thought and choice in chess wer wv Copyrighted materialPSYCHOLOGIGAL STUDIES 4 THOUGHT AND CHOICE IN CHESS Editorial Committee JOMAN 1, BARENDREGT HANS C, BRENGELMANN /G6STA EKMANT SIPKE D. FOKKEMA /NICO H. FRIJDA ADRIAAN D. DE GROOT JOHN P. VAN DE GRER/ADRIAAN D. DE GROOT MAUK MULDER / RONALD WILIAM RAMSAY Prefer of Atliad Pychology and Metiddogy sins WIRGERSMA Trivers of Amsterdam MOUTON PUBLISHERS MOUTON PUBLISHERS ‘THE HAGUE - PARIS » NEW YORK THE HAGUE - PARIS « NEW YORK‘This book was published with the aid ofthe Netherlands Organisation “for the Advancement of Pare Research (Z.W.0.) ISBN: 90-279-7914-5 Second edition 1978 © 1985, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands Printed in Great Britain atthe Unisersity Press, Cambridge PREFACE What is so special about the thought processes underlying the skilled chess player's choice of a move? Why do masters find the good moves that patzers overlook? This book is an attempt at answering these questions through systematic description and interpretative analysis of a collection of ‘thinking aloud protocols.’ The protocols, products of experimental sessions held in the years 1938 to 1943, are verbal reports rendered by subjects performing a simple experimental task: a subject was presented with an unfamiliar position taken from an actual tournament or match game and asked to find and play a move as though he were engaged in a tournament game of his own, The verbal report was to be as full and explicit a rendering of the subject’s thoughts as possible, to include his plans, calculations, and other considerations leading to the move decision. The author ~ at the time psychology student at the University of Amsterdam and an active international chess player to boot ~ served as the principal experi- menter while the subjects were players of varying strengths, up to masters, grandmasters, and even two world champions. For the interested reader protocols of the thought processes of such titans as Alexander Alekhine, Max Euwe, Paul Keres, Reuben Fine, Salo Flohr and Savielly Tartakower are appended. Quite apart from the insight the analysis of these protocols has given us into che dynamics of thinking and choosing in chess, these protocols would seem to be of some historic and curiosity value in themselves, ‘Since the experiments were not in the rigorous laboratory tradition but rather ‘free’ occasions for goal-directed, productive thinking 0 free, indeed, that some might prefer not to call them ‘experiments’ at all ~ the analysis of the resulting protocols had to remain largely descriptive and interpretative, Except for a few general expectations about masters doing better - they did — and calculating deeper — they did not ~ there were no present hypotheses being tested. The idea