Friday, March 17, 2006

New secret to chess improvement revealed

Forget about studying tactics, openings or endgames; instead, have someone hit you in the head with a hammer right before the game starts. Don't believe me? Just read what Dr. Richard Petty has to say about playing chess while unconscious:

There is evidence that while most chess players spend virtually all of their time trying to calculate, strong players rely on unconscious process for most of the game, and only calculate for short periods when their unconscious tells them too. There is even evidence from brain imaging studies that average players activate all the cognitive areas of the frontal lobes while playing, with some temporal lobe activity as they try to remember their lessons. By contrast, a chess master uses many regions of his brain at once, and only occasionally activates parts of his frontal lobes when calculation is required.

No comments: