ChapterZero

‘Effort is more important than innate ability’– seems like a confidence boosting feel-good saying, but this study of chess masters and other experts compiled results that, at least in that arena, make this an aphorism:

• Some chess masters have the ability to play chess (well) when blindfolded; the mechanism involved is nothing so prosaic as a representative mental image of the current layout of the pieces: instead a quick and unconscious reasoning process involving recall of what moves were possible or impossible previously in the game and a more general store of knowledge of previous games played seem to be what allows this feat.
• When asked to recall the layout of a chess board at a position reached through authentic game play, after viewing it for only a few seconds, chess masters were invariably able to reconstruct it perfectly. On the other hand, novice or weak chess players performed much worse even when given 30 seconds to view the board. Interestingly, experts and weaker players performed equally poorly at recalling the layout of random board layouts.

There are more points to support the thesis, and the conclusion they all seem to point to is that being an expert has more to do with a field specific store of knowledge that is constructed through experience and repetition than with ‘genius’. It’s always good to have science back up what common-sense tells you.

Possibly relevant posts:

• I suck @ chess (1/23/2002)
• The determinant game (12/12/2007)
• My hands are hurting (4/29/2002)