Not all well-educated people have a good "memory" for one thing, but the memory point is interesting. I think you have to remember the position for when it happens in the future "those who do not remember the past will be forced to relive it". Naming positions is a way of remembering tactics, some people talk of memory "hooks" on which we can place information to make it easier to retrieve.
There are really smart people who are not well-educated, and some pretty well-educated doofuses. There are chess players with high IQs that are mediocre at the game, and there are exceptionally talented chess players with average IQs.
Of course memory helps with chess, helps with the drive for formal education, and is one of the elements that leads to success in IQ tests. But memory is not the only factor driving correlation between intellgence, education, and success in chess.
Originally posted by bill718Considering most grandmasters have the ability to play several games at one time blindfolded I would think it has a great deal to do with playing strength.
I wonder if there is a direct connection between one's memory and there chess aptitude. I can't help but notice many (not all) of the world's top correspindence chess players are well educated with above average memories. Any thoughts? 😏
In 1960 Koltanowski played 56 consecutive blindfold games in San Fransisco at a rate of 10 seconds a move. The exhibition lasted 9 hours with the result of 50 wins and six losses. Koltanowski's specialty was conducting a Blindfold Knight's Tour on boards of up to 192 squares.
If you're interested in memory and chess you might want to take a look at this blog post I wrote a year and a half ago
http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/2007/07/pattern-recognition.html
it's about *how* chess players use their memories during a game.
A few weeks before that I'd written about a TV programme that featured Susan Polgar
http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/2006/10/susan-polgars-brilliant-brain.html
I think you can still the TV show itself on youtube. It's an interesting - if very flawed (see my article above) - account of Susan's chess "fundamental chess ability" of "memory"
The ability to memory file and recall many chessboard positions past and present is of great assistance to myself and to a great many other players past and present,and has nothing to do with being blindfolded or not. Being blindfolded in chess play makes no major difference to recalling moves and positions ,as these are seen in active memory cells of the brain and are not dependant upon visual eye cells.There is no confirmed or scientifically proven connection with memory recall abilities and superior intelligence or education levels, however it is a fact that extremely highly educated persons have a tendency to develope memory filing and recall abilities to a greatly elevated level than that which is usually considered normal.Everybody is aware that exactly what makes some people better skilled in memory abilities is not precisely known due to an incomplete understanding of all the workings of the human brain.Nevertheless some of the great chess players of the past were able to play some of the greatest chess games in history with little or no more than average memory abilities.A well developed memory ability is useful in chess as it is in many things in life,but is not necessarily a fundemental requirement beyond normal levels,in order to play chess to an acceptably good standard most of the time😴