Many USCF members will enjoy Joshua Foer’s popular introduction to mnemonics, Moonwalking with Einstein, which I’m just finishing.
As fascinating as our game is, there is a certain amount of tedium involved with learning one’s opening repertoire. Ideally, one would understand the reason for every move, but when even world champions make basic errors (as in move 23 of game 1 of the 2010 title match), there is something to be said for alternative methods.
Foer’s thesis: humans are good at memorizing vivid images & places (handy skill for hunter-gatherers). Perhaps our brains are not as ideally wired to memorize chess moves, so it would be helpful to “translate” chess moves into vivid images & places…
POSSIBLE SYSTEMS
The Major System seems horribly cumbersome:
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Ng1-f3
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5254 5755 7163 in correspondence notation
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A mental picture of Alien Hillary vs. loco Lola, answered by cat Hashem, all interacting in colorful & memorable ways.
When one is dealing with memorizing many thousands of half-moves, the brute force alternative is even more cumbersome! Memorization is no substitute for understanding, but one might memorize before one understands…
Another system might arbitrarily associate a vivid image with each square: the Formula One racer Michael Schumacher might be f1. Or one could associate (piece + square) with an image: a bishop arriving on c4 might be associated with Monty Python’s “The Bishop.” But (6 pieces) x (2 colors) x (64 squares) = 768 images, and you’d have the occasional “Ndf3” to sort out as well.
The Major System might be useful in memorizing the Forsyth Notation of certain critical positions.
One might construct separate memory palaces for each of one’s major openings, connected in Borgesian fashion.
ANECDOTES
Some openings author (I’ve of course forgotten who! ) called 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Bf5 6.Ne5 e6 7.f3 Bb4 8.e4 Bxe4 “The Bishop Sac Variation” so he’d (and we’d) remember to take on e4 with the bishop and not the Nf6. Silly, but effective.
Very recently, a much stronger player was helping me prepare a line with White against Problem Opening X. He noted a variation at move 15 or so that had been critical since the 1980’s (this much I remembered), showed me Aronian’s recent solution, and asked me to find the tactic that Aronian’s line depended on. (It was a simple overloaded defender combination, but I couldn’t find it during the lesson.) A few weeks ago, I was faced with this very position in tournament play, and realized that I’d again forgotten the line and missed the tactic… The master didn’t remember all the details (for the line is very complex and his analysis went past move 25), but he did remember the general ideas, and even remembered that I had forgotten the tactic in the lesson months ago. (At which point I remembered what I’d forgotten!)
Some years ago, I once spent twenty minutes showing a student (now much stronger than I am) why allowing the Fried Liver was a bad practical decision (otherwise, it’s hard for young players to understand why the somewhat unnatural-looking 5…Na5 is preferable). Of course, he inadvertently allowed the Fried Liver the next month.
I think that strong players contextualize their chess theory in narratives much more than fish like me, and that’s (one reason) why they have better recollection.
All the above is only slightly tongue-in-cheek: the underlying problem is serious, and a crucial mnemonic technique is to make the mental image ludicrous to make it unforgettable. Again, of course we want to understand the logic underlying each move, and of course, rote repetition is still essential. But it would be helpful to have a “non-chess” memory pathway to crucial lines in one’s repertoire.
Has anyone tried anything along these lines?
Or “non-chess” methods of memorizing famous games?
Was it worth the trouble?