uri65: I'd like to finish on a positive note and propose my own definition:
Chess pattern is a characteristic configuration of pieces and pawns that suggests certain candidate moves/plans/ideas
I think this is a pretty good definition, and using some kind of definition would certainly have made the author's article and argument more palatable. Fortunately your answer and a couple others help shed more light on the topic than the author's pedantic article.
I don.t agree, the article made its point in good style and it stimulated debate and tthat is what an article should do. Some of the feedbacks sound unecessarily polemic. instructor uri's definition is probably good, but not all that good, because it doesn't really address all the issues that the article sets forth.
I don.t agree, the article made its point in good style and it stimulated debate and tthat is what an article should do. Some of the feedbacks sound unecessarily polemic. instructor uri's definition is probably good, but not all that good, because it doesn't really address all the issues that the article sets forth.
90% of the "issues" addressed in the article are not issues at all but rather pseudo-intellectual nonsense with very poor reasoning - see my post #1.
I agree with uri65. This psychological, pseudo-scientific gibberish makes things more complex than they need to be and makes us all lose valuable time. This may be useful for philosophers, I don't think it is for chess players. For a useful introduction on patterns, see https://www.chess.com/article/view/learning-chess-patterns-is-easy.
@uri65: Why are you even bothering to take issue with a writer whose muddled thinking lack of knowledge and poor understanding are displayed on the Internet for all to see?
@uri65: Why are you even bothering to take issue with a writer whose muddled thinking lack of knowledge and poor understanding are displayed on the Internet for all to see?
For 3 reasons:
1) There were some readers who liked the article and made positive comments - so I just wanted to express my opinion.
2) If that text appeared as forum post I'd consider it a brilliant attempt at trolling. If it was a personal blog - ok that's authors opinion. But that's an article, it was somehow approved by chess.com and that bothers me as some quality standards should apply for articles.
3) The fact that the author has abused his moderator rights by mutilating my comment made it somewhat personal for me.
I wrote some negative comments to an article Pattern Recognition—Fact Or Fiction? by Vik-Hansen
The author prefered not to reply to me in a separate message, instead he replied by edited my original message (I didn't know the author has the right to do it), deleting almost half of it. I find this totally dishonest and intolerable.
Below is the restored complete text together with comments by Vik-Hansen and my reply to his comments.
Uri65, would you provide quote from the article that exemplies faulty logic? Thank you.
(From the author: Uri65's comments are in purple and his quotes from our article are in blue)
The article: If "pattern" is understood as "piece configuration," acquisition of chess skills appears even more cumbersome, depending on how fast one can set up different positions either on a board or on a computer screen.
uri65: I am lazy and don't like setting different positions neither on a board nor on a computer screen. Fortunately there are many alternatives:
- solve puzzles from book diagrams without board
- study commented master game with a book and a board - allows to see 50-100 positions/moves, many of them typical (patterns)
- study commented master game from computer database
- solve tactical/endgame puzzles from computer database
For some reasons Vik-Hansen preferred to "forget" these obvious training methods.
From the author: Someone had first to set up the position for it to appear in a diagram for us to study, either on a screen or a board.
uri65: yes, one person has to create diagram or database, then millions of players can use it without any need to setup a position. As usual you fail to see the obvious...
The article: If pattern recognition is the key to chess strength, we are hard pressed how to explain why performance decreases with age as one would think that a chess player could with some effort bring back relevant patterns and keep their performance at peak.
uri65: Effort needed to bring back relevant patterns is not same when you are 20 and when you are 60.
The article: Do older grandmasters' performances decrease because other cerebral factors (otherwise unaccounted for) interfere with the grandmasters ability to reproduce relevant patterns during a game? This illustrates that chess playing is more than mechanical reproduction of patterns, and it is impossible to determine how much is pattern recognition, and what is ability to produce high-quality moves of one’s own accord.
Does chess that easily lend itself to mechanical recipes? Is acquisition of chess skills no more difficult than to say: Learn these gazillion patterns, and you will become a 2800+ player? In the same vein, are grandmasters able to reproduce all the patterns they recognize and are familiar with?
uri65: Vik-Hansen repeats the word "mechanical" twice but nowhere in chess pattern books the process of pattern recognition is described as mechanical. Yet another straw man argument.
From the author: Not a straw man but a pointed out implication: "mechanical" is used explanatory: different entities, variables, components or elements in a working relationship: the concept of pattern (recognition) is supposed to help us improve and become better players. Chess authors not stating that pattern recognition renders chess training mechanical, does not imply that the training is non-mechanical or non-causal.
uri65: So if nobody states that chess playing is "mechanical reproduction of patterns", what's the point of your argument against it? If this is not a straw man I don't know what is...
Article: Another fundamental problem is that as long as thinking and learning are subconscious (see our previous installments here and here), there is no way to tell if the brain perceives different positions as patterns, but psychologists and chess writers seem to try to make pattern acquisition look like a mechanical, conscious process.
uri65: Well… "mechanical" for a third time.
And I have never seen pattern acquisition described as "conscious process". Can Vik-Hansen provide any references? For me training is conscious, pattern acquisition is mostly subconscious.
Article: A problem is how to generalize different positions into the same definition of pattern, which appears impossible, since the positions are different, and no player will live long enough to see if a position repeats itself and thus be able to establish a pattern. Due to the diversity of chess, there will always be a principal problem of formalizing a pattern definition comprising the ever occurring unique positions while not violating the notion of identical repetition.
uri65: "Identical repetition" is not required for chess patters and is never mentioned by other authors. Straw man again… Our difficulty to formalize the term has nothing to do with pattern recognition going on in our brains. For practical player there is no need to formalize the term - tactical motifs (simplest forms of patterns) are successfully learned by example."
From the author: Again, not a straw man but a pointed out implication: "identical repetition" is the key, how else to recognise something as a pattern? Does the concept of pattern in chess differ from the concept of pattern used on table cloths or bed sheets? If the concept of pattern in chess is to have didactical value, we need to be able to formalise it to comprise any possible position.
uri65: Yes, the concept of pattern in chess differs from the concept of pattern used on table cloths or bed sheets, are you surprised? And it already has huge didactical value - my 6-8 year students learn pattern recognition without ever hearing the word "pattern" from me.
Article: When the old masters played their games that later on became our patterns, what did they model their play after? What, if anything, served as a previously established model or pattern for their play?
uri65: You do not necessarily need to know a pattern in advance in order to play the strongest move - you can also find it via analysis and calculation. But chances that you will miss it or use too much time are much higher (especially with shorter time controls).
Article: Our sample positions bring us to the core question: When and how does a position become paradigmatic, i.e. a position we later on compare other "similar" positions to?
uri65: Is this supposed to be a tough question? A position become paradigmatic when later you find few similar positions with similar optimal moves/plans. There is no problem of "circular similarity" - all these positions are more or less equally good examples of a pattern.
uri65: I'd like to finish on a positive note and propose my own definition:
Chess pattern is a characteristic configuration of pieces and pawns that suggests certain candidate moves/plans/ideas.
From the author: In what sense do "certain candidate moves/plans/ideas" in paradigmatic/pattern positions differ from candidate moves/plans/ideas in non-paradigmatic/non-pattern positions?
In chess we have to move, we cannot pass on a move, so in any position there must be certain candidate moves/ideas/plans for us to play. What distinguishes or separates candidate moves/plans/ideas in paradigmatic positions from candidate moves/plans/ideas in non-paradigmatic/pattern positions?
uri65: The difference is that candidate moves/plans/ideas are found via analysys in one case and via pattern recognition in another.
This definition runs the risk of having one concept of pattern per position: what is characteristic for the piece configuration in position A differs from and is inapplicable to position B etc., i.e. no transfer value, and thus we have to learn or memorise individual positions, since every position is different and unique and has to be assed and evaluated by its own accord, whereas the point of the concept of pattern is to alleviate the learning and acquisition of chess skills.
uri65: no, take an example of back rank mate possibility - it is characteristic for huge number of position, same goes for other pattern. Once again - it's not about being identical, but about being similar.