Mnemonic Chess.

Otago Witness, Issue 2088, 1 March 1894, Page 38

Mnemonic Chess.

(Translated from the French of M Alfred Binet.)

Dr Tarrasch develops the same opinion. "In playing with the board a novice only can see it in detail with the particular shape of the piece?, because he does not lay hold of their intrinsic signification. On the contrary, an amateur, whose thoughts are absorbed by the combinations of the game, does not see a piece of wood with a horse's head, but a piece which possesses the peculiar characteristics of the knight, and which is pretty nearly equal to three pawns, which for the moment perhaps is badly placed on the board, and which is on the point of making a decisive attack, or which theopponentthreatenstopin, &c. Inshort, he does not see a, wooden puppet— he does not see matter— he sees only the value of the piece as a knight. The more his mind is taken up with the combinations, the less his eyes Bee of the substance of the board and men. The whole attention of the player is concentrated inwardly in himself, and his glance which instinctively falls upon the exterior accessories, does not take any account of thtir nature." Here are some instances in support of this statement. " I could not say whether the chessboards used at the last Dresden tourney were of wood or cardboard, but I know by heart nearly all the games I played. Even more. At Dresden itself at tho moment when Heft the table, if anyone had asked me on what kind of a board I had played the last game, I would have been unable to answer." Here ia another instance. " The queen which I use at home has lost her point and my wife sticks it on with Spanish wax. After the game I could not tell whether the queen had had her point on or not In ordinary play one does not perceive the object, or at least only very imperfectly. How then can they perceive them in unseeing play ? All I can say is that I represent to myself a pretty small chessboard, not larger than a diagram (about 8 centimetres square), in order that I may take in the whole of it, and in order that the mind's eye may pass the more quickly from square to square. I do not distinguish the black squares from the white, but merely the lighter from the darker, and the difference of colour is even less marked in the men. They disclose themselves rather as foes and allies. The forms of the pieces only appear indistinctly. I consider chiefly their faculty of action." If the players we have mentioned make use of a visual memory, it is very easily seen that it differs profoundly from that of a painter. It is not a graphic or pictorial— that is to say, a concrete memory, but an abstract visual memory to which may be given, as suggested by M. Chascot, the name of geometric memory.

Persons habituated to intellectual analysis, and particularly scientists, rarely have fine visual images full of colours. They rather make use of abstract visual images, which differ profoundly from the sensations of the eye. It may be concluded from this that these abstract images result from intellectual improvement, and are in some degree higher in rank than concrete visual images. I now stop. It is time to end this analj sis. It is very well to pry into things and examine them with a microscope, but it is not possible to give an exact account of such a subject as the complexity of intellectual activity. There are, altogether, in unseeing play, powers of concentration, memory, internal vision, and audition ; without taking into account the faculty of calculation, patience, coolness, and many other faculties. Were it possible to see what passes in the head of a player, one would see a world of sensations, images, movements, and passions set in motion — an infinite swarm of states of consciousness — of which our most careful, descriptions are only rough sketches. "It can be compared to a light which illuminates the inward chessboard of the unseeing player. Alight, or rather a glimmer, pale and vacillating, which would be quickly extinguished were it not kept alive by all the resources of the player's mind."

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