does memorizing master's games good???

does memorizing master's games good??

im currently reading logical chess move by move by irving chernev. After studing one game, i go through the game again and memorize it, now i have memorized 3. All games i know from move 1 to the end, can this improve my play??

im also studying simple chess by michael stean, i have memorized one game ( tal - bronstein ) in the outpost chapter, but all the moves made are not that clear for me ( except the moves about outpost ) because its not like logical chess move by move, which explains every single move...

so......any suggestion which i can learn 100% out of every game i studied??? i really worry i will forget whatever i have studied, if this so, its just like going through the book, without learning anything and thus cannot improve my play....

Absolutely not, unless you're planning on memorising millions of games.

Much better is to find at one key idea from the game which you will be able to use for a number of positions.

I believe memorizing games is helpful, although some of what Scottrf says is important: focus on the key idea or ideas in each game that you memorize. My chess blog has a few posts concerning my process of committing whole games to memory. See http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2012/03/memorizing-chess-games.html

Ziryab - thks!!

Scottrf  , ya LOL, you are absolutely correct, i also think of that problem too :P  

i have this " memorzing master's games idea" is because :
1) for me, its like pattern recognization which MIGHT occur in my game ( i hope so.........)

2) i read somewhere from internet ( not only once ) , that they say the grandmasters study all the great players' games like alekhine ( i THINK they probably memorize it too, because of their eidetic memory, which enables them to achieve GM level ), they also go through A LOT of games

3) some also state that the grandmasters memorize about 2000-3000 positions in their head, while kasparov can hold up to 10000 positions in his head

so all of these are MEMORIZE,MEMORIZE and MEMORIZE , does memorizing masters games help??? but im absolutely agree with what scottrf said...

This red herring concerning eidetic memory comes up every now and then. A cursory knowledge of the research is sufficient to set it to rest.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2972788/ 

Memorizing games may be useful for developing visualization skill, especially if you incorporate exercises such as figuring out where particular pieces are or which pieces attack or defend other pieces (like Fritz's Attack and Defence Training options) at different points in the game.  

It reminds me of a good story. At a tournament, some friends of the organizer are having dinner with Ivanchuk. One of them, a regular club player boasts himself of his newly acquired 3 million games database. Ivanchuk tells him that his personal database has only 10 000' games.

'- Only 10 000 ?' says the guy - 'I guess you must have carefully selected them.'

- Not at all, replies Ivanchuk - I just can't commit to memory any more games without forgetting one...'

There are model games in every opening system that are worth knowing, and give you great visibility into the ideas of the opening. Knowing those games won't hurt you. But memorizing random games won't. 

Hic, I've heard the same story with Bent Larsen as the protagonist!

One of the clearest differences between masters and weaker players is the huge number of critical positions the masters have memorized. Just about every GM has memorized every game they played, and most have memorized numerous complete games in the openings they play.

If you ask a GM about a position in the opening, they won't say that a move is book, they will usually be able to tell you what game it came from.

Lower rated players may say that memorizing games don't help. Higher rated players know a different truth.

Actualy GM Seirawan told that memorizing chess games is helpfull. Seirawan told that when he is still a developing player, he will memorize great chess games..

Recently I was reading about the value of memorizing grandmasters' games.

The author is a popular and successful chess coach, but for some reason his name eludes me at the moment. Maybe someone will recognize the "idea" and be able to fill in the gaps with the details.

So he was telling a story about a dinner with some former students from many years ago...

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To paraphrase, He assigned 100 of his students the task of,

"Memorize 20 games from grandmasters you like. From each game write down the central idea the game demonstrates. Try to find as many games of the 20 that each demonstrate a different fundamental concept and successful idea. For example, how to attack the castled king, etc."

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Here's the interesting part:

Of the 100 assigned, only 3 of his students memorized the 20 games.

Each of the 3 were now masters!

And another one who had memorized even more grandmasters' games became a master in less than two years and wasn't even an expert yet when he started.

So from reading it from a credible source, (successful chess coach of many years with results of creating masters) I gathered he may just be "onto something" there with the memorizing of grandmasters' games and taking the representative idea from each as a lesson to help improve chess understanding.

Although I have yet to do this exercise myself, as a diamond member, I have access to the masters' games database and am excited to get started. Maybe it could work for you and me too?

There is also the possiblity that the 3 students who did their work were much more serious about chess than their peers. The reason they reached master would more likely be the amount of effort they were putting into all of their chess study, not simply memorizing the master games.

Yes for sure. In hindsight, it's easy to say, "Yeah, that one thing there is what helped me achieve this."

But like you say, it's much more likely, that although it could have helped a little, (or not?!) their successful achievement of reaching master status was a cumulative effect of much more hard work and dedication over time than simply just memorizing and studying some games. 

However, I haven't reached anywhere near that rating yet, so for now, I can only take the advice of those who have.

I forgot on which website it was, but a player, he might have been an IM, wrote about a conference he went to where a GM giving a lecture challenged the lower players to memorize 30 grandmaster games if they ever hoped to become grandmasters themselves. In the end the few that did memorize the games ended up becoming grandmasters. I'm not sure if the story's credible. It won't lower your ability, so I think it's good to memorize games.

No. You would fry your brain. Just try to memorize a few good openings for black and white.

I think it is good..because when I memorize a game of morphy I won two game one by one in philidor defence.

Wow great....so many helpful informations and suggestions here.... 

so what should i do?? should i memorize...???  i really scared i waste my time and energy.....

so does memorizing games really help?? or just in the opening play?? cause im attracted by the ways the masters attack each weak position in Logical Chess Move by Move, and i want to learn them, but i dont know how @_@ , so i just simply memorize it , hoping the same type of position will occur in my game.......

HELP PLS~!!! any suggestion on how to really learn 100% out of one book??? 

You'd do better to review essential tactical motifs and positions illustrating common positional elements and their use.