One Against Many


I’ve always wondered how some chess players play against multiple players simultaneously? (Not only do they play, but they also win against most of the others). It seems hard enough to keep track of one board, how do they keep track of so many as they keep moving from one opponent to the other?

I read about some studies on top chess players that included scanners to track which areas of the brain they used during games. The surprising answer was that it was not the analytical areas. Instead, it was the memory areas that were used more! This is very counter-intuitive: most of us assume chess is all about cognitive skills.

Turns out top players have great memories of board positions, clusters of pieces that indicate go-for-the-kill scenarios, weaknesses and helps them spot pieces that “stick out” from standard positions. In other words, they don’t see 32 pieces, they see clusters and pivot points.

I think the results of those studies answers my question at the top of this blog: how do some chess players play against multiple players simultaneously? Well, if most of what it takes is the ability to look at the positions of pieces on the board and retrieve the best move from memory, then playing multiple players simultaneously is just like flipping to a different page of a chess quiz book and picking the best move! You don’t have to remember all the board positions as you go from table to table: rather, you need to be able to look at the board and spot the best move.

Comments

  1. KumarJune 16, 2012 at 9:14 PM

    You have no doubt hinted at some technicality regarding the way of functioning of human mind - as applicable to playing chess, one versus many. Hope psychology experts have no objection to your idea; these days things get very intricate in any field pretty soon to keep laymen at bay! Anyway, as a layman I can appreciate general points fortunately.

    There is a significant, possibly a common, background behind similar issues (of human mind capability):

    Being the most intelligent among species, man keeps trying to assess and understand the secret of human intelligence itself. Honestly we are, as yet, far far away from actually understanding the secret behind our own intelligence. A surprising (certainly surprising for those who come across this detail the first time!) fact has been ascertained by experts: "The normal human being uses a bare minimum - that is to say 'very nearly a negligible part' - of one's mind potential"

    If this is true, then we need not feel much surprise about any intellectual achievement of any human being!The great persons in many fields probably managed to put to use a little more of the "stupendous mind" just idling (for want of doing anything to do perhaps) behind their ordinary conscious mind.

    This may look crazy but this may also be true! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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