What makes a master chess player deviate from the average

chess player?

Nicholas Gilmore

Senior Project Advisor: Kyle Edmondson

Not only is chess a fun board game to play in your pastime, the game also is a good model for

how to improve your cognitive and thinking abilities. Being a master Chess player, especially

masters of the game, have been pioneers for all cognitive psychologists. As the online chess

community grows, many people will want to be the best player possible. In this paper

specifically, I looked at why these GrandMasters and super GM's turn out to be as good as they

are, and what really separates them from the rest of the average players.I was ultimately trying to

answer the question "Are the best players the best just because of their genetics? What do these

type of people do for structured training to be the best?" The largest contributing factorI found in

my research is that a lot of the traits that these master players have are things you are already

able to change. Most sources I used for this paper are scholarly articles or are referenced from

scholarly sources/professionals in the field. The most important thing I found in these studies

was that anyone can be a chess master, however it takes years of chunking theory, falsification,

Visual-spatial training, physical training, and a small amount of genetic factors to be able to

reach this understanding of chess.

 12th Grade Humanities
Animas High School
1 April, 2021

Part 1: Introduction

Did you know that Grandmasters and top-level chess players are able to burn thousands of

calories at world championships only by playing chess for a singular week? Even more

surprising is that you can burn 300-380 calories in a single classic timed game of chess!

However, it takes a lot of work, dedication, and discipline to reach such a level of understanding

of the game of chess. Dedication and discipline, along with the types of genetic factors play into

being an exceptional chess player as well.In relevance to beneficial effects of chess, there are a

lot of benefits. For example, it improves your visual-spatial reasoning and your cognitive

abilities in a rather long term significant manner, and it helps you to think outside the box. If you

take the game more seriously, chess can help you create constructive habits in more than just one

aspect of your life. You may be better disciplined and have an easier time learning new

concepts/content. The point is that there are more benefits to chess than meets the eye. Overall,

the most important purpose of my paper is for my readers to understand that you don’t exactly

need to know how to play chess in order to understand what this research is about. This is

because I am taking a psychological approach instead of a chess-based analytical approach. To

sum up this introduction formally, Grandmaster (GM) Interviews and cognitive psychologists

generally suggest that the game of chess involves more than just the board & pieces at the top

levels. An exceptional amount of modern day grandmasters excel at chunking theory,

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falsification, and tournament preparation which separates the very best from everyone else.

Part 2: Historical Context

There was once a time, estimated that the game of chess originated in the 6th century CE located

in the Gupta Empire of what is now known as India. This game, however, was very different

from the modern day game we are used to. It was played on something known as the “ashtapada

board”. This was a lot like the 8x8 checkerboard we have today, but was used to play more

popular games than just the game of chess. Moreover, instead of the game being called “chess”,

it was called “Chaturanga”. It wasn’t until the game transferred over to the Persian Empire that it

was called “chess”. Fast forward into the1500’s, chess took the form of how we play it today.

The 1500’s were also the time when strategy, tactics, and opening theory was all written in books

and could be read by the public. Since these “by the book” techniques were so scarce at the time,

the games played by the best in the world had more creative, aggressive, and more risk taking

moves than what we see now. After the late 19th century however, when the competitiveness of

the game became more popular, the old strategy from the best was soon bested by the more

strategic and logical calculational play that was soon becoming more prevalent.

A couple hundred years later, the geopolitical importance of the game gave the USSR lots of

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money and time that was put into making the best chess players in the world. For an

overwhelming amount of the 20th century, Grandmasters from the USSR would absolutely

dominate the game on a global scale, making it so the other countries’ competitors never stood a

chance against their Russian counterparts. At this point, the world championships were only

competitions among other soviet chess players.

It was only on February 10th, 1996 when IBM’s “deep blue” supercomputer defeated Gary

Kasparov (debatably the best chess player in the world) that people from other countries really

had the chance to play on an equal field during world championship matches. The computers

allowed the other players to be able to reach the skill that the Russians had throughout most of

the 20th century. Ultimately, this is where the complex history of chess has led us to our present

day understanding of the game of chess.

The most note-worthy players to ever be in chess history are as follows: Gary Kasparov, Magnus

Carlsen, and Bobby Fischer. Although there are some honorable mentions, these very select

people are widely known to be the best chess players to have ever existed. Bobby Fischer was

different from the rest of the grandmasters in his time, because he was one of the only american

chess players that rivaled the dominant & unstoppable russian chess players. He won all of the

world championships from 1972-1975. He was also awarded his grandmaster title in 1958 when

he was just 15 years of age. He was considered the best because his tactical, strongly positional

and patient play allowed him to dominate in endgames and middle games. His play was best

described to be like Analty Karpov. Gary Kasparov is the most popular answer for the best chess

players in the world, and for good reason. Gary Kasparov has the 2nd highest ELO rating of any

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chess player in existence. His peak rating was at 2851 out of 3000.This score was the best any

human had ever achieved. It was only surpassed 8 years after his retirement by Magnus Carlsen

in 2013. Gary was able to maintain the championship title for 15 consecutive years. He was also

known to be the youngest world champion, winning the title in 1985 at only 22 years of age.

Magnus Carlsen is also widely known as the best chess player to ever exist. In 2013 Magnus was

able to beat Kasparov’s peak ELO rating, having his be at 2882 out of 3000. This makes Magnus

have the highest ELO score to have ever existed. Not only that, Magnus has won all world

championships from 2013 to present. He(and Kasparov) have such high ELO ratings that the

FIDE(International Chess Federation) have given these types of players a new title: super

grandmasters. Magnus is said to be the best because of his calculation skills and his vast

knowledge of turning completely drawing endgames into winning positions.

With all of this knowledge I just presented to you, you're probably asking “what did all of these

world class players have in common”. “Are all of the aspects they share in their genetics”. These

are all questions that I wanted answers to, but before I knew the answer, I needed to know most

of the key terms/definitions:

Chunking theory is a way to memorize chess positions in “chunks” that are stored in your long

term memory.a chunk is a set of moves in a given position, that can span from a few key ideas to

an entire opening system.Template theory is very similar to chunking theory. The only difference

is that template theory is a more accurate and precise way to memorize chess information in the

long term

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Blindfold chess is the act of playing chess without looking at a physical board. You play

blindfold chess by memorizing/mapping certain chess notations until the game has an ending .

So basically being told the moves your opponent plays then you telling your opponent what

moves you play.

Falsification is the act of disproving a hypothesis. Although it’s found in almost all sciences as a

tool to strengthen their expected outcome, it has logical implications in chess as well. If you

know you have a potential winning strategy/move in a game, you should think about how your

opponent would make your winning move invalid. This is where falsification comes in. If you

find the ways your hypothesis is flawed, you may be able to find a better move. You could even

save yourself from blundering the game.

Subvocalization is the process of reading aloud information inside your head. When you repeat

your reasoning, ideas and even moves that you have made, it helps you remember the positions

better. Subvocalization is also shown to help you think differently and more creatively than you

otherwise would have. A perfect example of this taking place is in blindfold chess.

A confirmation bias is almost directly related to having falsification in chess. What that is in

chess is having a specific bias towards the state of the game you are in. For example, if you are

in a losing position, but you think you are winning, this would be a confirmation bias. This

happens less and less the more you falsify your ideas/plans.

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There are a lot of benefits to being a good chess player. For example, it improves your

visual-spatial reasoning and your cognitive abilities in a rather long term significant manner, and

it helps you to think outside the box. If you take the game more seriously, chess can help you

stay consistent in more than just one aspect of your life. You may be better disciplined and have

an easier time learning new concepts/content. The point is that there are more benefits to chess

than meets the eye.

Part 3: Research and Analysis

Section A: Training & Effort

Since we observed the main ideas and understand a large portion of chess history, you will now

be able to understand what these main ideas are more in depth, and how these ideas relate to the

top-class players. In 2001, Amidzic, et. al published a study in Nature to explain how chunking

theory works in one’s brain, and what hormones are released when chess players are introduced

to puzzles. Chunking theory, simply explained, is a way to remember chess positions in bulk.

However, this type of memorization gets put into the long term memory instead of the short

term, making it so that chess players can remember and perform better in-game. With this study,

the researchers found that in performance, the masters released a hormone called “focal

y-Bursts”. This tells us that the master's use their long term memory to force calculated positions.

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As for their beginner counterparts, little to none of these hormones were present in their system.

These homrones were measured by using a device called Magnetoencephalography.

Although the following key term I’m going to explain doesn’t seem like it has something to do

with chess, you would be surprised. This is because although the meaning was made for general

science majors, It has a deep and meaningful presence in competitive chess. Falsification(to put

it into my terms specifically) is the process of having a hypothesis and consistently attempting to

disprove your idea. This is so your hypothesis becomes more grounded and stronger than it was

before. In chess, and even in life we always want to have the right answer. Falsification prevents

you from keeping a confirmation bias, leaving you better ways to analyze a game. This will

allow you to make your chess progress skyrocket. In this specific study from 2004, the masters

with an ELO(chess skill measuring)of 2000-2600 were tested against the novices (600-1200

ELO). It was best said when Cowley, Michelle, and Ruth M.J Byrne when they stated: “Chess

masters tended to evaluate their moves as good or bad for them more realistically than

experienced novices:”. Another surprising fact the researchers noticed was similar to last,

stating: “Novices generated somewhat more positive bias tests than the masters (M = 5 for

novices and M = 3.4 for masters)”. After a few tests it was ultimately decided that the master

group was falsifying almost every single tactic and position they were given. The novices on the

other hand showed almost no signs of falsifying their conclusions and had a strong confirmation

bias throughout the tactical puzzles. It’s easy to fall under this bias of confirmation when

playing chess, that's why falsification should be the most prevalent solution to this problem. It’s

only when we ask ourselves “why am I wrong” instead of “why am I correct” will you be able to

improve as a player, and as a free thinker.

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Debatably, the most important short-term advantage that GM’s achieve with astounding accuracy

from their results is their ability to prepare for tournament preparation, which includes mentally,

physically, and emotionally. As best said by Maurice Ashley on the podcast website CBC.ca, he

claims that: “Today's players are much more keen on it. They'll focus on their diet, proper eating,

proper exercise and I think that they're more steeled for competition than ever.” (par 7)

His main point in his answer was to imply the versatility of exercise and eating properly. The

main physical use to being in shape as a chess master is to regulate your caloric intake. Since

these top class players burn hundreds of calories a game, they use their diet and exercise to train

their bodies to endure such a drop of calories in just a couple hours. This is why people like

Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen exercise multiple hours a day in a multiple amount of

different sports. If the average club player went into one of these tournaments (assuming he

doesn’t train like A top-class player) he would be absolutely exhausted before he could even

finish his game, regardless of outcome. I say “regardless of outcome” because he may be burning

even more calories maintaining a winning position. It was best said by Maurice ashley where he

explains the amount of stress builds up and involved in these types of tournaments: “It's always

razor's edge, every move could be a mistake and that kind of pressure does lead to a lot of stress

and subsequently a lot of calories burned. Just all that intense effort.” (paragraph 3) This quote

only exemplifies how difficult it is to manage the stress at this type of level of play.

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Speaking of managing stress, another common question asked is how they are able to deal with

such horrendous amounts of stress. The answer comes in actually a lot of ways. One of the most

common ways of removing pre-tournament stress is through exercise. Even after tournament

games the players try to get on a treadmill to eliminate any built-up stress that can occur during

these world-class games (Maurice, Ashley, 2-3). Although this is the most common way these

players regulate their stress, it's different for everybody. For example, Magnus likes to swim

before playing tournament matches.

One of the larger differences between good tournament preparation and world class preparation

is actually the people you keep in contact with. For every top competitor, they all have a

supercomputer database, and multiple coaches that teach the player how and what to play in

relevance to what the actual player wants to play against their opponent. This is because the best

chess comes not from just 2 people, but entire teams made to out play their team of opponents.

These teams of people travel around the world with the chess player and aid him in how to play

against that specific opponent. This applies for every professional tournament match they were

in.

Section B: Biological Traits

Most of the genetic advantages I talk about in this paper largely do not define how well you

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perform in most cases. This is because Judit Polgar (Highest rated female chess player) claims

that the genetic advantages of being a chess player is only 1-10% of what makes up a master

chess player. On the flip side, 90-99% of the process is hard-work, determination, discipline, and

years of practice. However, If you wanted to play in world-class tournaments(like being top

100), it would be a huge advantage to have the genetic traits(such as larger visual spatial lobes,

kinetic/photographical methods of calculation) to really gain the advantage over your opponents.

Another study from Carlin Flora (female grandmaster) in 2005 was published for the sole

purpose of bringing awareness to the Polgar’s lifestyle, and to explain how they became so good

at the game. However, the author was able to Confirm the theory of why there aren’t as many

female grandmasters as there are males. One of the reasons mentioned is males' higher

competitive attitudes during tournaments. This argument can be further explained by Christopher

F. Chabris and Mark E. Glickman. Their study titled “Sex Differences in Intellectual

Performance: Analysis of a Large Cohort of Competitive Chess Players”, the text states:“Even if

men and women have the same underlying ability distribution, a larger number of top-rated

players will be men if the overall number of men competing is greater (the participation-rate

hypothesis).”(pg1 par 2). The most compelling reason however was actually a biological reason.

The visual-spatial reasoning is located on the right side of the brain. Due to puberty, testosterone

helps the right side of the brain grow to a more significant level. This would allow Male GM’s to

understand the game through the better lens of visual-spatial capabilities. This was best

explained by carlin flora, when she stated: “The visual-spatial processing center is located in the

right side of the brain; among elite chess players (Kasparov included), there is a much higher

proportion of left-handers, who have dominant right brains, than chance would predict.

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Testosterone accelerates development of the right brain and may slow development of the left

side( THE GRANDMASTER EXPERIMENT,)”. This means that those with higher testosterone

levels are more likely to excel at visual-spatial tasks, like chess, and therefore that those with

lower testosterone levels will not be able to perform as well in their visual-spatial awareness.

As some of us know from the popular chess show “The queen's gambit”, the protagonist

Beth Harmon has an ability that few people have in real life. That ability is to visualize pieces

moving without a chess board. From the age of 8, she was able to map out entire positions and

openings as if the board was right in front of her. Although Masters in real life are able to do this,

a lot of master players do not do what Beth Harmon does in the show. This study, conducted by

Bill Wall, published by billwall.phpwebhosting.com, Sums up that there are multiple types of

ways people are able to play chess blindfolded. He explains his ideas (backed up by foreign

research) through this statement: “The first class was made up of those who have a clear visual

picture of the situation as it will appear after a series of moves. Then there were a class of

players who have some visual picture, but rely also on successive associations, in verbal or

possible motor terms, of one move with another. They were unable to picture a resulting

situation, but must build it up move by move by means of visual and other kinds of

imagery.”(page2 last paragraph) When this researcher put the masters into these separate

groups, he did this because of his own realization that not everybody interprets the board the

same way. Thanks to vocal etiquette of subvocalization, it's a perfect way to perform better in

blindfolded chess. This would mean a chess grandmaster would be legally blind for life, and still

be able to learn and play chess at almost the same performance level. When the text references

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“other kinds of imagery”. They mean thinking abstractly, thinking kinetically (like Beth Harmon

and Hikaru Nakamura), and having photographic memories. The difference between the kinetic

and photographic thinking is that kinetic thinkers think in terms of “videos” so to say, while the

photographic thinkers only think of the board in pictures. Another method for blindfold chess is

best explained by Bill Wall when he claimed: “ Another method is replaying the game from the

beginning. This means running over a series of successive associations aided and guided by the

critical points and by the general plan of the whole game, which gives a meaning to the

individual moves. The reconstruction from memory of a position involving any considerable

number of pieces is not possible to most beginners. They get lost in the mass of impressions

which the situation involves.” Although there are many different ways to think about the board,

Even some methods that the majority of chess players could not ever imagine doing in their

lifetime. One of the reasons why even master level players avoid this type of play is because of

how much strenuous information they have to process through their minds and remember.

Although most masters are reported to be able to do this, it still has room for some extremely

unneeded information that can backfire on them when they have to calculate multiple moves

ahead of them.

Part 4: Discussions and Conclusions

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Certainly most of the concepts and ideas that I use in part 2 and part 3 most definitely lead to a

singular, important message in regards to being a better chess player, maybe even the best in the

world. The main idea conveys that A lot of the traits you obtain to be a master player are

actually things you can work on, long term or short term. This main Idea would also imply that

the biological traits developed by genetics are a relatively small portion of what can make you

great at chess. Although the genetic factor is a small portion, it's nonetheless important to have.

These factors can give you a strong advantage over your opponent, which is why the top players

have some type of these genetic gifts at play. Mainly however, the thing that makes you the best

at chess is several years of consistency, perseverance, discipline, determination and ambition to

be the best player you can be. Going forward, a lot of the good articles I read and decided to

scratch were because of the language barriers. Most of the sources/original studies were

conducted in either russian or german. Going forward I know that buying a good translator

would allow me to be able to receive much deeper and more intertextual evidence for my paper.

My other larger implication would be that with every non-genetic trait I mentioned. This includes

getting a professional chess coach. WIth this in mind, you can definitely become a master of the

game with patience. However, to be in the top 100 or even top 10 you would need your genetic

advantages to be able to outperform people just like you.

A good question to ask is what the research that has been provided suggests. To start, the

blindfold chess studies mainly imply that Only master level players are capable of playing at

least a full game inside of their mind. This is because it's been proven time and time again that

moderate to advanced players are not able to acquire this skill with the skillsets they have. The

studies related to falsification tells us that everyone is able to falsify their hypothesis, especially

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in chess, but the beginners rarely think to do it. The masters on the other hand have falsifications

implemented inside of their thought process. This is what would separate the average player

from the master. The chunking theory evidence implies that anyone can use this strategy

effectively, but Grandmasters release focal-y bursts when solving puzzles, implying they are

using their chunking theory much more often than the beginners or even the moderate level

players are.

A lot of research can and may need to be done in order for me to completely understand all of the

key concepts I explained previously. Although I learned sometimes too much about a specific

subject, there is still always room to learn new things about my topic. The best idea to think

about when conducting further/extended research is to ask what specific subject would I learn the

most from within the amount of time I have. There are many answers to this question, but If time

wasn’t an issue I would research Template theory. Since I know base level information about

Tamplate theory in relevance to chunking theory, it can compliment the chunking theory key

concept rather well. This way, if I have the extended research needed, I will be able to fully

understand what these theories truly imply and how they are used. Another topic I would want to

extensively research is if standard IQ tests can correlate with chess skill. Although I have seen

some of my sources say that there is absolutely no correlation between the two, I believe more

extensive research should be done about this possible correlation. This could add to my small

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biological traits list if the correlation finds to be significant. This way, I could make the argument

that you either do or do not need to have a high IQ in order to be one of the best players in the

world. To add on to this point, there are not a whole lot of genetic traits that I could find as valid

information or “backed up” so to say. It’s safe to say that the research conducted in these traits

could be more broad instead of more specific, this way this paper would be able to talk more

about the unchangeable traits that may make the individuals more individualistic. Part 3

mentioned a bit about what the top players do before each important tournament, but I never

really went into the other stress-relief methods and their actual chess training exercises. Although

the stress-relief topic could be subjective and change from person to person, the research could

pull through some similarities from these top players. With the training exercises, there would be

a lot to look into there that could definitely be explored more thoroughly. The most important

topic I would look into with HEAVY amount of research would be the adolescent development

of a young chess prodigy. Everyone’s chess journey starts somewhere, and most GM’s start

playing chess before the age of 12. This would be the most important topic to look into because

almost all grandmasters had some type of chess training/ experience in their young adolescent

lives.

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Bibliography:
Academicchess, Published by : “The Psychology of the Game.” Academic Chess, 29 Jan. 2019,

w www.academicchess.org/articles/the-psychology-of-the-game/.

Cowley, Michelle, and Ruth M.J Byrne. “Chess Masters’ Hypothesis Testing.” Escholarship.org,

2 2004, escholarship.org/uc/item/2149d69v.

Chabris, Christopher F., and Mark E. Glickman. “Sex Differences in Intellectual Performance:

f Analysis of a Large Cohort of Competitive Chess Players.” f f f f f f f f f f f f f ff f

ffff Https://Us.sagepub.com/, Sage Publications Inc., 1 Jan. gf f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f

1990,web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=8&sid=5b06bea6-6199-4ffe-a3ed-9b623c8a8

f7c@sdc-v-sessmgr02&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==#AN=24025306&db=pbh.

Flora, Carlin. “The Grandmaster Experiment.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 2005,

www.psychologytoday.edu/us/articles/200507/the-grandmaster-experiment.

Joukowsky Institute. Chess: Psychological Games, Brown University, 2009,

www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7301.html.

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Wall, Bill. “Chess Psychology.” Bill Wall's Chess Page,

http//billwall.phpwebhosting.com/articles/Chess%20psychology.htm

Amidzic, Ognjen, et al. “Pattern of Focal γ-Bursts in Chess Players.” Nature News, Nature ffff
ff PublishingGroup, 2001, www.nature.com/articles/35088119.

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