can chess be grasped intuitively

i dont own any chess books and my rating reflects that fact, however Im just wondering if anyone out there in the chess realm has been able to become an exceptional player just by playing the game over and over again without reading numerous books.

I suppose chess is like anything else. Levels of potential are different in different people, and though booklearning can be a great help, either you can be really good at something or you can't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is yes, it can. Otherwise, where would the books come from? A book that lists strategies for situations can be copied, but for every gambit there is a countermeasure and not all of them may be listed. The possibilities of chess games are nigh-limitless, and textbook players are no substitute for those who are really gifted.

it's like physics, one could if one was sufficiantly clever work out all the known laws of physics just from sitting in a small room. You could theoretically work out all of chess just by knowing the rules.

Bobby Fischer is probably the greatest example of an initutive chess player.

Originally posted by Lord Erdrick
I suppose chess is like anything else. Levels of potential are different in different people, and though booklearning can be a great help, either you can be really good at something or you can't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is yes, it can. Otherwise, where would the books come from? A book that lists strategies for situations can be copied, but ...[text shortened]... ames are nigh-limitless, and textbook players are no substitute for those who are really gifted.

Originally posted by fierytorment
Bobby Fischer is probably the greatest example of an initutive chess player.

Originally posted by fierytorment
Bobby Fischer is probably the greatest example of an initutive chess player.

Originally posted by skywalker red
I agree with you. some people just have a natural ability more than others. now, my question is this:what natural ability comes into play ..is it memory.. think about it. if you had a photographic memory it would be an incredible advantage. or does it have more to do with abstract thinking?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I'd say natural chess talent involves pure love for the game, memory, pattern recognition and the ability to visualize and play through positions in your head.

Originally posted by gambit3
Seems to me the most natural player was Capablanca.

I guess the closest to a natural talent (without reading a lot of books) would be Capablanca. Early in his career he didn't know much about openings. He just plugged away until either his opponent made a mistake in the middle game or, if he entered the end game, Capablanca's technique was formidable. As I remember from an old Reinfield bio, he passed his bar exam in law with one of the highest grades in the least amount of time. Morphy is another talent, who picked up the game just from watching his father and brothers play. Many players, like the late Ken Smith had a visual memory, which enabled him to be a great poker and chess player. I recall a long time ago Fischer was on TV and he pulled out those little square puzzles with tinier numbered squares. After the host mixed them up, Fischer was able to re-number them in sequence in a matter of seconds. I don't know what kind of ability this would be called. It's similar to visualizing knight moves in advance so that you can drop it into an effective square. People who study intelligence (whatever that is) would be well advised to look at chess players and why some are mediocre (like myself) and some become masters.

Oh, I just remembered. A psychologist studied the memory of chess players and non-chess players by giving them positions on the board to reconstruct. When chess players were confronted with, say, a middle game from a real game they were able to reconstruct the position much better than non-chess players. But when the pieces and pawns were scattered at random on the board, the chess players did no better at reconstruction than non-chess players. This would suggest that experience is an important factor in chess memory or pattern recognition.

While Fischer researched quite a fair amount, you really cannot treat his sacrifices in games as book-material. Thats where his intution came out. In big games against solid opponets. The ability to guess or anticipate what his opponents were going to do was his intuition ability shining out. How do you think he made his sacrifces work? NOTE, not all them did, but most did.

obviously it can be done. Somebody had to become strong enough to write the first books or develope lines like the sicilian.

I've got photographic memory and I'm definitely not a master. Photographic memory isn't perfect memory, it's just the ability to see it as a picture. Everything I think of is in a picture... but that was just because I decided to do so.

Shut your eyes, think of a black cat. You can see the black cat.

I do the same with chess.

I agree, I think Capablanka is one of the most 'intuitive' players, or one of the few that started out great without much studying. He learned to play by watching his father play when he was five. I think he won his first tournament when he was 7, or near that age. He lost the first two games, tied the next 4, and won the next 4. (Or something similar).

Intuition definitely needs to be added with research, if you know all the typical examples, or the 'book' answers, then you don't have to look at those as possibilities, you know what they do. You can look for alternates, and follow those paths with your mind, and that is how you can come out on top.

-Kerry