Log In

PLAY
LEARN
Chess.com

SHARE

FORUMS

Sign Up - It's Free!

Search

MORE

Why Chess Players Blunder

Vik-Hansen

| Feb 9, 2016 | 2715 views | 13 comments

We have seen them, havent we? The howlers? Amateurs and

professionals alike in the aftermath of a game, trying to
explain

their blunder, shaking their heads in disbelief,

scratching their brows, sighing while trying to come up with a

rational explanation.
Born out of recent findings from the field of consciousness and
mind, the article seeks to explain that chess playing is based
upon

a fine interplay between a mind subconsciously

triggering moves, and a well-disciplined consciousness

knowing what to keep and what to discard.
Unlike other play-by-play-articles, this first part aspires to go behind the moves to unravel the
conundrum underlying our blunders and the second proposes a method for fighting impulsiveness
and blunder-tendencies.

^ Ads keep Chess.com free. Upgrade to remove ads! ^

Most Recent Articles

Why Chess Players Blunder
by Vik-Hansen
8 hours ago
Not Used To It
by JoseDiaz
48 hours ago

Who Loved These Knight Moves?

by GM Gserper
2 days ago
Castling Early And Piece Coordination
by IM Silman
5 days ago
Surprise Mating Attacks
by batgirl
6 days ago

Who is doing the thinking?

Playing chess is often linked to thinking and Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum, I think, therefore I am,
has long since cast its spell on us regarding our beliefs in our mental life.
Concerning the nature of thinking, in the chapter The Stream of Thought(The Principles of
Psychology, 1890), William James emphasized that consciousness always chooses; it is always
more interested in one part of its object than another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all
the while it thinks (James quoted by Nrretranders, 1998: 176):.
The mind is at every stage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the
comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest by the
reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are
filtered from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered by the faculty
below that, which mass in turn was sifted from a still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so
on.
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of
stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones
beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
Just so the world of each of us, how so ever different our several views of it may be, all lay

^ Ads keep Chess.com free. Upgrade to remove ads! ^

embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all
of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and
jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real
world.
But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly
cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply removing portions
of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds
from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos!
My world is but one in a million alike embedded, alike real to those who may abstract them. How
different must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant, cuttlefish, or crab!' (James, quoted by
Nrretranders, 1998: 177).
.

In 1901 and 1905, K. Marbe and H.J. Watt respectively, confirmed that thinking and judging, the
supposed hallmarks of consciousness (Jaynes: 2000: 36-41) are not conscious at all; i.e. the
(conscious) I is not the thinking substance Descartes (and later Kant) took it to be.
In other words, we do our thinking before we know what we are to think about (Jaynes, 2000:
39), we do not know what we are thinking before were thinking it and [...] the actual process of
thinking, so usually thought to be the very life of consciousness, is not conscious at all and that
only its preparation, its materials, and its end result are consciously perceived (Jaynes, 2000:
41).
The preparation, materials and end results being the only things consciously perceived does not
imply they are conscious, because if they were, apparently, we could control the quality of the
thinking process by consciously choosing the best preparations and materials for the actual
thought processes. In chess, the chessboard is your marble block; figuratively speaking, your mind
carves out moves from and presents to your consciousness. Positions with several equal moves?
Different sculptor, i.e. player, different move.
Since the end of the 1950s it has been known that from all the information flooding through our
sense organs (1,121,000 bits), only a fraction (1-16 bits) makes up a conscious experience
(Nrretranders, 1998: 124-126) and in 1988 Hans H. Kornhuber, echoing James and Jaynes, states
thinking as independent of consciousness and acts of volition and that most of the information
passing through our central nervous system is subconscious, suggesting we cannot think what we
want, but that we might be able to direct the focus of our attention (Nrretranders, 1998: 177).
As it suggests we by acts of volition can focus or direct our attention towards what we should
focus on or direct it towards, focussing our attention is less straightforward than what may be
assumed, since there would be no reasons not to focus on or direct our attention towards what we
should focus on or direct it towards. Concretely, this means that the quality of our thoughts,
feelings and actions depends of the quality of the information flowing through our sense organs
into the brain and the brain's capacity and capability to analyse and process the information
before sent out as thoughts, feelings and actions.
However, the possibility of directing our attention might not be as straightforward as first
thought: the phrase of having our attention or interest caught implies that something outside our
consciousness does the catching, i.e. we do not decide what to be interested in, what to desire,
urge or crave, nor as to what to direct our attention to. We cant turn our head until we are
made aware of that we can turn it. We do not have to turn our head, but to be able at all to turn
it; an impulse making us aware of the possibility must subconsciously be triggered or presented to
our consciousness.
.

Who is doing the playing?

Until Benjamin Libets ground-breaking experiment (1983) showed that any apparent act of
volition normally begins subconsciously with studies showing that the brain subconsciously prepare
actions before consciousness is informed (Nrretranders, 1998: 213-256), it was assumed was that
we ourselves, consciously, decide when to move and what to move (pieces, arms, fingers, legs).
In the wake of his experiment, Libet suggested that consciousness despite not being able to
initiate actions could veto, abort or stop impulses from running to action where chess playing
does not differ from any other kinds or types of actions.This implies that, contrary to popular and
traditional beliefs, consciousness cannot trigger or initiate actions but can, if disciplined, veto,
or abort, impulses leading to unwanted, awkward, unacceptable, unfortunate, embarrassing or
immoral actions.
Actions starting subconsciously further suggest that the only thing we consciously can do
deliberately or on purpose is to veto and thus reveals an inherent ambiguity in the phrase
on purpose (deliberately). Since consciousness cannot trigger actions, we cannot
inadvertently, unintentionally, un-purposefully or un-deliberately commit actions or play moves
we didnt mean to.
The brain does work in mysterious ways not needing any reason or justification for triggering this
or that impulse and does it not see a purpose, it will not trigger the impulse and there no other
way to act. In short: if consciousness triggered actions, slip-ups would never happen or occur.
Thinking being subconscious, moves are triggered by the brain and consciousness working by the
veto, chess playing (and human activities in general) is left in the hands of the fine-tuned
interplay between conscious and subconscious processes (rather than a definite and isolated self,
acting out from nowhere, so to speak); knowing what to keep and what to discard among all the
suggestions, whims and ideas with which the mind comes up with.
Consciousness more or less functions as blunder check, lightly monitoring our play, making sure
no pieces are left hanging or put en prise. Most of the time when playing, consciousness is not
involved at all; Romanovsky writing that A maneuvering game can also sometimes arise from
the conscious efforts of one of the opponents (Romanovsky, 2013: 201) may serve as an example
as to how entrenched the belief in the role of consciousness when playing chess is.
Were we to choose our moves consciously, how do we explain or account for our blunders and
mistakes? Were chess playing conscious, we would never make mistakes since nobody blunders
(consciously) on purpose. Simply by acts of volition, we could decide to play the best moves as the
chess board in front of us would yield access to full information; we would have the entire
overview of what is going on since consciousness would be transparent, and the position on the
board would be there for everyone to see.
Traditionally, chess games are explained and moves attempted justified in the analyses after the
game and this is usually the order of the day; first playthen explanation. If chess playing were
conscious, logically, it should be the other way around; first we explain why certain moves
are to be played and then the brain triggers the requested moves, right?
If we could give perfectly viable and reasonable explanations for every move we make, why would
our brain trigger a blunder or not produce or come up with moves best fitting the explanation
thus making chess the rational game it is perceived to be?
The Russian proverb -- We are all satisfied with our reason but not with our position -- nicely
captures this apparent paradox. In blitz and rapid games, where consciousness is almost absent,
these kinds of games are merely perception and intuition, this being even more apparent since

there is no time to ponder possible explanations before a move is to be triggered.

Who is blundering?
Blunders might be perceived as some sort of spontaneously ill-conceived move-suggestions, i.e.
impulses to moves which would be detrimental to ones position if not aborted. However, we are
not talking about strategically weak moves on a general level, like misplacing a piece due to lack
of general chess ability and understanding but moves literally occurring out of nowhere, moves
there apparently are no sensible reasons to play. The key question is; if consciousness does not do
the playing, then, who does the blundering? Someone or something must be responsible for
players blundering, and who or what part of us might that be?
As mentioned, a light consciousness monitors while playing, whereas full consciousness announces
itself the moment a chess player blunders, which his/her body language just too well illustrates.
Note the order; never do we come across players announcing their blunders in advance; we only
hear about the ones that blundered first, and then became aware of it.
This time, only briefly can we touch upon the whys and hows of blunders but as a general
pointer, we might say that blunders occur due to lack of interplay between brain and
consciousness and seem to have only three possible explanations:
1) We take in only parts of the position due to inadequate vision, focussing only on certain
parts of the board.
2) We take in the whole position but something happens while processing the material
resulting in apparently spontaneous and inexplicable blunders.
3) Even when seeing the whole board, our brain does not take it all in.
The first explanation might be the most clear-cut, implying that inadequate focus results in lack
of information and thus absence of interplay between the brain and mind resulting in being
consciously unable to abort the impulse. Mistakes in this department might be caused both due to
fatigue but also due to lack of general chess ability and experience. Differently put: GMs might
fall victim to these kind of blunder due to fatigue rather than lack of proficiency, whereas
amateurs might suffer from it both because of fatigue and lack of chess skills.
Regarding the second explanation, blunders are something we try to avoid, so if blunders have
anything to do with what we take in, why would the brain process the material in such a way that
it leads to blunders? This seems to happen only if there is a problem with the wiring so to
speak, which is conceivable if not too frequent. Having consciousness purposefully misinterpret
the information seems to lead to a conflict of interests since the goal of playing chess is to mate
your opponent and why would you want to mess things up for yourself?
The plot thickens when arriving at the third explanation, valid for both amateurs and
professionals, raising a timely dilemma: it would seem impossible to blunder when seeing the
whole board with our own two eyes, right? Wrong! This reason for blundering is closely linked to
our point about the order in which chess is played and explained and research shows that only a
fraction of all information passing through our eyes is perceived by consciousness, implying that
we might see the whole board and still not perceive it. This means there might be chunks of
information our brain does not take in or misses even when our eyes physically are seeing the
board.
Solving tactical puzzles or playing the guessing game where we try to guess a GMs moves, may
illustrate the difference between seeing and perceiving. The whole board is in front of us we
see (eyes directed towards) the position clearly all information for solving it is right in front of

us and still, many a time, we end up face-palming ourselves. How could we miss that? However,
when the solution is presented to us, its the most obvious thing in the world.
Despite purists considering tactics the sophism of chess, how fast you find tactical solutions tells
you how quickly your brain processes the information, i.e. the position. Perception being
subconscious, there is no point in beating ourselves (or others) up for not seeing this tactical shot
or missing that beautiful combination.
Amateurs and professionals literally perceive different boards even when seeing the same one and
the reason is that the professional mind is better trained to perceive more information than the
amateur mind.This is so since perception is not based on acts of volition and the brain works
independently of what we think it should perceive, think, understand, comprehend or interpret
etc. Blunders happen because humans are fallible and ill-founded impulses prove stronger than
our ability to abort them.
Our next installment presents a method for combatting blunders....and more.
.

Bibliography
Jaynes, J., The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Mariner Books,
2000
Nrretranders, T., The User Illusion, Penguin Books, 1999
Romanovsky, P., Soviet Middlegame Technique, Quality Chess, 2013

Comments
prunebiscuit

26 minutes ago

This is brilliant. Thank you

Haggard-CC

kkmkr

88 minutes ago

100 minutes ago

well thought out article!

enotSgnilloR

101 minutes ago

Because we're human.

kajalbasak

2 hours ago

very nice! waiting for next part.

klimski

2 hours ago

If you enjoyed this, as I did, you will enjoy the book I am currently reading which delves
further into this matter: Move first, think later. By Willy Hendriks. Highly recommended
and fun!
NightCrawler2003

3 hours ago

Awesome!

adelsonpr

5 hours ago

Excellent article. Are you a psychologist? It is unusual to know this type of information if
you are not a PhD in Psychology or Neuroscience.
Thank you very much for sharing and Im looking forward the second part.
slowfooted23x

6 hours ago

After having thought so deep, a player may be a move late before coming to the present
reality at the chessboard. Hence, en prise pieces are left hanging. Alexander Kotov
talked about this in his book Think Like a Grandmaster.
Atlas_T

6 hours ago

4Dchessonline

6 hours ago

Fantastic article! I was working on similar lines myself but this covers more than I have
achieved so far. Thanks. Look forward to the next installment.
gargelfuh

7 hours ago

Wow - great stuff. Thank you

tondeaf

7 hours ago

holy cow. best article ever here.

valen1949

7 hours ago

Great article, Thanks

Back to Top

Post your reply:

Log In

or

Join

Home | Why Join | Chess Topics | About | FAQs | Help & Support | Site Map
Privacy Policy | Legal | 2016 Chess.com Chess - English