General Factor of Intelligence, Genius, Experts and Chess

Half Sigma is at it again.  In his post entitled Chess and David Shenk, he discusses how a blogger has debunked an author who argues genius is made and not born.  I've saved articles on the subject of becoming a genius/expert before ... here and here.  Half Sigma goes on to add that "playing chess at a high level doesn't create value; it increases the chess player's status, and because status is [a] zero sum game, he can only increase his own status by making everyone else slightly less important."  He goes on to say that chess is a value transference activity rather than a value creation activity.

It was entertaining reading the pages and pages of comments.  If you don't understand Half Sigma's premises, then you will be riled up with his comments and opinions.

In a subsequent post entitled Intelligence and reasoning, chess, computers, calculus, he further clarifies why he thinks learning chess does not require as much intelligence because it is mostly about memorization and "being able to compute board positions many moves out into the future."

In my opinion, the best argument against Half Sigma's is this one:

"-Chess talent requires the ability to make quick connections and recognize patterns. There are nearly an infinite number of moves possible. You cannot "memorize" your way through chess. It might be possible to have a repertoire of the three first moves memorized, but soon after that the combinatorial possibilities become overwhelming. What's needed, then, is an ability to make connections (recognizing the opponents intentions/strategy) and an ability to perceive what the most damaging move is at any moment. Have you ever looked at chess problems? They can be very difficult and people with chess talent can solve them simply.
-Chess talent depends heavily on working memory, which is a key component of g and perhaps might be what underlies analytical ability. On the LSATs, for instance, students who can solve the logic games the fastest no doubt can simply retain and manipulate a greater deal of information in their heads -- the same thing that's required for chess.
-And for the last time, just because talented chess players are intelligent does not mean all intelligent people will be chess champions. So relax."


Agree with him or not, his opinions spark debates and reading the debates and comments is entertaining and interesting.

CT-ART 4.0

In reading my feeds today, I came across a post stating that CT-ART 4.0 is out.

Then I read the one review at Amazon about CT-ART 4.0.

Avoid this software like the plague.
First, it is not new - it is CT-ART 3.0 with Mate Studies added. If I had known that I wouldn't have bought it. And they lie on the box and in their web info. I only found out by going to their support site. Which is another nightmare, by the way.

Second, the new interface, Peshk is a Piece of Garbage. I own the software, I bought it, and will be returning it to the USCF. I can't get the thing I bought, CT-ART 4.0 not Peshk, to install or register it. In fact I can't even tell you where it is. I bought, I remind Convecta, a licensed copy of their software. I didn't buy the right to attempt to endlessly contact their server to get their permission to run something I own. Or endlessly write tech support for help. There is no excuse for this.

It is software from hell. You have no idea what you are supposed to do. Another example of bad programming from ChessNOTOk. Not to mention more bad English.

One star is too high. Even zero stars is too high. A waste of both time and money. Stay away from it at all costs.

 
Talk about a hot opinon! Needless to say, the reviewer gave it 1 star.

ChessCafe's shop has a few more reviews which are at least toned-down from the one at Amazon.
 
Has anyone purchased this new version?  Is the Amazon reviewer correct or does (s)he have abnormally high expectations to begin with?
 
I also wonder if tactics-type software sales have dropped significantly since more and more tactics sites are available now.

10,000

I've finally done 10,000 blitz problems on chesstempo.

My percentage correct has also been climbing and I'm now over 64%.

OTB in Houston

I'll actually be able to attend this month's meetup in my feeble attempt to include OTB in my chess diet.  If you're in town on March 15th, stop on by.  Looks like Glenn is on the list but not attending.  And I'm not sure if Donnie knows about this meetup or not.

On a related note, I just saw on the TCA blog that the 2010 US Class Championships will be in Houston October 1-3.  I'm seriously considering signing up.

Perhaps those of you who have gone to one of these tournaments can answer me a few questions about this tournament.  On the site it says "3-Day Schedule: Registration Fri (10/1) 5-7pm. Rds. Fri 8pm, Sat 1pm & 6:30pm, Sun 9:30am & 2:30pm. 2-Day Schedule: Registration Sat (10/2) 8-9am. Rds. Sat 10am, 1pm (merges with 3-Day Schedule) & 6:30pm, Sun 9:30am & 2:30pm. Byes for all rounds, must commit before end of Rd 2."  So if I were to sign up for the 3-day schedule, I would play 5 rounds?  And when it says "byes for all rounds", what does that mean?  I wouldn't be able to play Sunday, but I'd be able to play Friday and Saturday.  So could I use byes for the two rounds on Sunday?  And one last question ... could I replace a Sunday round with a Saturday morning round?  Maybe I'll just email the organizer.

February Stats / March Goals

My main goal for February was to do 30 tactics a day on ChessTempo.  I fell short by 35 problems.  Even still, I managed to do the most tactics in a month than I ever have before.  The most before that was 785 problems in a month ... that was last February .. February seems to be the month to do tactics.

ChessTempo: Blitz - 562/805 (69.81%) Rating: 1673

Slow Games: 2 (2-0) FICS Rating: 1687
RedHotPawn: 2 wins (claimed time outs), 0 losses, 6 current games Rating: 1670
Reading/Study: 1 game from Logical Chess

March Goals:
1) 30 tactics a day (930 total for the month)
2) 3 long games - contact me if you want to play!!
3) Study and input into .pgn at least two games from Logical Chess
4) Consolidate previously captured tactical misses into one .pgn file (missedtactics.pgn)
5) Review missedtactics.pgn every week - add problems to file as needed.

Chess Playing Ghost?

Patrons, baristas and even the owner of Lazy Daze coffee house in Indianapolis claims there is a ghost who haunts the place and even plays chess.  The claim about the ghost playing chess comes from the owner who said, "One morning I was opening up the coffee house, getting the place ready and straightened up for business," [Jeff] Coppinger tells Asylum. "I put the chess pieces on to the playing table and then went to the back room for a little bit. I came back to the front office and noticed that all the chess pieces had moved."

OK ... I'd bite.  If I lived there, I would visit the place after reading this story.  I'd even get the pieces out and wait for the "ghost" to move them while I sipped on some cocoa.

via Our Lady of Lourdes Chess Club
image credit Earl McCall at redbubble.com

Rook Shop

Rook Shop ... my kind of store.  Very neat idea.

FICS DB Annotate Feature

So I was messing around at ficsgames.com and found that you can request for games to be annotated.  What I did was search on my handle, clicked on a specific game and then clicked the 'annotate' button.  A message pops up saying a request has been made and that in a few minutes the annotated game would be available.  Sure enough, I hit refresh on the browser and the game was annotated.  Pretty neat for a quick and dirty analysis of a game.

Here is the game I had annotated.

And since I'm a glutton for punishment, I've linked to all my FICS games (for all my potential competitors to see).  You can find the link under "ROCKY ROOK GAMES" to the right.

A Chess Set for all the Knights Errant

Hurry and place your bids today!  There is a unique Don Quixote chess set on eBay right now.  At the time of this posting, the bidding ends in about 5 hours.

The world of creative chess sets and the old Knights Errant collide in spectacular fashion in this antique chess set.

A snippet from the auction details reads,

"What we do know:
The oral history of the set: This set was purchased 1988/1989 from a woman who told me her Grandfather brought it back from Spain. He was stationed in Spain both during and immediately after World War 2. She said the pieces were displayed in a curio cabinet for many years until the Grandfather died in the late 1960's. After his death, the set was put back into it's case and stored. We used it several times a year (total probably around 100 times), returning it to it's case after use. We have not used it since about 2002.

What we do not know:
The actual age of the set, the manufacturer or the type of wood used. The back of the board is stamped GENUINE LEATHER MADE IN SPAIN JEYPE. Since the stamp is in English, we feel that it was probably made for export, so there may be some doubt as to it being purchased in Spain. Our research indicates Jeype is a leather maker, which sheds no light on who made the set or who carved the pieces."

Happy bidding!

*UPDATE* The set sold for $104.50

Old Picture Site - Playing Chess in Algeria & Capablanca

I found a neat site (called old-picture.com) a few years ago and saved the link to it.  I went back to the site today and did a search on chess and a couple of images were returned.  Here is a direct link to the first picture.  From the site, it says this picture was taken in 1899.

The second picture is of Capablanca.

T41: Game 3

We're into the 4th round.  This was my third game.  Here is a link to all the whispers made.  I need to start whispering in my game so as to record my thoughts and such.

It's not an exciting win, but it is a win nevertheless.  Fritz is working it right now ... we'll see how many tactics I missed this time.

January Stats

Inspired by Farbror who posted his January chess stats, I thought I'd start doing the same.

ChessTempo: Blitz - 337/468 (72%) Rating: 1701
Slow Games: 3 (1-2) Rating: 1640
RedHotPawn: 0 wins, 0 losses, 6 current games Rating: 1642
Reading/Study: None

4-Way Chess

I've posted a picture of a 3-way chess board.  Now behold the 4-way chess board and set.

I found the picture while browsing Flickr (here).

This set sports the fancy "star" design of the board.  It looks like you can get a more "normal" looking 4-way chess board here.

When to Play Your Best Chess

I just read Scott Adams' post "Like a Night Watchman" in which he talks about how he feels words and how he needs to be in the right frame of mind before he can write.

He wrote, "People often ask how I get into the writing frame of mind. To me, it feels like being the night watchman in a museum. My job is to make sure all the doors are locked, and the blinds are pulled, and the lights are out. As a writer, you need to shut out all of the distractions from your other senses. I make sure I'm not hungry, tired, uncomfortable, or listening to anything. Then, like the night watchman, I go room by room with my flashlight until something scares me, surprises me, or makes me laugh. I have to feel something. And when I do, that's the part I keep. Then I wrap up the inspiring words in ordinary words, to form sentences. That part is more craft than art.

"Writers tend to work early in the morning, or late at night, when brains are naturally able to focus deeply on one thought. In the middle of the day, distractions are unavoidable. I wonder if anything worthwhile has ever been written in the afternoon."

Although I don't want it to be that way, I admit that I am this way when it comes to chess ... I have to be in the right frame of mind before I can play really good chess.  If I'm too distracted or have something else on my mind (work, family, other pressing needs) then good chess play takes a back seat.  I'd rather be able to play good chess anytime, anywhere ... that's where I'd like to be.  But as it stands, my best chess is played at night with the kids in bed and my wife watching American Idol or whatever it is she likes to watch on TV and me sitting at the computer in a quiet room.

Chess Player Look-a-Likes: Lilienthal-Bush

Susan Polgar had a Chess Trivia on her blog today.  I thought I was looking at a young George W. Bush when in fact it was Andor Lilienthal.

T41: Game 2

It was going pretty well, I thought, until his queen came down and picked off those two pawns.  After he picked off the first one, the air out of my ambition just went out and I pretty much lost the will to continue.  I kept trying to prep for that kingside attack on h7, but it never really materialized for me.

Oh well, it was still fun kept me entertained for most of the two hours.

Here's the game with all the observers' comments.

I let Fritz analyze the game all day today ...

He pointed out a missed tactic that would have really helped me along.  I actually considered the move, but felt that Bf8 neutralized the check ... if I would have looked one extra ply, I would won a rook.

Intuition

Maybe this is nothing new, but it's still fascinating.

Here are the links to read:

"Jonah Lehrer on Carlsen and chess intuition" by Arne Moll at Chessvibes
"Chess Intuition" by Jonah Lehrer at ScienceBlogs

Consider this passage from Jonah's article,

This is a truism of expertise. Although we tend to think of experts as being weighted down by information, their intelligence dependent on a vast set of facts, experts are actually profoundly intuitive. When experts evaluate a situation, they don't systematically compare all the available options or consciously analyze the relevant information. Carlsen, for instance, doesn't compute the probabilities of winning if he moves his rook to the left rather than the right. Instead, experts naturally depend on the emotions generated by their experience. Their prediction errors - all those mistakes they made in the past - have been translated into useful knowledge, which allows them to tap into a set of accurate feelings they can't begin to explain. Neils Bohr said it best: an expert is "a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

So it sounds like intuition is "emotions generated by experience."

Also, I really like that definition of an expert; "a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

Carlsen developed his intuition by deliberatly practicing against computer programs all those years (at least 10 years?) and learning from his mistakes.

To me, it sounds like the best bang for your buck at getting better at chess is to play against computers or stronger-than-you players, deliberately, often (as much as you can) and to learn from the mistakes you made.

Maybe ... but maybe not.

Moll's article goes on to state, "Still, mere exposure to more positions is not the same as being able to use them in a sensible way. The idea that working with computers can influence intuition is similar to the idea that the internet may be changing the way we think."

He quotes a neuroscientist who says, "Assembling a new combination (”associations”) may be relatively easy. The problem is whether the parts hang together, whether they cohere. We get a nightly reminder of an incoherent thought process from our dreams, which are full of people, places, and occasions that do not hang together very well. Awake, an incoherent collection is what we often start with, with the mind’s back office shaping it up into the coherent version that we finally become aware of — and occasionally speak aloud. Without such intellectual constructs, there is, William James said a century ago, only “a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion.”

This is just fascinating, fascinating stuff.

By the way, Jonah Leher's book How We Decide looks very intriguing.  I'm going to look for this the next time I'm in the bookstore.

Classic Posts on One Moves and Planning

There are three chess posts sitting in my RSS reader that I have saved for several months.  I saved them because I really like them.  What's interesting is that they were each written in different years (2007, 2008, 2009), they are all related and they pretty much have the same point ... looking deep into a position is futile; so don't do it.

First post: December 13, 2007 - "How Deep Do You Look" by wormwood
Second post: May 7, 2008 - "Multiple Choice" by drunknknite
Third post: October 8, 2009 - "A Word on Planning" by Nigel Davies

Here are three quotes from each post respectively:

"The errors happen 1-2 move deep, and the overwhelmingly most common one is underestimating a move that you did look into. And by underestimating I mean direct consequences that are blindingly obvious once you see that move made, not consequences that lie deeper." - wormwood

"The truth is that when we understand the position we see clearly, we do not overlook things, we do not make mistakes. It is when the position is beyond our comprehension that mistakes become easy. It is no longer easy to distinguish between moves. There is no way for us to tell how to proceed because our knowledge of this particular imbalance is limited." - drunknknite

"I have been thinking a lot about planning of late, especially with regard to its connection with intuition and minimalism. ... The more elaborate a plan, the more there is to go wrong at every stage of its realisation. And this is without considering the role of the opposition, whose goal is not just to refute various plans but to lie in wait for the obvious ones, constructing his game to meet them most effectively.  So should one actually have a ‘plan’ as such, or is the entire concept flawed? I’d say it needs some adjustment in that a ‘plan’ must have enough inherent flexibility to change at any moment. And what characterises the game of strong players is the way that their moves often seem ‘multi-purpose’, fulfilling a role in multiple potential plans." - Nigel Davies

My oversimplified suggestion (and by no means is this an expert or professional opinion) is that plans should be discouraged (thinking beyond 2 ply) and that time should be spent trying to understand the current position on the board and then finding the best move that improves your position.

Now cue the sarcastic comments, "wow.  brilliant suggestion Einstein" or "tell me something I don't already know."

Anway, go read those three posts.  They are worth the time and effort.

"Mental Block" by Marilyn Riseman

Here's a screen shot from a video (found here) about one of Marilyn Riseman's favorite pieces of art - a chess set entitled "Mental Block".

How cute.

Of course after finding this picture of her (she's the one on the left), I wondered if she had a mental block when she decided dress like that for her 80th birthday party.

(photo credit: http://www.boston.com/yourlife/fashion/gallery/0816_stylespy/)

Kiefer Loves Chess

Not sure if anyone else out there watches '24', but I just read here that Mary Lynn Rajskub says Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer) "loves playing chess and spends time in the game whenever he can manage."  And if you ever beat him, he'll break your knees.  OK ... that last part I just added.

Anyway, even though the show seems pretty predictable now, I still enjoy watching it.