Carlsen's Intuition Stands upon Islands

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RoaringPawn

Grischuk's comment on Carlsen on Twitter today made me submit this shorty

That was Carlsen's highly educated intuition whispering to his ear.

Carlsen's chess brain has collected models of thinking (or mental models known in psychology) from his experience over years. It is a mental map giving his thought quick intuitive orientation and direction at the board - without much thinking, erm calculation.

Now Carlsen stands upon his educated intuition as upon islands. It is so firm beneath his feet that he forgets their existence.

The rest of us, without a finely-tuned intuition Carlsen possesses are down below the surface of the sea.

TDgeek

Agreed that Carlsen has fantastic intuition.

But he also has a fantastic "mental database" of chess games. Many times in interviews or streams I've seen MC rattle off references to not just "chess classics" but games played by non-top level GMs. So maybe his intuition/pattern recognition was built on playing through and analyzing a huge volume of games.

 

Not to diminish intuition, which I agree is highly important. 

RoaringPawn
TDgeek wrote:

Agreed that Carlsen has fantastic intuition.

But he also has a fantastic "mental database" of chess games. Many times in interviews or streams I've seen MC rattle off references to not just "chess classics" but games played by non-top level GMs. So maybe his intuition/pattern recognition was built on playing through and analyzing a huge volume of games.

 

Not to diminish intuition, which I agree is highly important. 

You're right. They do maintain "mental DBs" of games as you say.

Now, what's important to point out here is that they don't mechanically store the games. What helps them remember all those games is Ideas and Concepts that occurred in them. It is the "connecting tissue" so to speak. 

And interestingly enough, Intuition does consist of Ideas and Concepts and simple Mental Models that bring Understanding.

Thanks for dropping by, commenting and sharing your thoughts @TDgeek, much appreciated!

Monster_with_no_Name

This is why democracy is not good.

RoaringPawn
GMproposedsolutions wrote:

Help me understand this thing about islands. If you said on a continent or something else, would the impact be lost?

I know you're smart enough to get the idea on your own. You even expanded it, being true to your name and proposed a new solution, that might work, toogrin.png 

Ziryab

I have Beim’s book on Morphy. It is good. I didn’t know about this book.

RoaringPawn
Ziryab wrote:

I have Beim’s book on Morphy. It is good. I didn’t know about this book.

I've been all intuition latelyhappy.png

Intuition is an amazing faculty of mind, a big leap from logic and reasoning, the ability to ‘know without knowing how we know.’

We need to find a way to train our mind so that the great distance and divide between perception and intuition disappear, and we get from Point A to Point B, that is the Current Position to the Resulting Position, at once.

RoaringPawn
GMproposedsolutions wrote:

Standing on firm ground or standing on quicksand are the only two expressions somehow related to this that I am familiar with. Sorry, this island thing is a new thing to me. I don't know how there is something about islands that relates to being good or of a firm foundation unless perhaps you are drifting at sea and luckily came upon an island. Maybe he is standing on bedrock, bridges, boats, barges, tractors, or skyscrapers? Hmmm.

You're very funny, with great imagination. Pity, not used someplace else more productivelyhappy.png

Ziryab
RoaringPawn wrote:
Ziryab wrote:

I have Beim’s book on Morphy. It is good. I didn’t know about this book.

I've been all intuition lately

Intuition is an amazing faculty of mind, a big leap from logic and reasoning, the ability to ‘know without knowing how we know.’

We need to find a way to train our mind so that the great distance and divide between perception and intuition disappear, and we get from Point A to Point B, that is the Current Position to the Resulting Position, at once.

 

Knowing how we know what we know is the very essence of my work as a historian.