What you should know about chess image

If you want to improve your chess game, you need to analyze your thinking process when you are playing the game. Once you determine the defects in your thinking processes, you can find ways to overcome or become more efficient in your thought processes.

Typically, chess players think in terms of images. You imagine or picture certain chess images and over time you accumulated a large number of these chess images which consist of typical positions about which you have formed assessments. These typical positions are used to assist you in creating variations that let you transfer from one typical position to another. A chess image becomes not only a picture of the position on the board but also an assessment of a typical position and becomes a generalization of the relationship of pieces with their possible moves.

Once you go beyond seeing the pieces as the characters carved out of wood or molded in plastic or metal and begin to see those pieces as having the properties of moving a certain way on the board, you move beyond a beginner and into the realm of the chess lover. A chess lover sees the piece for its significance as a knight, king, queen or even pawn.

When you step beyond the beginner status, you step deeper into the combination of moves. You notice fewer things outside the moves on the board. You know they’re there, like walking down the street and not paying attention to your surroundings. You’ve walked that street so many times you know what’s there at every turn; you just don’t notice it as much now. You concentrate more on where you’re going than what is around you.

Although you see the chess pieces in your mind, as you gain more experience as a player, those pieces no longer remain just pieces. They become more abstract in that they start representing moves and variations. The board, in turn, moves from black and white squares to move configurations.

You will begin to form chess images in your mind. A chess image will become a combination of meaning and structure. You will learn to assess a situation or the elements of the actions of pieces on the board.

As you grow as a chess player you will learn to evaluate a multitude of positions by using the knowledge you gain from each game you play, becoming more comfortable with strategies and tactics, and relying on logic. As new plays are presented to you, you will use your previous experience as well as comparison and assessment to consider a number of positions. You will then determine how to precede as positions present differing chess images. You’ll be able to move from more concrete, practical moves into abstract evaluation of counter moves.

Playing chess involves learning to use the chess images in your mind to your best advantage. You will take those images and apply them to concrete positions or assess alternative more abstract positions to give you an advantage over your opponent.