Think Like a Super-GM

I am excited to see my book Think Like a Super-GM written with Philip Hurtado finally appear in print.

I didn’t really have any plans to write a book, when I was emailed out of the blue by Phil, but I was immediately impressed with his concept. I felt the resulting book would not be like any other that I had seen, and now it is on the shelves, I remain convinced that is the case. The only problem with this, is that it is not so simple to explain exactly what it is about, so I will try to give a little more information here, beginning with how the project came about.

In his youth, Phil who eventually became a 2100 strength player himself, had come across the book “Thought and Choice in Chess” written by Dutch psychologist Adriaan de Groot. Adriaan conducted a fascinating experiment, where he asked famous chess masters and amateurs to think aloud, whilst finding the best move available in selected positions. De Groot gathered data from Alekhine, Keres, Euwe, and other top GMs at the 1938 AVRO tournament, as well as a number of weaker, but still expert, players.

Phil wanted to replicate this experiment with a wider range of players, and also broaden the scope by asking participants to assess the position after choosing their move. He had already recorded the answers and thoughts of players of an array of strengths, before he contacted me. He compiled over 1100 position commentaries by the end of the project.  Andrew Greet mentions in his thoughts about the book, that reading these reminded him of the TV program ‘The Master Game’ for those of you who like me are old enough to remember that!  It is pretty interesting to listen to another player’s thinking process.

Phil had a number of theories that he wanted to put to the test, with the huge amount of data he painstakingly recorded in both Spanish and English – Phil was brought up in Madrid and also acted as translator for some of the puzzle solvers! One of his aims was to estimate the Elo rating of solvers from the results of their solutions to solving the main 40 puzzles. Some of the other insights gleaned included detailed conclusions about the speed with which top players find candidate moves, how they verify their choices, how accurately they assess positions, and how many correct moves they calculate, all contrasted to the results of players of different rating bands.

Initially my role was a small part of his larger project, as I agreed to solve all the puzzles in the book, as one of the GMs taking part, alongside Julio Granda, Eduardo Iturrizaga, Renier Vazquez, and Keith Arkell. The book is certainly intended for players of all strengths, and some puzzles are a lot more complicated than others. The solutions and thoughts of solvers cover a large portion of the Elo scale. I also agreed to provide brief comments on the solutions, as a co-author on the book.

When we did the puzzle solving, and got on well, I felt that I had more I could usefully contribute to the project, and wanted to add my own introduction, and supply some of my own rather more chess intuition-based conclusions on the intriguing commentaries of others. As things progressed my role increased further, partly because the now rather detailed write ups of solutions to the puzzles – as well as the 40 already mentioned, there are another 15 to solve in the later chapters of the book, take up a large percentage of the final pages.          

Phil’s original concept, hard work in data collection, statistical analysis, and own insights on the positions, were also instrumental, and he was also key in setting up the final chapter of the book, introducing the extra variable of monitoring the eye movements of participants of various strengths as they solved puzzles. This made for a very interesting day, and I spent a lot of time watching the videos of solvers when adding my contributions to this chapter later. Quality Chess thoughtfully printed this section in colour to really demonstrate the squares focused on. 

Andrew Greet, who edited the book, does a good job at providing more details in the Publisher’s Foreword available for download at the link above.