The Psychology of Chess Skill

Dennis H. Holding

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367772406
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000394788
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Both chess play and psychological research offer rewards to their participants in the form of intellectual satisfaction. It seems to follow that combining these two forms of activity, by carrying out research into chess play, should be a particularly engaging enterprise. In the mid-1980s enough was now known for it to be feasible to tell a reasonably satisfying story by piecing together the accumulated results of experiments on chess. There were remaining gaps in knowledge, but the structure of chess skill had at least become sufficiently evident to exhibit where the gaps lay. Originally published in 1985, this book was an attempt to summarize the progress that had been made at the time, recounting some of the components of the research process while describing how the chessplayer seems to think, imagine, and decide.

1 The Game and Play of Chess

Chess is an extremely complex game. Having to manipulate six different kinds of pieces, distributed in different numbers and arrangements over as many as 64 squares, makes for an activity which taxes both human players and modern computer technology to the utmost. It is hardly surprising that the cognitive processes required by chess playing provide a rich field for experimental research and, at the same time, form a kind of proving ground for cognitive theories derived from the study of other psychological processes. Psychological research on the game has now existed, in one form or another, for nearly a hundred years. As we shall see, interest in chess skill has evolved from the early stage of curiosity about unusual feats, like the exhibitions by masters of blindfold play against multiple opponents, to the current stage of careful inquiry into the more prosaic but fundamental problems of how players choose their moves.

These developments are probably better appreciated against a broad historical background. Chess has been played in something recognizably close to its present form for about 1400 years. As it happens, the second book ever printed in the English language was Caxton’s translation of de Cessolis’ The Game and Playe of the Chesse, an engraving from which is reproduced in Figure 1. Our current concern with carrying out experimental research on chess is thus a very recent development, viewed against the long history of the game itself.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME

The best evidence, according to Murray’s (1913) erudite History of Chess, indicates that chess originated in India shortly before the year 590 AD. The curious thing is that the game seems to have emerged fully formed, judging from the available documentation. Murray’s original contention that chess was the invention of a single individual at an Indian royal court is debatable (Golombek, 1976), although there seems to be no doubt that the game had no direct predecessors. The scattered earlier allusions to games sometimes translated as “chess” in fact refer to other types of board game, while recurrent claims for a Chinese origin are difficult to evaluate.

FIG. 1 Engraving from Caxton's The Game and Playe of the Chesse. Reproduced from Gizycki (1972).

It must be admitted that the distinction between the invention of a new game and the adaptation of an existing game is a difficult one to make. There are of course many other board games of far greater antiquity than chess, such as games of the checkers (draughts) and backgammon families, both of which antedate chess by millennia. The oldest gameboard known to archeology (Bell, 1979) is an Egyptian board of three by six squares, accompanied by eleven conical pieces, which is dated between 4000 and 3500 BC. A famous tomb painting of Queen Nefertiti, dating from 1500 BC, shows her seated before a game distantly resembling checkers – perhaps a version of “senet,” which is illustrated in the Book of the Dead for the scribe Ani, from 1250 BC. Many early board games involved the use of dice which, although viewed unsympathetically by modern players, were also used in early variants of chess.

Our game derives directly from the Indian “chaturanga,” which was overtly identifiable as a war game. The Sanskrit “chatur-” is easily recognized as equivalent to the Latin “quattuor,” meaning “four.” Here it refers to the fourfold division of the Indian armies of the time – the same disposition of military forces which Alexander the Great had encountered 200 years earlier. The chess pieces were based on these army divisions. A chess set thus consists of pawns (infantry), knights (cavalry), bishops (elephants), and rooks or “castles” (chariots); these forces are led by a king (unchanged) assisted by a queen (the vizier or chief minister). The significance of the pawns and knights is immediately obvious to a modern player. The transformation of the elephant into the present-day bishop seems implausible until one holds a bishop on its side, when the slit may be seen as the elephant’s mouth and the terminal knob as the vestige of an elephant’s trunk. Understandably the elephant was poorly identified when chess reached medieval Europe, so that our “bishop” has been given a wide variety of names in different languages, including the equivalents of “count,” “archer,” and “jester.” Our own appellation seems to come from interpreting the slit top of the bishop as an ecclesiastical mitre.

The rook, which takes its name from the Persian “rukh” (chariot), has also had a varied history. Replaced by a boat in Bengali sets, and in some versions transposed with the elephant or reduced to an elephant’s howdah, its identity was established as a “castle” in Europe by an influential allegorical poem, “Scacchia Ludus,” which was composed in 1527 by the bishop Vida. The vizier (medieval “fierz” or “fers”) had already been reinterpreted as a “queen” in 11th century Europe, although both terms survived together for some time, so that the 15th century Chaucer still laments the loss of his “fers.”

Chess had spread to Europe through the medium of several civilizations, each of which left some imprint on the game. The early diffusion of chaturanga throughout Asia is less important to us than its establishment, perhaps a century after its inception, in what is now Iran. Our present word “checkmate” dates from this period, deriving directly from the Persian term “shah-māt” which means that the king (shah) is without resource (māt). The game spread from Persia to the Byzantine empire and was played by the Greeks (as “zatrikion”) before 800 AD, but already by then the Persian empire had been overrun by the Arabs. This conquest had a lasting effect on the subsequent history of chess. The game was adopted by the invading Arabs (in the form of “shatranj”) and was subsequently developed throughout the Arab world as a subject for serious study.

The algebraic system of notation for recording games, which is now used internationally and which has been adopted for this book (see Appendix A), was originated at this time. The Arab chess theorists made systematic studies of chess openings and endgames, some of which have been preserved until the present day, although their usefulness has been nullified by subsequent changes in the rules of the game. The Moorish (Arab) invasions of Spain, beginning as early as the 8th century, introduced the game to Western Europe. With the further aid of the Arab trade routes through Venice and Genoa, and the roving assistance of the Vikings, the game had traveled throughout Europe as far as Iceland by the year 1000.

It was in Renaissance Europe that the final improvements were made to the game. As chaturanga, as shatranj, and as the early Spanish “ajedrez,” chess had been rather slow and cumbersome. The moves for the king (K) and rook (R), and even the curious move of the knight (N) were identical with those of the modern game. The basic pawn (P) moves (one square forward to move and one square diagonally to capture) were the same then as they are now, but our initial two-square jump was absent. The major differences were those involving the bishop (B) and queen (Q). The only move available to the bishop was a diagonal two-square jump, while the queen, which is now the most powerful piece on the board, was restricted to moving only one square diagonally. The old forms of move for P, B, and Q are illustrated in Figure 2. Incidentally, the dissemination of historical information early in this century led to a brief, experimental revival of shatranj. Herbert Jacobs played a series of games in this manner against Sir George Thomas, one of which is recorded in British Chess Magazine for 1914. An extract from the first part of this game is shown as Game 1, to convey the rather awkward flavor of the original game.

FIG. 2 Moves of the queen (vizier), bishop (elephant), and the pawns in chaturanga, from arbitrarily chosen positions.

Game 1

Shatranj

Jacobs-Thomas, London, 1914

1. d3 c6 2. d4 b6 3. e3 c5 4. d5 Nf6 5. Nc3 Na6 6. e4 e6 7. dxe6 dxe6 8. f3 Qe7 9. a3 Kd7 10. Be3 Kc6 11. Qe2 Nc7 12. a4 Bh6 (remember the B jump) 13. Qd3 Ba6 14. Nge2 Qd6 15. Kf2 Qe5 16. b3 Rhd8 17. g3 Rd7 18. Nd1 Rad8 19. Nb2 Nh5 20. Bh3 g6 21. Rhb1 f6 22. Bfl f5 23. b4 cxb4 24. Nd1 fxe4 25. fxe4 Qd4 26. Rxb4 Nf6 27. Kg2 e5 28. Nf2 (an oversight) Qxe3 29. Nh3 Bf8 30. Ng5 Qd4 31. Nf3 Re8 (the major threat was not Nd4 but Nxe +) 32. Rb3 Ne6 33. c3 Nc5 34. Rb2 Qe3 35. a5 b5 36. Nc1 Bc4 37. Nb3

White’s counterattack has begun. His Q and B cannot be dislodged, because the attacking R and N are worth more. Black eventually resigned on the 94th move.

The disadvantages of the older rules were rectified in Italy, where the much more dynamic “alla rabiosa” (“mad chess”) game developed during the 15th century. The new form of game speeded up the opening by allowing a two-square jump by the P on its initial move. Caxton’s book is a disappointingly allegorical book for the serious chess player, but it does reveal that the two-move P jump was widely accepted by 1474. The modern Q and B moves, and also the one-move transposition of K and R, which we call “castling,” were all introduced during the same period. Castling could originally be accomplished in several different ways, but the present-day method had become uniform by 1597. Apart from some minor variations such as the rules concerning stalemate, the game has remained essentially unchanged from the 1500s to the present day.

The Modern Game

The first systematic treatise on the modern form of chess was produced by Lucena in 1497. His analysis of the chess openings has been superseded by later works but, although he apparently did not originate the famous “Lucena” position for winning with K, R, and P against K and R, much of his endgame analysis is still perfectly applicable. He was followed by another Spaniard, Ruy Lopez, whose name is widely known by chessplayers as identifying a commonly used sequence of opening moves. Ruy Lopez was unofficially acknowledged as the world champion of chess during the middle of the 16th century. After this time, the initiative passed first to Italy, where Salvio produced some influential chess analysis, and Leonardo (not da Vinci) and Greco (not El Greco) dominated international chess for about 60 years through the 17th century.

By the beginning of the 18th century, France had become the center of chess activity. The composer Philidor, followed by de la Bourdonnais, were successively the acknowledged champions of the western world, producing games which are still replayed as examples of strategy and tactics. Philidor, who moved to England during the latter part of his life, had a lasting influence on the theory of chess through his emphasis on pawn play; his epigram, “Pawns are the soul of chess” is often cited today. Meanwhile, chess in England had been gaining ground as it spread from the aristocracy to the middle classes, so that London had become the preeminent chess center of the world by the 19th century. England’s leading player was the Shakespearian scholar Staunton, whose name identifies the design of chess pieces used in contemporary tournament play. Perhaps his greatest contribution lay in conceiving and organizing the first ever international tournament, which was held at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. Staunton was recognized as world champion until displaced by a German, Anderssen, in that event.

Paul Morphy, who succeeded Anderssen as champion after failing to induce Staunton t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Games
• Preface
• 1. The Game and Play of Chess
• 2. Individual Differences
• 3. Looking and Visualizing
• 4. Chess Memory
• 5. Memory and Skill
• 6. How Computers Play Chess
• 7. Planning and Search
• 8. Evaluating Chess Positions
• 9. Problems and Issues
• 10. Skill at Chess
• Appendix A Chess notation
• Appendix B Protocol by 1522 player
• References and Author Index
• Subject Index