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Inside the Grandmasters' Brains
dunkerz writes: "The BBC News site has an article on how the great chess players play so well: they use a different part of their brain (or so German scientists say)."
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They're all drunk on low quality vodka when they play.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
I got to play Kasparov about 10 years ago, during a visit he made to the states. It's amazing to watch these top players run around to 50 different opponents at a time, immediately move, and win every match. If it wasn't clear from his speed, it was clear from talking to him that he did almost no analysis at each board; rather he "recognized" the position, or recognize how similar it was to positions he'd been in many times before, and remembered his strategy for that position.
At the same time, tho, one of the other things I remember from hearing him talk was that he routinely looks 8 or 9 moves ahead in a game if it does require analysis. I'm sure it's a combination of both skills (pattern matching and analysis) that makes the best the best.
This is why a grandmaster can play dozens of people simultanously and win most of the matches, spending only a few seconds at each board before moving on to the board. In essence they are treating each turn on each board as a seperate puzzle, without considering what came before it.
What is interesting is that computers play chess much like amateurs do, by analysing each move and trying to think ahead. However computers are much faster than your average chess player and therefore can suceed at a higher level that a person can.