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Right and L

eft Brain Chess


"It's controversial, but there is some body of scientific literature showing a m
ale superiority for nonverbal, visuo-spatial skills"
involved in chess, says Dr. Lee D. Cranberg, a neurologist at Harvard Medical Sc
hool.
Chess requires the ability to visualize what the board looks like several m
oves in the future a skill involving the right hemisphere of
the brain. Verbal and linguistic abilities, on the other hand, reside mostly in
the left hemisphere.
While visualizing a series of moves is important, even more crucial is the
ability to recognize patterns among the near-infinite
arrangement of pieces.
"With a glance at the board, top players will recognize a pattern from game
s they've studied or played," Dr. Cranberg says. "If you look
at speed chess, especially, these players are not analyzing sequences of moves;
they don't have time for that."
Researchers estimate that a male grandmaster has, in his memory stores, 50,
000 patterns of unique configurations. Pattern recognition, it
seems, is at least half the battle.
While many females excel at right-brain tasks as proven by Mrs. Polgar, 26,
and her two sisters, Susan, 33, and Sofia, 28, also world-
class players such women seem to be exceptions.
This is also true in music composition and mathematics, two other fields re
lying heavily on the right brain. Knowing which combination
of musical notes completes a score or which equations complete a theorem, Dr. Cr
anberg says, is pattern recognition.
The mystery is far from settled: Despite circumstantial evidence pointing t
o a "chess mind," as Dr. Cranberg calls it, others are quick to
note cultural factors.
Chess is, after all, a formalized war game, where each side has an army. It
's no secret that boys more than girls are socialized to be
soldiers and to direct armies.
"Women didn't play chess in any great numbers and didn't get training until
very recently," says Dr. Charles Krauthammer, a
psychiatrist, political columnist and chess player. "Until that is equalized, th
at factor will make it hard to say whether there is a different
aptitude for chess.
"You do see a similar male-female imbalance with great mathematicians. Agai
n, that could be a cultural imbalance; studying math was
long considered unladylike.
"If you look at the male-to-female ratio of great composers, it's also over
whelmingly male," Dr. Krauthammer says. "And it's hard to
argue that women are discouraged from music. That ratio in music is becoming mor
e even, but it's still not 50/50."
If men do have an edge at right-brain tasks, there are a few popular explan
ations. One theory suggests it begins in the womb.
Though no solid answer is available, some neurologists have proposed that t
estosterone produced by the male fetus slows the
development of its own left hemisphere and the right brain overcompensates in it
s development. In female fetuses, testosterone is less
present, and the two hemispheres develop at a more even pace.
Supporting the role of the right brain in chess is the unusual number of ch
ess players who are left-handed. As basic anatomy teaches, the
left hand is controlled by right brain, and vice versa. Being left-handed may si
gnify the right brain is more dominant, Dr. Cranberg says.
In the late 1980s, he carried out a study of amateur and master chess playe
rs. His conclusion: Male chess players were almost twice as
likely to be left-handed as the general male population.
Average left-handedness in the general male population is between 10 percen
t and 13 percent. But Dr. Cranberg found that 18.6 percent
of male players were left-handed. However, he was not able to gather a large eno
ugh sample of female chess players to perform a similar
comparison.
Logically searching for mov
es
Psychologists have been studying the way our mind works for ages. Research on le
ft-right
hemispheric differences has been a key study. Our brains have two sides, a left
side and a
right side. These two sides are connected by a tight bundling of nerves called t
he corpus
callosum. It is by this connection that the two sides communicate with each othe
r.
The left side predominately thinks sequentially. It is a step by step thinker. W
hen solving
a mate in three the left side of our brains should be solving the problem.
The right brain predominately likes to see things as a whole. This is the side o
f our brain that
is capable of determining if someone is lying just by looking at their face. Our
mind picks up
all of the subtle hints that we have learned over the years and puts them togeth
er all at once.
This is the part of our brain that "tells" us there is a mate in three and all w
e have to do is
find it.
You may have heard someone say that a logical person is left-brained. Or, a woma
n is right-brained
because they're emotional. In fact we are probably not born this way at all. We
can train our
minds to see right, or left brained. Speed chess helps our right brain a little
because now we
haven't enough time to calculate and must play the best "looking" move. Solving
mate problems
helps strengthen our left brain because it forces us to see the result of every
move. Of course
both speed chess and solving mate problems improve both sides to some degree.
Now with that in mind lets look at some of the logic in chess:
All middlegame positions can be divided into two groups:
1. Positions resolvable only by intuitive decisions; and (right-brain)
2. Positions resolvable by means of variations or logic. (left-brain)

The first group, positions requiring intuitive decisions, are said to be rare. T
his isn't true.
All of our left-brained thinking has to be chosen in some part by our right-brai
n. We scan the
board, look at weak spots, consider good outposts for our Knights, try to achiev
e more space,
take into account material, etc. before starting move one of the "if this then t
his" variety.
The second group, are positions resolvable by variations or logic.
Variations of logic worded such as to take this then take that, or if this then
that.
There Is No Satisfactory Alternative To Go
© 2002 Milton N. Bradley
As one of the world's great strategic board games, Chess shares certain importan
t characteristics with Go that also makes it a valuable
pedagogical adjunct to the standard curriculum, and it has often been used in th
at role outside the Orient in places where Go was
unknown. As Shelby Lyman noted in his nationally syndicated Chess column in Long
Island's premiere newspaper Newsday on Sept
10, 1991, "Chess works in an educational environment because ......it is a sport
....and it is played for fun." He continued "... children
playing Chess engage their full intellect, will and strength to a remarkable ext
ent. They alertly attend the chessboard: observing,
remembering, generating ideas, testing those ideas, making decisions and mistake
s and learning from those mistakes." He concluded
"Chess has an advantage over most school subjects: it combines both theory and p
ractice. Ideas are honed and tested in the crucible of
competitive play. Poor formulation or poor execution of ideas loses games. Carel
ess, faulty thinking is ruthlessly refuted on the
chessboard."
The validity of Lyman's contention that Chess can improve student performance wa
s recently abundantly demonstrated in New York
City's Mott Hall School, as reported by Brent Staples in the Sunday New York Tim
es of Dec 15, 2002, and described in considerable
detail in the section of this web page entitled "Teaching The New 'R' Of Reasoni
ng".
Go is far superior to Chess as a pedagogical tool because it not only fully shar
es all of these considerable assets, but also possesses
several others of transcendent importance that Chess lacks almost completely:
Most readily apparent is Go's far greater accessibility, especially by the very
young. It is free of all the artificial complexities
(e.g. different piece moves, promotion, castling, en passant capture, etc.) that
beset Chess. The structure of Go is as simple and
almost as easy to learn in rudimentary fashion as Checkers, so it is possible fo
r almost anyone to quickly and effortlessly begin
playing it.
The rigid starting setup of Chess vastly reduces the number of options available
, thereby inhibiting the free flow of the player's
imagination. In contrast, the Go board starts empty and the players create their
own unique structure in every game, thus
allowing full reign to their creativity and imagination.
The simplistic objective of Chess of catching the opposing King together with it
s small 8 x 8 square scale and constricting
starting lineup lead to a "quick kill" mentality in which the capture of some ma
terial or a successful "mating attack" on the
opposing King can lead to an instant win. The result is a game that is very stro
ngly biased toward the tactical, with very little
opportunity for the development of much more than elemental strategy. In contras
t, the 19 x 19 line Go board has enormous
scale. Coupled with the need to trade off short term profits and their costs aga
inst the possibility of later achieving greater long
term gain, this leads to incredibly profound strategy whose realization depends
upon the precise execution of tactics every bit as
incisive as those of Chess. This gives Go an entire dimension for intellectual d
evelopment almost entirely lacking in Chess.
Perhaps most important of all, the vast scale of the Go board makes it impossibl
e to precisely calculate anticipated outcomes
during the crucial opening stages of the game, and this requires the players to
rely entirely upon general strategic principles and
such right brain functions as pattern recognition and "instinct". This integrati
on of right and left brain function provided by Go
is crucial to the complete development of the brain, and is also almost complete
ly lacking in Chess (or any other known
human activity).
This unique integration of left and right brain function in playing Go was recen
tly directly demonstrated for the first time
by MRI brain scans, in experiments described in the report referenced in the sec
tion of this web page "Comparison
Between Chess and Go".
For these reasons, Go not only provides unlimited scope for even the most brilli
ant to exercise their mental capabilities to the
fullest, but an effectiveness in improving the brain function and academic perfo
rmance of even underachievers unmatched by any
other known pedagogical mechanism.
Caveats
There are some significant caveats that must be addressed in implementing a scho
ol Go program, especially in the US:
Most important is the realization that Go is not a form of magic wand, despite t
he enormous benefits that its participants
ultimately enjoy. Mere brief exposure to the elegant basic concepts of Go and oc
casional casual play may be pleasurable, but
will not result in substantive salutary changes in the student's thinking proces
ses or study habits!
The benefits Go provides can only be achieved over a period of months and years
during which the student actively
studies and plays Go, and progresses well into the advanced stages of skill. The
reason is that a deep understanding of and
ability to appropriately address the complex interactions between Go's strategy,
tactics, and elegant structural concepts are
what actually improve the student's intellectual capabilities. Coupled with Go's
subtle development and inculcation of
improved study habits, this then translates into improved academic performance.
It is this "rewiring" of the brain to enable it to efficiently engage in the kin
d of advanced REASONING essential to both playing
Go and solving real world problems that is most readily accomplished at about ag
e 4 or 5. As noted in some detail in the section
of this web page "Teaching The New 'R' Of Reasoning", the ideal learning method
for such young children is largely but not
wholly informal, supplemented by a small irreducible minimum of formal instructi
on. Unfortunately, the ideal combination of
conditions to permit using this preferred method does not routinely exist anywhe
re in the US today outside a very few Oriental
communities. Therefore there is no practical alternative to a more formal, intri
nsically less desirable (but still effective)
approach.
In Japan, Go is a well established and highly respected cultural/social activity
and almost every child is already aware of its
existence long before entering school, so participation in an in-school Go progr
am is fairly readily obtained and accepted. In the
US Go is almost completely unknown to all but a few students of Oriental extract
ion. Far worse, in our basically anti-intellectual
society, activities like playing Go are also often characterized by many student
s and parents as "nerdy", and are viewed
disapprovingly. Overcoming this erroneous negative preconception may constitute
a formidable challenge, at least until the
program is well established and its value demonstrated beyond question
Successful functioning, whether of the individual, groups and organizations, nat
ions, and even the world as a whole is almost entirely
dependent upon a single central meta-skill that I call Reasoning. This is the ab
ility to correctly appraise the problems confronted,
assemble the facts necessary, comprehend their interrelationships and implicatio
ns, and then devise and implement appropriate
solutions.
Unfortunately Reasoning is not now explicitly taught, and is at best only periph
erally addressed in very limited contexts in some
science, mathematics and graduate business school courses. To make matters worse
, even those few peripheral stabs at teaching this
vital meta-skill occur very late in the student's academic career, long after ma
ny bad thinking habits have long been established. The
result is that the desperately needed problem solving ability can only be acquir
ed by first breaking those long established defective
thinking habits - a process that's notoriously difficult for most and virtually
impossible for all too many!
In the essay that follows I discuss this problem, some of the partial solutions
now being implemented (primarily the teaching of
Critical Thinking), their limitations, my proposal for solution, and the role th
at Go can play in that solution. Also addressed are some
of the key impediments to juvenile learning, and how they affect the educational
process.
What Is CRITICAL THINKING?
In standard education texts, critical thinking is defined as consisting of the f
ollowing elements:

1. Estimating
2. Evaluating
3. Classifying
4. Assuming
5. Inferring Logically
6. Grasping principles
7. Noting Relationships
8. Hypothesizing
9. Offering Opinions With Reasons
10. Making Judgments With Criteria

On close examination, it is apparent that all of these 10 elements together addr


ess only the evaluation/appraisal portion of the total
decision-making process. Even the last of them, although in a sense summarizing
its predecessors, still falls short of making or acting
on a decision which may result from such an evaluation/appraisal. For this reaso
n, critical thinking as defined above is inadequate as a
tool for effective decision-making in the real world because it addresses only t
he "front end" of that vital process.
Given that reality, it is only reasonable to wonder why the educational establis
hment has heretofore seen fit to stop at this point rather
than to take the natural further step of completing the Reasoning process by inc
luding the additional steps needed for action oriented
problem solving.
The answer to this conundrum is readily revealed when one recognizes the etiolog
y of this entire effort - the search by the educational
establishment for a mechanism with which to provide students with a structured,
rational basis for readily distinguishing fact from
mere speculation, and for deciding which of competing "explanations" for an obse
rved situation or phenomenon is the more likely to
be correct.
Since most of the student's study and research even through graduate school is f
ocused on the investigation of sources and data
followed by the drawing of inferences and conclusions therefrom, this is really
all that is necessary to adequately fulfill that need. The
necessity to continue on to action oriented decision making and implementation o
nly arises in such situations as graduate business
school case studies, and, of course, real life situations with which the educati
onal establishment rarely deals explicitly
What is REASONING?
As defined herein, Reasoning subsumes Critical Thinking by adding to it the addi
tional elements needed to turn that primarily
evaluative process into one in which a decision-making situation is correctly an
alyzed in the face of intelligent competitive
action, and then the required corrective/ameliorative action is devised and impl
emented! With this important addition, the
necessary but static and essentially intellectual exercise of critical thinking
is transformed into a highly useful, practical decision-
making process.
Elements Of the Reasoning Process:

1. Objectively assess the current status and its (often far from obvious) i
mplications. (= Critical Thinking).
2. Recall pertinent facts which potentially impact the outcome.
3. Visualize feasible/appropriate alternative courses of action.
4. Calculate/estimate the value and risks of each.
5. Prioritize them.
6. Make and implement action decisions.
7. Observe the outcome.
8. Repeat the entire cycle, as appropriate.

From this definition, it is apparent that Reasoning is the essential meta-skill


involved in correctly making the entire complex of
every-day decisions which dominate all human interactions, so the ability to eff
ectively utilize it is a primary determinant of
each individual's real-world success or failure!
These decisions range from the relatively simple like choosing what to eat for d
inner, to vastly more difficult ones like deciding
whether to go to college or get a job after high school. They culminate in the a
lmost infinitely complex decisions confronting an
entrepreneur who must decide whether or not to launch a new product, what market
to aim at, how and where to produce, price and
advertise it, etc., etc.
The great strategic board games of Chess and/or the superior and far older orien
tal strategic board game of Go can be used to
teach these vital Reasoning Skills informally!
As will be described shortly, Chess is already fulfilling this role with distinc
tion at the Mott Hall School in one of New York City's
poorer neighborhoods, while because Go is still largely unknown in the US it has
only had the opportunity to show its even greater
value in Japan (Described in the section of this web page entitled "Go In Japane
se Education").
The "miracle" of both Chess and (especially) Go is that playing either well requ
ires implementing at each move precisely the same set
of logical steps as in the solution of real world problems. This confluence of t
hinking seems not to have been noticed by anyone other
than myself and until recently was unsubstantiated, but its validity has just be
en demonstrated (at least to my own not easily garnered
satisfaction) with my discovery of a technique now widely used in the business w
orld called SWOT Analysis! In this technique, the
decision maker evaluates the: S = Strengths, W = Weaknesses, O = Opportunities,
and T = Threats inherent in the situation of
interest, and then uses that analysis as the basis for his decision. And this is
precisely what a competent player of either Chess or Go
must do prior to each and every move!
The advantage of using these games is that the lessons they teach are informal a
nd non-threatening, concealed in the benign guise of
the world's most challenging strategic board games! So unlike formal school inst
ruction, all that the children are aware of while
playing them is having FUN, so that the profoundly useful changes that occur in
their thinking processes are completely transparent
and painless to them! And it is only later, when the relationship between their
thinking/ decision making in the game context and in
real life problem solving is explicitly developed (e.g. using the model of the S
WOT technique) will they experience any of the
pressure that exists in the "normal" school context.
So until the explicit REASONING SKILLS curriculum has been developed and impleme
nted, the games of Chess and (even
better) Go can function effectively to informally begin the process of teaching
them. And even after the formal curriculum has
been implemented Go, especially, can continue to serve as a pleasurable reinforc
ement which offers unlimited opportunity for the
students to practice and hone these vital skills at home whenever it is convenie
nt (thanks to the internet), at their own pace! And this
combination of attributes certainly constitutes an ideal learning environment.
At present, this premise is largely supported only by anecdotal (albeit highly p
ersuasive) evidence, so that it can't quite be considered
fact. However, that evidence has been persuasive enough to convince me and I hop
e that it will do the same for you.
Why Go Is Superior To Chess as Paradigm For Teaching Reasoning Skills
Although this web page is devoted to Go, and my own migration from Chess to Go w
as based upon my regretfully arrived at deep
conviction of Go's superiority in almost every respect, in the pursuit of fairne
ss I've noted in the foregoing that Chess has been used
quite successfully in a number of American (and foreign!) schools as a mechanism
for improving student academic performance.. But
because of its limited scope, fixed starting setup, and primarily tactical orien
tation Chess provides a far less than ideal vehicle for this
purpose.
Go's major advantages over Chess are its immense board size, infinitely flexible
starting setup, and especially the dominance
of deep strategic thinking over even its dazzlingly beautiful and incisive tacti
cs. Together these attributes make Go the ideal
vehicle for painlessly teaching vital REASONING SKILLS so badly needed yet sadly
missing from our children's current
school curriculum. Almost equally important for their academic careers, advanced
students of both Chess and Go typically
develop good study habits, but this process is even more complete in Go. As if t
hat weren't enough, its many attributes combine with
the vast scale of the Go board to provide unlimited scope for even the most capa
ble students to exercise their mental capabilities to the
fullest, so that even the best and brightest never become bored. And, as already
noted, it is not uncommon for "underachievers"
who become captivated by Go to become transformed into superior students!
The main reason that Chess suffers from a serious limitation as paradigm for tea
ching REASONING SKILLS is that it is essentially
analytic and therefore primarily a left-brain function. In contrast, because Go
players must rely almost entirely upon general strategic
principles and such right-brain abilities as pattern recognition during the cruc
ial opening phase of the game, Go produces an
integration of right and left-brain function which is essential to complete ment
al development, and does so to a degree
unmatched by any other mechanism known to medical science! (At least partial val
idation of this contention was provided in late
2002 by a MRI brain scan study, referenced in the earlier section of this web pa
ge entitled "Comparison Between Chess and Go".)
Despite its limitations, Chess can nevertheless be quite efficacious in improvin
g student academic performance, as described in a
featured article on the Sunday New York Times of December 15. 2002 editorial pag
e by Brent Staples, Editorial Observer, entitled
"Chess Offers Young Students Life Lessons at a City School".
Selected excerpts, with my comments, follow:
"The chess master and teacher at the Mott Hall school, Jerald Times .....radiate
s energy as he patrols the classroom urging fourth and
fifth graders to fight through chess problems that he has given them. Mr. Times
is looking for potential prodigies who could join the
Mott Hall's Dark Knights, a mainly black and latino chess team from a poor commu
nity that has won six national championships over
the last decade."
The article later continued:
"Chess programs are offered on a voluntary basis in many schools around the City
. But a child who attends Mott Hall is REQUIRED
(emphasis mine) to take at least one semester of chess"!
Redressing The Deficits In The Mott Hall Program
The key unanswered question is whether the spectacular results obtained in the M
ott Hall School can be widely replicated. I believe
that answer is in the affirmative because their program, excellent as it is, omi
ts the following important elements the inclusion of
which can only improve the probability of good results:
1. The Mott Hall program does not teach Reasoning Skills explicitly, only implic
itly using the Chess paradigm..
2. Their Chess instruction is separate from the regular curriculum, rather than
being integrated into it as it would be if the same
teachers taught both (at least at the elementary level - beyond that, of course,
a specialist like Mr. Time would have to take over).
3. Their program also requires the students to "find their own way" in transferr
ing the thinking processes employed in Chess to their
academic studies.
4. Perhaps most important, there is NO transfer either explicit or implicit into
the problem solving thinking processes which govern
success in the real adult world beyond the academic experience, and which are so
essential to the proper functioning of our democratic
society.
5. The age at which the children are introduced to the Mott Hall program, althou
gh quite young, is still almost certainly far older than
optimal.
6. Although all the Mott Hall children are required to take Chess for one year,
beyond that it's voluntary. Continuation for all children
throughout their entire school careers must almost necessarily improve overall r
esults.
7. Finally, the Mott Hall program uses the game of Chess as paradigm rather than
Go. Although the resulting difference in academic
performance between these is probably negligible (and this may be sufficient to
satisfy school administrators who almost necessarily
have parochial interests involved), when transferred to the real life decision m
aking that will determine the viability of our society the
vastly broader (and more realistic) scope of Go thinking is clearly superior.
consider the case of Korea's former top Go professional, Cho Hun-Hyun. His first
exposure to Go was at age 2 (!), when he would sit
in the warmth and caring of his father's lap while his dad played Go, absorbing
the game's strategy and tactics "by osmosis", in the
same optimal and effortless way that all young children learn language. By age 3
, young Cho was already a competent player, and by
5 he was the best player in his village. (This fairly closely parallels the expe
rience of former World Chess Champion Jose Capablanca,
and shows the close resemblance of the learning processes involved.) At around a
ge 10 he was proficient enough to be accepted as an
apprentice professional, and the rest (as they say) is history. In sharp contras
t, Go and its attributes are even today almost
completely unknown to the vast majority of children, parents, and educators in t
he USA. Consequently, even in the few venues
in which it has been introduced Go necessarily ranks very low in the fierce comp
etition for the scarce but essential resource of
the children's time, and, absent special programs like that at Mott Hall, Chess
usually fares little better.
"Dr. Richard E. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan
, has found that Asians and Westerners think
differently from each other in significant and measurable ways, as he describes
in his new book 'The Geography of Thought'.
"Westerners focus on some kind of central object" he said in an interview. "They
attend to its attributes and try to find out what rules
apply to its behavior, with the goal of categorizing it".
By contrast, he said, Asians tend to see an 0ject in a much broader field. "They
're not as interested in categorizing objects", Dr. Nisbett
said, "and they don't have as many linear deterministic rules of behavior". Thes
e differences are revealed even in tests of perceptual
and visual skills: Westerners score higher on the ability to remember the absolu
te size of an object; Easterners do better with recalling
its dimensions relative to something else.
(All of this is entirely consistent with my speculation that Orientals have some
kind of "built in" advantage in learning Go - as it turns
out, not an inherent genetic advantage, but a cultural one! And this, too, is co
nsistent with my observations of the Oriental children in
my classes and the sons of my Korean friend. To more or less definitively confir
m this last contention, the Science Times article
concluded with these words:)
"Significantly, the cognitive styles are not fixed, but shift after a person has
spent only a few months living on the other side of the
globe. (My comment: Or in a cultural environment displaced from there, as with m
any of today's Japanese youth immersed in
American culture?) Whether it must tilt holistic or dualistic, defend nature, nu
rture or neither, the human brain will find a way to fit in
with the crowd".The foregoing exposition of the benefits that can accrue to the
student's Reasoning processes as a result of training in
Chess and/or Go seems quite neat and tidy until one addresses the well known and
extremely puzzling anomaly of the excellent Go or
Chess player who is socially inept. How to reconcile this kind of individual wit
h the premise that learning these strategic board games
can make one a competent thinker?? This is the anomaly that baffled me for many
years and which for a long time deprived me of
compelling ammunition with which to silence critics of what I have always "known
" (in the deep "gut" sense) about what learning
REASONING SKILLS via Go (even more than Chess) can both explicitly and implicitl
y contribute to making a successful, mature
individual.
At least that was true until Apr 6, 1999! Because in that day's New York Times,
"Science Times", Section F, page 1, one of the feature
articles "A Syndrome With a Mix of Skills and Deficits" by John O'Neil, seems to
have finally revealed the long sought answer!
Described therein is "Asperger's Syndrome", "generally considered a form of auti
sm", which "under some definitions as many as 1 in
500 people have the condition", and is "largely a condition affecting males". Th
e article further states "All of the autistic-like
conditions that have come under an umbrella term of 'empathetic disorders' - to
emphasize the stunted social skills that undermine the
learning process - appear to be caused by lesions in a part of the brain that pr
ocesses sensory input." It goes on " In Asperger's the
deficits are largely in non-verbal skills , connected to the right hemisphere".
It further says "The most striking characteristic of the
syndrome is consuming interest in arcane subjects." And in conclusion "The key p
oint in the diagnosis is that their obsessive behavior
significantly impairs their social functioning."
So if - and this is a major point - if some competent and even ultra-competent G
o players are otherwise social misfits they may in fact
be victims of this until now largely unrecognized condition (affecting 1 in 500
people = almost 1 in 250 males)! And if this is true then
the premise that "normal" individuals (and especially children) can be trained t
o transfer their Go thinking skills to improve their
ability to solve their real world problems becomes truly viable! What's more, th
ere are remedial mechanisms even for those
unfortunates afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome but they are only effective if b
egun early - a perfect dovetailing with my "early start"
REASONING SKILLS teaching proposal.
THE PLEASURABLE WAY TO A SUPERIOR MIND
© 2002 Milton N. Bradley
SIMPLE, ELEGANT RULES.
Rules as simple as checkers. Strategy more profound than chess.
No different piece moves to master.
No fixed starting setup. Each game uniquely structured by the players th
emselves.
Integral handicap system allows even players of widely different ability
to enjoy truly competitive games.
Suitable for age 3 - Ph.D.
NO "LUCK" OR CHANCE. Just outsmart your opponent to win.
A GAME OF EXQUISITE SUBTLETY.
Profound Strategy. (Like football, many different plays from the same in
itial "set".)
Dazzling Tactical Magic. (Like Judo, use the opponent's strength against
him.)
Features pincer attacks, ambushes, feints, diversions, traps, and "airbo
rne" invasions behind enemy lines.
VAST SCOPE, ALMOST LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES.
ALWAYS CHALLENGING. Every game different, never routine or boring..
FULLY UTILIZES/INTEGRATES ARTISTIC/ANALYTIC ABILITIES.
ABSTRACT MODEL OF REAL WORLD BUSINESS/ECONOMIC COMPETITION.
CHILDREN/STUDENTS
DEVELOPS GOOD STUDY HABITS.
TEACHES VITAL REASONING SKILLS. Creates an enjoyable, mentally stimulati
ng environment in which even very
young children learn how to:
Objectively appraise a competitive situation. o Identify what's importan
t and what's not.
Evaluate the feasible alternatives.
Recall/apply pertinent facts and techniques.
Develop appropriate alternative strategy and tactics.
Calculate the value and risks of each alternative.
Prioritize them.
Make and implement decisions.
Observe the outcome, cope with the consequences, and then
Repeat the decision making cycle, as appropriate.
TEACHES REAL-LIFE REASONING/JUDGMENT SKILLS
Long term planning succeeds, "instant gratification" fails.
Greed is counter-productive. The opponent must always get his due.
No simplistic, fixed plan can succeed against competent opposition. A ba
lanced, flexible approach is the only
possible route to victory.
Rote memory is useful but insufficient.
Deep positional analysis, understanding and sound judgment dominate even
the best tactics. No "quick kill" is
possible against competent opposition.
ADULTS
ABSTRACT MODEL OF REAL WORLD BUSINESS/POLITICAL COMPETITION.
Overall strategic judgment and patient development dominate tactics.
Investment for the future is generally superior to emphasis on immediate
profit, but ultimate success almost always
requires a carefully balanced set of tradeoffs between both o
bjectives.
The game that taught Japan the strategies that have moved them into lead
ership in such fields as automobiles and
semiconductors!
SENIORS
AIDS MEMORY, REVERSES SENILE DEMENTIA, MAY HELP PREVENT ALZHEI
MER'S DISEASE.
In his regular column "The Empty Board" in the American Go Journal, Vol. 34, #3,
Fall 2000, William S. Cobb reports:
"Last June (I visited) Japan to participate in a symposium on the educational be
nefits of teaching Go in schools. ....... On this
trip I discovered that the Japanese have become seriously interested in the poss
ibilities of using Go as a therapy for people
with mental problems."
And Cobb goes on to say:
"In recent years, Dr. Kaneko Mitsuo, a Japanese neurosurgeon with an internation
al reputation, has been working with older
people suffering from senile dementia. Using PET scans he has shown that there i
s substantial area of the right brain that
begins to atrophy in people who suffer from dementia. This turns out to be essen
tially the same part of the brain that is most
active when engaging in musical activities and in playing Go. To research this f
urther, Dr. Kaneko has been teaching Go to
patients in the beginning stages of dementia. (He) is now convinced that learnin
g to play Go can reverse the development of
dementia in virtually all patients in the beginning stages of the disease. Of co
urse, this does not apply to Alzheimer's, which is
still an incurable condition, but it does work for common dementia."
Other recent medical research indicates that older individuals who vigorously an
d consistently exercise their REASONING
abilities also have a far lower incidence of Alzheimer's Disease than those who
do not!
And, as you may have gleaned from the foregoing, for this purpose the 4000 year
old game of Go is far superior to any other
known mechanism! Why? Because playing Go regularly is not only enjoyable but als
o results in intense exercise and integration of
both left and right brain function to a degree not otherwise achievable
Comparison Between Chess And Go
© 2003 Milton N. Bradley
Although manifestly quite different, Chess and Go are unquestionably the two fin
est strategic board games in all of human history.
Some prefer one, some the other, and there are a small fortunate number who enjo
y and excel at both. So why compare these two
exemplars in a manner designed to demonstrate that one is superior to the other?
The answer to that important question is at least
partially provided by the lead editorial in The New York Times of May 10, 1997 e
ntitled "Mind Over Matter", which commented on
the then ongoing Chess match between IBM's Deep Blue Computer Program and World
Chess Champion Gary Kasparov, in part as
follows:
"No one much cared when computers mastered backgammon and checkers or clobbered
lesser Grandmasters in chess. But now that
we have sent the greatest chess champion in human history into battle, the prosp
ect of defeat seems unnerving. Still, before mere
mortals sink too deeply into despair, it is important to recognize several comfo
rting alibis that may apply here.
Deep Blue is not thinking the way humans do. It is using its immense number-crun
ching power to explore millions of moves per
second, and applying a set of rules provided by its human masters to pick the st
rongest. This gives it tremendous powers to play
chess, a narrow, circumscribed pursuit that is red meat for high-speed computati
on but hardly the supreme measure of
intelligence its practitioners like to pretend."
Deep Blue won its match with human World Chess Champion Kasparov by causing his
resignation in Game 6 after only 19 moves,
after what had been an even contest to that point. The following is a typical re
action to this event as posted on the web newsgroup
rec.games.chess.misc: "Deep Blue won that final game not because of any superior
ity it had over Kasparov, but because of bizarre
opening play by Kasparov.". To my mind that's a sure indication that Kasparov "c
racked" psychologically, but whether or not that
alone is sufficient to justify characterizing his defeat as "decisive" I leave t
o the reader's judgment.
The key thing that's almost certain is that with the inevitable improvements tha
t might have been readily added to its hardware and
software in subsequent months had IBM chosen to continue its development, Deep B
lue would likely have become indisputably
superior. But having satisfied whatever corporate objectives they had, once havi
ng achieved that narrow victory IBM "pulled the plug"
and disassembled Deep Blue, presumably forever.
In sharp contrast, the best computer Go programs are still mired at just beyond
an advanced beginner's level, despite the presence for
over 15 years of a $1 million prize for a program which can defeat a master Go p
rofessional, offered by the Ing Chang-Ki Goe (his
unique spelling!) Educational Foundation of Taiwan. But no claimants for this im
pressive prize are even visible on the far horizon
after all these years! The many reasons for this disparity are set out in the co
mparison below, but the most obvious concerns the many
orders of magnitude vastly greater size of the "move trees" in Go, which render
the massive number-crunching power of Deep Blue
and even its potentially vastly more powerful descendants totally impotent in th
e critical opening and middle phases of the game.
At least equally important is the fact that, unlike Go, Chess essentially lacks
a deep strategic component! To those who may question
this assertion, substantiation is provided by the following famous quote:
"Chess is 99% tactics." -- Richard Teichmann, (1868-1925), a German Grandmaster
who for many years lived in England, and one of
the strongest attacking players of all time.
Al Lawrence, former Executive Director of the US Chess Federation said of this q
uote: "Everyone has always agreed on this point--
even before Teichmann, who happened to come up with a snappy way to say it."
This was validated by Grandmaster Reuben Fine in his book "Chess Marches On", pu
blished by Chess Review, 1945, in which he said
on page 97:
"Thirty years ago Teichmann said that chess is 99% tactics. And despite the enor
mous strides of chess theory since then, his
percentage can only be reduced (by) a few points. Many amateurs think that maste
r games are usually decided by some deeply-laid
plan covering all possibilities for at least ten moves.. That is what they conce
ive the grand strategy of tournaments to be. Actually,
however, strategical considerations, while quite important, do not cover a range
or depth at all comparable to the popular notion. Very
often, in fact, sound strategy can dispense with seeing ahead at all, except in
a negative or trivial sense. And it is still true that most
games, even between the greatest of the great, are decided by tactics or combina
tions which have little or nothing to do with the
fundamental structure of the game."
Then there is this excerpt from the internet review "NEW CHESSBASE CDs", by Stev
e Lopez, who said:
"It's a hoary old cliché that's been kicked around for three-quarters of a century
. But do you know why it's quoted so often? Because
Teichmann was right! If Philidor was right in saying that the pawn is the soul o
f chess, Teichmann was correct in implying that tactics
is the heart of the game."
Some of my master level chess-playing friends have complained that by making thi
s comparison and demonstrating the objective
superiority of Go I am denigrating Chess, but this is a misperception. For examp
le, if we compare precious metals and conclude that
gold is more valuable than silver, are we denigrating silver? Or just acknowledg
ing objective reality? It's clear that silver has many
vital uses as coinage, an electrical conductor, and in jewelry, so it is of impo
rtance in industry, commerce and quality of life areas.
Under these circumstances our objective appraisal of its position as less valuab
le than gold should offend no unbiased observer. And
the same should hold true for Chess compared with Go, but regrettably it almost
invariably does not. Chess is interesting in its own
right and has many assets, but when all of its attributes are stacked up against
those of Go it necessarily ranks second best! The
problem is that most chessplayers refuse to even contemplate that this could be
true!
What most chessplayers share in this regard is that they are so convinced of the
superiority of their game that, almost invariably with
at best meager knowledge of Go gained almost entirely by hearsay, they dismiss t
he entire idea without even exhibiting a willingness
to find out for themselves. This is the very problem that Chessmaster Edward Las
ker and then World Chess Champion Emanuel
Lasker encountered in 1905 in Germany, and which is described in the prior secti
on of this web page entitled "How Go Came To
America". Maintaining this close-minded posture is any chessplayer's absolute ri
ght, of course, but its sad consequence is that it
unnecessarily cuts them off from one of life's greatest purely intellectual chal
lenges and pleasures. Perhaps an even worse loss as a
result of their narrow perspective, those chessplayers of my acquaintance who ha
ve put forth the effort to study Go report that it has
improved their chess, so this is yet another detriment that those who display th
is "head-in-the-sand" attitude sustain. Hopefully those
of you who are reading this do not wear those same blinders, and are willing to
investigate Go further and then judge for yourselves!
Finally, there is this perhaps most cogent comment on the comparison between Che
ss and Go that appeared in an article in The New
York Times Metro Section of Thursday February 6, 2003 entitled "Queen, Captured
by Mouse", which focused on the then ongoing
tied match between Gary Kasparov and the Israeli Chess software program "Deep Ju
nior". In it, Dr. Hans Berliner, a leading
Chessmaster, former World Correspondence Chess Champion, Professor of Computer S
cience at Carnegie Mellon University, and one
of those whose work on chess led to the development of IBM's Deep Blue and its d
escendants said: "You don't have to be really good
anymore to get good results. Chess is winding down.....What's happening with Che
ss is that it's gradually losing its place as the par
excellence of intellectual activity". And he concluded: "Smart people in search
of a challenging board game might try a game called
Go..."
Need I really say more?
* It has been my experience that most chessplayers strongly dispute the contenti
on that chess is primarily a left brain function while
Go integrates both left and right brain, and absent any research studies specifi
cally designed to explore this issue it was formerly
impossible to definitively resolve it. But now at last one such a study has been
performed, with conclusions that substantiate the
contention, as follows:
Cognitive Brain Research 1 (2002)
Research report
A functional MRI study of high-level cognition
II. The game of GO
Xiangchuan Chen , Daren Zhang , Xiaochu Zhang , Zhihao Li , Xiaomei Meng ,
* Sheng He , Xiaoping Hu
Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics ,University of Science and Technology
of China , Hefei , Anhui , 230027, PR China
Hospital of Anhui Medical University , Hefei , Anhui , 230027, PR China
Department of Psychology ,University of Minnesota , Minneapolis ,MN 55455, USA
Center for Magnetic Resonance Research ,University of Minnesota , 2021 Sixth Str
eet SE , Minneapolis ,MN 55455, USA
Accepted 26 July 2002
Abstract
GO is a board game thought to be different from chess in many aspects, most sign
ificantly in that GO emphasizes global strategy more
than local battle, a property very difficult for computer programs to emulate. T
o investigate the neural basis of GO, functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activities of subjec
ts engaged in playing GO. Enhanced activations
were observed in many cortical areas, such as dorsal prefrontal, parietal, occip
ital, posterior temporal, and primary somatosensory and
motor areas.
Quantitative analysis indicated a modest degree of stronger activation in right
parietal area than in left. This type of right hemisphere
lateralization differs from the modest left hemisphere lateralization observed d
uring chess playing.

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