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Comment by ccppurcell | Hacker News Reader

I think you're wrong to be honest. Experts have a lot "memorised" but never do memorisation. Chess grandmasters can recall huge sequences of moves from classic games. It's not because they sat down and tried to memorise "1. e4 e5; 2. Nf3..." It's because they understand those games, why the moves were made, why seemingly obvious alternatives weren't made etc etc

I have a PhD in mathematics and some (minimal) claim to expertise. I have also met and worked with several serious experts. What I said about chess holds true here, at least in my opinion.

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Every strong chess player I know actually has sat down and memorized the lines in their repertoire. It's also true that they understand the "why" behind the moves but I don't think the memorization is avoidable at a high level. It's not always possible to find tactical compensation over the board, especially when you're running lines that have been tested by an engine, which many people are!

Or for instance see the "woodpecker method", which is basically a technique for rote memorization of tactical patterns used by a lot of strong players.

(I quit my PhD in mathematics so I have less claim to expertise, but I regularly get smoked by >2000 fide chess players in my local club and talk to them about chess a lot)

This is kind of conjecture based on various things I've read over the years, but I feel like there is a strong tie-in between memorization and visualization abilities. I think many great chess players actually have trained their visualization abilities and are great at this. This in turn allows for easier memorization of games, sequences, etc, because it feels like they're only half-memorizing it at this point. It's easier. Some great Chess players utilize the memory palace technique as well, which feels like it ties into their visualization skill abilities.

I think there is often a confusion between memorising and understanding because they often go together. I'm an amateur chess player and I learned a few lines from a few openings. I never sat down repeating blindly the move to make them stick in my head, I watched lessons that explain every move. But I did that on many openings and understood most. Yet I can only play a few of them because I forgot all the ones I was not actively practicing. Understanding makes remembering a lot easier but it isn't enough.

> I watched lessons that explain every move. But I did that on many openings and understood most.

People who say this usually didn't understood the lesson at all. When you ask people about the things directly afterwards they can't answer a thing, its just that people overestimate how much they did understand when they first heard it since they don't didn't test themselves on it.

What is your rating?

Everyone I know who is 1700 or above has spent a significant amount of time memorizing openings from books, and it would be interesting to see a counterpoint.

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