Layered Analysis

@dboing said in #9:
> I write this because I believe there is originality of thinking in the approach, but I see some more work needed.

Layered Analysis is simply trying to break a game down into a sliced loaf of bread instead of a loaf of bread. Here are questions I get all the time, but sadly these questions are never asked together:

1. How do you analyze your games?
2. How do I benefit from going over my games?
3. Why is it important to go over the games of other people?
4. How do grandmasters always know the names, dates, city, year, and moves of various games?
5. Do I need a coach?

I have never had one person ask me all of these questions. But they are all related. Layered Analysis is a way for people who struggle with any of these questions to get some answers without hiring a coach. It is a simple approach anyone can understand an implement. Yes, a 400 rated player implementing this approach will not be as strong as an 1800 implementing this approach. But if both are putting in genuine effort to go over their game with a simple methodology, then both will improve.

And that is the point - Layered Analysis lowers the bar on what it takes to analyze a game, making it accessible to people of all ratings, and helps them build a healthy improvement habit. When people are asking questions 1 - 5 above, they are ACTUALLY asking for help with improvement. The answer to improvement is ALWAYS "Put in a lot of effort." So, the natural follow ups are "How much effort?" and "How do I put in effort?"

I think a lot of people do not understand HOW to put in effort. So, they need a guide. No matter if it is Layered Analysis, Silman's thinking process, Think Like A Grandmaster, or any other thinking method, eventually you will abandon it once you understand how to improve.

People need a starting place for improvement, and I find a lot of the advice out in the world is not distilled down enough for most people to understand or do. Layered Analysis attempts to lower the bar on what is needed to analyze a game so that you can build healthy habits.

Readers can be the judge on whether this succeeds or not. It has worked for me, and I spend a lot of time thinking about why people struggle to get to where I am, and then more effort to figure out how to help them get there.

So does Layered Analysis need more work? Probably. No thinking technique or analysis technique is perfect. But I do know it will lead to healthy improvement habits.

@RyanVelez said in #10:
> To answer your question more fully, I'd have to do a full write up with specific examples. Right now, I am giving you generalities that are still helpful.

That would be great, thanks for these general principles, too!

thanks I now understand better the context. Thanks for re-centering. I was more about theory and not just layering of famous whole game analysis.

But the context here is individual improver making a the best of available time and available resources accumulated so far. Giving a wide perspective, and not a rating dependent nested and sequential requirements list of all the parts that could be approached in parallel, but with different layers conditional, to specific chess things questions, to iterate through. so not all the many things are linearly dispersed through the one skeleton frame of the recorded moves, of the whole game from head to toe.

I think my own self aware 2 cents, just valid for myself, addition would be to chop also the whole game in not just phases, but ideas, themselves possibly of different levels. So my levels might be what i confused initially with your layering. but there might be some interaction. I understand better your layers. in the context above. it is already a strategy of approach in more parallel way the mountain of things to digest eventually. The common thing is to acknowledge more of the learning point of view and its known facts from current science of it. The myths of the infinite brain, hard to let go of it. (often comes with myths about the best of us, maybe).

The analysis slices be made more single arc stories one can chew in one sustained optimal learning session. I think it is a well studied thing, in psychology and education sciences, for example about the classroom or learning curves per material to learn and session duration, long time ago I though ti was 20 mins, to be followed by rest or change of target. constraints have made that in best case 50 min 10 min rest in schools. It might be old conceptions.

how is it for chess nowadays. coaching teaching. instructor rations. session durations. int he chess theory of learning, it we were to make them explicit? I am curious. this is off topic abit.

I had difficulty separating some of the layers. between tactical, calculatio, variation and sub variations, and cursiosity.

they seemed to be of some degrees of the same thing, not quite qualitative. Some would say perhaps subjective line where one ends and the other might start. or even overlapping catergories.

but it might be ignorance. yet a learner has ignorance as intiail condition. if i can speak that way.

“I had an opportunity to pin Nf6 via Bg5, but I played h3 instead.”

I see your callback to an earlier blog post!

Yes, I think in one of the examples I literally posted a link to it, too.

@dboing said in #14:
> I had difficulty separating some of the layers. between tactical, calculatio, variation and sub variations, and cursiosity.
>
> they seemed to be of some degrees of the same thing, not quite qualitative. Some would say perhaps subjective line where one ends and the other might start. or even overlapping catergories.
>
> but it might be ignorance. yet a learner has ignorance as intiail condition. if i can speak that way.

A layer is anything you wish to investigate. Anything you investigate can be broken down into layers, too, if you want. I avoided saying "Sublayers" because such classifications never end (ie: subsublayers, subsubsublayers, etc...)

But "Positional Chess Layer" can be a single layer to someone who understands positional chess well. To someone who understands it less well, they could have "Pawn Weaknesses," "Key Files / Diagonals / Ranks," Maneuvering," and "King Safety" all be individual layers. The Layered Analysis remains flexible in that the investigator, that is the "improver," has full ability to add or remove as many layers as they like.

Two people analyzing the same game using this system will not likely have perfect overlap in their analysis (but this is already true when you have 2 people analyze the same position through traditional means). However, both should hit on a lot of the same themes. The higher the rating, the more overlap there will be when an analysis is done by separate people. This is because higher level people will more easily hone in on the critical details. A professional quality analysis should not deviate to unnecessary details. For example, a game that explores the 4 Knights Game should not deviate to "And technically, white could have played Qh5 to attempt the 4-Move Checkmate."

Anyway, the flexibility offered with this system encourages people of differing levels to analyze their games. People with more knowledge will analyze better, which is still true without this system; however, weaker players and stronger players can still both follow these steps and produce an analysis that is beneficial for growth at their respective levels.

You are a genius like Copernicus. You have connected chess with astronomy! That is to state that we can play chess in the outer space!

@Ferdosco said in #18:
> You are a genius like Copernicus. You have connected chess with astronomy! That is to state that we can play chess in the outer space!

haha! With physics, too. I like teaching people how Space and Time are the same in chess because the more space you have, the more time you have to maneuver your pieces.

I hope you like the planet Lichessula!

We have the ' soul' of astronomy in Chile, Atacama Region. Please visit ALMA Chile Observatory - - - > www.almasite.alma.cl/ Alma is the equivalent of Soul (Spanish/English), that's okay but ALMA is an acronym for Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.
ALMA Gets a New Hearbeat (published 6 Feb 2024 in ALMA's site). This is a great news.
Greetings from SCL_Chile! ¡Saludos desde Santiago de Chile!