Cognitive Chess: Improving Your Visualization and Calculation Skills

To improve and succeed, a chessplayer must be able calculate precisely and visualize prospective positions. This is easier said than done. While pondering the next move, a chessplayer frequently keeps “replaying” the same melody in his mind, thus falling into a kind of trance.

This book by Russian grandmaster Konstantin Chernyshov is designed to improve your visualization and calculation skills. With 500 exercises and an additional 250 puzzles, the author provides a vast amount of material to work through for students and coaches of the game. Most exercises require the reader to go through several stages of thought, including visualizing the configuration of the pieces, evaluating the resulting positions, and finally, calculating an accurate continuation.

The regimen suggested by the author will require a disciplined approach by serious chessplayers. The exercises and puzzles start out with easy examples, but they gradually become more difficult. And all are meant to be solved without sight of the board.

As noted by Ian Harris in his foreword:

“Cognitive Chess is designed to train you to visualize the board and correctly calculate sequences in your mind, skills that are essential to problem solving in all phases of the game. Players who train in these areas will certainly see an overall improvement in their game. After all, chess is ultimately a contest between opponents to determine who can “out-calculate” the other.”

Cognitive Chess: When you are serious about taking your game to the next level…