Quick question for you chessers. Let’s say you play 2 casual rapid OTB games at your local chess club - the next day I ask you whether you can show me the games. What proportion of the moves would you be likely to remember?
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I will be hopelessly lost recalling any game after ~10 moves, often less. I tried working on this once and successfully committed a 25 move game I played to memory, but it took me many hours spread over a week. I'm 1500 USCF.
With help, I can do better. Me and an opponent of similar rating can often reverse engineer a game pretty well with a series of "What did I do here? Did I trade bishops?" "Yeah, I think so."
It’s not something I’ve ever specifically trained for but a couple of times recently I’ve idly gone into lichess and just entered the first few moves of a game from the previous day, then realised I could follow the whole thing through.
I do tend to get lost if it goes into a long endgame, in that case I can usually remember positions (especially “this isn’t *quite* how it was”) but not always all the moves.
Thanks David! From the responses I’ve had, seems that this recall is strongly correlated with playing strength - I’m guessing it’s that being a stronger player means you’re more able to do this rather than being able to do this making you a stronger player.
I saw game memorisation as a sign of true natural talent, that a player had the potential for greatness. Before personal computers having an ECO in your head was an almost insurmountable advantage.
Yeah just from memory. I find I can often go through pretty much the whole thing even if I don’t make a specific effort to remember it - was wondering whether that was typical or not.
Maybe I'd recall half the moves before stumbling and being unable to continue. But it would depend on the speed at which the game was played (rapid encompasses a range of speeds), the number of moves played, whether there were memorable features...
Hard to give a number because my move recall depends in part on seeing the correct positions in front of me (ie get one move wrong → get more moves wrong). But guessing 30–50% the next day?
Thanks! The reason I ask is that I find I can often replicate nearly the whole thing (not quite as good if there’s a long ending). Was just idly wondering whether that was normal or not…
We typically play 12d3 games and if the game is “normal”, i.e., follows a book opening, then I can remember a large chunk the next day but if it detours wildly then I can’t.
Thanks! I’m similar in terms of % recall and decay over time - though can quite often remember decent chunks of blitz games too. Was just idly wondering whether others were the same or very different.
It's an interesting question. I am also so impressed by top GM's memory of games.
I have good memory of ideas but a really awful memory for specifics, so I find learning lines of openings pretty hard work. The ideas stick basically forever, the specifics stick well for about a week.
It is fascinating! Feels like this sort of recall is a bit of an indicator of playing strength - I have a vague memory that you’re a fairly similar level to me (2000ish)?
I'd say I would be able to recall 70% of the moves, when I used to play OTB regularly I could remember games for a good while, especially the fun ones.
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It was called, "Being booked up"
Ask me a week later and my recall will be much worse and at a month awful... I don't even remember my classical games well a month later.
I have good memory of ideas but a really awful memory for specifics, so I find learning lines of openings pretty hard work. The ideas stick basically forever, the specifics stick well for about a week.