On a fundamental level, chess is all about trying to ‘outsmart’ the opponent.
Some will spend countless hours scouring through the latest opening courses, in search of novel ideas to surprise their unsuspecting enemies.
Others will try to absorb the strategies employed by the likes of Capablanca in the older classics, or maybe work their way through a difficult puzzle book.
These are all (to varying extents) ways in which players can try to get an upper-hand on their competition.
An Attempt To “Cheat The System”
Given the seemingly logical nature of chess — it is no surprise that there have been various attempts at trying to “crack the code” of the game, by means of various ‘thinking algorithms’.
These algorithms typically constitute a step-by-step process, that one can supposedly apply to any position, or a certain subset of positions (this is more realistic than the former) — ultimately guiding them towards the best/one of the best moves in a given position.
Given the complexity and difficulty of chess, it is very enticing to believe that if one were to just learn this simple algorithm, that they could see instant improvements from their very next game.
Unfortunately, any gain to be had from such superficial strategies is likely going to be short-lived (not to mention, time consuming), and is not a replacement for a proper, systematic study of the game.
Let’s dive in deeper.
The ‘Blunder Check’
If I had to guess, I would say the most commonly used type of algorithm is the blunder check — especially among more novice players.
I understand the appeal; that one could apply a few steps to their thinking process, and then instantly eliminate a large percentage of their blunders.
Unfortunately, I believe this is largely a fantasy.
At the novice level, in particular (the group for whom such blunder checks will be most appealing to), I believe blunders are often the symptom of:
Poor board vision (hanging pieces in “simple” ways), and
Not knowing a particular tactical pattern
(and perhaps also poor focus — but that’s something which is much easier to control)
These take time to build up, and cannot be instantaneously solved by “plugging in a formula” — like you would for a math equation.
Reflecting on my progression as a younger player (and also talking with friends/acquaintances of mine on the topic), there is this recurring story of how “one day I just stopped blundering”.
Not blundering (at least, in significant volumes) was merely a natural byproduct of the aforementioned traits being developed.
In a strange way, the player who is “trying really hard” to not blunder — is probably much more likely to blunder than the player who is able to do so, without any conscious effort.
However, it is often players of the latter category — who then proceed to give players of the former category, the good’ol blunder check algorithm — which they do not, and never have used themselves.
If you ask yourself “what is my opponent’s idea?”, do some basic calculations, and then still make a blunder — your issue is not (contrary to popular belief) that you did not have a 50-step anti-blunder checklist. It is again, most likely a result of a deficiency in board vision, or tactical recognition.
As difficult as it may be, you have to trust in the abilities of the human brain — that slowly but surely, the majority of “silly blunders” will get weeded out.
How Strong Players Think
While I’m not exactly qualified to speak on behalf of the very best, I am going to make the bold statement and say that regardless of whether someone is 1000, 2000, or 2500 — there isn’t actually a huge difference in the way they will approach any given position.
The 2500 will of course get to the heart of a position much quicker, and more accurately than the 1000 and 2000 rated players; but that is most certainly not because of some secret thinking method that they devised.
More or less, each player will look at a position, and then naturally start to come up with ideas — gradually narrowing down their filter to a move they deem to be best/good enough.
The big difference, though, is what happens when the player is just staring at the position, and “naturally” coming up with ideas.
One’s ability to come up with ideas, and calculate them over the board, can be thought of as (approximately) the sum of all the training/study inputs they’ve accumulated over their chess career.
Even if you gave a strong player one of these thinking algorithms, they likely would not help but be able to default back to using their intution for coming up with the majority of their ideas; and then later post-rationalizing the decisions through the lens of the algorithm.
How This Applies To Your Own Game
Ultimately, I am not saying that one should completely reject any sort of algorithmic template that can help inform the decisions one makes over the course of the chess game.
Things like “first look at checks, captures, threats”, for instance, can certainly help players who have literally zero framework for how to approach a position that requires calculation.
(I’ll be honest, though, I hadn’t even heard of this until I was already 1800 FIDE. At the time, I thought this was revolutionary advice.)
But, even then, it has its shortcomings. For example, if we take the following position:
Many of you would’ve immediately spotted the Greek’s Gift sacrifice with 1…Bxh2+!.
However, you probably didn’t even spend any time looking at other forcing options such as …dxc4, or …Bxc3 — but rather, your brain immediately recognized the familiar tactical idea.
Conversely, if one were not familiar with this idea, I have my doubts that “look at the checks, captures, and threats” would actually guide them towards playing the move. They might briefly consider it, but then would likely dismiss it as a nonsense idea, losing material.
One framework that helped myself a fair bit — were the ‘3 Questions’ from GM Preparation: Positional Play, where the renowned trainer GM Aagaard gives 3 guiding questions for finding strong moves in more quiet positions, with relatively few tactics1:
What is your worst placed piece?
What are your opponent’s intentions?
What are your opponent’s weaknesses?
Even some months after working through the book, I would still religously ask myself these questions — and had some success with it.
But again, it’s important to remember that these sort of templates merely exist to guide your attention to what is important in a position.
They are not some bible that has the answers to all your problems.
Chess can be counter-intuitive at times, and there are many scenarios in which the best move in a position is difficult to explain logically, and can only be justified through a concrete, cold-blooded analysis of the situation.
note the precise language ”relatively few tactics”. I had a friend whose student was talking about his worst placed piece — when his opponent had a simple threat of mate in 1. Survival always comes first…
Thank you for the the detailed post. The 'thinking system', 'thinking algorithm', 'thought process' etc are various terms that I came across these years which need to be used carefully. These steps are only guide to develop your chess intuition or chess vision. The volume (as in one of previous post) also matters a lot - no matter what type of algorithms we practice.