Chess Experts Research Articles

Exploring the brains of Baduk (Go) experts: gray matter morphometry, resting-state functional connectivity, and graph theoretical analysis

One major characteristic of experts is intuitive judgment, which is an automatic process whereby patterns stored in memory through long-term training are recognized. Indeed, long-term training may influence brain structure and function. A recent study revealed that chess experts at rest showed differences in structure and functional connectivity (FC) in the head of caudate, which is associated with rapid best next-move generation. However, less is known about the structure and function of the brains of Baduk experts (BEs) compared with those of experts in other strategy games. Therefore, we performed voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and FC analyses in BEs to investigate structural brain differences and to clarify the influence of these differences on functional interactions. We also conducted graph theoretical analysis (GTA) to explore the topological organization of whole-brain functional networks. Compared to novices, BEs exhibited decreased and increased gray matter volume (GMV) in the amygdala and nucleus accumbens (NA), respectively. We also found increased FC between the amygdala and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and decreased FC between the NA and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Further GTA revealed differences in measures of the integration of the network and in the regional nodal characteristics of various brain regions activated during Baduk. This study provides evidence for structural and functional differences as well as altered topological organization of the whole-brain functional networks in BEs. Our findings also offer novel suggestions about the cognitive mechanisms behind Baduk expertise, which involves intuitive decision-making mediated by somatic marker circuitry and visuospatial processing.

Facial masculinity predicts risk and time preferences in expert chess players

In this study, we examine the relationship between risk-taking, impatience and facial masculinity in expert chess players. We combine a large panel data set from high-level chess games with measures of both risk-taking and impatience in chess with facial masculinity, a proxy for testosterone exposure in puberty. We find that male players with high pubertal testosterone exposure are more impatient by playing shorter chess games. For female players, we find that facial masculinity is negatively correlated with risk-taking.

Facial Masculinity Predicts Risk and Time Preferences in High-Level Chess Players

In this study we examine the relationship between risk taking, impatience and facial masculinity in expert chess players. We combine a large panel-dataset from high-level chess games with measures of both risk taking and impatience in chess with facial masculinity, a proxy for testosterone exposure in puberty. We find that male players with high pubertal testosterone exposure are more impatient by playing shorter chess games. For female players, we find that facial masculinity is negatively correlated with risk taking.

Expertise in Chess: Does It Help to Be Paranoid?

Expertise in Chess: Does It Help to Be Paranoid?

Inhibition of Irrelevant Information is Not Necessary to Performance of Expert Chess Players

Some studies on expertise have demonstrated that the difference between novices and experts can be partly due to a lack of knowledge about which information is relevant for a given situation. This lack of knowledge seems to be associated with the selection of correct information and with inhibitory processes. However, while the efficiency of inhibitory processes can lead to better performance in the normal population, it seems that experts in chess do not base their performance on this process but rather on an automatic and parallel encoding of information. Two experiments investigated the processes involved in a check detection task. The congruence of the information was manipulated in a Stroop situation similar to Reingold, Charness, Scheltetus, & Stampe (2001). The results showed that the experts did not benefit from cuing with a congruent cue and that they did not show any interference effect by the incongruent cue, contrary to less skilled chess players who benefited from cuing (Exp. 1). An attentional priming procedure confirmed the automatic encoding of chess relations in the more skilled chess players by showing no advantage from the prime in this group (Exp. 2). Taken together, the results indicate that the processing was serial for the less skilled chess players and that it was automatic and parallel for the more expert chess players. The inhibition of irrelevant information does not seem necessary to process information rapidly and efficiently.

Valedictorians of the Soviet School: Professionalization and the Impact of War in Soviet Chess

September 2, 1945, is best remembered as the day World War II officially ended. But on this day the United States and the Soviet Union also formally resumed international sports competition--with a chess The occurred over l-4 September via radio receivers in New York and Moscow and was the first ever chess competition between the countries. Except for leading grandmasters Mikhail Botvinnik and Czech-born Salo Flohr, Soviet players were relatively unknown in the United States and had little international experience compared to the American team. Just days before the match, the New York Times proclaimed that a competition among 100 players might end in the Soviets' favor because of the massive popularity of the game in the USSR. In a two-game contest often American masters versus their Soviet counterparts, however, the Times had reason for misgivings as to the outcome of the forthcoming match. (1) The Times could not have been more mistaken. The Soviet team won by an overwhelming margin, 15 1/2-4 1/2. (2) Moreover, on the first and second boards in both games, Botvinnik and Vasilii Smyslov (the next two world champions) devastated the two best American masters, Arnold Denker and Samuel Reshevsky. (3) The Soviet chess journal Shakhmaty v SSSR called the victory the match of the 20th (4) Soviet commentators claimed that a style of play unique to the Soviet Union--the Soviet school of chess--accounted for the victory. This style was essentially romantic, meaning that Soviet players attempted to find hidden combinations or sacrifices that would lead to a dramatic and decisive checkmate. Soviet chess literature contrasted it with an outdated positional style supposedly used by players in the West. Players who adopted a positional strategy stressed incremental gains over the course of the game, favoring careful pawn structure over bold sacrifices. For Soviet chess experts, the obvious conclusion was that the difference between these styles represented the ideological divide between the dynamic East and the declining West; the overwhelming victories of Soviet chess masters represented the inevitable triumph of socialism. How did Soviet chess masters, virtual unknowns before the war, come to dominate international play by 1945? The answer begins with the founding of the state-run Chess Section in 1924. The Soviet state did not, of course, invent chess. The game appeared in the Russian lands before the 10th century and it was well-known among intellectuals in urban centers during the 19th century. The country's first chess society, the All-Russia Chess Association, was founded in 1914 and had approximately 5,000 members before it discontinued its activities after the outbreak of World War I. Chess, like other forms of bourgeois entertainment, was an activity the new Soviet state co-opted and shaped. Yet party-state officials did not favor all forms of recreation but rather those with a didactic bent, like mountain climbing or tourism. Chess was similar in that initially it was supposed to teach the population skills and qualities that would prove valuable outside the game. However, the goals for chess shifted over time. In the Great Turn, the aims of chess changed in a way that corresponded to what Matthew Lenoe calls the shift from mass enlightenment project to mobilization. Nonetheless, throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the Chess Section's main purpose was to spread chess, and whatever good might come with it, among the populace. (5) Unlike exponents of other didactic forms of entertainment, though, the best Soviet players were at once organizers and high-level competitors in a time of blossoming international sports competition. Barbara Keys writes that the interwar period saw a burgeoning of internationalist nationalism--a desire to prove one's country's worth through international sport. Stalin's Soviet Union was no exception. Soviet competitors in the 1920s played mostly in workers' tournaments, but by the mid-1930s authorities began to allow competition against foreign professionals. …

Practice other than playing games apparently has only a modest role in the development of chess expertise

Evidence that chess expertise rests on practice alone mostly comes from studies using a correlational retrospective recall paradigm, which confounds amount of study with number of games played and possible innate talent. Researchers also often use latest performance rating and include participants who play and study little. Study 1 partially replicated such studies with improvements such as use of peak rating and a large, skilled sample. Number of internationally-rated games played was the strongest predictor of peak rating. Total study hours was a significant but weaker predictor. Study 2 controlled for sampling confounds by including only very well-practiced players who had played at least 350 internationally-rated games. Total study hours did not predict rating at 350 games. Study 3 found that the subjective phenomenon of reaching a performance ceiling and undertaking specific practice to get beyond it does occur but does not distinguish between stronger and weaker players. Study 4 found that many players play relatively few internationally-rated games mostly because of other commitments, such as work and education. Extensive study may go along with great interest in and persistence at chess but apparently lacks a major causative role in chess performance level.

Reduced caudate volume and enhanced striatal-DMN integration in chess experts

The superior capability of chess experts largely depends on quick automatic processing skills which are considered to be mediated by the caudate nucleus. We asked whether continued practice or rehearsal of the skill over a long period of time can lead to structural changes in this region. We found that, comparing to novice controls, grandmaster and master level Chinese chess players (GM/Ms), who had a mean period of over 10years of tournament and training practice, exhibited significant smaller gray-matter volume in the bilateral caudate nuclei. When these regions were used as seeds in functional connectivity analysis in resting-state fMRI, significantly enhanced integration was found in GM/Ms between the caudate and the default mode network (DMN), a constellation of brain areas important for goal-directed cognitive performance and theory of mind. These findings demonstrate the structural changes in the caudate nucleus in response to its extensive engagement in chess problem solving, and its enhanced functional integration with widely distributed circuitry to better support high-level cognitive control of behavior.

Chess masters show a hallmark of face processing with chess.

Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.

Chess Expertise and the Fusiform Face Area: Why It Matters

Several brain regions have been linked to human face processing, most prominently the fusiform face area (FFA) in the fusiform gyrus. Dedicated architecture for face processing has also consistently been suggested by functional neuroimaging and single-unit recordings in primates. Faces are

Concepts without intuition lose the game: commentary on Montero and Evans (2011)

In several papers, Hubert Dreyfus has used chess as a paradigmatic example of how experts act intuitively, rarely using deliberation when selecting actions, while individuals that are only competent rely on analytic and deliberative thought. By contrast, Montero and Evans (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10:175–194, 2011) argue that intuitive aspects of chess are actually rational, in the sense that actions can be justified. In this paper, I show that both Dreyfus’s and Montero and Evans’s views are too extreme, and that expertise in chess, and presumably in other domains, depends on a combination of intuitive thinking and deliberative search, both mediated by perceptual processes. There is more to expertise than just rational thought. I further contend that both sides ignore emotions, which are important in acquiring and maintaining expertise. Finally, I argue that experimental data and first-person data, which are sometimes presented as irreconcilable in the phenomenology literature, actually lead to similar conclusions.

Measuring Chess Experts' Single-Use Sequence Knowledge: An Archival Study of Departure from ‘Theoretical’ Openings

The respective roles of knowledge and search have received considerable attention in the literature on expertise. However, most of the evidence on knowledge has been indirect – e.g., by inferring the presence of chunks in long-term memory from performance in memory recall tasks. Here we provide direct estimates of the amount of monochrestic (single use) and rote knowledge held by chess players of varying skill levels. From a large chess database, we analyzed 76,562 games played in 2008 by individuals ranging from Class B players (average players) to Masters to measure the extent to which players deviate from previously known initial sequences of moves (“openings”). Substantial differences were found in the number of moves known by players of different skill levels, with more expert players knowing more moves. Combined with assumptions independently made about the branching factor in master games, we estimate that masters have memorized about 100,000 opening moves. Our results support the hypothesis that monochrestic knowledge is essential for reaching high levels of expertise in chess. They provide a direct, quantitative estimate of the number of opening moves that players have to know to reach master level.

Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice (DP) occurs when an individual intentionally repeats an activity in order to improve performance. The claim of the DP framework is that such behavior is necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance. The proponents of the framework reject evidence that suggests that other variables are also necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance, or they claim that the relationship between those variables and expert performance is mediated by DP. Therefore, the DP framework also implies that DP is sufficient to achieve high levels of expert performance. We test these claims by reviewing studies on chess expertise. We found strong evidence that abundant DP is necessary (but not sufficient) and estimated that the minimum requirement to achieve master level is 3,000 hours of DP. We also review evidence showing that other factors play a role in chess skill: general cognitive abilities, sensitive period, handedness, and season of birth.

Longitudinal Effects of Different Types of Practice on the Development of Chess Expertise

SummaryA view holds that expertise level depends on practice alone and that certain types of practice are important or unimportant. Supporting evidence largely comes from studies using a correlational retrospective recall paradigm, usually with small samples. Initially, these studies were partially replicated with 533 international chess players. Log number of games played was the strongest predictor of latest performance rating. Then, effects of study hours, having had coaching and the number of games played were examined longitudinally to control for key variables confounded in the retrospective recall paradigm. Groups with a nearly 5–1 median difference in weekly study hours, roughly equated on time in the domain and the number of games played, were observed over 7 years. More study hours had negligible impact. Coaching had some effect over time, and the number of games had a strong effect even when participants were equated on time in the domain. Previous studies show that a factor other than the number of games is important in developing chess expertise. Study is a weak factor at best and could not be that important factor. Chess expertise apparently does not depend on practice (study and the number of games) alone. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Prehistoric stone tools, chess expertise, and cognitive evolution: An experiment about recognizing features in flint debitage

Prehistoric stone tool knapping was an expert skill. This experiment was a cognitively demanding test of modern day knappers using an adaptation of the classic Chase and Simon paradigm from chess expertise (where chess experts/novices are briefly exposed to chess positions and later asked to recall the patterns). Here, pieces of flint debitage were used instead of chess pieces, and it was a recognition test rather than recall. Expertise was measured by social status and questionnaire. Three participant groups were tested (archaeology professionals, students, and nonexperts) in 15 trials each, each comprising four tasks: (1) sorting task, (2) exposure, (3) sorting task, and (4) recognition task. The sorting task (interference) required participants to sort flint debitage by size into different buckets. In the exposure task, the experimenter showed the participant three types of rock (flakes, miscellaneous rocks, cores) seriatim for 2 seconds each. The recognition task required that the participant attempt to identify previously seen rocks on three tables (flakes, miscellaneous, and cores tables). Experts performed significantly better than students and non-experts. Post-session interviews revealed a diversity of strategies, suggesting that increased expertise enhanced perception. This result parallels chess expert studies, and template theory in chess might apply to knappers.

Many Faces of Expertise: Fusiform Face Area in Chess Experts and Novices

The fusiform face area (FFA) is involved in face perception to such an extent that some claim it is a brain module for faces exclusively. The other possibility is that FFA is modulated by experience in individuation in any visual domain, not only faces. Here we test this latter FFA expertise hypothesis using the game of chess as a domain of investigation. We exploited the characteristic of chess, which features multiple objects forming meaningful spatial relations. In three experiments, we show that FFA activity is related to stimulus properties and not to chess skill directly. In all chess and non-chess tasks, experts' FFA was more activated than that of novices' only when they dealt with naturalistic full-board chess positions. When common spatial relationships formed by chess objects in chess positions were randomly disturbed, FFA was again differentially active only in experts, regardless of the actual task. Our experiments show that FFA contributes to the holistic processing of domain-specific multipart stimuli in chess experts. This suggests that FFA may not only mediate human expertise in face recognition but, supporting the expertise hypothesis, may mediate the automatic holistic processing of any highly familiar multipart visual input.

The neural organization of perception in chess experts

The human visual system responds to expertise, and it has been suggested that regions that process faces also process other objects of expertise including chess boards by experts. We tested whether chess and face processing overlap in brain activity using fMRI. Chess experts and novices exhibited face selective areas, but these regions showed no selectivity to chess configurations relative to other stimuli. We next compared neural responses to chess and to scrambled chess displays to isolate areas relevant to expertise. Areas within the posterior cingulate, orbitofrontal cortex, and right temporal cortex were active in this comparison in experts over novices. We also compared chess and face responses within the posterior cingulate and found this area responsive to chess only in experts. These findings indicate that the configurations in chess are not strongly processed by face-selective regions that are selective for faces in individuals who have expertise in both domains. Further, the area most consistently involved in chess did not show overlap with faces. Overall, these results suggest that expert visual processing may be similar at the level of recognition, but need not show the same neural correlates.

Visual span and change detection in soccer: An expertise study

There is evidence to suggest that sports experts are able to extract more perceptual information from a single fixation than novices when exposed to meaningful tasks that are specific to their field of expertise. In particular, Reingold et al. (2001) showed that chess experts use a larger visual span including fewer fixations when compared to their less skilled counterparts. The aim of the present study was to examine whether also in a more complex environment, namely soccer, skilled players use a larger visual span and fewer fixations than less skilled players when attempting to recognise players’ positions. To this end, we combined the gaze-contingent window technique with the change detection paradigm. Results seem to suggest that skilled soccer players do not use a larger visual span than less skilled players. However, skilled soccer players showed significantly fewer fixations of longer duration than their less skilled counterparts, supporting the notion that experts may extract more information from a single glance.

It Takes Two–Skilled Recognition of Objects Engages Lateral Areas in Both Hemispheres

Our object recognition abilities, a direct product of our experience with objects, are fine-tuned to perfection. Left temporal and lateral areas along the dorsal, action related stream, as well as left infero-temporal areas along the ventral, object related stream are engaged in object recognition. Here we show that expertise modulates the activity of dorsal areas in the recognition of man-made objects with clearly specified functions. Expert chess players were faster than chess novices in identifying chess objects and their functional relations. Experts' advantage was domain-specific as there were no differences between groups in a control task featuring geometrical shapes. The pattern of eye movements supported the notion that experts' extensive knowledge about domain objects and their functions enabled superior recognition even when experts were not directly fixating the objects of interest. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) related exclusively the areas along the dorsal stream to chess specific object recognition. Besides the commonly involved left temporal and parietal lateral brain areas, we found that only in experts homologous areas on the right hemisphere were also engaged in chess specific object recognition. Based on these results, we discuss whether skilled object recognition does not only involve a more efficient version of the processes found in non-skilled recognition, but also qualitatively different cognitive processes which engage additional brain areas.

Intuitions without concepts lose the game: mindedness in the art of chess

To gain insight into human nature philosophers often discuss the inferior performance that results from deficits such as blindsight or amnesia. Less often do they look at superior abilities. A notable exception is Herbert Dreyfus who has developed a theory of expertise according to which expert action generally proceeds automatically and unreflectively. We address one of Dreyfus’s primary examples of expertise: chess. At first glance, chess would seem an obvious counterexample to Dreyfus’s view since, clearly, chess experts are engaged in deep strategic thought. However, Dreyfus’s argument is subtle. He accepts that analysis and deliberation play a role in chess, yet he thinks that all such thought is predicated on intuitive, arational expert perception, and action. We argue that even the so-called “intuitive” aspect of chess is rational through and through.