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Comment by DeathArrow | Hacker News Reader

Maybe that's why I don't like to play chess, because you have to have a very good memory to at least be average.

You can for sure be above average without a very good memory if you're good at spotting tactics. But average isn't a super high bar.

Define "average" and "very good" - it's quite easy to become good enough to beat all your friends and family (as long as you haven't made friends at the chess club or chess competitions). But if you want to do your best at the local chess competition held in a school hall at the weekend against all kinds of people, from little kids to pensioners, then yeah, you're going to need to spend lots of time studying openings, learning end game theory, and solving chess puzzles.

strongly disagree that studying openings is necessary to "do your best" at competitions. In my experience almost all games between players under 2000 (class players) are decided tactically. I'm expertish (2200+ bullet, 2200+ blitz, 1900+ USCF, win most local tournaments in my area etc) and I don't bother studying openings. Chess is 99.9% tactics at the class level. You won't reach GM without opening theory memorization but you wont reach GM anyway.

Also a reminder for anyone reading these comments that chess should be fun! Don't let psychological hangups like thinking u need a good memory, thinking you need to study openings, have a certain level of skill, or need to play a certain format (like avoiding blitz because it is "bad" for your game or thinking OTB is more important) stop you from playing chess! The only rules for how to play chess are the rules of the game; all the other stuff e.g advice about how to get good are just things people make up. Learn and play however you want and in whatever way brings you the most joy! Chess is a game and it is meant to be fun and not be taken seriously

That echoes my experience as a much weaker player as well. I improved leaps and bounds by studying puzzles. Not so much by memorizing openings.

I think I'm just salty (and overfitting) that my cousin studied one opening to a stupid depth and beat me ~10 games in a row with it

It doesn't take extreme memory on your part to remember to avoid that opening after the first 9 losses, or indeed the first one. There are 5-10 other reasonable options for you on the first move alone.

It doesn't take extreme memory on your friend's part either if you keep falling for the same trick. It would take extreme memory for him to have something prepared against every plausible option you could choose.

Have you considered that your cousin is also better than you tactically?

If you're losing 10 games in a row to a specific opening trap then that falls into the "fool me eight or more times" category :)

I used to like chess and probably had a very good memory. But I never studied openings because I felt that those were 'other peoples games' and I figured the whole idea of playing a game is to have fun and see what you can do, not to regurgitate a bunch of paperwork and feel clever by congratulating each other on recognizing obscure opening variation #1922. Obviously the chess club wasn't amused: they cared about winning matches, I cared about having fun. So chess stopped being fun and I quit playing for a long time. Now I'm having a ton of fun playing with my kids and none of us have ever studied an opening book.

Have you tried Chess960?

A misconception is that chess is all memory. If you look at some of the research, it’s learning to remember patterns, not all the moves.

Eg when they tested good chess players on random board positions they were just as good as people that did not play chess.

> when they tested good chess players on random board positions they were just as good as people that did not play chess.

Doesn't that prove the opposite as the statement in the first paragraph if they were only as good as non-players? I assume there's a typo in there somewhere because I would expect the original thesis to be true. My gf would squarely beat me at chess960 just because she sees the relations between the pieces a million times faster. She can walk into a room and look at the board I've been 'rearranging' (playing on) for 45 minutes and still know what I should do faster than me

It sounds like they're recalling a study where they looked at brain activation and accuracy when trying to memorize random positions vs “real” positions, which is a very different thing.

I am very decidedly above average (1800ish on lichess) and my memory is blank.

If you had to pick 1-2 things, what would you consider key skills that put you ahead of players a tier below you?

I am above average (by a small margin) on Lichess, and it sounds trite but to be average at chess you have to not make blunders.

Things like not leaving a piece hanging undefended, not falling into one move tactical traps (forks/pins etc.), and learning how to check mate.

You can achieve all of that by playing slower games, and doing some puzzles.

Like the other comment said, usually being careful not to hang pieces and capturing hanged pieces takes one a long way. The most applicable advice is to count attackers and defenders in a particular square (or piece) and if you have more attackers than defenders then it is safe to move there, generally.

I was being (slightly) flippant. As in any other discipline you do need to actually learn some things: tactics practice, basic endgames, basic opening principles.

But that's different from opening theory and what people usually mean by memorization. It is almost all pattern recognition and rules of thumb, and all the opening theory memorization in the world won't help you if you dont understand the ideas behind them. All the top players are extremely sharp tacticians long before they do any memorization.

Try Go! If you learn the principles and apply them you can be good enough to have fun without too much memorization.

Memory helps but another way is just to play the best moves every turn based on the position.

Totally. Especially handy in openings.

I don't see the sarcasm because it IS especially handy in openings. If you understand the core principles like developing pieces and taking space, you won't need to memorize any openings to become good.

It's not that simple, though. Even with solid core principles, there are lots of established openings where move order makes all the difference. All other things being equal, the player who has memorized a bunch of standard openings will have a distinct advantage.

Cool, how?

You have to run the computation. Garry Kasporov is great at this. Its like what is the answer to 1 + 1, you can look it up in a table (memory) or you can understand the concept of addition and run the computation yourself to get the answer (best move).

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