Has anybody done this study yet? I’m curious about the results. Perhaps there’s some chess-playing cognitive psychologist who’d like to collaborate on this?
Has anybody done this study yet? I’m curious about the results. Perhaps there’s some chess-playing cognitive psychologist who’d like to collaborate on this?
Two thoughts on this: (1) Maintaining an objective, updated assessment of one’s chances is a crucial skill for high-level chess players. You play differently depending on whether you are pushing for a win or trying to hang on for a draw. The greatest threat to consistent performance at the top is faulty radar. (2) That said, chess players are arrayed on a continuum stretching from megalomania to paranoia. There are two psychological forces at work at any moment, satisfaction at the guile of one’s own plans and fear that one has overlooked a particularly devious plan of one’s opponent. Players sort themselves into two camps based on which tends to dominate. Looking for the central tendency in this context may miss the true distribution.
Apropos of calibration is this comment from Jeremy Silman:
"It’s funny, but ever since my first step into the tournament chess scene other players would always say (when asked what their rating was), “My rating is so and so, but I’m really XXX strength!”
Everyone thinks they are better than their rating. Everyone! Usually they add 200 points to their existing rating, but why not go whole hog and add more? Your 400-point addition shows that you really are much stronger than the 1500 rating, or that you’re a very positive, confident guy (which is also good). It might also mean you’re delusional, but hey, we won’t go there!"
http://www.chess.com/article/view/losing-focus-an…
"Chess is and will always be a game of chance. "How now, sir?', I hear you cry. 'Isn't it precisely the best and noblest aspect of the game of chess that the chances are equal and that the players control everything themselves?' 'Yes, gentlemen, quite, but who can control himself?'"
— Dutch grandmaster J.H.Donner, Elseviers Weekblad, 20 Nov '67 (trans Richard de Weger, in "The King: Chess Pieces", New in Chess, '06)
You might find this comment by Kasparov of interest. Can it really be true? This is of course before computers were used in analysis.
"In particular, the topic of intuition is intriguing. When I analyzed a 1894 world championship game between Lasker and Wilhelm Steinitz, I also looked at their post-game analysis and the comments of other top players of the day. They all made more mistakes in analysis than the players had made during the game! The intuitive decisions of the players during the game were correct in most cases, and more often so than when they had all the time in the world to analyze later."
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/03/kasparov-ret…