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LINKS: ....Bird Flu Info ....Your Memory Enhancer ....Neurotech ....Success Tips ....Free Genius in chessIt is a pity that not all those genius chess brains had been sufficiently employed in the betterment of this planet. However, they all provide highly valuable material for studying the human brain power. There are a couple of reasons for chess being so valuable to study. Chess rules are clear-cut. The competitive achievement is measurable. Individual games are available for study move-by-move on the Internet. Last but not least, chess is often associated with aura of genius, and world champions generate lots of excitement that results in numerous books and studies on scientific and popular-scientific platforms. In those conditions, we can study factors that help some people reach processing power that is hard to match with the present computing technology. Chess is a great metaphor for creativity. Chessboard positions roughly correspond to facts and applicable moves correspond to inferential rules (see: facts and rules). The more abstract the rules, the more positions they can resolve. The more abstract the rules you acquire, the less sheer computation your brain needs to do in the game of chess. Consequently, the better your chess score. The move rules will often be based on pattern recognition rules who can filter complex position into simply identifiable patterns. The better your arsenal of pattern recognition rules, the more applicable your move rules become. The rules are the key to chess genius. British chess player and author Jonathan Levitt proposed a formula linking chess scores with IQ (The Levitt Equation: Elo ~ (10 x IQ) + 1000). Although the formula does not represent exact science, it is a good illustration of the difference between the two concepts of intelligence and genius: one of the true mental processing power and the other of the potential to develop it. Levitt's formula determines the approximate maximum chess score for a given IQ assuming years of extensive training. The purpose of IQ is to distil innate mental skills from expertise. Although this is never entirely possible, people with little expertise in any selected field may still show high IQ which is indicative of high intellectual potential. In chess, adding new recognition and move rules to memory will plateau with time, and the quality of reshuffling them in conditions of maximum concentration will determine the champion. However, there is no substitute for hard work on the way to success in chess. No amount of lateral thinking or transcendental mediation will help. The chess player's brain needs to be equipped with the arsenal of thousands position patterns. The chess scores reflect the true processing power of a players brain in the narrow specialty of chess. In real life, high IQ is welcome; however, what will determine a person's success in a given field is the actual ability to solve problems in that given field. This ability is always related to knowledge, skills and expertise. One of the greatest geniuses of the past century, Herbert Simon (Nobel prize in economics, 1978) has devoted his whole life to studying expertise and proposed another (very rough) formula: it takes 10 years for an individual to reach the top-rank level in any field of expertise (be it chess, medical diagnosis or botany). This number reflects the fact that we tend to measure human accomplishments relative to the accomplishments other individuals in the same class. With classical learning methods, acquired knowledge tends to plateau after a period of time in which the forgetting rate becomes comparable with the acquisition rate. Today, this plateau can be overcome with spaced repetition (see: SuperMemo) that linearizes the acquisition of knowledge in lifetime. Simon's 10-year period reflects the approximate acquisition plateau in non-linear learning. If an individual works hard enough, he will sail close to his maximum knowledge acquisition potential in more or less ten years. His knowledge and skills, as compared with his peers, will then be most noticeable. Due to the law of diminishing returns, the increase in expertise will not be as easy to notice later on. Levitt's formula links the intellectual potential expressed by IQ with the maximum level of expertise in the field expressed by chess score. Herbert Simon's "formula" fits well with chess. The brightest stars of chess, Bobby Fischer and Judit Polgar both got their grand master titles in just under ten years. Some estimates put the number of position patterns recognized by a grandmaster at 50,000. This is more or less as much knowledge as you accumulate with several-hours-per-day extensive learning in the period of ten years in any field (or in a much shorter period in SuperMemo). An important component of success in chess is the way chess knowledge is represented in the brain. Optimum representation cannot be described verbally, but it is acquired with time via the inherent properties of neural networks employed in processing of the chessboard configurations. Herbert Simon noticed that grandmasters show huge advantage over amateur players in their ability to memorize or recognize meaningful positions in chess. At the same time, their advantage all but evaporates when it comes to memorizing meaningless positions (i.e. those that are not likely to result from a real game). Grandmasters see the chessboard in their special way. They use their own representation. Their own language. Their own pattern recognition. This special representation is the key to getting away from the complexity of chess and reducing games to (relatively) simple game of applying thousands of memorized rules of the winning strategy. As with memorizing the result of 199 x 199, good rules make it possible to replace lengthy computation with a quick retrieval of a solution or applying a succession of just a few well-fitting rules. This is also why it is so difficult to write computer programs that could match grandmaster skills. Those non-verbal skills are difficult to convert to unfailing algorithms. In essence, chess training is based on memorizing positions and moves (see: smart vs. dumb learning if the word memorizing raises an opposition here). A chess player's brain subconsciously develops a specific chess language in which it expresses the events on the chessboard. This language is a form of knowledge representation which, as it is always the case in learning, plays a central role in success. Once this internal language develops and becomes the player's second nature, all games analyzed and played, leave a trace of memorized chess knowledge in player's memory. Over years, player's memory acts like an efficient pattern recognition computer. One look at the chessboard results in a quick retrieval of relevant patterns from memory and a quick analysis of not-so-many applicable move rules and their outcomes. Unlike Deep Blue beating Kasparov by juggling 200 millions positions per second in its digital memory, a chess player, with a high error rate, quickly guesses best moves in a process that is hard to replicate in a computer. Of numerous interlinking factors, the personality of a chess player may be one of the most important factors for his or her ultimate success. The baseline IQ may determine the realistic ceiling of achievement. However, it is hard work and training that makes a great chess player. For this, you need a truly neurotic personality with an extreme obsession for the game. Scrupulous analysis of the game and highly competitive spirit are crucial ingredients. It is the personality that turns a budding player into a computer-like achieving machine where chess permeates all aspects of an individual's life. Training, tournaments, game analysis and the highest accomplishment are central points of a chess champion's mind throughout his day. With training, further qualities develop: the art of concentration, and chess expertise. On-demand concentration plays a greater role in chess than in other areas of creative activity. A chess player must reach top concentration at the right moment and sustain a high-level of game processing power until the next move is chosen. On the other hand, success in sciences, engineering, business, etc. will rely on the quality of the creative output independent of the speed at which it is reached. More like in correspondence chess. If you can produce a better result in 3 hours of thinking than another genius in 3 minutes of thinking, you can still arrive to a better business plan, better scientific theory, better algorithm, better design, better marketing idea, etc. Your creation over many years will accumulate those incremental points. In creativity, quality counts more than speed In chess, it is easy to notice that statistically it better to be Jewish, middle-class, and male for top achievement. The Jewish factor is more to do with home environment and family values rather than with genetics. The male factor may have more to do with the genes; however, Judit Polgar could still beat 99.99997% males of this planet (i.e. just about all of them except few). Additionally, women's incentives to enter the chess world are miserable (judging by less glamour and offensive prize offers), and disincentives to leave it are by far greater (see the issue of marriage and children in Polgar sisters insert). Probably, the sex and race, as baseline IQ, can influence the hard to measure ceiling of achievement; however, in practical terms they appear inconsequential. It is the quality and the amount of training that will determine the outcome Ultimately the short formula for genius in chess is: (1) the right competitive personality that makes one work hard and able to reach the peaks of concentration at critical times, and (2) the resulting hard work that leads to mastering thousands of highly abstract chessboard rules Similar preconditions are true for creativity in general: it all begins with the rage to master and years of training towards a problem solving expertise in a given field HOME...... Brain Food LINKS: ....Medical Dictionary ....Stress Management ....Allergy Info |