![]() In order to remember eight pieces of information here, the only thing necessary is to remember that Red has not moved any pieces on his Left Flank. However, it would be helpful to immediately build your pattern base by quickly examining three of the most basic shapes. Obviously, the more games of Stratego you play, the better you will get at remembering various patterns, since you will have seen them before. Thus, the key to having a good board memory is to be good at chunking-the process of grouping the pieces into easy-to-remember shapes. The Blue pieces on a6, b6, a5, and b5 have obviously been moved-otherwise, they would not be where they are. It is also helpful for the players to note that they do not have to remember which enemy pieces that have wandered past the fourth or seventh ranks, respectively. Two of these shapes are rectangles (a very easy shape to remember), so only the constellation in the Center is “difficult.”Įven then, however, practically anyone could remember which pieces have moved. Looking at the board this way, there are only three pieces of information to remember: the cluster on the Left Flank, the cluster in the Center, and the cluster on the Right Flank. View the board again, this time in the following way: ![]() With chunking, however, it is easily possible to remember which pieces have moved. However, after a few additional pieces were moved (and the number of moved pieces rose to, say, twenty), someone pursuing this strategy for keeping track of the pieces would have an impossible task. This would result in thirteen pieces of information-which is difficult, but not entirely impossible to remember. Of course, it might be possible to remember only the individual pieces that have moved. This is far beyond the working memory capacity of most humans. If you simply tried to remember every single piece here and whether or not it had moved, you would be in trouble: there are thirty-six Red pieces on the board and thirty-six Blue pieces, so that would make for a total of seventy-two pieces of information. The pieces that have moved are marked here. For instance, consider the following position: In the same way, it is possible in Stratego to group pieces into different formations and thus to remember which ones have moved. This fits with what we believe today about the human working memory, namely, that it is able to hold between five and nine pieces of information at any one time (see “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” by George A. So instead of remembering where all thirty-two chess pieces were at any one time, the professional chess players only had to remember about five to seven “core” groups of pieces. Thus, de Groot established his theory of “chunking.” His idea was that chess players group pieces they see into “chunks” of information. When the pieces were scrambled in an entirely random fashion, the strong chess players did no better than the weaker ones in reconstructing the positions from memory. However, there was one caveat: the chess positions being committed to memory had to be one from real games (or at least “normal-looking” positions), not random ones. How is a player supposed to remember all this?Īdrianus Dingeman de Groot (1914-2006) was a Dutch psychologist and chess master, and his studies on chess players-conducted in the 40s, 50s, and 60s-showed that a master chess player is-Īble to reconstruct from memory an entire chess position he has seen for the very first time in just a matter of seconds, whereas an amateur player is entirely incapable of doing so. It is also important to remember which pieces you have moved, so that you have an understanding of what your opponent knows.Įach player begins with forty pieces, so that makes for up to potentially eighty pieces of information. When playing Stratego, it is of the utmost importance that you remember every piece the opponent has moved, and the identities of your opponent’s pieces. Board memory is of the utmost importance to Stratego strategy, as we have seen in the previous chapters. Thanks to player HiltonChess's post on 's forum (and Chapter 9 of his book at )īoard memory is the ability to remember all moved and unmoved pieces on the board, as well as the identities of any pieces which have been discovered. The initial location of opponent's pieces (since this reveals info when neighboring pieces become known).One's pieces you have used to bluff your opponent.Opponent's pieces about which you have suspicions.One's own pieces that have moved or been revealed.Opponent's pieces that have been revealed.Memory is an important component of Stratego.
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