Chain of Chess Influences.
As an undergrad at Westfield State College, having co-majored in Secondary Education, I was required to take a great many psychology courses. And in the early 70's, each doctor and psychology professor could describe in detail their lineage of teachers to themselves all the way from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Behaviorists always somehow get back to John Watson or BF. Skinner.
.
I thought this was a really cool process, listening to each professor's narration emphasizing the trail of specific teachers that had the most influence on their personal thinking. Psychology being a "new" science, having each university teacher degreed in the field, so the "chain of influence" is unbroken and is easily recognizable.
.
To chess: Today if you are an OTB player you are the product of receiving parts of information about a 1,500 year old game from some sources. Because more than thirty preceding generations have been buried, knowledge of your particular "chain" has been buried. The lack of documentation still exists.
.
Nonetheless theories like the "six degrees of separation" or http://ibeatgarry.com/; with the attempt to measure how many steps a player is separated from beating Gary Kasparov; bring to mind that in time there will be the capability to recognize the connections with respect to games played and opponents faced. Although ibeatgarry.com is based on one limited chess database, I foresee a day when there will exist a superdatabase where all known will games exist and interesting facts harvested. So the chain of who in mankind influenced a chess player is not be formally documented.
.
Still I like to play with thoughts about the chain to Harry Lyman,
my biggest influence on chess thinking. And Harry being so well connected was a node of wisdom gathering and disseminating huge amounts of information and getting people together - what Malcolm Gladwell calls "a connector" in The Tipping Point. Harry was a byproduct of the swashbucklers of Boston like Weaver Adams,
Harlow Daly, of which John Curdo 
still personifies. An attitude that can be traced back to Harry Nelson Pillsbury. 
I call it Pre-Soviet American chess: before the coaches from the School of Botvinik came to Boston. Players were brawlers heralding tactics - not considering strategy the way most players do today.
.
So the connections of my chess background are much different than that of a 12 year old studying the game today.
.
Another way to look at this is to ask: who arrived on the chess scene self taught? Gladwell's new book Outliers would say that success in any area requires basic intelligence in combination with many other factors including luck. In the book he refers to successful chess players having had to study 10,000 hours.
.
How far back can you trace your chess lineage.
Excluding legend, do you know of any chess geniuses who were self taught or were very successful with little study or formal training? They in fact created their own chain of influence.
.
Please Comment Mike Griffin 01/07/2008
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
http://ibeatgarry.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point
As an undergrad at Westfield State College, having co-majored in Secondary Education, I was required to take a great many psychology courses. And in the early 70's, each doctor and psychology professor could describe in detail their lineage of teachers to themselves all the way from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Behaviorists always somehow get back to John Watson or BF. Skinner.
.
I thought this was a really cool process, listening to each professor's narration emphasizing the trail of specific teachers that had the most influence on their personal thinking. Psychology being a "new" science, having each university teacher degreed in the field, so the "chain of influence" is unbroken and is easily recognizable.
.
To chess: Today if you are an OTB player you are the product of receiving parts of information about a 1,500 year old game from some sources. Because more than thirty preceding generations have been buried, knowledge of your particular "chain" has been buried. The lack of documentation still exists.
.
Nonetheless theories like the "six degrees of separation" or http://ibeatgarry.com/; with the attempt to measure how many steps a player is separated from beating Gary Kasparov; bring to mind that in time there will be the capability to recognize the connections with respect to games played and opponents faced. Although ibeatgarry.com is based on one limited chess database, I foresee a day when there will exist a superdatabase where all known will games exist and interesting facts harvested. So the chain of who in mankind influenced a chess player is not be formally documented.
.
Still I like to play with thoughts about the chain to Harry Lyman,
my biggest influence on chess thinking. And Harry being so well connected was a node of wisdom gathering and disseminating huge amounts of information and getting people together - what Malcolm Gladwell calls "a connector" in The Tipping Point. Harry was a byproduct of the swashbucklers of Boston like Weaver Adams, Harlow Daly, of which John Curdo still personifies. An attitude that can be traced back to Harry Nelson Pillsbury. I call it Pre-Soviet American chess: before the coaches from the School of Botvinik came to Boston. Players were brawlers heralding tactics - not considering strategy the way most players do today..
So the connections of my chess background are much different than that of a 12 year old studying the game today.
.
Another way to look at this is to ask: who arrived on the chess scene self taught? Gladwell's new book Outliers would say that success in any area requires basic intelligence in combination with many other factors including luck. In the book he refers to successful chess players having had to study 10,000 hours.
.
How far back can you trace your chess lineage.
Excluding legend, do you know of any chess geniuses who were self taught or were very successful with little study or formal training? They in fact created their own chain of influence.
.
Please Comment Mike Griffin 01/07/2008
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
http://ibeatgarry.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point
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