Path to expertise development

Most of our understanding of experts and how their memory works  is gained from study of chess players. 

Study of gifted chess players has shown that preparation plays a big role in their development. A good chess player has accumulated knowledge of 10000 plus past games and actual experience of playing thousands of games. 

Deliberate practice is key strategy used by chess players to develop their skills. They play everyday. They constantly recreate past games. They constantly practice. They study others games. 

Back in 1985, Benjamin Bloom, a professor of education at the University of Chicago, published a landmark book, Developing Talent in Young People, which examined the critical factors that contribute to talent. He took a deep retrospective look at the childhoods of 120 elite performers who had won international competitions or awards in fields ranging from music and the arts to mathematics and neurology. Surprisingly, Bloom’s work found no early indicators that could have predicted the virtuosos’ success. Subsequent research indicating that there is no correlation between IQ and expert performance in fields such as chess, music, sports, and medicine has borne out his findings. The only innate differences that turn out to be significant—and they matter primarily in sports—are height and body size.

So what does correlate with success? One thing emerges very clearly from Bloom’s work: All the superb performers he investigated had practiced intensively, had studied with devoted teachers, and had been supported enthusiastically by their families throughout their developing years. Later research building on Bloom’s pioneering study revealed that the amount and quality of practice were key factors in the level of expertise people achieved. 

Buliding on Bloom's work in 1993, a researcher named K. Anders Ericsson published a paper called “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” were he developed a general theoretical framework for the development of expertise by examining the development of expertise across a variety of different domains to see what commonalities arose. Most of our understanding of expertise development is based on this seminal study. 

This kind of deliberate practice results in development of ability to think in chunks. Studies show chess players can look at a board and remember large number of moves compared to novice. Not only that they can work out several more moves and anticipate moves compared to novice. 

While to play chess innate talent is needed, the deliberate practice builds the skill several fold.

The momentum burst setup is a purely pattern based play. Under certain circumstances stocks make a sharp 3 to 5 days move. By deliberately studying several thousands of the past setups we are trying to develop expertise in identifying good setup in real time.

If you study thousands of these setups you will find not all lead to explosive moves , but if certain underlying conditions are present like nature of pre b/o consolidation and low volatility prior to breakout , then it leads to explosive moves.

Most of you after reading about the setup and looking at few of them, intellectually believe that yes a setup like this exists. The challenge really is to put an effort and do deliberate practice to a level where you understand and internalise the setup like a chess grand master and play it in real time.

Challenging yourself to go through at least 100 to 1000 past setups like these depending on your work commitments is the path to expertise development. 

If you are genuinely motivated that should not be a problem. It takes an hour to go through 400 to 500 setup once you get a hang of it.