What kind of player are you? How do we tell? The academic year began a few weeks ago in North Dakota, which means I've been busy with the Neuropsychology course I teach during the fall each year. The big goal I have for my students is to learn h...
I count myself very fortunate to be a scientist. I love running my lab, and as we approach the beginning of the Fall term (where did summer go?) it's time for me to start designing the experiments we'll be deploying for kids and grown-ups to take ...
The other day, everything was going great on the chessboard for yours truly. Maybe I was feeling the benefits of putting in more tactical training than usual, or maybe cutting back on my doom-scrolling was having salutary effects on my attention a...
I've been reading a lot about blindfold chess recently, mostly because I'm fascinated by the accomplishments of great blindfold players. I consider myself to be downright mediocre in terms of my ability to visualize positions and calculate, so fin...
My favorite chess book of all time has to be Bobby Fischer's "My 60 Memorable Games." I was given a copy as a gift when I was about 9 years old or so, and I've read and re-read it too many times to count since then. I know players who are more ser...
I love puzzles. My morning routine usually includes the New York Times Connections puzzle, the Strands grid, and the venerable Wordle. From there, it's off to Gisnep for a daily drop-quote afollowed by my new favorite, Squardle. If I need a quick ...
Introduction to a possibly bad idea As a university professor, I've found myself on the receiving end of a lot of messaging focused on how I could (or maybe should) find ways to incorporate AI into my teaching. To be blunt, I can think of few th...
When I first started learning how to play chess as a kid, I was also really excited about computers and programming. This meant that it didn't take long for me to set my sights on getting a computer training partner that I could run on my Apple II...
One of the big ideas - maybe THE big idea - in the cognitive science literature about chess is something called template theory. This refers to the idea that chess players build up a library of chess-position "chunks" over time, which allows...
I have a puzzle for you. The good news is that it isn't very hard - I'll even tell you that it's a Mate-in-2 for White. The bad news is that I'm not going to let you see the position. Instead, you'll just have to do your best with the following de...
If you, like me, are a squarely average player, looking at a puzzle like the one below presents you with about a 50/50 shot at getting the right answer. Surely there is some tricky tactical play that leads to a clear win? Then again, is there a qu...
We're now three weeks into the semester at my home institution and my Neuropsychology students are just starting to try their hand at interpreting data from hypothetical (and a few real) brain-injured patients. That means that we encounter individ...
If you're interested in how chess works in the mind and the brain, I've been working on a series of blog posts talking about the cognitive science of playing chess. Below you'll find links to each of the articles in the series - hope you read and ...
I've been busy enough that I haven't set aside a ton of time for my 10-minute Rapid games, but I did take some time this morning to test fate: My rating was exactly 1700, so either I'd climb a little, drop back into the 1600's, or have another dra...
I ended my first "Road to 1800" post with a reminder that every game is a new opportunity, so I should try to shake off being On Tilt and just play. With that in mind, I decided to try and clear my head a bit this evening and play some more Rapi...
I am terrible at chess. No, hang on - that's not entirely true. I'm terrible at chess, except for the occasions on which I'm actually not so bad. There are even moments when I might say that I was pretty good: I get the occasional Brilliant move...
The latest in my series of short stories about chess, cognitive science and AI. Bots are still fascinating to me especially the different "personalities" that they have. In this story, I speculate about the possible origin story of our most fierce...
This past Sunday I competed in the Fargo Chess Club's 2023 New Year's Open. While I haven't been an active member of the club, they've been growing steadily since their founding in 2021 and have held a bunch of successful tournaments in downtown F...
There are a lot of reasons why you might miss something on the board during a game of chess. Maybe you were distracted for some reason (I can and do blame my cat for a number of losses), or maybe you were so intently focused on a particular loomin...
I’m not a grammar nerd, but I do kind of love punctuation. I don’t mean that I like getting in arguments about the Oxford comma or anything – I just like that there are these symbols that we use to add meaning to our words in different ways. Punct...
As a middle-school player back in the 90's, the only time control I knew about was Classical. I'm pretty sure we played G30/D5 (30 minutes per player, with 5 seconds before you start using up your real time per move) at most of our club tournament...
I've been active on chess.com for about a year or so now and while I've probably been studying far less than I should and playing random Bullet games far too much, I've learned a good bit. I'm not talking about major gains here, but joining the on...
Many writers and chess players have tried to describe the psychological aspects of playing chess and I've been working on familiarizing myself with some of their ideas. One thing I'll say right away is that few of them have much to say with what I...
I am not now, nor have I ever been a good chess player. To sum up most of my competitive playing history, I played chess in grades 5-6, then took a break of about two years or so before returning to competitive play at events sponsored by the Mur...
