Memorizing Games

for sure one thing is true: To be a chessmaster we have to spend many hours, learning games, openings, endings, tactics, .... ,
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this is the problem with chess. Too much time in a hobby

Would it be any different to be a scratch golfer etc?

chess is a mind game, so it is a very intellectual activity. Many people today has jobs that are in some way 'mind jobs'.... in this case a hobby like chess is just more load for a tired brain.
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for physical demanding jobs, chess is the perfect hobby.
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now to be good at chess requires 1 or 2 hours of daily study, and 1 hour playing the game.
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who is able to commit 2 hours a day after work?

Actually, I believe the majority of "mind workers" do very little work that takes intense concentration etc.
Mastery of anything (being in the top 2% of practitioners) takes effort, skill and time (and probably money). Is it any easier trying to set aside time to play a couple rounds of golf per week to maintain a scratch average? Or how many hours a week working out to stay in form for tennis, basketball or such. How many hours of practice shots.

Anyway, I work at least 60 hours a week plus raising small kids and I find time for chess. What I don't have is time for TV, sports events etc. I get up at 5am almost every morning so I can have the quiet time necessary for real study.

Ok. I am interested in the Ruy Lopez, so I am going to work with some of Bobby Fischer games with this interesting opening using your method.
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This is my study game for the next 3-4 weeks.
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http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044274
http://www.redhotpawn.com/chess/grandmaster-games/viewmastergame.php?pgnid=54603&subject=Bobby-Fischer-vs-Vasily-Smyslov
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this is going to be a lot of fun, because I kill 2 birds, learning a game and learning my pet opening.
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Bjelica: Can you describe yourself in one sentence?

Korchnoi: Yes – Victor Korchnoi devotes a lot of time and energy to Chess and this shuts him off from life to some extent. I’m not teaching my son to play Chess because I would not like him to suffer my fate.

Interesting. Not the type of Fischer game I was expecting. Fischer pretty much always played to win so it might be interesting to go deep and try to figure out where Fischer thought he might have an edge here.
Do you have any annotations of the game to look at?

Originally posted by nimzo5
Interesting. Not the type of Fischer game I was expecting. Fischer pretty much always played to win so it might be interesting to go deep and try to figure out where Fischer thought he might have an edge here.
Do you have any annotations of the game to look at?

I don't have annotations of this game but I found something online:
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chesstempo has an interesting tool with many variants for the opening
http://chesstempo.com/gamedb/game/2656278
and this one looks similar, with some statistical analysis:
http://68.169.60.53/public/game.jsp?id=11000000011.4100310.122341120.7480

this could help for the 1st week, I guess...

Originally posted by moonbus
I believe that having many games available to conscious recall is part of what it is to have reached a certain level of proficiency at the game. But it does not follow that committing games to memory is a path to that level or an especially fruitful exercise in memory training.

I think you are getting close to the point. The act of trying to remember games forces your brain to change. When I started playing chess i played each game in bewilderment, I simply didn't have the capacity to remember what i did last week that won me that game. I distinctly remember the day that changed. I had an RHP game against a stronger opponent and i was in real trouble. I looked at the position every day for a week and could see no defence. Then one day i got into bed and was just falling asleep when the position appeared in my head and i saw a saving defence. It was so strange, like my brain had been ticking away by itself on this problem and then progress bar just suddenly made it to 100%.

I believe this happened because i had looked at the position repeatedly. I had tried new things each time, but because the position was the same each time It started to become familiar. I could remember that 'oh yes, I can't put my knight here because of such and such'.

I spend a lot of time looking at Master games these days, but the only ones i remember are the ones i have played over many times. I used to teach kids for a while and on occasion would demonstrate a game to show some idea. This was many years ago now, but i can still remember which games I demonstrated. You can't stand up and show a game you haven't looked at in detail, THIS is what is important. Looking at it IN DETAIL.

One other thing i have found, play through games backwards as well as forwards. I generally play through a game fairly quickly the first time. What is the general flow, is this something worth looking at in detail at all? Once I get to the end, i do the same thing backwards, one move at a time. Honestly, just try it! You'll see why i am saying this..

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
I think you are getting close to the point. The act of trying to remember games forces your brain to change. When I started playing chess i played each game in bewilderment, I simply didn't have the capacity to remember what i did last week that won me that game. I distinctly remember the day that changed. I had an RHP game against a stronger oppo ...[text shortened]... e thing backwards, one move at a time. Honestly, just try it! You'll see why i am saying this..

Totally agree.

If you pick good games to memorize (or at least try to memorize) you will be absorbing not just the moves but the little mini tactics, the strategic moves etc. and you will start seeing these ideas in your own games as well.

Memorizing games, no literally (except for Tal and maybe Fischer for some games), but when you build your repertoire, you should find a "mother game" for some opening.

Then you learn the game because you had studied it, and not pure memorizing but understanding of strategic motiffes is important. So you know why you play that an that opening.

Sometimes that game might be the very first, mother game, like for example Najdorf vs Gligoric if you want to play Mar Del Plata variation in King's Indian.

More often it is good game between GMs, preferably if your idol won in your favourite opening.

But you memorize patterns, more than games.
In that case, you have your own data base in your brain.

Originally posted by nimzo5
GP had a great example of knowing the pattern and seeing if it works vs brute force calculating adding another piece (the queen) to the mix.

I was thinking about GP's idea and it seems to me that perhaps chess is more about pattern recognition as opposed to reasoning.

Originally posted by Eladar
I was thinking about GP's idea and it seems to me that perhaps chess is more about pattern recognition as opposed to reasoning.

Sometimes there are many patterns in a position. Some work and some don't, then we have to use reason.

Originally posted by iChopWoodForFree
Sometimes there are many patterns in a position. Some work and some don't, then we have to use reason.

Chess is a house of cards and what appears to be a good move to a novice may be death to the experienced. All it takes is one small difference in the board.

My comment was based on how novices view the game. Many people believe that chess is simply a game of intellect. Work out the moves in your mind and come up with a great idea! The better chess player is the more intelligent person.

GP's post leads me to believe that although mental abilities do play a part, most of the game has to do with pattern recognition which of course implies board vision. Without excellent board vision, the patterns you recognize can crumble like a house of cards as I noted earlier.

Originally posted by nimzo5
Totally agree.

If you pick good games to memorize (or at least try to memorize) you will be absorbing not just the moves but the little mini tactics, the strategic moves etc. and you will start seeing these ideas in your own games as well.

I think going backwards through the game is important to improve your defensive skills. Start at checkmate and go back a move looking for a defence.Mate is still unavoidable? Ok, go back another move..and another. Find the mistake that caused mate.

Simply watching someone deliver mate is not good enough. It is aways the result of an inaccuracy. Go back and find the inaccuracy, find a better move.

Some games you will find yourself going right back to the beginning! These sort of games are invaluable when you find them. Once you see how bad 5.Be3 is you'll always see it is bad!

It's interesting how many people resist an exercise like "memorize one game". If you were a guitarist and I asked you to memorize one AC/DC song - so that you could get a deep feel for Angus Young's guitar style, would that be so unreasonable?

Yes Eladar, I agree, seeing comes before calculating. This is why a 12 year old trained by constant play and a fluid mind can outplay a Physics phd with an off the chart IQ. Logic, reasoning etc whatever you call it is a valuable asset in chess, but the game is too complex and and defies rule based play. If you don't know Phillidor's ring, you will constantly undervalue it and allow it to happen on the board and over 1000 games you might lose an extra 10 because of it and ultimately cost you 25 elo. Then if you have 10 deficiencies like that .. you get the idea.

I like memorizing because a great game has so many little mini combinations, positional decisions leading up to the denoument that they are a treasure trove of little ideas that you can implement into your own game. The repetition is to really ingrain the details. Practice not till you get it right, practice until you can't get it wrong. That will serve you well in the 5th hour of play in an important game.