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The road to chess improvement - falsification!

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Submitted by SonofPearl on Thu, 04/24/2008 at 10:29am.

You're playing a chess game and it's your turn to move.  You decide to analyse a move that looks like it could be good.  How do you decide if your instinct is right or not?

You can either look for evidence to back up your idea - or you can look for ways to refute it.  This scientific paper (pdf file) suggests that good chess players pick the latter approach.

This seems to be common sense to be, but I suspect I'm guilty of trying to do the former more often than I'd care to admit.  I find a move I like the look of, and then find some replies from my opponent that simply fall in with my plans.  Instead, I should be looking for a killer reply which blows my idea out of the water.

This approach is technically called falsification.  The proposition that I am attempting to falsify is that my move is a good one.  If I can find just one reply which makes it a bad idea, then I know to try something else.

The other (incorrect) approach is to seek confirmation that the move is a good idea.  This is weaker because no matter how many good variations you find that start with that move, it only takes one bad one - which your opponent may find - to make it a bad move.

Humans eh?  So illogical.  No wonder computers are taking over...Laughing


» posted in Blogging makes the world go around
587 reads | 5 comments
 

Comments:

by Pawn_mower - 20 days ago
United States
Member Since: Dec 2007
Member Points: 25

I think this sounds like a good approach.  I think this is a nuanced and interesting way to think about Lasker's candidate moves.  If you think you have a good move, ask: Is there a better move.  He said that for every move we should have at least 2 other moves and weigh which is best.  This takes discipline and I often consider 2 candidates, not a total of 3   (Ref: "Teach yourself Visually: Chess-- Jon Edwards).  


by C_Evzpa - 21 days ago
Littleton, CO United States
Member Since: Jun 2007
Member Points: 10
It is all so confusing... My small mind does not compute this at all...
by staggerlee - 21 days ago
Kansas United States
Member Since: Mar 2008
Member Points: 82
Dang someone beat me to the punch.  I was ready to go on a long tangent about Popper and the scientific method!
by woodstock - 21 days ago
Strasbourg France
Member Since: Dec 2007
Member Points: 108
Thats what I do, so I guess I'm fine.  =)
by Vance917 - 21 days ago
Rockville, Maryland United States
Member Since: Oct 2007
Member Points: 129
Karl Popper would be proud!  Except that you can confirm that a move is a good one in certain cases.  For example, it may lead to a winning strategy (forced check mate).  Or you may be able to enumerate all possible replies your opponent can make, and find a good counter move to each.  Of course, now we get into circular logic -- how do you know that these counter moves are good?  Another aspect is that you may wish to falsify, rather than confirm, your opponent's replies.  That is, you choose a minimax solution (to minimize the maximum loss), but this loss is computed with your own limited ability to see into the future.  You may say that your move is a bad one because your opponent can reply with a move that results in a great loss to you.  But you may have missed a clever counter that would actually turn the tables, and so your move may be a good one after all.
 
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