Improvers are often told to focus on learning from failure, but studying success might be more useful. Some time ago, I was fortunate to be invited to be a guest on NM Ben Johnson's Perpetual Chess Podcast to talk about winning streaks in chess. ...
It can be easy to think about chess improvement as something that only happens on a personal scale. If you’re reading this article, I imagine you’d love to be better at the game and you may spend some amount of time on opening courses,...
There are always moments during a top-level Classical tournament that I find striking. Sometimes it’s a brilliant move I know I’d never imagine making, other times it’s a blunder I know I absolutely could have made, and occasiona...
I've been into astronomy for about as long as I've been a chess player. To this day, I have a decent collection of telescopes that includes an 80mm refractor with wonderful optics, a 90mm Maksutov-Cassegraine telescope that is small enough to trav...
There are a lot of specific reasons why you might be interested in the science of chess, but I think in general these can be grouped into two broad categories. On one hand, you might think that studying the cognitive and neural processes that supp...
If I had to pick one idea about chess expertise that fascinates me the most, I think that would have to be the possibility that strong players see the board differently than mere patzers like myself. I've written about various aspects of this befo...
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...
