The late Simon Webb had a wonderful idea a while ago, to record chessplayers of different strengths for 10 minutes while they considered a chess position. He published them in Barry Wood's old CHESS magazine in the 1970s, and I've used them before with groups. We tried this last week; I gave them all this position:
Fridrik Olafsson
Svetozar Gligoric
Los Angeles (1)
1963
No. 1
Position for analysis from Simon Webb
* [Webb]Black to move. [Take 10 minutes yourself, if you like.]
Without being able to record them all, I asked people to write down their thinking while they were doing it. I then asked people to describe, not what they were thinking about (specifics), but how they were thinking about it. If they found this difficult, I got them to just say their moves, then I tried to re-describe their thinking in terms of process, as follows.
Player A's actual
comments: |
What I wrote down: |
|
|
Here are their comments:
Player B
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Player C
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Player D
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Player E
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Player F
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Player G
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Now, there's nothing to say that a different 7 players might have come up with something totally different, nor that the same 7 players might not do something totally different when faced with a different position. Also, I don't know if they would recognise the descriptions I gave them... Anyhow, all good food for thought:
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Of the 7, 4 didn't mention looking for White's threats. Ever get surprised by a blow of your opponent? Often? Is that because you don't routinely check for threats?
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I think you can put these 7 in order of organisation, but, without wishing to embarrass anyone, I think this order would be different to order of playing strength. I suspect that if the strongest players were more organised, they would be better, rather than concluding that thinking organisation is irrelevant.
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From the various models given in the session, I think a couple come close to Purdy... if we listened long enough, maybe we would discover they were doing a lot of what Heisman says too.
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I rather warmed to player B: once they get some error-checking in, they have the basic survival kit for beginners down pat.
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Player C was just awesome... Lots of appropriate questions used in sequence.
No.1: Fridrik Olafsson Svetozar Gligoric Los Angeles (1) 1963 [Black to move] | No.2 Rudolf Teschner Leonid Stein Stockholm (9) 1962 [White to move] |
b - - 0 15 |
w - - 0 28 |
Mikhail Tal Paul Keres Curacao (2) 1962 | Victor Kortchnoi Fridrik Olafsson Stockholm 1962 |
[Black to move]
b - b3 0 32 |
[White to move]
w - - 0 12 |
Miroslav Filip Efim Geller Curacao (25) 1962 | Pal Benko Paul Keres Curacao (27) 1962 |
[White to move]
w - - 0 46 |
[Black to move]
b - - 0 42 |