Author: Miguel A. Ballicora
Date: 11:09:37 12/29/01
Go up one level in this thread
On December 29, 2001 at 04:24:55, Otello Gnaramori wrote:
>On December 28, 2001 at 23:51:33, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:
>
>>On December 28, 2001 at 21:57:03, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>I think it is rather well established by now that human players are, like
>>>computers, studying a chess tree, trying to find the best possible continuation.
>>
>>Actually, not. That is the vicious influence from Kotov's teaching that
>>made everybody think that they should think like a tree.
>>There are recently two books that finally made in writing what everybody
>>suspected. "Improve your Chess Now" by J. Tisdall and "Secrets of Practical
>>Chess". Not even amateurs are taught NOT to think like a tree nowadays, and the
>>best book about it is "How to reasess your Chess" by J. Silman.
>>
>>First quote from Tisdall's book, first Chapter ("The Fabled Tree of Analysis"):
>>
>>"I do not think like a tree - do you think like a tree?" GM Anatoly Lein.
>>
>>There are certain situations where a strong player think like a tree, but
>>their thinking should certainly not be characterized by that.
>>
>
>Taking as an example Kasparov, he is renowned for his powerful calculations
>capabilities of the variations (...tree), both in analysis and both in OTB.
Which does not mean that he calculate every move like a tree. BTWA, he is more
renowned for this tactical vision, I think.
>>>Their way of searching this tree is probably very different of the way current
>>>alpha-beta algorithms do it, but still they are studying a tree.
>>>
>>>The NPS idea is based just on this fact: in a tree you have nodes, and after a
>>>while you have visited a number of nodes, so you can compute a "NPS".
>>
>>It is possible that in an endgame, you can be staring at the position for 10
>>minutes and make a very strong move without calculating like a tree a single
>>move, based only on general considerations and _retrograde_ analysis or a goal
>>seeking approach. Once you find the plan, everything falls into place.
>>
>
>Actually without calculating, your plan can fail miserably after few moves, but
>in that case we say that the player used an "heuristic" approach dictated by
>his/her intuition or from a "pattern recognition" process that helps to prune
>the tree and speedup the move choice, but as I said , it's prone to error
>without the methodical verification of the calculus.
You say "helps to prune the tree" because you assume there is a tree. Sometimes,
the whole tree is "replaced" by another approach. You mention intuition, many
times it is not intuition, but rather there is a solid logic analysis of the
situation that does not involve a tree.
How do you think that strong players play bullet? they could play dozens of
moves without analying any of them. Just pattern, knowledge and reflexes.
Once in a while they stop one second to quicly calculate something.
Regarding errors, it is the opposite, look at this quote:
"Tactical analysis is an error-prone activity. Overlooking one important finesse
can completely change the result of the analysis. If it is possible to decide on
your move on purely positional considerations then you should do so; it is
quicker and more reliable. There are of course many positions in which concrete
analysis is essential, but even in these cases you should not analyse specific
variations more than necessary." GM J. Nunn in "Secrets of Practical Chess" pp
21.
Regards,
Miguel
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