Scientific American: Oh Dear.

Scientific American this month has as it's cover story a truly mediocre exercise called The Expert Mind, by Philip E. Roth. It's mostly about chess, mostly a rehash of old research, and provides essentially no support for its central thesis - that hard study is more important than talent.

He lost me at hello. How far does a chess grandmaster see ahead?
"I see only one move ahead," Capablanca is said to have anwered, "but it is always the best one."


I much prefer the version I heard. When Capablanca arrived at the great New York Tournament of 1924, he had not lost in ten years, and newspapers reported that he looked ten moves ahead in a chess game (perhaps he even said that). It created a sensation when mathematician and chess master Reti defeated him in the fifth round.

Reti, my story goes, was then asked how many moves he looked ahead. His reply, "as a rule, not even one."

The point, whichever story you believe, is that positional judgement is more important than calculational ability.

Computers have shown that that's not necessarily so. Humans are poor calculators, but expert humans are good positonal judges. Despite having lots of human positional judgement poured into them, computers remain, at best, mediocre at positional judgement, but perfect calculation can more than compensate - if you can see far enough ahead.

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