Deliberate practice is easy to define, and there are methods for training many hard-skills, but game sense is about as fuzzy as it gets for a soft skill. Despite that, we've all seen it happen. Certain players have an almost uncanny sense of timing, of know what their opponents are doing without scouting ot, etc.
Before I continue, Definitions I'm using:
* Deliberate practice: improving on a skill in a way that both isolates it and gives clear feedback
* Gamesense: the ability to determine from incomplete information both the current game state and the space of probable future and likely game states to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
It seems to me that part of it can be attributed to a combination of experience and game knowledge. E.g., if you present a player with a given problem, they typically only have a few solutions available. It's also possible to lead players into behavior (e.g. creating openings that are no such thing, by deliberately failing to counter something so that they invest further in it making later counters more effective, etc.) This would especially apply as you slow down to consider the game more.
However I find this an insufficient answer. Even if it's correct, not being able to deliberately develop the skill becomes a problem.
One thing I think
isn't helpful is predictions in spec games, because for your predictions to be be correct, you have to blindly predict both sides without the ability to have game impact. Without this, your guess is just lucky, and there will be no clear feedback as to if that call was correct or luck.
I would appreciate the thoughts of others on this.
