This week’s guests on Perpetual Chess are the award-winning co-authors and tournament chess players, Dr. Christopher Chabris and Dr. Daniel Simons. Dr. Chabris, of course, is a cognitive scientist, USCF Master, chess dad, and frequent guest on Perpetual Chess. Dr. Simons is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois-Urbana and a tournament chess player in his own right. Their excellent new book, Nobody’s Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It is not exclusively about chess, but touches on the subject repeatedly,  and has many implications for our game. In our conversation, we talk about the book generally but also try to focus on “chess takeaways,” from the book material,  with a particular emphasis on the future of cheating in chess. Dr. Chabris has also been active on the tournament scene since we last spoke, so he shares a few fresh observations about chess improvement. I learned a lot both from the book and from our conversation, and I am confident that you will enjoy it. 

0:00- Thanks to our presenting chess education sponsors, Chessable.com. Check out Anish Giri’s new course Lifetime Repertoires: Giri’s 1. E4 Part 3.   You can also see a list of my recommended courses here:

You can check out some of my recommended courses here: https://go.chessable.com/perpetual-chess-podcast/ 

0:00- What is misunderstood about “Growth Mindset”? 

Mentioned: Chess Improvement, It's All in the Mindset, Episode 199 with Dr. Barry Hymer and GM Peter Wells 

7:00- What is replication and why is it important for scientific studies?

12:00- What is “desirable difficulty?” 

16:30- Dan and Chris discuss a famous chess study that they recreated on their own involving the ability of chess players of different levels to recall chess positions. Watch the video here:

Memory for chess positions (featuring grandmaster Patrick Wolff)

24:00- Are there any studies of chess players that Dan and Chris would like to see done? 

31:00- We have a  brief digression on how to deal with email scams, I was surprised by the advice given in Nobody’s Fool. 

35:00- What can we do about cheating in chess? 

Mentioned: FM Nate Solon’s article Beating Hikaru

https://zwischenzug.substack.com/p/beating-hikaru

More info on Apple Vision Pro:

https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/

48:00- Chris Chabris just played in two tournaments. What were his chess observations and conclusions? 

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