Mnemonics & chess openings

All Things Chess
1

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! :laughing: ) 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?

2

That’s an interesting theory, because I understand things narratively, and I routinely bemoan the dearth of chess literature written for players who think in words, sentences and sequences rather than in algebraic alphabet soup. So if strong players think in narratives, they must do so despite the conventions of chess communication, not because those conventions are in any way conducive to such a way of thinking, let alone a product of it.

3

I think strong players toggle between methods of play. Of course they think in narratives: “The N on b7 is my worst-placed piece. Its ideal square is d4. So I’ll try to get it there, no matter how long it takes!”

But if a random tactic appears in the middle of this plan, they toggle to concrete play. Or they may even synthesize these different methods of thinking.

4

I forgot about Kolty’s knight’s tour: not much practical chess application, but very impressive!

5

I have been using a spaced repetition program (Mnemosyne) to memorize my opening lines for the last year and a half or so, and it’s worked great. I’m up to around 1800 “flashcards”, of which I get served around 40-50 a day (it takes me about 10 minutes to get through them). My opening memory always used to be a weak point, and now it’s a strong point, plus I’m now comfortable playing sharp lines, which increases my enjoyment of the game as well.

6

Do you put positions or notation on your flashcards?

How many flashcards per variation? (A complex variation–say in the Semi-Slav–might require 15 just for one’s main line, and who knows how many for the major sidelines.)

There are more than a few flashcard-ready books: Evans’s What’s the Best Move?, for example.

7

I don’t know - when I think of Mnemonics my brain inadvertently goes directly to The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey. For those of you who do not like dark humor, do not look.

8

Very strange, bizarre, but wickedly funny this Edward Gorey. Sesame Street fans would be appalled.

On mnemonics and chess openings. Varieties of subvariations and move order problems makes it difficult to apply one method to learning openings. Memory has a vicious habit of disappearing when under stress. Emanuel Lasker lived in an era where memory feats by masters, magicians, and other entertainers were common. Schools in Europe as well as America emphasized the memorization of lists and poetry as a way to promote the development of thinking faculties. Lasker went against the grain and dismissed memory as a crucial factor in learning chess. More important was to develop methods of thinking that were logical and flexible. In learning openings it was necessary to understand the purpose or reasoning behind each move. The methods of analysis stay in the mind, the memorization of move lists tends to fade.

When learning an opening it is useful to look at the pawn structure, typical plans, and significant opening specific tactics. Some openings even have typical endgame schemes. I would rather know that than try to remember what to play on move 28 of a Poisoned Pawn Sicilian or on move 38 in a Grunfeld Defense: Exchange Variation (7.Nf3). Have been there and done that and found the process too prone to human error. For the amateur player, you have to understand why you are playing a particular opening move and what type of middle game you are heading for. Relying on a book or flash card may give you some confidence, but soon you realize something is missing. I have watched all too many players rattle off an opening and then blunder when an opponent deviates.

9

Which raises a point that I was thinking about just this morning: More opening books should include, aside from all the time-tested variations, advice along the lines of, “This is what these moves you’re making are trying to accomplish, and this is what you do to punish your opponent when he fails to reply accurately.” Something more specific than, say, “Black pushes on the queenside while white develops and expands in the center.” OK, why is black pushing on the queenside? Is there a designated target? A vulnerability? A plan of attack? If white doesn’t realize what black is up to, black should be able to exploit white’s failure; it’s a crying shame when black doesn’t know what black is up to either, and is only making moves based on the win percentage.

10

Both (each flashcard is a diagram along with the notation leading to that position).

It depends. I’m not at my home computer now to check, but I think my biggest stack is for the white side of the French, which I think is at 150 cards or so, but that’s just because I broke up the Open Sicilian into a substack for each main branch (Dragon, Najdorf, Taimanov, Scheveningen, etc.).

11

Dude, how long did it take you to make graphic files for all the board diagrams?

12

This works well; I’ve been experimenting with it a bit. It takes about 90 seconds to make a card with the program and ChessBase running side-by-side. I paste the pgn, eliminate all but the notation, and then hit ‘save position,’ followed by pasting the image below the notation on the card. (If there’s a smoother way, please let me know.)

It’s less efficient than something like Chess Openings Wizard, but the price is right considering all is free. (Well, I believe that ChessBase Light has all that’s needed, but I’m using CB 10.)

13

I guess it took a while to make all 1800, but it’s extremely rare that I’ve ever entered more than 10 in any given day. If I encounter a line I’m not familiar with, or feel that I need to extend my knowledge of some subvariation, I’ll add a few cards from that point. I certainly wouldn’t want to recreate the whole thing from scratch at this point, though.

I keep my repertoire in Chess Position Trainer, and to make the diagrams, I just C-c to copy the position from there, C-v it to the FEN input field of ChessVideos.tv’s diagram generator, click Generate, and save to disk. I could probably even automate most of that, but it hasn’t been enough work to bother.

14

I didn’t know about Chess Position Trainer, and it looks like something I could use. How well does it work? Is there a reason why you’re primarily using it as a utility for Mnemosyne?

15

It works great; I highly recommend it. And you can’t beat the price.

I don’t quite understand the question; are you asking why I have two programs instead of one?

Chess Position Trainer is perfect for navigating my repertoire, handling transpositions, and finding out when a game left my “book”. I find it deficient at training, though (despite the title); although it has a drilling function, it concentrates too much on what I’ve just put in. I used it for a long time before I ever heard of Mnemosyne.

Mnemosyne is perfect for transitioning individual moves from short-term to long-term memory. However, all it is is a (smart) stack of flashcards; it doesn’t actually “understand” my repertoire or anything. I can’t navigate through a variation or set of variations with it.

Does that answer your question?

16

Sort of. I know what Mnemosyne is good for – I downloaded it on your recommendation and have used it to study Arabic vocabulary. But it sounded as though you were only using CPT to make diagrams for Mnemosyne, and I wondered whether that was because it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be as a training device. Is it any good for internalizing a repertoire in the first place?

17

It is good as far as constructing the repertoire, making notes on it, and navigating it, which are all very important for internalization. I found that I needed something else for making sure that I actually remembered all of it.

18

But in that respect, does it do anything that ChessBase (which I already have) doesn’t?

19

My understanding is yes, but I haven’t used ChessBase to construct a repertoire, so I’m running out of useful info. You’ll have to look at the CPT website for details.

20

Chess Position Trainer and Chess Openings Wizard are very similar. Last time I looked, CPT was free. COW is a little slicker but is not free.