As featured on ChessBase

It was very exciting to see this morning that the editors at ChessBase have published the article I wrote that describes the chess tools I have recently posted about. For those who haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look.

Some of you may be viewing this blog for the first time due to the ChessBase article. To all of you, I say welcome! Although my updates to this blog are not that frequent (once a week at best), if you found the article interesting you should subscribe or keep your eye on this space. Here is some of what you can come to expect in the near future from Science on the Squares:

• The excel file 'tool' I use for normalizing the data I collect and finding the differential between two data sets, available for download along with instructions
• More information on how I created the heatmaps, and why I used particular settings
• A post concerning what I think the proper use of these tools are. This will expand upon my thoughts from a previous post, in which I argued for a scientific approach to chess.
• Responses to the comments by readers of the ChessBase article.
• More data and analysis of players and openings! In addition to the Sveshnikov Sicilian, I have already looked at the Winawer French, the Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation and Breyer Variation, and the Smith Morra Gambit.

Thanks again to all my readers, and a special thanks to the editors at ChessBase!

The Science of Chess: Moving to the (heart) beat

Recently a team of researchers published an article (PDF format) in which they monitored the heart rate of Chess players during a game (Aptly titled The tell-tale heart: heart rate fluctuations index objective and subjective events during a game of chess. Published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2012, Vol 6, No 273). 

The same authors of that study have summarized their work for chessbase news in a report also aptly titled: "Psychology: The Heart of Chess". Naturally, I was interested, as I have posted before about the intersection of science of chess and I check PubMed occasionally for such work (although I must have missed this particular study).

Picture reposted (with modifications) from Chessbase. I do not own the rights to the above picture (or for that matter, any of the pictures used in this post).

The article is interesting and thought provoking. There have been many studies that examined some psychological or mental aspect of the game, but there are much fewer (to my knowledge) that studied the physiological manifestations of a chess player's mind. As the article reminds us, Chess is fertile ground for studying all of these phenomenon. 

What did you think of the article? Select 'Read More' to see my full opinion. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below!