Sunday 27 March 2016

A small contribution to Science

My attention was drawn by Angus French to this online endgame quiz, created by Berenike Waubert de Puiseau, Dipl.-Psych and Professor Dr Jochen Musch at the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf. So now I'll draw your attention to it in turn.


Some of it is easy, some of it you'll likely have seen before, some of it is a bit harder. (I found it so, anyway, scoring a little less than I was comfortable with.)


At the end you give your Elo rating, if you have one, and a few other details - they explain briefly the purpose of the survey, and you even get the answers to the questions.


So give it a go: it's a long weekend and I'm sure you have half an hour spare to make a small contribution to Science.


And no closing the browser window prematurely when you think you've got too many wrong!

(Thanks also to Dr Chris Brooke, Oliver Rivers and Dr Vanda Wilcox.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I took part in this very worthy survey, scoring 33 out of 48.

As a recent disciple of De La Villa's "100 Endgames You Must Know" (one of the citations at the end of the survey), I was heartened that I recalled several of the themes outlined in the book and was generally strong on the Q v P on the 7th puzzles in particular!

The Bh7! theme I'll definitely file away.

Some of the pawn endings did have me thinking "OK, it's a puzzle, there must be something there" when OTB you might miss the "crucial moment" or not get an assessment right when liquidating to such a position.

David Fowler said...

Yes, thanks for sharing this - I've got a few positions to study up on now (37 out of 48). I'd seen Bh7 before in the bishop & wrong rook's pawn position, and still managed to get it wrong...