Peak: Unleashing Your Inner Champion Through Revolutionary Methods for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement in Work, Sports, and Life

by K. Anders Ericsson

When asked what they see when they are mentally examining a chess position, grandmasters do not talk about visualizing the physical chess pieces on a board as they would if they were relying on some sort of “photographic memory” of the position. This would be a “bottom-level” representation. Instead, their descriptions are much more vague, sprinkled with such terms as “lines of force” and “power.” A key thing about these representations is that they allow a chess player to encode the positions of pieces on the board in a much more efficient way than simply remembering which piece is on which square. This efficient encoding underlies a master’s ability to glance at a chessboard and remember the positions of most of the pieces and, in particular, the ability to play blindfold chess. Two other features of these representations are worth noting, for they are examples of themes that will appear again and again as we explore the broader world of mental representations. First, the mental representations are more than just ways of encoding positions. They allow a chess master to glance at a game in progress and get an immediate sense of which side has the advantage, which directions the game might take, and what a good move or moves might be. This is because the representations include, in addition to the positions of the pieces and the interactions between them, the various weaknesses and strengths of the two players’ positions and moves that are likely to be effective in such po...