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By Lee Siew Fai

You too can Teach! IX

The 5Bs (Part 1)

Happy New Year 2008! 

Parents of school going children always look forward to the school holidays. This is the time of getting away from weekly routines and to take a well-deserved break. But then, it also means a massive disruption to ongoing work. Abruptly, my writing stopped as my "spare" time has been taken up! Finally, and surely, I must resume writing and get round to write about the first Keystones; the “Basic 5Bs”.

Before I proceed, let me also write about my fortunes of having the time to spend in front of the TV! I managed to watch the program "My Brilliant Brain: Make me a Genius". In this program, GM Susan Polgar was featured. Aptly titled, it is an interesting story of her father (Lazlo, a psychologist), intently applied his knowledge in launching her and her other famous sisters through a training program that provided them the foundation to excel in chess. As we know it, it was a complete success and I would say, every aspiring chess player must watch this TV program and get the insight to improve their own game.

In this program, the area that caught my attention most was the established theories on long term and short term memories. On short term memory (herein termed as working memory), we human (herein assumed as having a brain) could only work with SEVEN items at any one time. There were no exceptions! In one of the experiment, GM Susan was found to be no different from any one of us! Her brilliant brain cannot show any exceptional differences or any undue advantages when sent in to do more than SEVEN items (over the chessboard) at once. Again I emphasize the number SEVEN!

Here, let me remind the readers that my professed "You too Can Teach" is derived from The SEVEN Keystones to Competitive Chess (and I am not a psychologist!). Noticed the assimilation? The SEVEN (magical?) Keystones were designed over three years of consistent contacts and feedbacks with the junior chess players from Seremban in a natural teaching and learning environment. They were accumulated by chance when our natural self had reached this equilibrium limits on working memory. Why we managed to settle for SEVEN Keystones made me wanted to know more. Once again, I resorted to the power of the Internet and google/wiki the term "working memory, seven".

I was amply rewarded with plenty of articles. The SEVEN Keystones did not deviate much from the findings of scientific research! It came under George Miller's arguments that human short-term memory has a forward memory span of approximately SEVEN items plus or minus two (Miller, 1956). Miller had argued that the unit of measurement for short-term memory capacity is a CHUNK. A chunk can be a single digit or letter; it can also be a word, multiple-digit number or even a whole phrase if the number or the phrase form a unit already learned in long-term memory before. Perhaps I should change my teaching method to that of the not too elegant wordings as "The SEVEN CHUNKS to Competitive Chess!"

Looking back, I come to realise that The SEVEN Keystones were the results of our conscious mind working over the chessboard and had reached its natural limit of “seven chunks”. It had encompassed the transfer of short-term memory to long term memory, vice versa, and thus, is enhanced by the relationship of easily understood alpha-numeric descriptions via interfaces between the items (chunks) of short-term memory to the items in long-term memory. When I come round to write about the 2Rs (Read/Recognise), readers will have a clearer picture on GM Susan's immense memory capacity in remembering hundreds of thousands of chess position in "chunks!" She can recognize and react to “a chunk” seen previously in just 0.8 of a second! 

It’s about time we have a look at the first Keystones a.k.a "Chunks". As the theme goes, the Basic 5Bs are really about the basics. Instead of a lengthy description, the best way forward is to hitch a ride on the hot topic of our Malaysian Eight-year old Yeoh Li Tian's feat in finishing fourth at the recent World Youth Chess Championships in Turkey. I will use his game against Marek Matyas, a Czechoslovakian that finished in a distance 27^th position. It’s common knowledge that all of us are curious as to see how good Li Tian is. As the saying goes, a sparrow does not make a summer. Analyzing just one game will not do justice. But I will still make an attempt. Then I will do the unthinkable and make the unsolicited comments about Li Tian’s strength! 

To be continued…watch out for his 22^nd move, b4 and 28^th move, Nd4. These two moves indicates his… 

First Keystone: 5Bs

The Basic 5Bs

1st Basic: Control the Center

2nd Basic: Develop the Pieces

3rd Basic: Putting the King into Safety

4th Basic: Gaining Tempo

5th Basic: Controlling open Files