Chess and the Flynn Effect

The Soviets first dominated chess because the goevrnment needed a harmless outlet for the smart people, so that they wouldn’t scheme to overthrow the government. Similarly, young people have been shut out of the job market in the Marxist states of Europe and North America, so the smart and young are finding another way to exercise their brains.

Quick observation: I’ve read a number of math biographies. Among older mathematicians, they wouldn’t learn a lot of basic math till they hit graduate school. Now, a prodigy can quickly zip through the most demanding material by high school age. There is simply more information out there and it is more accessible. You can even download tons of free math material over the internet. I bet there’s also been improvements in teaching complex materials, like chess or math, so people can process it more quickly than in the past.

Add improvements in nutrition, child care, and health, you have a smarter population with access to more and better information. So it’s not surprising that you get younger and younger experts.

But we’ve also seen the same phenomenon of dropping peak age in a lot of women’s sports, such as in ladies’ golf, where a 19 year old won a major championship yesterday. Remember the trend in Olympic gymnastics that led from matronly 20-somethings winning the gold to 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci? They finally had to set a minimum age limit in Olympic gymnastics.

Dropping peak ages in women’s sports came from more intensive training of little girls. I suspect that chess players get more intensive training at the highest competitive levels today at younger ages through the Internet and computer programs. That would reduce the “experience” premium and stress the young man’s advantage in raw processing speed.

I agree with Greg Hamer.

Acquiring expertise in the skill of chess playing requires thousands of hours of effortful study against “players’ better than you. Computers are now able to provide this willing slightly better opponent for as many hours as needed. It is now much easier to get the practice needed to develop expertise in chess which is why the level of play has increased in the past two decades or so.

It is only a matter of time before chess ends up as tic tac toe. All paths will have been analyzed and a canonical set of play developed that will yield a draw if played correctly. It will then become simple memorization and lose interest.

First, observe the research about the average age when certain people, such as scientists and mathematicians, do their best work. Assume the same is true for chess players. Next, observe that it becomes easier and easier to learn chess. When I was a kid, it was a struggle to find a few good chess books (in my native language, English). Later good chess books became more plentiful, and still later, the internet arrived to provide a treasure trove of chess resources. Perhaps the “true” average age of best work is beginning to assert itself as the difficulty of preparation melts away.

The Flynn effect is thus but one explanation. I assume the internet will effect math and science “scores” similarly, with all its good free info.

What is happening is this:

Chess skill is a combination of experience/knowledge and raw mental power. Our raw mental processing power peaks in our early 20s. Up until the advent of good computer chess programs it was hard to get enough experience by your early 20s to compete with the best players, so the top players were in their 30s even though they weren’t quite as mentally quick as they once were. With the training that computers now enable, players can accumulate much more experience by the time they reach their mental peak, meaning their overall chess playing peak will move closer to their raw mental power peak.

From The Expert Mind

John Nunn, a British mathematician who is also a grandmaster, recently used a computer to help him compare the errors committed in all the games in two international tournaments, one held in 1911, the other in 1993. The modern players played far more accurately. Nunn then examined all the games of one player in 1911 who scored in the middle of the pack and concluded that his rating today would be no better than 2100, hundreds of points below the grandmaster level–“and that was on a good day and with a following wind.” The very best old-time masters were considerably stronger but still well below the level of today’s leaders.

Then again, Capablanca and his contemporaries had neither computers nor game databases. They had to work things out for themselves, as did Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and if they fall below today’s masters in technique, they tower above them in creative power. The same comparison can be made between Newton and the typical newly minted Ph.D. in physics.

Howard’s theory, and paper have been criticized. The authors make the following arguments:

A) The trend in Chess Howard describes, unlike the FE, is not linear and began in the 80s.

B) Data explicitly fails to show psychometric differences between elite and non-elite chess players.

C) Two trends in coaching better coincide with the rise: Books and computer software. Literature about chess in the household is a strong correlate of playing ability.

D) The authors show that there has been a rise in practice time. (perhaps due to the fact that incentives have risen in the form of greater prize money) And there has been a rise in “chess professionals” (people making chess their sole career path).

E) There has also been a rise in participation; the International Chess Federation has 30x as many people as it had in 1970.

F) Also the starting age in chess has dropped significantly. (the Mozart/Tiger Woods Effect in the fostering of excellence should not be discounted – although this contradicts Judith Rich Harris dogmatism)

I would add the following serious problem: The Flynn Effect does not represent a rise in g factor intelligence, the predictive component of IQ tests.