Visualization pt. 2

(Hmm, if you haven't read part one I would go ahead and read that first.)

I think the way I personally define visualization should not be revealed with caution - as they were an integral part of breaking my plateau, and I have a personal connection with it. While personally I think this discussion offers something different terms of what has been discovered by traditional means in chess literature and science, I still firmly believe that the elements of chess improvement too very dynamic to have any static view on chess. So I went ahead and used some sources to help us without my firsthand opinion

A few things that came to mind during this search for the definition of "visualization", and this article Whos Doing the Playing? assisted in helping me put the pieces together.

As Aagaard effectively put it - solving exercises is an excellent way to improve your ability to calculate, visualize, and improve many different facets of your game. This statement is absolutely spot on - but there lies an inherent problem (which is discussed in part 1) in this thesis.

To recap, there seems to be a foundation of skills that you must be able to acquire or inherently possess (which Rune Vik Hansen supports as a product of nature than nurture) before engaging the process of "calculation", which authors such as Dvoretsky ignore altogether, and many other authors that unsuccessfully in my opinion try to tackle.

Vik-Hansen includes many hidden truths in the psychology of the mind - how it operates, and why people excel in various activities. While his discoveries aren't really a beacon to chess improvement itself, it is possible to deduce certain possibilities that can be derived to fix some of his assessments, which would otherwise be an impassable road block in ones chess improvement. If you read clearly the Introduction and the sections on conscious memory, acquisition of chess skills, it is clear that there were players such as Fischer or Carlsen where operatives relevant to "visualization" happen subconsciously.

If there is some underlying skill set is required before engaging in the training of calculation itself, I believe it would make sense to acquire these abilities which is believed to be for many, one of generic inheritance.

Vik-Hansen discusses inherent differences between say a prodigy - and a person who insists on working incredibly hard on the game, and for Nakamura fans, he is an example of a player purportedly only to spend 1-2 hours a day on chess if he FEELS like it, and still is capable of maintaining a world class rank. But quickly put our telescope on our hero, the club player who has spent many years of his life accumulating chess wisdom, and we can already see the difficulty that is exclusive to our passion to the royal game.

The question will always be for me - How to use all of this arbitrary knowledge and combine it to something that can actually assist in the search for chess excellence?
It is primarily the discovery of a concrete method which emulates the processes of subconcious of capable players such as Carlsen, Ivanchuk, and Fischer as described by Vik Hansen.

Yes, this guy calculates looking at the ceiling

Perhaps it is a fruitless search, and perhaps the method I have personally derived is not one of use- but it is a worthy question posed to the reader- What is my ethos? What are these "methods"? What is visualization? Is it genetically inherited? If it is (or even if not) is it attainable through hard work?

The answer to this question lies in how you form your own answer, because perhaps there is no one single answer. However if we look back to Richard Reti, and players such as Lajos Portisch, a significantly small number of players have been able to achieve the highest levels from hard work alone - but is it the work of a philosopher who have found an answer to this discussion? Or was it the sheer amount of work that was to be done as proposed by the Soviet Chess School, Dvoretsky, or Aagaard? Or is there some other discussion that is capable of encompassing "visualization" in itself?

While I cannot provide a sufficient answer for my credibility (perhaps it is more credible for a Grandmaster to have a confirming definition of all of this) , nor can I divulge such methods as I personally believe ones own the search for the answer of trying to define "visualization" and development of this skill is a fascination that should reap dividends.

At the end, I believe the answers posed in our lack of definition of visualization can we examine at the roots - the psychological nuances of how we interpret information - and why certain information is with-held much more quickly, whereas some other forms of patterns are not recognized with extended study.

For the "mortal" chess player, is there importance to find the answer to such a simple question? What is "visualization?, and how can it be developed?

After reading many books on these topics (Road to Chess Improvement by Yermolinsky, Rapid Chess Improvement by la Maza, Excelling at Chess by Aagaard, Excelling at Calculation, by Aagaard, Secrets of Chess Excellence - Tactical Play by Dvoretsky) I came to the conclusion that these books suggest that only by extensive study can we be able to cultivate such skills.

I felt that they all offered a piece of the answer to defining "visualization", but they all seem to suggest something that is impractical for the majority of chess players, which includes methods of just sheer amounts of work. Perhaps this is the answer, but perhaps working more intelligently to a focused effort to define "visualization" can we ultimately understand chess.

Just some food for thought, there will probably be a part 3 when I finally spill the beans of what and how I personally define "visualization", and some lost soul reading this will get something out of it. But perhaps what I am revealing is more untruth, which this untruth was misguidedly increasing my playing skill in dramatic fashion.

Visualization

This series is a part of the search for excellence since my first log, and have found discomfort in classical methods and modern methods that I have researched that is popular in chess literature and culture. Methods proposed from the extremes of the Russian School of Chess and the fast-food methods proposed such as by De La Maza, I was left feeling at large unsatisfied. So in this series what I wanted to do was to share with you some of my findings, confusions, and opinions about what I believe is the foundation of chess excellence - visualization.

Many authors have tried to define the word "visualization" in chess literature. I had often looked for a sort of "conclusive" answer to it, and although many author addressed the problem of developing this visualization ability, there is still much confusion about a word that is repeatedly seen in chess literature. It is often confused with calculation, tactics, combinations, and pattern recognition. Now I will choose a few authors whom I think are the leading or are current modern writers of this subject, and present some of the problems which I feel are present in their methods.

For example, Dvoretsky's books in general are fantastic in giving such precise definition of such chess terms, but often the suggested methods of training are either not addressed, or Dvoretsky already assumes that the reader already had acquired the basic abilities due to his target audience of his books. Consider a player like Ivanchuk, who at an early age was already capable of calculating moves in his head, by staring into the blank air. If his message is "canon" so to speak, then the target audience is not accessible to a vast majority of chess players.

Ivanchuk - known to have advanced abilities at a young age.

In his "School of Chess Excellence Tactical Play", he very well defines the varying tools necessary to excel at tactical play - visualization (here it is again) and ability to calculate deeply. However his exercises are aimed at already accomplished players capable of handling volumes of calculation further than your average player.

In Aagaard's "Excelling at Chess Calculation", he suggests that an issue with many players is that that they want to improve their results - but often the book is aimed at a level above which they currently perform. He suggests that they do not have the abilities to tackle the particular tools (such as Kotov's Think like a Grandmaster's tree analysis technique), but that this ability can be trained.

I found this all dandy - but he does not actually particularly SUGGEST how this training can be done (besides the two magical three words you can see in a stock tactics / studies books - "Solving MANY Exercises"). Then he talks about the calculation process and its pitfalls, which arguably should be placed after his (lacking) discussion of visualization.

White to move... Perhaps Aagaard expects a little too much out of club players?

The first 10 pages of his book tries to persuade that you have to have a certain level of tactical ability before tackling positions that require refined calculating abilities. Ironically his previous work that also tackles calculation called "Excelling at Combinational Play" contains exercises that are incredibly difficult. However in the prose, he uses very simple examples to illustrate the elements of successful combinational play. This creates a very jarring effect, since it is similar to introducing a child simple arithmetic, then giving him exercises on calculus. How this is acceptable in a chess book is somewhat baffling to me, and it should not be in this manner just because chess literature in the past (and even now) are very cryptic.

Both books by Aagaard include good information about the process during the calculation, such as blind spots in calculation which may include intermediate moves and quiet moves that are easy to miss. They are very helpful tips during calculation, and many of these micro-tips deserve praise as the author explores his own games where he had failed to utilize these techniques.

In the remaining chapters of his book "Excelling at Chess Calculation", Aagaard tackles visualization (why he introduced the topic then talks about it later 60 pages later is beyond me, although I understand his reasoning - there is some confusion in calculation/combinations/visualization to be interconnected, but he also fails here), and how players calculate. He offers a trick called "Stepping Stones" (a fixed position in your mind and you calculate from there), but he never at one point clearly defined what visualization is, and its relevance to the only technique he offers to help the student calculate. In his defense, he writes:

"Stepping-stones have a lot to do with focusing and visualization. You could argue that you need to improve your visualization ability before you can use stepping-stones. But actually I see it as a chicken and egg question: who cares which was first when you can get fried chicken?"

So to my disappointment, most of the prose in this book talks about the calculation process - but not how to particularly develop these skills (beyond the study of tactical exercises), and visualization at large seems to be a vague topic.

It is interesting to me because it is commonplace for many people to solve literally tens of thousands of chess tactics puzzles, but remain somewhere in the 1500-2000 range even after extensive time dedicated to studying tactics. Maybe they need to study other parts of the game, openings, endgames, middlegames, psychology, whatever it is, but it's possible to still see very basic tactical oversights in their games (and mine included).

1. Is it the quality or difficulty of the exercises?
2. Are the problems in these books too difficult?
3. Is there a collection of slightly EASIER but still out of comfort zone exercises?
4. And who gauges this?
5. Are authors holding out, or are they merely already incapable of reaching out to the club player?
6. Are these authors slightly off the mark? (or way off!)

It is a possibility that the answer to any of these are yes, seeing they are already accomplished Grandmasters/World class trainers, but none of these questions answer the problem that persists: both authors advocate that you need "visualization" as the core to your development, but in Aagaard's books, he does not clearly define them, nor offer a (good) solution to develop visualization. And in Dvoretsky's works, the material is largely focused on players who are already developed where this is not an obstacle.

I came to some interesting conclusions on my own after a lot of research, which I will post later...