FICS SurveyBot

I don't see many opportunities for me to play OTB tournaments and establish a USCF anytime soon. Our kids are still fairly young and we are devoting a lot of our time to their interests. As such, I won't be able to play OTB very often.

Therefore, FICS will be the preferred venue for my play.

FICS has a survey bot that allows players to sumbit their USCF ratings. From there, regression analysis is completed to give us a fairly good comparasion between FICS ratings and USCF ratings.

Every time I update my rating status on my improvment plan page, I'll update this page with the latest analysis. I'll indicate where my FICS rating falls in the scale by highlighting it.

The command to get this report is "tell SurveyBot ratings USCF analyse"

December 19, 2007 Analysis
: FICS USCF
: ---------
: 1220 839
: 1240 873
: 1260 908
: 1280 942
: 1300 975
: 1320 1008
: 1340 1040
: 1360 1072
: 1380 1103
: 1400 1134
: 1420 1164
: 1440 1194
: 1460 1224
: 1480 1253
: 1500 1282
: 1520 1310
: 1540 1338
: 1560 1366
: 1580 1393
: 1600 1420
: 1620 1447 <---
: 1640 1473 <---
: 1660 1499
: 1680 1525
: 1700 1550
: 1720 1575
: 1740 1600
: 1760 1624
: 1780 1649
: 1800 1672
: 1820 1696
: 1840 1720
: 1860 1743
: 1880 1766
: 1900 1788
: 1920 1811
: 1940 1833
: 1960 1855
: 1980 1877
: 2000 1898
: 2020 1920
: 2040 1941
: 2060 1962
: 2080 1982
: 2100 2003
: 2120 2023
: 2140 2043
: 2160 2063
: 2180 2083
: 2200 2103
: 2220 2122
: 2240 2141
: 2260 2160
: 2280 2179
: 2300 2198
: 2320 2217
: 2340 2235
: 2360 2253
: 2380 2271
: 2400 2289
: ---------
SurveyBot(TD) tells you: A list of the estimated USCF ratings has been displayed above. The 164 submitted USCF ratings fit the best logarithmic curve given by formula USCF=a+b*ln(FICS), where a=-14397.65344145, b=2144.02597249 and coefficient of determination r^2=0.624.
***********************************************************

How to Beat a Grandmaster (or two)

Here's the challenge: At best you're an average chess player. You challenge the following group to a simul

GM John Emms
FM Nathan Alfred
GM Jonathan Levitt
Desmond Tan (Former England Jr. )
IM Paul Littlewood
FM Graham Lee
GM Julian Hodgson
GM Chris Ward
Robert Chan (Pres. of the Chess Society Kings College, London)

How do you come out on top? Watch to found out.

Chess Tempo

I created an account at Chess Tempo several weeks ago, but never revisted the site until today. I've been playing around there for a bit today and I really, really like what I've seen so far.

The biggest feature I love (so far) is the ability to choose either a blitz or standard tactic. If you choose blitz, it is just like CTS ... the quicker you correctly solve the problem, the better off you are ... time is a factor. But if you choose standard, the only thing that matters is if you correctly choose the sequence of moves ... time is not part of the equation.

It pains me that I've spent so much time and effort at CTS and will probably abandon the site. I'm only a few hundred problems away from 10,000 on CTS. Maybe once I hit the 10,000 mark, I'll quit CTS and exclusively focus on Chess Tempo.

Is there any reason to keep using CTS? Are the tactics comparable?

Chess Boxing World Champion

I know this is old news and probably has already been hashed around the chess blogosphere, but I wanted to make a few comments on this.

The BBC did a wonderful job summarizing the event. You can view the video at YouTube. The BBC article can be read here. I particularly liked how the BBC author described the sport: "A sort of Rocky ... with rooks."

In a nutshell, David "Double D" Depto from San Francisco lost to Frank "Anti-terror" Stoldt in the seventh round by checkmate.

Did you know that 1,200 people showed up to watch this event? ("Chessboxing heavyweight wins by checkmate") I don't think ESPN carried this event, but the suits over there should certainly look into showing these matches. I know they've done a report on it (see below)


This could legitimatly open up chess to "mainstream" America. I know I'd enjoy watching more events like the "Double D" vs. "Anti-terror" fight.

If you haven't already, go to YouTube and seach "chess boxing" to see videos of some fights (along with videos about some oriental show called "Mystery of Chess Boxing").

And on a final note, I found this quaint video advertising some chess club.

Need for Consistency

My wife and I went to Hawaii the first week of October. We just got back. Before our trip, she sent me to Half-Priced Books to get her some reading material for the plane and beach. I needed to buy a book to read too. As always, I checked the chess section first to see if they had any books on my "to buy" list. I was pleased to find that they had Patrick Wolff's "Idiot's" book. I remember Dan Heisman recomending this book. So I bought it and took it with me to Hawaii. My wife just laughed at me. She couldn't believe I was going to read a chess book to relax.

I got through all the tactical section and part way into the positional section. I really bought the book to begin learning about positional strategy. I got about half way through the book by the time we had to leave. I'm still reading through it at night.

While we were gone, I didn't get a chance to log into CTS. So when I got back, I logged on and started working the problems .... I stunk it up! With tactics, you really do need to keep at it every day to keep your tactical vision sharp (or at least not dull). After a week of struggling, I am finally back up to where I was before our vacation. Like I told Blue Devil Knight (who finished the circles by the way) ... you have to keep at it.

Milestones on CTS

I hit two milestones on CTS tonight.

I've now completed 5000 tactical problems and I reached a new high of 1489. My previous high was 1484.

This new high was a long time coming. I've been really struggling with the tactics on CTS the last couple of weeks. But the last few days ... I've been on fire.

It feels so good to break another barrier after pounding against it for so long!

Dilbert Chess

Scott Adams is genius.

Today on his blog, he imagined his characters as chess pieces.














He describes each character/piece:

Alice = Queen. The most powerful and capable piece.

Boss = King. He’s in charge, but largely helpless.

Dilbert = Rook. He moves in a straight path. Dilbert’s head shape and bumpy hairline even resemble a rook.

Bishop = Wally. He always has an angle, and he has a little bald head.

Dogbert = Knight. It’s the sneakiest chess piece. You never see it coming. And it’s the only animal.

Pawn = Asok the interns. He’s small and powerless and expendable.

Another Reason I Play Chess

I got a kick out of Chessloser's post a few weeks ago about the possibility of being thrown in the slammer and having all that spare time to play chess. In a sense, a lot of senior citizen who are physically disabled experience a form of prison.

I've always figured that once I've exhausted all my physical strength and and am old and sitting around in my son's home or a "retirement home" that I'd play chess all the time.

Today I came accross an article about a man who is taking chess to senior citizens who are disabled. Obviously he loves chess and now that he can no longer work because of his own physical disability, he is focusing on helping others.

After reading the article, it dawned on me that this gentleman (Patrick Ellis) has hit upon a great idea. As kids, my Mom would force us to sing at Retirement Homes during the holidays. I knew it helped these older people feel some joy in their lives, but I personally didn't enjoy visiting these crypts. Through the years, I began to realize just how much these elder folks appreciated and loved receiving visits ... any form of interaction made them wag their tails. They are a lot like little kids and beg for attention.

Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for me or any of you chess bloggers out there who may come accross this post ... consider visiting a Retirement Home this year (especially around the holidays). And when you go to visit, don't forget to take your chess set (or even your checkers).

For more information about this subject, visit Patrick Ellis' website http://www.thesilverknights.org/

Shakespearean Knight Tour

I read this over at Futulity Closet.


The knight's tour is a recreation familiar to chessplayers: Move a knight about an empty chessboard so as to visit each square exactly once.

On this board, each square contains a syllable. Collect them in the right order and you'll compose a six-line quotation from Shakespeare.

What is it? (hint ... start at e4)

With a little help from Google, I was able to complete the task.

CTS Update

I bottomed out a few days ago, but I've rebounded nicely. I don't know if CTS is throwing easy problems at me or if I'm getting better, but I've been very consistent and accurate. My accuracy is up at 71.1% as of today. I'd like to continue my streak, but I have to go to bed in order to get up at 4:30am tomorrow.

Extreme Knockdown Chess via n8ux

Found this video over at Out of the Ether (which is a great blog by the way).

CTS Update

I've been fairly consistent at working on tactics on CTS. In the last week, I've only dropped below 1400 once. Before, I would continually drop below 1400 and then gradually climb back up only to drop back below 1400 again. It was a roller coaster.

But this past week, I've stuck to it pretty religiously and I've been able to maintain some consistency. The last backslide I had pushed me to just above 1400. But I've recovered nicely and am now keeping it pretty steady around 1420-1430. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep my rating at this level.



I'm a pretty average tactician in the CTS community.

Think, but don't Think

There is something about this article that bugs me.

Each “Chess Tuesdays” in the park begins with a rap session to get the participating kids fired up because not only are they going to play chess, they will play fast, making decisions in seconds. Organizer Orrin Hudson says it causes the kids to think and react quickly and realize they have to live with the results of their decisions.

I've underlined the parts that, to me, seem incongruent. I can see what the organizer is trying to do, but I don't agree with the tactics, I guess. How can you truly think when you're playing fast? I guess it'll make it easier for him to point out the kids' errors so he can then make the metaphor "you have to live with that conseqence." If I were one of those kids, I'd probably respond to his metaphor with something along the lines of, "If I need to think before I make a decision, then I need some time and some quiet. Why the hell are you forcing me to rap and make split-second decisions?!"

Well, I'm sure the organizer has good intentions. I'm sure he's having some positive influence on some kids' lives.

Red Hot Pawn

I've tossed my hat into the correspondence chess world. I signed up at Red Hot Pawn tonight and started my first game. I'm hoping this will force me to work out a thought process without the time pressures of an on-line game. Plus, I don't always have enough time to play a 60 5 game during the week.

Feel free to start up a game with me at RHP if you use that site.

I've added my RHP profile link to the sidebar.

"Aim for small advantages"

I'm continuing to read Logical Chess Move by Move and while reading over game 7 (Spielmann v. Wahle) I read a quote which seemed to hit home with me since I tend to want to strike early and hard in a game.

In the beginning of the game ignore the search for combinations, abstain from violent moves. Aim for small advantages, accumulate them, and only after having attained these ends search for the combination - and then with all the power of will and intellect, because then the combination must exist, however deeply hidden.

Of course if there is a combination early, I think I'd take it, but the point is well taken ... get all your men ready for battle and then strike. Don't attack blindly or without preparation.

"The Expert Mind"

I stumbled accross this article today.

July 24, 2006

The Expert Mind

Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well

By Philip E. Ross

A man walks along the inside of a circle of chess tables, glancing at each for two or three seconds before making his move. On the outer rim, dozens of amateurs sit pondering their replies until he completes the circuit. The year is 1909, the man is Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.

How did he play so well, so quickly? And how far ahead could he calculate under such constraints? "I see only one move ahead," Capablanca is said to have answered, "but it is always the correct one."

He thus put in a nutshell what a century of psychological research has subsequently established: much of the chess master's advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought. This rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well. Just as a master can recall all the moves in a game he has played, so can an accomplished musician often reconstruct the score to a sonata heard just once. And just as the chess master often finds the best move in a flash, an expert physician can sometimes make an accurate diagnosis within moments of laying eyes on a patient.

But how do the experts in these various subjects acquire their extraordinary skills? How much can be credited to innate talent and how much to intensive training? Psychologists have sought answers in studies of chess masters. The collected results of a century of such research have led to new theories explaining how the mind organizes and retrieves information. What is more, this research may have important implications for educators. Perhaps the same techniques used by chess players to hone their skills could be applied in the classroom to teach reading, writing and arithmetic.

The Drosophila of Cognitive Science The history of human expertise begins with hunting, a skill that was crucial to the survival of our early ancestors. The mature hunter knows not only where the lion has been; he can also infer where it will go. Tracking skill increases, as repeated studies show, from childhood onward, rising in "a linear relationship, all the way out to the mid-30s, when it tops out," says John Bock, an anthropologist at California State University, Fullerton. It takes less time to train a brain surgeon.

The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born.

Without a demonstrably immense superiority in skill over the novice, there can be no true experts, only laypeople with imposing credentials. Such, alas, are all too common. Rigorous studies in the past two decades have shown that professional stock pickers invest no more successfully than amateurs, that noted connoisseurs distinguish wines hardly better than yokels, and that highly credentialed psychiatric therapists help patients no more than colleagues with less advanced degrees. And even when expertise undoubtedly exists--as in, say, teaching or business management--it is often hard to measure, let alone explain.

Skill at chess, however, can be measured, broken into components, subjected to laboratory experiments and readily observed in its natural environment, the tournament hall. It is for those reasons that chess has served as the greatest single test bed for theories of thinking--the "Drosophila of cognitive science," as it has been called.

The measurement of chess skill has been taken further than similar attempts with any other game, sport or competitive activity. Statistical formulas weigh a player's recent results over older ones and discount successes according to the strength of one's opponents. The results are ratings that predict the outcomes of games with remarkable reliability. If player A outrates player B by 200 points, then A will on average beat B 75 percent of the time. This prediction holds true whether the players are top-ranked or merely ordinary. Garry Kasparov, the Russian grandmaster who has a rating of 2812, will win 75 percent of his games against the 100th-ranked grandmaster, Jan Timman of the Netherlands, who has a rating of 2616. Similarly, a U.S. tournament player rated 1200 (about the median) will win 75 percent of the time against someone rated 1000 (about the 40th percentile). Ratings allow psychologists to assess expertise by performance rather than reputation and to track changes in a given player's skill over the course of his or her career.

Another reason why cognitive scientists chose chess as their model--and not billiards, say, or bridge--is the game's reputation as, in German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's words, "the touchstone of the intellect." The feats of chess masters have long been ascribed to nearly magical mental powers. This magic shines brightest in the so-called blindfold games in which the players are not allowed to see the board. In 1894 French psychologist Alfred Binet, the co-inventor of the first intelligence test, asked chess masters to describe how they played such games. He began with the hypothesis that they achieved an almost photographic image of the board, but he soon concluded that the visualization was much more abstract. Rather than seeing the knight's mane or the grain of the wood from which it is made, the master calls up only a general knowledge of where the piece stands in relation to other elements of the position. It is the same kind of implicit knowledge that the commuter has of the stops on a subway line.

The blindfolded master supplements such knowledge with details of the game at hand as well as with recollections of salient aspects of past games. Let us say he has somehow forgotten the precise position of a pawn. He can find it, as it were, by considering the stereotyped strategy of the opening--a well-studied phase of the game with a relatively limited number of options. Or he can remember the logic behind one of his earlier moves--say, by reasoning: "I could not capture his bishop two moves ago; therefore, that pawn must have been standing in the way...." He does not have to remember every detail at all times, because he can reconstruct any particular detail whenever he wishes by tapping a well-organized system of connections.

Of course, if the possession of such intricately structured knowledge explains not only success at blindfold play but also other abilities of chess masters, such as calculation and planning, then expertise in the game would depend not so much on innate abilities as on specialized training. Dutch psychologist Adriaan de Groot, himself a chess master, confirmed this notion in 1938, when he took advantage of the staging of a great international tournament in Holland to compare average and strong players with the world's leading grandmasters. One way he did so was to ask the players to describe their thoughts as they examined a position taken from a tournament game. He found that although experts--the class just below master--did analyze considerably more possibilities than the very weak players, there was little further increase in analysis as playing strength rose to the master and grandmaster levels. The better players did not examine more possibilities, only better ones--just as Capablanca had claimed.

Recent research has shown that de Groot's findings reflected in part the nature of his chosen test positions. A position in which extensive, accurate calculation is critical will allow the grandmasters to show their stuff, as it were, and they will then search more deeply along the branching tree of possible moves than the amateur can hope to do. So, too, experienced physicists may on occasion examine more possibilities than physics students do. Yet in both cases, the expert relies not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis as on a store of structured knowledge. When confronted with a difficult position, a weaker player may calculate for half an hour, often looking many moves ahead, yet miss the right continuation, whereas a grandmaster sees the move immediately, without consciously analyzing anything at all.

De Groot also had his subjects examine a position for a limited period and then try to reconstruct it from memory. Performance at this task tracked game-playing strength all the way from novice to grandmaster. Beginners could not recall more than a very few details of the position, even after having examined it for 30 seconds, whereas grandmasters could usually get it perfectly, even if they had perused it for only a few seconds. This difference tracks a particular form of memory, specific to the kind of chess positions that commonly occur in play. The specific memory must be the result of training, because grandmasters do no better than others in general tests of memory.

Similar results have been demonstrated in bridge players (who can remember cards played in many games), computer programmers (who can reconstruct masses of computer code) and musicians (who can recall long snatches of music). Indeed, such a memory for the subject matter of a particular field is a standard test for the existence of expertise.

The conclusion that experts rely more on structured knowledge than on analysis is supported by a rare case study of an initially weak chess player, identified only by the initials D.H., who over the course of nine years rose to become one of Canada's leading masters by 1987. Neil Charness, professor of psychology at Florida State University, showed that despite the increase in the player's strength, he analyzed chess positions no more extensively than he had earlier, relying instead on a vastly improved knowledge of chess positions and associated strategies.

Chunking Theory In the 1960s Herbert A. Simon and William Chase, both at Carnegie Mellon University, tried to get a better understand-ing of expert memory by studying its limitations. Picking up where de Groot left off, they asked players of various strengths to reconstruct chess positions that had been artificially devised--that is, with the pieces placed randomly on the board--rather than reached as the result of master play. The correlation between game-playing strength and the accuracy of the players' recall was much weak-er with the random positions than with the authentic ones.

Chess memory was thus shown to be even more specific than it had seemed, being tuned not merely to the game itself but to typical chess positions. These experiments corroborated earlier studies that had demonstrated convincingly that ability in one area tends not to transfer to another. American psychologist Edward Thorndike first noted this lack of transference over a century ago, when he showed that the study of Latin, for instance, did not improve command of English and that geometric proofs do not teach the use of logic in daily life.

Simon explained the masters' relative weakness in reconstructing artificial chess positions with a model based on meaningful patterns called chunks. He invoked the concept to explain how chess masters can manipulate vast amounts of stored information, a task that would seem to strain the working memory. Psychologist George Miller of Princeton University famously estimated the limits of working memory--the scratch pad of the mind--in a 1956 paper entitled "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two." Miller showed that people can contemplate only five to nine items at a time. By packing hierarchies of information into chunks, Simon argued, chess masters could get around this limitation, because by using this method, they could access five to nine chunks rather than the same number of smaller details.

Take the sentence "Mary had a little lamb." The number of information chunks in this sentence depends on one's knowledge of the poem and the English language. For most native speakers of English, the sentence is part of a much larger chunk, the familiar poem. For someone who knows English but not the poem, the sentence is a single, self-contained chunk. For someone who has memorized the words but not their meaning, the sentence is five chunks, and it is 18 chunks for someone who knows the letters but not the words.

In the context of chess, the same differences can be seen between novices and grandmasters. To a beginner, a position with 20 chessmen on the board may contain far more than 20 chunks of information, because the pieces can be placed in so many configurations. A grandmaster, however, may see one part of the position as "fianchettoed bishop in the castled kingside," together with a "blockaded king's-Indian-style pawn chain," and thereby cram the entire position into perhaps five or six chunks. By measuring the time it takes to commit a new chunk to memory and the number of hours a player must study chess before reaching grandmaster strength, Simon estimated that a typical grandmaster has access to roughly 50,000 to 100,000 chunks of chess information. A grandmaster can retrieve any of these chunks from memory simply by looking at a chess position, in the same way that most native English speakers can recite the poem "Mary had a little lamb" after hearing just the first few words.

Even so, there were difficulties with chunking theory. It could not fully explain some aspects of memory, such as the ability of experts to perform their feats while being distracted (a favorite tactic in the study of memory). K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University and Charness argued that there must be some other mechanism that enables experts to employ long-term memory as if it, too, were a scratch pad. Says Ericsson: "The mere demonstration that highly skilled players can play at almost their normal strength under blindfold conditions is almost impossible for chunking theory to explain because you have to know the position, then you have to explore it in your memory." Such manipulation involves changing the stored chunks, at least in some ways, a task that may be likened to reciting "Mary had a little lamb" backward. It can be done, but not easily, and certainly not without many false starts and errors. Yet grandmaster games played quickly and under blindfold conditions tend to be of surprisingly high quality.

Ericsson also cites studies of physicians who clearly put information into long-term memory and take it out again in ways that enable them to make diagnoses. Perhaps Ericsson's most homely example, though, comes from reading. In a 1995 study he and Walter Kintsch of the University of Colorado found that interrupting highly proficient readers hardly slowed their reentry to a text; in the end, they lost only a few seconds. The researchers explained these findings by recourse to a structure they called long-term working memory, an almost oxymoronic coinage because it assigns to long-term memory the one thing that had always been defined as incompatible with it: thinking. But brain-imaging studies done in 2001 at the University of Konstanz in Germany provide support for the theory by showing that expert chess players activate long-term memory much more than novices do.

Fernand Gobet of Brunel University in London champions a rival theory, devised with Simon in the late 1990s. It extends the idea of chunks by invoking highly characteristic and very large patterns consisting of perhaps a dozen chess pieces. Such a template, as they call it, would have a number of slots into which the master could plug such variables as a pawn or a bishop. A template might exist, say, for the concept of "the isolated queen's-pawn position from the Nimzo-Indian Defense," and a master might change a slot by reclassifying it as the same position "minus the dark-squared bishops." To resort again to the poetic analogy, it would be a bit like memorizing a riff on "Mary had a little lamb" by substituting rhyming equivalents at certain slots, such as "Larry" for "Mary," "pool" for "school" and so on. Anyone who knows the original template should be able to fix the altered one in memory in a trice.

A Proliferation of Prodigies The one thing that all expertise theorists agree on is that it takes enormous effort to build these structures in the mind. Simon coined a psychological law of his own, the 10-year rule, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others.

According to this view, the proliferation of chess prodigies in recent years merely reflects the advent of computer-based training methods that let children study far more master games and to play far more frequently against master-strength programs than their forerunners could typically manage. Fischer made a sensation when he achieved the grandmaster title at age 15, in 1958; today's record-holder, Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine, earned it at 12 years, seven months.

Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.

Meanwhile the standards denoting expertise grow ever more challenging. High school runners manage the four-minute mile; conservatory students play pieces once attempted only by virtuosi. Yet it is chess, again, that offers the most convincing comparison over time. John Nunn, a British mathematician who is also a grandmaster, recently used a computer to help him compare the errors committed in all the games in two international tournaments, one held in 1911, the other in 1993. The modern players played far more accurately. Nunn then examined all the games of one player in 1911 who scored in the middle of the pack and concluded that his rating today would be no better than 2100, hundreds of points below the grandmaster level--"and that was on a good day and with a following wind." The very best old-time masters were considerably stronger but still well below the level of today's leaders.

Then again, Capablanca and his contemporaries had neither computers nor game databases. They had to work things out for themselves, as did Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and if they fall below today's masters in technique, they tower above them in creative power. The same comparison can be made between Newton and the typical newly minted Ph.D. in physics.
At this point, many skeptics will finally lose patience. Surely, they will say, it takes more to get to Carnegie Hall than practice, practice, practice. Yet this belief in the importance of innate talent, strongest perhaps among the experts themselves and their trainers, is strangely lacking in hard evidence to substantiate it. In 2002 Gobet conducted a study of British chess players ranging from amateurs to grandmasters and found no connection at all between their playing strengths and their visual-spatial abilities, as measured by shape-memory tests. Other researchers have found that the abilities of professional handicappers to predict the results of horse races did not correlate at all with their mathematical abilities.

Although nobody has yet been able to predict who will become a great expert in any field, a notable experiment has shown the possibility of deliberately creating one. Laszlo Polgar, an educator in Hungary, homeschooled his three daughters in chess, assigning as much as six hours of work a day, producing one international master and two grandmasters--the strongest chess-playing siblings in history. The youngest Polgar, 30-year-old Judit, is now ranked 14th in the world.

The Polgar experiment proved two things: that grandmasters can be reared and that women can be grandmasters. It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after Laszlo Polgar published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier.

Thus, motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise. It is no accident that in music, chess and sports--all domains in which expertise is defined by competitive performance rather than academic credentialing--professionalism has been emerging at ever younger ages, under the ministrations of increasingly dedicated parents and even extended families.

Furthermore, success builds on success, because each accomplishment can strengthen a child's motivation. A 1999 study of professional soccer players from several countries showed that they were much more likely than the general population to have been born at a time of year that would have dictated their enrollment in youth soccer leagues at ages older than the average. In their early years, these children would have enjoyed a substantial advantage in size and strength when playing soccer with their teammates. Because the larger, more agile children would get more opportunities to handle the ball, they would score more often, and their success at the game would motivate them to become even better.

Teachers in sports, music and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. Capablanca, regarded to this day as the greatest "natural" chess player, boasted that he never studied the game. In fact, he flunked out of Columbia University in part because he spent so much time playing chess. His famously quick apprehension was a product of all his training, not a substitute for it.

The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. What is more, the demonstrated ability to turn a child quickly into an expert--in chess, music and a host of other subjects--sets a clear challenge before the schools. Can educators find ways to encourage students to engage in the kind of effortful study that will improve their reading and math skills? Roland G. Fryer, Jr., an economist at Harvard University, has experimented with offering monetary rewards to motivate students in underperforming schools in New York City and Dallas. In one ongoing program in New York, for example, teachers test the students every three weeks and award small amounts--on the order of $10 or $20--to those who score well. The early results have been promising. Instead of perpetually pondering the question, "Why can't Johnny read?" perhaps educators should ask, "Why should there be anything in the world he can't learn to do?"

Tagged

Thanks to Korsmonaut, I've been tagged. Rise and Shine, you're it.

What is your blogger name and URL?
RockyRook, rockyrook.blogspot.com with my "Circles" quest over at sirrockrook.blogsot.com

How did you learn about the circles?
I don't remember exactly how I came accross de la Maza's book, but I know it was through the Chessville site and forum.

When did you learn about the circles?
Probably late 2002 or early part of 2003 ... I know it was shortly after the book came out and it was around the time I "found" on-line chess and FICS.

How long have you been going through the circles or how long did it take if you finished?
I received CT-ART 3.0 for Christmas in 2003 and I made a few feeble attempts in 2004. Then I went back to school to earn an MBA and that left little time for chess. Then in February 2006 I found Man de la Maza's blog and the Knight Errants. After that, I decided to try the program again. So I started again June 2006 determined to do 1039 problems, but recently decided to cut that to 500. I just finished yesterday.

How is your progress?
I spent a lot of time hammering the problems into my head. Although I've improved, I still have a long way to go.

Does working with the circles alone work for chess improvement, or is it more helpful to join the Knights?
I think joining the Knights is better. Having that quasi-accountability over my head helped me to keep at it as long as I did.

Are you a scholastic player?
No.

Would you recommend the circles to a scholastic player?
Maybe ... if that is what the player needs to improve.

Do you use other training methods to supplement the circles?
While I was working on them, no. Now that I'm done, I plan to keep doing mini-circles while studying other parts of the game.

Any general comments about chess training or the circles?
It's tough at times, but you gotta do it if you want to improve.

4th of July and Chess

With the 4th of July in a couple of days, I was interested in seeing how the 4th are chess are related when entered into a search engine.



Quite of few hits came up for chess sets.


Chesshouse.com actually has a category of chess sets named "Revolutionary War Chess Sets" There are other military themed-sets too, of course.

If you google "Revolutionary war chess", you'll find lots of sites willing to sell you a set similiar to this one.

This person (over at halfbakery.com) takes atomic chess to the next level ... rigging actual pieces with fireworks. When captured, the firework is lit!

And while you're out BBQing on Wednesday, the chess competitor in you may decide to focus on Championship BBQ ... read more here. DG over at the BCC picked up on this article last year and proposed a BBQ/Chess competition.

After cooking up your BBQ, sit down and enjoy your picnic and a nice game of chess ... but be careful about the distractions.

Enjoy the 4th!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the United States of America!

Former Chess Champion Transitions Skills to Politics

In a recent interview, former chess champion Garry Kasparov says that transitioning his chess skills to politics has been easy.

"In politics, body language is everything. In chess, I found that by strategically placing my hands on my face, I could influence the mind of my opponent."

The chess legend went on to explain the various messages he could send with body language.

"If I put a half-clenched fist under my chin it meant, 'oh, that was a good move, but really quite silly.' Usually this move will cause my opponent to squirm a little."

He further explains, "If I want my opponent to piss his pants, then I put my whole hand over my mouth and give him the stare of death. Then I wait for him to resign."

Rocky Decisions Overturned

PHILADELPHIA—In the wake of last month's shocking revelation that actor
Sylvester Stallone had been caught with the illegal human growth hormone Jintropin at an Australian airport, the World Boxing Association, in a joint decision with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Actors Guild, has overturned the uplifting, feel-good endings of Rocky II, III, and IV, sources said Monday.

... read the rest of the article.