That for me is the thing, to show that you can gel so far just by your spirit and trying very hard when you 're at the board.
GM DAVID NORWOOD
So where does all this leave us? Is there a way of neatly sorting all of the above examples and ideas? Well to be honest, not really ! However, a Taoist perspective, and specifically the idea of Yin and Yang, is interesting in this respect.
'Yin' refers to a yielding, receptive, 'feminine' force, while 'Yang' is assertive, imperial and 'masculine' . A Taoist might say that whereas there are yang aspects to your thinking and yin aspects, neither is ever entirely by itself. So whereas your yin thinking will involve intuitive recognition and your sense of value, and yang thinking the active search for ideas and con
scious calculation, they will somehow both be present to a greater or lesser degree in whatever way you think. This is partly in evidence in the way we use our positional understanding (yin) while calculating (yang). At the risk of over
simplifying, your 'yin ability' will be based on the patterns which you have at your disposal;
what you ·see', whereas your yang strength will be related to your ability to think; how you 'look' I have suggested that all thinking is evaluative, so the value you seek might be thought of as Tao, which is prior to Yin and Yang.
Douglas Hofstadter's idea of "jumping out of the system", explained in his monumental work Godel, Escher, Bach, is closely related to the idea of 'yang' strength and is, I think, an ex
cellent idea to help chess-players improve with
out forcing them to spend days on end assimi
lating new patterns (needed for yin strength):
.. It is an inherent property of intelligence that it
can jump out of the task which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always look
ing for, and often finding patterns. Now I said that an intelligence can jump out of its task, but that does not mean that it always will. However,
a little prompting will often suffice." Of course it is difficult to draw a clear line between 'in
side' and 'outside' the system and this idea's validity also depends a lot on what 'the system' is. In this case I want to suggest that your chess patterns are your system, that if you 'think' along normal lines you will not be able to break free from 'inside' the bondage of these patterns.
If you are 2850 it's no great trauma to be caught 'inside' your system and you could still dispose of 99.99% of chess-players with your intuition.
But if you are weaker, and aspire to be stronger, you can •jump outside' of your system by think
ing in unusual and provocative ways; talking to your pieces, or looking for 'jokes' for example.
When all is said and done though, there is a considerable amount of truth in Norwood's
saying. 'Thinking' causes a lot of problems, only some of which you can solve, and the first step to improving your results is to apply your
self to the maximum while you are at the board.
Remind me, why is Thinking a Sin?
1) 'Thinking' is much more complicated than we tend to think it is, and therefore we give the wrong reasons for the errors we make.
2) 'Thinking' in a conventional sense is lim
iting, because it leaves us stuck in our old pat
terns and habits.
3) 'Thinking' tends to be based on rules and justification, which leads to confusion given that chess is largely rule-independent and often inexplicable.
4) 'Thinking' can stifle your intuition, which is more suited to the omnipresent task of evalu�
ation.
So, what can you do?
1) Realize the importance of abstract knowl
edge and try to assimilate as many new patterns as possible.
2) Try to 'unlearn ' old thinking habits as well as learning new thinking techniques, but don't treat any as exclusive.
3) Talk with your pieces !
4) Don't assume that 'fuzzy thinking' is al
ways bad. It's often guided by your unconscious and can be the best way to find good moves.
5) Try to see the funny side, and enjoy your-self!
6) Be aware of the way you habitually think, and find suitable ways to 'jump out' of these where necessary.
Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve ... it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material condi
tions for its solution already exist.
KARL MARX, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
If you're getting root canal work from your dentist, it's a good idea to be desensitized, but if you are playing chess it can be fatal. In fact, I suspect that the main problem with 'thinking' as opposed to 'feeling' is that it undermines your ability to sense the key moments/critical positions in a game. Such moments occur in positions where your choice of move is pivotal for the direction of the contest.
Notice already that we tend to refer to key moments and critical positions. We consider these almost synonymously, but it was partly a reflection on this distinction that led to this chapter in its present form. The former lends it
selfto the personal, subjective arena and the lat
ter to objective identification. It's little good filling in your score-sheet with the comment that after, say, move 29, the position was criti
cal, unless you consider why, at this key mo
ment, you didn't think of the position as critical and sense that this moment had more 'weight' than all the others. It seems to me that somehow you need to sense that it's a key moment before you can see that the position is critical. This chapter is an attempt to consider how we might try to do that.
The first obstacle to doing so is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to give any clear definition of what a key moment, or critical position, actually is, I have given a few point
ers below, but I must admit that key moments are more easily felt subjectively than defined.
Indeed, when all is said and done, I fear that there is no good substitute for experience in such matters. However, there is still much that the average player can do to improve his ability in this area.
Since I can't think of a useful definition of the focal point of Blinking, there is some value in limiting our subject area and then generaliz
ing where necessary. In this respect, the types of key moment I wish to concentrate on are the
turning-points in a game, positions where we
fail to capitalize on an advantage and under
standing the importance of transformations in general. However, the reader should know that 'key moments' also manifest themselves as po
sitions where, for example, we need to sense danger, where we need to make a short-term plan, where we need to snap out of a defensive mindset or where we have to choose between playing for a win or a draw. That said, I think these and various other types of moments are usually reducible, at least partly, to the chosen aspects above.
I have called this sin 'blinking' mainly be
cause that's all you have to do to miss these mo
ments. Moreover, often you can only see them with hindsight. To miss such moments can be considered essentially 'sinful' in that it usually results from a basic misunderstanding of the nature of chess assessments and how they can and do change. By most definitions they arise not more than three times during a contest but usually there is at least one.
Spassky claimed that this was Fischer's only weakness, though of course this is relative to his other strengths. In any case, I think it is a difficult sin to remedy partly because there is no clear consensus on what such moments look like and partly because they are felt in different ways by different players. In order to make more sense of this sin I have made some specu
lations about the nature of 'the advantage' in chess. This is quite dense and theoretical in places so some readers may prefer just to read the game notes. However, I do think that the theory will illuminate key moments better and help you to know what to do with them, so I rec
ommend that you have a good think about all parts of the chapter.