Board visualization: does it matter?

Check out the interesting article Training in chess: a scientific approach, where the authors give advice on the best way to train based on the psychological data (the primary author was a PhD student of deGroot). Thanks to Ray Cheng for bringing this article to my attention.

Following are some interesting snippets from the article:

Blindfold chess
We believe that playing blindfold chess is at best useless, and at worst harmful to one’s development. The ability of playing blindfold comes more as a side effect of having acquired a well organized and easily accessible knowledge base (Ericsson & Staszewski, 1989; Saariluoma, 1995). Practicing blindfold as such may be harmful when it interferes with other types of training.

Chess coaches [tempo...]
Although the necessity of having a coach is sometimes debated (e.g., Charness, Krampe, & Mayr, 1996), we believe that it is a key factor of success—most grandmasters had a coach at some point of their career. Finally, research in education has shown that students take more advantage of a private tutor than from a tutor shared in a classroom (Bloom, 1984; Cohen, Kulik, & Kulik). We believe that this is the case with chess as well.

Tactical training
Again, most chess trainers and teachers agree that practice and repetition are essential (e.g., Bönsch, 1987; Kotov, 1971). Traditional “quiz” books are quite useful, although we expect computer technology to greatly improve this part of chess teaching...It is probably best to start with positions ordered by themes, then to move to positions randomly ordered (as is fairly usual among the quiz books). [Italics added]

Opening study
[O]ne should focus on a limited number of types of positions and openings, and learn the various methods in these positions thoroughly. This focus is necessary due to the limited study time available and to the wealth of information to learn. As discussed below, this focus also facilitates access to the information through pattern recognition.

[W]ithin a restricted repertoire, the required repetition and the predictive value of generalizations is likely to lead to rules more usefully applicable to later games than the less specific and less predictive knowledge derived from multi-opening systems.

Chess scholars
[O]ne should avoid spending too much time on historical and anecdotal details. Although such information may be useful in indexing knowledge, it has several disadvantages. It can become an overwhelming mass of information, dangerously attractive but not useful for competition.

Calculation training
[T]raining depth of search per se is unlikely to yield good results. Rather, depth of search should be seen as a consequence of acquiring a large knowledge base, which, through chunking of moves and creation of templates, leads to a more selective and efficient search.

It is worth pointing out that, even for improving depth of search, it is more efficient to improve one’s knowledge base than one’s ability to look-ahead. Assuming a search with constant depth, we find that weak players (slow search speed and low knowledge) increase their depth of search more by increasing their knowledge than their search ability. Players with low search speed but with high knowledge (that is, high selectivity) actually search deeper than players with high search speed but with low knowledge. Although the assumption of constant depth of search is not quite plausible, this demonstration makes our point clear: selective search due to knowledge is more useful than sheer search speed. In addition, searching without knowledge has a high likelihood of missing a good opportunity (something well known by chess program designers), because even fast searchers can cover only a very small portion of the search space.

Studying the "classic" games
[O]ne word about studying classics. This clearly has advantages, as is often stressed in the literature. For example, ideas are easier to understand in these games than in contemporary games, because the quality of defense was lower and games were more centered around a single theme than is the case nowadays. Classical games were
also less obscured by many subtleties in the opening. However, there is the danger that, in addition to overloading LTM with anecdotal material, studying classics leads to the creation of schemata that will not be useful in practice, because the type of positions met in these games is unlikely to be seen again. This disadvantage is not fatal, however, and may be avoided by studying a judicious mixture of classical and modern games.