A few weeks ago, I was in the city on a Sunday, killing somme time while my girlfriend was recording some music (Check out her itunes page!). Naturally, I took the opportunity to get in a game of chess, and headed down to Bryant Park. There I found a player, sitting smugly with sunglasses on (it was a nice September day) taking on various opponents. Most of the opponents he played were crushed, making fairly simple mistakes and dropping pieces to simple tactics as the bespeckled player jokingly taunted them. I noticed, however, some errors in his play (both tactical and positional), and his tendency to underestimate the counterplay of his opponent.
I have posted the game below for your enjoyment. It was played with the time control of 5-0 (5 minutes each side, no increment). In hindsight, I think that this game might be a good example of the Einstellung effect. This effect is essentially when you become fixated on only certain moves or ideas, miss the optimal continuation in a position. I recently posted about some research concerning the Einstellung effect on chess players (it is a more generally phenomenon), and it brought this game back to my mind. In fact, I otherwise would have not posted the following game, because it contains some really rather sloppy play (I'm usually sharper that this tactically, I swear!), but is nonetheless instructive on several points.
In particular, I became fixated on the pressure my opponent was exerting on my King in the above position, and missed an excellent resource on move 21; I played the awkward 21.Bf4, when a combination of 21.fxg6, Rf7 and Rh7 would have easily secured the win.
Select 'Read more' or the following link to view the whole game.
The time pressure of blitz can sometimes highlight our tendency to overlook important possibilities. What examples of the missed possibilities and the Einstellung effect do you have in your own games?
Since this blog is about Chess and Science, it is only natural to discuss the nexus between the two: scientific studies that examine some aspect of Chess. The game of chess is used by some social science, psychology and neuroscience researchers as a model or tool to examine memory, expertise, decision making skills, or some other process that two combatants engage in over the chessboard.
A few chess players may be already familiar with an example of this type of work, perhaps the highly cited studies by Adriaan de Groot. In some of the studies conducted by de Groot, chess players of different skill levels were tasked with position recall and were told to analyze a position while thinking out loud. This has led to conclusions about the way expert players organize their memory, and how they search and evaluate a position. (I'll probably revisit de Groot in a future post)
A contemporary researcher in this field is Fernand Gobet, a professor at Brunel University, West London. (See his professional homepage). Gobet has dual qualification to study chessplayers, since he is both a cognitive psychologist and an international master (a qualification not unique to the researchers in this field). He has published a number of interesting articles on a variety of aspects of the game, ranging from memory, visualization skills of chess players, and even gender differences between players. Of particular note, Dr. Gobet has attempted to simulate certain aspects of expert memory and skill using commuter models.
Below, I'll give you my reaction to a paper by Dr. Gobet that deals with the interesting Einstellung effect. While I am scientist, cognitive psychology is not my field, so the experts will have to forgive me if I do not assess the work correctly. Also, I provide below only a brief sketch of the work; I might someday blog about the individual topics in more detail, as I learn more about them.
I'd love to hear from you, dear reader, if you have some insight onto to the work of Dr. Gobet or others. In particular, please feel free to let me know if I have gotten something wrong. You can do so by leaving a comment.
