PhD Candidate seeking research participants for a 5-minute online study on the factors that contribute to chess ability

[ChristinaLUQ]

Hello all!

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland in Australia. I am currently conducting research for my doctoral dissertation on the personal characteristics that contribute to chess ability and am seeking volunteers to participate in a 5-minute online survey. If you are a currently active competitive chess player with a FIDE, ACF, NZCF, USCF, or ECF rating and are at least 18 years old, it would be a massive help if you considered participating! If you are interested in participating, the survey can be found at the following link: https://uniofqueensland.syd1.qualtrics. ... HJcKB1hDam

Thank you,

Christina

[towforce]

Hello Christina,

I am not a strong chess player I'm afraid, but I am interested in the subject:

* I read "Chess Skill In Man And Machine" by Peter Frey when it came out 42 years ago. The most important point in the book was that studies had shown that to become a GM, expert knowledge of 50,000 patterns that commonly occur on a chessboard are required

* The higher the ELO, the more it's all about memory

* the knowledge easily trumps other human attributes: a new player who is highly competent in life and who is a quick learner and also very good at working things out will get consistently beaten by the useless person who is highly skilled in chess

[chetday]

Hello Christina,

I am not a strong chess player I'm afraid, but I am interested in the subject:

* I read "Chess Skill In Man And Machine" by Peter Frey when it came out 42 years ago. The most important point in the book was that studies had shown that to become a GM, expert knowledge of 50,000 patterns that commonly occur on a chessboard are required

* The higher the ELO, the more it's all about memory

* the knowledge easily trumps other human attributes: a new player who is highly competent in life and who is a quick learner and also very good at working things out will get consistently beaten by the useless person who is highly skilled in chess

Reading this gave my fragile ego a welcome boost in regards to my poor chess record of wins over the years!

[Uri Blass]

Hello Christina,

I am not a strong chess player I'm afraid, but I am interested in the subject:

* I read "Chess Skill In Man And Machine" by Peter Frey when it came out 42 years ago. The most important point in the book was that studies had shown that to become a GM, expert knowledge of 50,000 patterns that commonly occur on a chessboard are required

* The higher the ELO, the more it's all about memory

* the knowledge easily trumps other human attributes: a new player who is highly competent in life and who is a quick learner and also very good at working things out will get consistently beaten by the useless person who is highly skilled in chess

It may be interesting if there can be a software to teach humans to know 50,000 patterns and it may be interesting what is going to be the rating of humans who studied the patterns.

Knowing 50,000 patterns means being able to show for 50,000 different positions with the relevant patterns that you can memorize them if you only see them for 3 seconds.
I think that people also should be able to memorize some verbal explanation for lines that they need to calculate in the positions

A software may be able to teach all of it but unfortunately I do not know about a software to do it.

[towforce]

Hello Christina,

I am not a strong chess player I'm afraid, but I am interested in the subject:

* I read "Chess Skill In Man And Machine" by Peter Frey when it came out 42 years ago. The most important point in the book was that studies had shown that to become a GM, expert knowledge of 50,000 patterns that commonly occur on a chessboard are required

* The higher the ELO, the more it's all about memory

* the knowledge easily trumps other human attributes: a new player who is highly competent in life and who is a quick learner and also very good at working things out will get consistently beaten by the useless person who is highly skilled in chess

It may be interesting if there can be a software to teach humans to know 50,000 patterns and it may be interesting what is going to be the rating of humans who studied the patterns.

Knowing 50,000 patterns means being able to show for 50,000 different positions with the relevant patterns that you can memorize them if you only see them for 3 seconds.
I think that people also should be able to memorize some verbal explanation for lines that they need to calculate in the positions

A software may be able to teach all of it but unfortunately I do not know about a software to do it.

Open this page (random wiki article) 50,000 times and see how many of the articles you remember the important (for that subject) information about - link.

Strong chess players remember patterns because:

1. The game is intensely important to them

2. They've studied them in depth

When I find the deep underlying patterns of chess, I'll teach those: there will be fewer of them, and they will confer greater strength.