Ceiling Chess
Last night I was reading a post from polly on chess psychology and there was a comment from happyhippo regarding shirov's use of the ceiling in his calculation. I had just read something on it and I forgot where and it was really bugging me (I literally opened 3 or 4 books last night trying to find it). So I googled "Shirov ceiling" and it came back with a bunch of garbage, but I found an interesting article about some controversy that arose between Shirov and Kasparov and came to a head during their game at Corus in 2001 (I just can't ignore coincidences like this, finding a random article about a tournament going on right now). Anyways then I remembered where I read it, funny how little things trigger that, so here it is...
"In the '80's appeared a new generation of chess stars from the Soviet Union who created quite a splash, not so much because they were such fantastic players, but because of what they did at the chess board: they spent more time looking at the cieling ( or the spectators) than they did at the chessboard.
I remember the first time I played Shirov. It was '90, Paris, and I was paired against this relatively unknown youngster from Latvia. I played my normal game, and was quite astonished when I noticed that he would only look at the board from time to time, and that most of the time he spent staring at the ceiling! I still remember thinking that there was something quite wrong with the fellow! ''I will have no problem with this fellow'' I thought.
But was I amazed by what this guy ''saw''!! I still am impressed.
He was combining the usual 'visual' chess thinking with , what for lack of a better word, 'blindfold' chess thinking, and the results were very impressive. Even to this day he employs this technique.
Other players of his generation who did this also are Ivanchuk, and Gelfand. But it is a mistake to think that these players just 'happened' upon this new technique: it was a technique developed by Soviet trainers looking for a way for the new generation of young players to get an edge on the existing generations.
Today perhaps Anand is the most visible exponent of this 'school'...
There are many things you don't 'see' in chess which you do 'see' when you close your eyes, and of course, the reverse is equally true. I suggest you try some experiments!" -Kevin Spraggett (Here's a link to the post I made when I first read the article).
"In the '80's appeared a new generation of chess stars from the Soviet Union who created quite a splash, not so much because they were such fantastic players, but because of what they did at the chess board: they spent more time looking at the cieling ( or the spectators) than they did at the chessboard.
I remember the first time I played Shirov. It was '90, Paris, and I was paired against this relatively unknown youngster from Latvia. I played my normal game, and was quite astonished when I noticed that he would only look at the board from time to time, and that most of the time he spent staring at the ceiling! I still remember thinking that there was something quite wrong with the fellow! ''I will have no problem with this fellow'' I thought.
But was I amazed by what this guy ''saw''!! I still am impressed.
He was combining the usual 'visual' chess thinking with , what for lack of a better word, 'blindfold' chess thinking, and the results were very impressive. Even to this day he employs this technique.
Other players of his generation who did this also are Ivanchuk, and Gelfand. But it is a mistake to think that these players just 'happened' upon this new technique: it was a technique developed by Soviet trainers looking for a way for the new generation of young players to get an edge on the existing generations.
Today perhaps Anand is the most visible exponent of this 'school'...
There are many things you don't 'see' in chess which you do 'see' when you close your eyes, and of course, the reverse is equally true. I suggest you try some experiments!" -Kevin Spraggett (Here's a link to the post I made when I first read the article).