What methods are good to learn board/position memorizatio?

Hello, this is probably an old question to many of you who have played chess regularly through your childhood or those who have received professional coaching in chess. I also hope the same type of people could help me by suggesting what are some effective methods there are to learn not just tactics and theory but simple memorization of moves, and/or memorization of board positions. Do you use chunking and remember the board by quadrants? Do you use mnemonic shortcuts I color hints? Similarly if you wants to memorize a match you've played with someone, do you remember just where the pieces were moved , or do you specifcally recite lines of notation in you mind? Maybe you remember what sort of exercises your chess teacher gave you?

In my case I am just a chess hobbyist who has rediscovered chess over the last year at my age 30. I just want to become best I possibly can for my own enjoyment.

Thanks!

I think the key is understanding or having some involvement in a game or position.

I saw this documentary once about J. Polgar. They did this experiment. They had her sit at an outdoor cafe. A truck drove by with a complex position from an actual game. she had just a few seconds to look at it. She was able to set-up the position with no problem.

They then had a truck drive by with a randomly set-up position. She was unable to duplicate most of the position.

The idea is that it is the relationship of the pieces in the position or positions that helps us remember the position or game.

And, of course, this ability to understand a position or game comes with time and practice.

It was Susan Polgar

Maybe so. Obviously her memory is better than mine.

 It was called "My Brilliant Brain".

Yes,that's the one.

I watched it right after this other docu. where they had Susan Polgar and 4 or 5 other people in 'intelligent' professions.

In the docu., they gave the participants a series of tests to test how intelligent they were. 

Susan didn't do so well. I think she was 4th or 5th overall.

Trysts, are you Susan Polgar?

No, I'm in the documentary, "My Empty Head", where I try to cross a street and a truck hits me.

I love a happy ending.

The truck became famous and well-regarded.

There are some things you can do, which amount to memorizing the board and piece moves. Memorizing square colors, diagonals, squares a knight can move to, squares a knight can move to in two moves, and similar ideas. For instance, you need to know, without thinking, does a bishop on c2 attack g7 or h7? Without thinking, can a knight on e4 reach c7 in two moves? You get the idea.

Those kinds of "flash card" memorization drills can help, but probably what helps more than anything is just getting better at chess. The more higher level concepts you understand, the larger chunks you will remember. I have investigated most of what you mention (mnemonics, etc). While my failures with those methods does not mean someone else can't succeed, I came to the realization that all strong players can see the board and play blindfold games and follow chess book analysis without a board, but their visualization abilities are a side effect of them being strong chess players, not the other way around.

Personally I have given up on trying to improve visualization ability. I'm 33 and my mind is not getting any faster. I stick to correspondence chess where I can use an analysis board. And I play blitz while drinking.

Here's GM Patrick Wolff, author of the very good The Complete Idiot's guide to Chess, helping out on research into memory and the brain:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWuJqCwfjjc

It doesn't have any methods to use, but it is interesting to see how a pro does it.

This is the beauty of the algebraic notation. It is much easier to remember or memorize than English notation. Opening sequence including variation is easier to remember. Endgame positions are easy to remember by not visualizing the position of the pieces, remembering only W: Kg2, Rh1, h3, g3, f2, B: Kg7, h7, g6, Rb8... My example is bad ☺

Simple alpha numeric characters text are essier to rememember thsn imsges and videos.

Pretty much everything said above is accurate in terms of how strong players (in addition to those with just plain old great memories) can recreate a position.

So how do [you] learn to do that?  Two things.

a) Play through a ton of games.  Your own, GM games, anything you can.  You can spend 3-4 minutes just flipping through moves in ChessBase if you like.  No need to analyze in depth at all, just play through the games.  In fact, since the idea is to simply see as many games as possible it's a bad idea to analyze in depth.  This will help you build up your chunking skills since you will see certain chunks over and over again.

b) Of course you also have to practice what you are learning, so every few days grab a book or magazine, open to a random page and glance at a diagram.  Give yourself a minute or two to look at it.  Set the book down and set up the position on a board.  Then compare.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself and the truth is that as I've gotten stronger I've gotten better at setting up positions.  Part of getting stronger is better pattern recognition, which is (obviously) a huge part of chunking.

The other massive benefit to the first step above is that this is one of IM Silman's preferred methods of getting stronger.  To flip through tens of thousands of games.  His reasoning is solid.  You will see tactics so this will help with your tactical vision.  You will see how to play various pawn structures.  You will see positional ideas and strategic themes.  You won't even know that they're sinking in but they are!