Morning guys!
Contemporary chess grandmasters use computers to study different starting positions before competing. This preparation helps them understand the best moves when they see the positions on the board.
However, in a podcast with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, one of the best players of all time, he mentions that preparing with a computer is precarious. In tournaments, he would have trouble recognizing the positions he'd seen on the computer because the variations he studied were on a 2D screen, not on a chessboard.
As Maxime puts it, "you'll feel a bit uncomfortable [...], and every [momentary lapse in] attention could cost you the game". I believe that replicating the chessboard in virtual reality can enhance a player's pattern recognition.
VR headsets can simulate an entire chessboard and overlay computer-suggested moves, eliminating the disconnect between a screen and the board. In all, this technology would promote a player's pattern recognition since they would be training in an environment that resembles a chessboard.
I hope you'll study well this week!
- Curtis
Tbh this issue sounds quite bland. It's basically a glorified Tabletop Simulator mixed in with Stockfish analysis. But I was super surprised when I heard about this problem. Like think about it. There are problems that people would consider solved because we can put it on a 2D screen. However, Maxime helps us realize that flat icons mess with our innate ability to recognize patterns.
That's crazy! A human being has trouble recognizing patterns.
Do soccer players have hard times following game plans because they can't recognize their position in relation to a bird's eye view of the field?
What patterns am I missing when things are presented in a different dimension?
When my eyes are really fatigued, I try to write code with only one eye. However, I tend to miss a lot of glaring compilation errors with only one eye open. This makes no sense because my code is on a 2D screen.
Perhaps my pattern recognition for syntactical patterns is wired to sensitive changes in depth. With only one eye to scan for errors, I lose most of my pattern recognition abilities.
I can talk about this all day, but I hope that this amendment will broaden the ideas you have on the delicacy of pattern recognition.
P.S. You can find Maxime's interview here.
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