I’ve read through this article from Chessbase about Simon Reinhard, it’s interesting as far as memory goes but I cannot see anything he says which would be of interest to real chessplayers in their opening preparation other than brute force parrot fashion memorisation of book lines.
I’m a bit shocked at his endgame (specifically rook) endgame suggestion - to memorise the top fifty endgame positions. Without understanding?
I’m no longer a competitive tournament chessplayer but I occasionally still play online (on Chess.com I’m in the top 3% of players and that still makes me pretty weak compared to long dormant players like Raymond Keene, who is of course a name in Memory circles) and like other players of my level because of the work (thousands of hours) we put in learning all standard endgame positions you don’t have to think about a simple R+P v R endgame once you understand the strategy and have seen it demonstrated and described in a book such as Batsford Endgames by Speelman, just recognise the file and then go through the motions. Any chessplayer within a couple of hundred points of Simon Reinhard (whose rating is a respectable good first division team player but no where near the strength needed to win a local tournament of amateur players in Scotland anyway - and we are not a great Chess power) any player in that sort of level including Simon can memorise ANY chess game just by seeing it played out on the board, even a blitz game. It’s not something you have to work at. I don’t pay serious chess anymore but even witnessing a chess game as a Kabitzer - if asked to write it down I could - and so could any player above about 1800 which is from memory about 160BCF.
As far as openings go memorising cold chess lines is just not done, what chessplayers actually do is PREPARE certain lines for each opening that their opponent could play. White has the first move but BLACK chooses the opening, then the players choose which line or variation to follow and at each turn until you are out of your prep. While at the highest levels certain openings have been analysed sometimes to variations twenty moves long or longer at every stage along that path both players have to have some idea of the different choices away from the main line. My understanding is that most competitive players don’t necessarily prepare systems which they feel comfortable with what they are really doing (AND THIS IS THE POINT) is preparing variations they know that their opponent does NOT feel confident it comfortable playing.
So to learn a new opening you have to (even as a club player) build a repertoire which allows you to sidestep those variations you don’t like.
Hope that makes sense.
I wouldn’t build a system to memorise chess moves or openings, but just learn to recall ever chess game you play - for an hour or so afterwards.
As for Forsyth Notation - I don’t see the point of that for memorising, algebraic notation is easily the best and while descriptive notation in both English and Spanish speaking countries is still around no one I’ve ever met under the age of seventy actually uses it.
This isn’t true. Most players IM+ have huge amounts of cold chess lines in memory both main lines and sidelines especially as black.
In addition they play training games from their planned tabias with training partners and get their partner to test all their lines in practical games.
In the US the tournaments give no notice of your upcoming opponent so by nature all the players play their own systems and have narrow repertoires sidestepping specific prep. System style opening play is much more common than opponent specific prep.
Hi Zweb, okay I’ll take your word for it, I played tournament chess for twenty years in Spain, France, England and Scotland and never met anyone who memorised openings cold. But I’ll admit I’m a bit out of touch. Hope you didn’t disagree with everything I said… Good luck with your memory systems. And chess of you play.
Thanks for the reply! It’s always interesting to read about different points of view regarding a topic.
I just want to point out that, as far as I can see, Simon Reinhard doesn’t suggest to memorize endgame positions without understanding. Actually he says that memorization and understanding complement each other. Please take a look at this quote from the interview:
A typical argument against memory in chess is: “Only understanding matters.” Of course understanding is important, but memory and understanding complement each other.
The thing with this is all the guys who have the understanding also know the specific moves.
The specific moves is prerequisite knowledge to the ideas. Maybe they forget some specific moves and retain some ideas eventually but they all knew the specific moves at some point.
This quote is just a cope for the huge amounts of wannabe masters who study almost never but blame their age or other various things like this instead of their complete lack of analysis and study of their own games.
#1 chess skill by far to improve is just analyze your own games which does undermine openings. Hikaru just said on stream there are a lot of guys trying to “hack” the game with opening prep and Chess doesn’t work like that.
I acknowledge this even though my project is similar to “hack” attempt. I am not really expecting to gain huge strength from extensive memorization and its more a hobby project and novelty among chess players.
Chess memory really only matters if the players are equally rated and even then only matters maybe 20-30% compared to other skills.
That is impressive. Were they GMs?
Last year I agreed to go skiing to a 15m blitz tournament in my home city to support a friend. I a asked to pay to make up the numbers. Reluctantly agreed. In the first round I wonv against (I don’t say beat !) an IM. He left a bishop en prise on move six. Ended up joint third! I won a prize of about $20 first tournament in ten years and hopefully my last ever…
One of my mnemonics activities today is drawing one of my memory palaces.
I happen to be drawing the layout of the Chess Camp that first interested me in Chess 25+ years ago.
It is amazing how strong our location based memory is and when describing mnemonics at a party I always ask them to imagine the layout of their childhood home and 100% of people can often even 50+ years since living there.
He attempted mnemonics alluding to princess Diana as his image for the d4 square and a hook for Nf6.
He abandoned early on into his attempt and used his conventional chess memory. He also mentioned the persons voice being very helpful so perhaps he attached the current position to the player voice somewhat.
My suspicion is he just hasn’t practiced his mnemonics basic skills barely at all to potentially exceed his conventional chess memory and live encoding multiple games simultaneously is an advanced mnemonic skill.
He is one of the most active tournament players who plays probably 4-5x the classical tournament games per year of an average professional.
India is doing very well in the current Olympiad and there is a new breakout star Gukesh that has an insane score.
Nelson (LOL!) always set up your chessboard with Right Square on right. Queen takes her own colour. I guess if you set up the board with the black square on the right hand side you should strictly speaking swap over the King and Queen positions for opening positions on board as effectively you have made every white square black and every black square white. But good video!
