Well, there are lots of people, including this humble writer, who think that intuition also has considerable role especially in complex situations. Why so?
Let us understand what intuition is. My Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines intution vey succinctly as “the ability to understand something immediately without conscious reasoning”.
Does it apply to chess? Purists will argue that in chess, there is nothing hidden like in card games (except of course the thoughts in your opponent’s head!). You can see all the pieces, you know all the moves each piece can make in given situation, so it is a matter of cold reasoning and calculation to find the best sequence of moves.
But question arises about how deep you can calculate. I have said elsewhere that in complex positions in the middle game, the sheer numbers of possibilities will make it impossible to go beyond next 4-5 moves. Let us assume that each move by a player can result in only two viable options for the opponent. So your first move has to consider 2 responses from the opponent, then you get 4 options for your second move and going this way, you have to calculate 16 for 3rd
move, 64 for 4th move…!! Well, even accepting that many of the options on later moves may really not be possible, but considering that you may have more than one option to start with (which is true
in most cases), there will still be a lot to take into account for your 4th or 5th move!
So what if something looks good up to 4 or 5 moves by your calculations, but proves to be a disaster after, say, the eighth move? In this instance, how much help did you get from your calculating ability?
Intuition is something else. In the aforesaid dictionary definition, the last four are the key words. There may be some calculations going on behind your ideas, but you are unaware of it. You appear to be jumping to conclusion. All you do is take in the situation, get that big “hunch” and play something that later gets you a brilliancy prize!
Calculation is the king?
Computers can do many more calculations in much less time compared to a human brain, so they should always win against the poor, dumb humans – but do they really? Nowadays computers have become much more powerful, but even then Deep Blue (with ability to make 200 million calculations per second) could win against Kasparov (2-1 with 3 drawn) only with some unfair help from IBM who did not venture for return match with Kasparov. Otherwise, you’ll not find many instances of computer defeating a GM or IM. In earlier days when computer chess programs were less advanced but still capable of defeating amateurs by virtue of their speed of calculation, I won some games by the trick of playing a completely unexpected silly move at some other part of the board! The computer would go into a huddle to logically analyze an illogical move and end up making an equally silly move allowing me to win! An amateur player would readily recognize the move as silly and punish me for it by just looking at it (intuition?) without the need of calculation.
I’ve mentioned that your brain may be making unconscious calculations that prompted your “gut feeling”. I can believe that such must be the reality. How many times have you seen a fresher to play by intuition? That subconscious thinking comes out of your database of knowledge from games played or seen by you, ideas you’ve read about (including those at this site!), chess puzzles you have solved and so on. All these experiences have registered somewhere in your brain. You are like an actor on the stage delivering crisp dialogs that comes to you from the prompter in the wings who is reading from a script, so no mistakes!
Frank Marshall (1877 – 1944), US Chess Champion from 1909-1936 and one of the great masters, is famous for many sacrificial plays (one line now known as Marshall Gambit). Some of these were spectacular successes, some were failures. It makes me think that Marshall’s intuitions had a major say in his making such moves!
It will be interesting to know what you all think about the role of intuition and how it comes about. Start a discussion on this blog.
5 Comments
[...] be typical and different depending upon the player’s approach to the game. Both intuition and logic are said to be playing an equal role in determining the moves in the [...]
[...] fore during the middle game. And unless you are one of those with a gift of intutition (remember Intuition vs. Logic?) it needs a deep thinking to work out the tactics in the complex middle game positions so as to [...]
[...] Chess is a food for your mind and some analysis definitely helps us to understand complex positions. But over-analysis will surely create the same effect as I described for your favorite foods. I have another thought on game analysis which may appear controversial to many of you. It is my view that unless the players themselves annotate their games immediately afterwards, the analysis of moves that get published may not reflect the truth behind the logic of the moves when those were played. Except where a link can definitely be established between a previous and a later move (like Breyer’s 14th and 23rd moves in Chess Tactics: Well thought-out combinations), we can never be sure how much of the brilliant idea in a move owe itself to the player and how much to subsequent analysis! Also of relevance are our thoughts on chess logic and chess intuition. [...]
[...] We have already discussed the role of intuition in Intuition vs. logic in chess and this is something that a human player will use, not the computer. An expert chess player takes [...]
Intuition and Logic.
Luck and Calculation.
Intuition = Luck.
Calculation = Logic.
When I play vs weak engine, I am trying my luck in my intuition, and I really can seldom beat (1960elo) engine calculating on any decent CPU, if I am lucky not to make calculation mistakes, I actually did it in practice, hence I am saying I can… That doesn’t make sense to play against decent engine on many times slower PC, because decent engine is so good programmed it makes no sense to play against it, as it is not calculating, but using human invented practices to beat me. For example, it plays positional chess a lot, which makes me impossible o beat it. Only to draw, and of course if and when I am lucky, I did that actually when I was very very lucky… the problem was same engine showed me after game that I could actually win in 12 moves forced mate… Ok it was on cellphone engine DroidFish (StockFish engine brother for Android OS stuff, StockFish is free engine which is 3220 elo, second after Deep Rybka which is 3296 elo as for today).
So why to bother.
Enjoy your chess. Or if you want not to see everything on board, go play Poker, which is even more intuition=luck.
Chess really has a lot solid calculation=logic. And I am saying, that stupid algorithm even on QuantumBillion times faster PC won’t win a game vs human being. That means any sophisticated new logic=calculation game invented by human being cannot be won by any fastest supercomputer running stupid algorithm invented by stupid human being. In other words, if you like stupid luck, go for it. If you like solid logic, go for it. Don’t forget, that chess has a lot luck=intuitive too. Just don’t let your opponent use decent engine with him, and put less time on the clocks! Enjoy best game in the world – Chess!