Friday, August 10, 2007

Pattern Recognition II

If you haven't already read Tuesday's Pattern Recognition post then go there first. You'll get more out of today's if you do.

For the rest of you, here are the diagrams provided as 'typical responses' to the chess position memory test from players of varying standards. The squares highlighted in green show where errors were made - either by forgetting a piece, including the wrong piece or adding in a piece where there shouldn't have been one at all.


Typical Master Response




Typical Expert Response

(yes I know there's something wrong with the pawn on f3. Bug in my graphics programme that I don't seem to be able to fix. Looks weird doesn't it?)




Typical average player response


3 comments:

Tom Chivers said...

Interesting a typical response includes getting the Nf7 right - I'd have thought that was quite an unusual square for a knight.

What counts as expert?

Anonymous said...

So which are the patterns which make up the position?... And can they really - for the most part - be recognised by a master in just five seconds?

Angus.

Anonymous said...

*TOM*
Interesing question. Unfortunately my book doesn't define 'expert'. I imagine the original research articles do though.

*ANGUS*
Also an interesting question. That's my whole quibble with the original TV programme. It purported to answer as "YES" but given it was a known theoretical position we can't really be sure on their evidence alone.