⚡ Leftover Stories (Quick Lesson)

This is a quick conceptualization lesson from Aiden at Don't Move. Let's get straight into it. Hi, it's Aiden. This is the second of a series talking about the mistakes that we can make in our chests and sort of some of the cognitive stuff going on behind them as part of the quick lessons here. Today we're gonna look at leftover stories.

So these are a really interesting one that um I've had a lot of fun with in exercise creation. I've had a lot of fun with in my coaching. And it's really interesting to see these things happen because Once you understand where they're coming from and what they are, I suppose, uh, it all sort of makes a bit of sense in a really cool way. So leftover stories are where something has changed in the position, but we haven't updated our sense of the position.

What I mean is let's say your knight has been pinned to your king for uh a good chunk of the game. So long, in fact, that you've sort of stopped thinking about moving your knight ever. It's just there. And then during a calculation, you decide at some point I'm going to need to cut. So in your calculation to castle, and then slightly later in the calculation, there is an opportunity to do some stuff with the pawns in the center, but it doesn't work.

because you still think your knight is pinned. Or more correctly The idea of the knight getting involved in that action in the center simply doesn't occur to you. Because some part of your brain has still kind of labeled the night as pinned. This is quite an extreme example, but you can think of lots of situations, I imagine, in your games where this sort of like

a r small the something's changed the position and that realization hasn't sort of sunk in in a couple of areas. Um can can occur, the big one being pins, but there's plenty of other examples as well. What's happening here? Um

Is first off first off, it's got nothing to do with being silly or dumb or any of that kind of stuff. It's a perfectly normal brain thing that happens. To handle the ridiculous amount of information that is in a chess game, our brains will try and simplify. And they'll create stories, they'll create ideas that hold big chunks of information on a base level. When we s when someone's castled kingside.

Our brain is extra happy because we know what that is. We know what that looks like. We know how that operates. That's really quite easy for us to hold and manage. Likewise, uh, if your knight's been pinned for a while It there's a good chance that your brain is gonna simplify that out instead of burning cycles to check.

potential night moves all the time, your brain's gonna simplify things to make it a little bit easier for you. And it's gonna go, cool, the night's pinned forever. It's there. And what w how we experience that is we don't really consider moving the night. Uh,'cause it's it would be a silly thing to do while it's pinned. We can't do it while it's pinned. The trick though, the tricky part though is when these stories become no longer relevant, when they're no longer true.

But our brain keeps that same simplification in play. So when you castled in that calculation in the example, your knight is no longer pinned. But that's sort of a side effect of castling. It's not directly related to the king moving or the the rook moving. It's a side effect. So your brain can sometimes glance over these events. and not realize that our knight is free or that whatever else in the position is true.

Uh and this obviously causes missed opportunities, this causes uh mistakes, this causes us to think that things are defended when they're not, this causes us to think that we can't attack things that we can. And uh something that can be a real, real, real issue. But again, it comes back to how our brain is trying to help us manage the information of the position. The way we combat this.

Is to pay more attention with each move in a position, each move in a sequence. Uh on what's no longer true. So not only do we want to start looking at threats that are coming in with the position, look at stuff we need to be aware of, opportunities that are coming because of the move that's just happened. We also need to recognize the things that are no longer true because of the move that's just happened.

This is often uh heavily connected and with the idea of second order effects, which are the effects of the vacated square. So as an example, we pay far more attention to the pawn on E4 than we do the empty space on E2. If we train ourselves to put more attention on the empty space, then we can resolve some of these other issues of leftover stories as well. Bring it back to the pinned knight example.

Once we castle Kingside, we should point a little bit of our attention into what's different about this position because the king is no longer on E1. And in answer to that Is the knights no longer pinned? But if we never put that little bit of attention on the empty square on e1. We're much less likely to catch and retire that story that we have a pinned nut. And that can basically stick in our sense of the position far beyond its welcome uh and cause a lot of issues.

So be wary of leftover stories. Instead of only thinking about what's now true, we should also be pointing attention at what's no longer true. And put some extra attention on vacated squares. My favorite thing is. Ask yourself with each move or each time you consider moving a piece, what is one thing that is different about this position? Because that square is now empty.

That's a really, really, really good question to ask. It's not going to catch all of the leftover stories issues, but it will catch a lot of them. So start building up that habit. Be aware of retiring stories as they're no longer relevant. And when this sort of stuff happens, forgive yourself. It's your brain doing what it's designed to do. It's doing its best.

And uh the poor thing has not evolved to play this game. Uh, none of ours are. I'll be back next week to talk about ghost pieces, and until then, here's to the journey. I hope you found that useful. For more insights like this, check out don't move until you see dot it. Happy conceptualizing. Here's to the journey.