calculation. Some cannot make a move without calculating concrete lines; others toss out a move because it "looks good". None of these styles is instrinsically better or worse than any other.

Whats a pattern. I just throw pieces around. 

Ziryab is going to quote "hyperbole" in my topic and then backtrack??

Oh hell no!

You should only study patterns in kindergarden.

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No. I cannot take credit. It may be hyperbole, but maybe not. Carlsen is a little better than me, even though I beat up on his child persona (age 9) on his iOS app. If the WCC says it is the main thing, it's probably more true than not true (allowing for hyperbole). Certainly the 1800ish blitz player who wrote the article you cribbed to start this thread has a wee bit less credibility (as do I).

 

One real test, I imagine, of the significance of pattern recognition would be to get strong or fairly strong players to play and analyze games in which the board was set up with a black square in the bottom right hand corner. That way the initial set up is the mirror image of the legal initial set up. Then get players to play games and try their favorite openings, look over well known opening traps, play over games that they are very familiar with (their own or those of famous GMs), and so forth, evaluating as far as possible the cognitive dissonance they experience with all the pieces on opposite color squares and on opposite sides of the board. If pattern recognition is a nonsense, this change of orientation shouldn't make any difference. There you go. There's your thesis project on a plate if you are doing a M.Sc in Cognitive Psychology. Thank me after you graduate.

@Karpak : nice idea - or alternatively, try to play with black starting first. I read somewhere that long long ago they used to do this.

But it definitely feels strange, even if the opening positions are the same, you don't evaluate them the same way with Black on move...