🚀 go-pugleaf

>> <bill@milford> writes:
>> I vaguely remember some psychological studies which indicated some
>> unlearned traits which good masters possess but are relatively lacking
>> in the rest of us.  The term I remember is "eidetic memory" and the test
>> was how well the subjects could reconstruct chess positions after
>> examining it for a short time....

> Andrew Tannenbaum replies:
> This seems misguided.  If the test positions were sensible chess
> positions, then a master would see them the way you would see
> sentences....

Andrew is quite correct, but the studies were well-done. On positions arising
from actual (or, at least, possible) games, masters were far superior.  Random
arrangements were also tested -- masters were no better than woodpushers.
This is often used as an illustration of chunking in psychology texts, as
the masters simply noted who had castled where, which files and diagonals
were controlled by what, and so on.