Contents:

5 Symbols
6 Acknowledgements
8 Bibliography

10 Extended Preface: The Map, but not the Territory

19 1 Thinking
23 Thinking about Thinking
23 The Problem of the Patterns
25 Introducing Intuition
34 Vision
36 Evaluating Value
40 Cultivating Intuition
44 The Trappings of Analogy
46 Confused about Confusion?
50 Humour and Hedonism
54 The Tao of Chess Thinking

56 2 Blinking
57 The Importance of Being Trendy
59 Transformations: Signs, Signals and Sensitivity
66 Resolving to be Resolute
74 Contradiction at the Heart of Chess?
81 Drums without Symbols

85 3 Wanting
89 What are You Playing For?
90 Go with Flow
91 Gumption
92 'Plus Equals Mode'
99 The Theory of Infinite Resistance
103 Putting the Ball in the Back of the Net

106 4 Materialism
109 Early Learning
110 What's the Point?
116 Exceptional Chess
123 Are We More Materialistic than Computers?
127 'Angst'
131 Blocks of Wood or Bundles of Energy? The E = mc² of Chess
135 The Four Dimensions of Chess

142 5 Egoism
144 Subjects and Objects
149 'Inter-Subjectivity'
153 Responsibility
156 Populist Prophylaxis
161 Other Faces of Egoism

163 6 Perfectionism
163 Moralizing
167 'Copy-Cat Crime'
169 Bread, Butter, and Jam
170 The Causes of Time-Trouble (and a few remedies)
174 Pragmatism
178 Confidence

183 7 Looseness
183 'Tension Transference' and 'Neural Hijackings'
187 A Quick Survival Guide to Time-Trouble
188 Drifting and 'Slippage'
193 Finding the Plot
197 'Echoes'
203 The Art of Concentration

205 Conclusion: The Author's Redemption

206 Index of Players
208 Index of Openings