New Player with problem memorizing board

[martyguy]

I'm a new player who knows the rules of chess but knows absolutely no strategy. Now that I'm retired I have the time to start studying the game in earnest. I bought Chessmaster 9000. The lessons are going well except in one area that I'm having a terrible time. One set of lessons is to memorize the board with from four to six pieces on the board. No matter how long I look at the board, whenever I think I can reproduce the board, I am wrong by quite a bit. I tell the game to erase the board and I then immediately try to reproduce the position of the four to six pieces. Invariably my memory is faulty even a few seconds after the board is erased.

I'm hoping that I can develop and improve my short term memory. I've been practicing for perhaps two or three hours over the last three days, but I haven't improved much.

Do you think that the "photographic memory" of the board positions can be learned or is it hopeless?

[Perseus]

Well, it's a useful skill to have, I think. But I don't know if you really need to be good at it. I know that I'm totally awful at reproducing positions from memory, yet my rating shows a nice (approximate) 1950 FIDE...

What I can tell you is that, probably, concentrating really hard on the position isn't the answer. Letting it sink in while more relaxed improves my recall. As does context really, if it's a game of my own and I know what plans lead to the position I'm trying to reproduce, it's a bit easier..

That's just my €0,02.

[JacksonWShowalter]

I’m not sure what such an exercise is designed to teach you. More important is the skill of pattern recognition.

Susan Polgar made the following statement: “One of the biggest misconceptions about chess is it requires a lot of memorization. In reality, while some memorization is required, pattern recognition plays a crucial part in chess mastery.”

“The higher ranked a player is, the more likely it is that this player would have in his ‘head’ a larger storage of information. When the time and opportunity occur, the player processes the data, to come with, or aim at a solution, a desired structure or a sequence.” - Aviv Friedman

Refer to the following for more information:
Secrets of Chess Intuition
Chessville - The Psychology of Chess Skill - by J. Corey Butler, PhD
Getting into chess...: How important is repetition for acquiring pattern recognition skills?

[Fromper]

I agree that this isn't that useful a skill to memorize. You'll remember key points of a position as they relate to the specific games you play, not because you want to remember what squares the pieces are on for the sake of an exercise.

For instance, I played a slow game recently where my knight on c4 ended up playing a crucial role in the middle game. I couldn't tell you offhand where some of the other pieces were at particular moments, or exactly where my queen moved, but I remember that knight on the c4 square, because it was the most important piece in the middle game.

As mentioned above, it's pattern recognition, in the context of what the pieces are doing and why they're there.

This actually reminds me of something I read once. A researcher did an experiment where he showed some chess positions to beginners at the game and chess masters and asked them to reproduce them. In positions that looked like "normal" positions from games, the masters did significantly better than the beginners at reproducing the positions of almost all the pieces. But in totally random positions that look nothing like what could come up in a game, the masters did no better than the beginners. Think about it.

--Fromper

[Octal]

Originally Posted by Fromper

This actually reminds me of something I read once. A researcher did an experiment where he showed some chess positions to beginners at the game and chess masters and asked them to reproduce them. In positions that looked like "normal" positions from games, the masters did significantly better than the beginners at reproducing the positions of almost all the pieces. But in totally random positions that look nothing like what could come up in a game, the masters did no better than the beginners. Think about it.

--Fromper

This works because masters do what is called "chunking." They literally cut the position apart into chunks (or patterns) they can recognize, which helps them for finding tactical shots, developing plans, etc at faster speeds.

It was discussed in this video: My Brilliant Brain - Make Me A Genius

[JSeeds]

Fromper, the research you're talking about is discussed in this outstanding Scientific American article: The Expert Mind: Scientific American

It's quite long, so I cut and paste the relevant paragraphs:

"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."

...

"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."

The ability to reconstruct real chess positions from memory comes from experience/training with the positions/patterns that occur during actual games (and not from being "good" at memorization).

Martyguy, my advice would be not to worry about that exercise too much. My sense is that Chessmaster is trying to teach you how to visualize chess positions in your head. I believe this is better learnt through basic tactical study and playing slow games - where you are forced to exercise your calculation ability.

[mifs adaro]

Originally Posted by Octal

This works because masters do what is called "chunking." They literally cut the position apart into chunks (or patterns) they can recognize, which helps them for finding tactical shots, developing plans, etc at faster speeds.

It was discussed in this video: My Brilliant Brain - Make Me A Genius

yes, i think i encountered the concept too...in de Groot's book, i guess. and it's a very good way to assess how we are doing in chess, actually in everything we do, there are patterns..in math, science..everywhere, even in Amy Lowell's poem...hehe
anyway, sir, one book i've read says that enhancing chess vision (that is, memorising the board indeed) can be not so tedious, if you turn it into a habit...say, you browse thru a chess magazine or book once in a while and try just looking at the diagrams, the position of the pieces, where the square f4 is...when you are relaxing, on the way to work, taking a snack..everywhere, everytime, make it a habit. and it actually works for me, now i do not commit grave blunders anymore, and i can read and re-play in my mind chess games even without a board...