DSarkar, perhaps you are the right person to try to see your technique in action, and to make some sense of my jumbled in-game notes. :-)

I actually think a modification of this method can be good under certain circumstances, and probably not for absolute beginners, but more for middling players. The biggest thing is that it's impractical to list out every variation. On the other hand, listing out the top 5 moves (by no means is this a hard and fast number, how many moves it is will be determined by the position) for each player maybe 8 moves deep (again, not hard and fast number, must be determined by the position). Okay so even this is far too much (5 to the 16th is an incredibly large number), but you'll hopefully be able to find the most critical 20 or so lines. There probably won't be more lines than this, as either there will be threats which must be met (forcing lines), move order won't matter so much, or the differences between moves won't be all that significant, at least tactically. So you evaluate these lines and come up with what's best for you. Tihs is, in a way, what computers do. The difference is that computers can do what the OP suggests and just check everything, whereas people can't compute that fast. Therefore, an important skill for human players is figuring out what lines are the most critical. The best way to do this, once again, is to play games and analyse them afterwords, hopefully with some help on the analysis end for the positions where you're most confused.

I'm not sure why that's relevant, but yes, the analysis on this site leaves quite a bit lacking

Thank you for trying to help us beginners. But I must be one of the those lazy beginners. I don't really understand it~

But this isn't listing out every single variation, is it? it's a deep think but it's not every possible move. There are times for deep analysis but that doesn't make dsarkars method make sense because those are rare situations. It is completely unnecessary in such a vast majority of positions to do this every move in every game, correct?

Elubas: exactly. I think that using candidate moves is much more effective than using all moves.

But I think that most players don't even do this, even when they are putting in a lot of thought into a position. Am I wrong?

Brilliant moves, like the ones Kasparov or shirov make, still come from trying to find the needs of the position. They just find a very unique way to do just that but they do not need to nor do a method like this. It's just too time consuming. The better you are, the better you can make brilliant moves but they're hard to find even for GM's and an opportunity is few and far between. It's pretty hard to teach (!) because to find a brilliant move requires a very strong chess mind. You said this was for beginners right? Well it's not going to help a beginner to find a brilliant move because they don't even know what one is. So there could be some justifications for your method, but it needs to be modified quite a bit as Wandering Winder said. Then it could help you to search in deep positions but in ones that aren't deep it still doesn't seem necessary.

Well they should learn how to find the candidate moves which should happen by study. That's what that person needs to do. It's all about thinking about what achieves your goal tactically, positionally, or both. Then, if you can't find an obvious one, look for indirect ways to achieve the goal (which again requires study to find no matter what) and you may just make Kasparov proud. That should cover every move. You may think that you should look for a better move, but is it totally necessary to look for that !! move when you have an easy ! move that leads to a clear plus? Then it's no big deal if you missed the big move. I think I need to find an example of this.

Elubas, no offense, but it sounds like you're trying to make an excuse ahead of time to avoid work. The recommendation is to just try it a couple of games, and it's a good one. As dsarkar noted, most players here do not have a disciplined thought process, and this is one way of making it better. Some of the Dvoretsky/Yusupov books I have talk in passing about the tree of variations, and this addresses exactly that issue.

I don't even think that you're actually disagreeing. It's not that you can just start writing things down and stop thinking. Of course, coming up with candidate moves is a skill and must be developed. But organizing your thoughts around searching the tree of variations, and making sure you don't duplicate effort, is also a skill that must be devloped.

I've heard of this tree variation stuff before, and I think dsarkar has a good concept, but this is a very exaggerated version. I think it's better as a way to figure out what to do in sharp positions. In other words, when you think a deep think is called for but you should not be unnecessarily clogged by pointless variations and I think that's what will happen. There are so many positions when calcualtion isn't even called for, like when it's much better to create a plan and follow it. In that situation, trying to slowly eliminate moves without a clear goal in mind as opposed to tryng to follow a plan will in fact be a complete waste of time. The thinking process needs to be made more efficient but slowly cutting back on moves in critical and sharp positions would be more logical. Strong players tell you not to look for combinations every move but only when there are certain tactical chances like pins or for example if you had a lead in development to mate the king quickly perhaps with a sacrifice before he can catch up.

OK -- agreed. Good concept. I don't even think that ALL the moves should be put in, as you can see from the example I posted.

As I said above, I find what you call the "deep think" to be most useful when there are several competing moves which are roughly equal at first sight, for a couple of ply. Before you know it, there are 4-6 positions you're evaluating relative to each other. If you don't do it in a structured manner, you'll just pick one "for no good reason".

Yeah I think the "structured manner" is the key.  But I don't like the way it's being done here. It has flaws, but can probably be improved and that may be the way to find the very best move in tough positions. And I can spot those critical moments in a game where this could be helpful.

On games I really want to do well on, I might "do the tree" for the 2 or 3 moves I want to examine.  90% of moves can quickly be eliminated as mistakes, so you'd only do this for your key moves... and only the opponents' key moves too.    I would only do this to ensure that I don't miss a key line.

There is no way in hell I would recommend to a beginner to do this with every single move.  The resulting confusion would not be in any way helpful to them, as I think this topic clearly shows.  The sheer number of lines to examine will PREVENT the student from seeing key lines to deeper levels, which is what should happen.  Correct evaluation of postion comes with practice, not from a notepad.

Writing is not the idea.  Thinking and visualising the peices moving and seeing the positions in your mind is what chess is all about.  Try to mechanise it like as is suggested, takes the beginner away from this important facet of chess in preference for spending time on a notepad.  God help them when they get OTB!  And good luck in a Blitz tournament at the local chess club.

All you would need to do is get them to add a numeric value to all resulting positions of each line and at the end, choose the one with the best number and you will have successfully trained a person to be a really really really slow computer with bad positional evaluation.

This idea does have a benefit or two though:  It would train the beginner to at least look at every move, it would reveal to them the number of nodes you can get from a chess position, and it might help them not make really obvious blunders, but nothing more imo.

One more point.  The attraction of chess is in fun, play, and the beauty of combinations and attacks that make us all go "WOW" when we see them.   This takes all of that away and reduces it to a ridiculous amount of time spent on a notepad analysing completely ridiculous lines.  No thanks, I would have quit chess in year one if I thought I had to do this to be a half decent player.

But anyways doesn't everyone go through candidate moves? Don't most developing chess players use a candidate method anyways? So what's so unique about this (More long winded) method?

If you are referring to me, then I did suggest a better alternative, use your brain, not your notepad.  It's way faster.

Yes, it is prone to missing some moves.  We all do it.  No biggie there really.  With practice, you miss less and less though.  That is the only strength this notepad method has -- it won't miss a line.  It does effectively the same thing as a computer chess engine does... looks at every single move, building a tree and valuing each position.

But I would rather see this line to 12 moves, that line to 4 moves and examine interesting lines in the position than spend 4 hours on a notepad, robotically filling out a move tree.  My eyes would just glaze over and I would lose interest completely. 

Maybe that's just me though.

Mind you I am a programmer so I spend lots of time editing text and tbh, the last thing I want to do when I get to play some chess is to spend time stuffing around in a damned text editor.

Good luck to you if you can use this method... if you can be bothered using notepad for so long intead of actually seeing the move lines in your head... but I think you'd have to do this tree to like 10 moves out to get any clarity as to which line is best.  Now how many positions can a game of chess have with say 35 move possibilities each and 10 moves (20 ply).  How many?  More than I want to write down in a note pad.

I'm not attacking you dsarkar, and if you can use this method successfully, great for you!!   I am just pointing out the weaknesses of this method.  It's very computer-like in it's approach don't you think?

Do you think applying this approach would actually help your OTB game?  Do you play OTB?

I just get this mental picture of this person turning up for a tournament game with 20 notepads, 10 pencils and asks for timeouts between moves so they can write a million moves down.

In that case, I see this as a decent method, though I would still suggest limiting to several candidates, and perhaps extending it to other moves if you aren't liking where your analysis is going or see something new in the position.

I missed that too.  As long as people are aware this method should only be used to help you see the move combinations possible, but it can't go too deep or you end up with a million lines and still no idea which is best.

The main reason why I would never use this is because my focus has shifted from online chess to otb. I am trying to dodge any means other than seeing the moves.  Unfortunately I am not as diligent as I would like... I still use the analysis board, real boards and a very cut down version of this notepad method when I get stuck too.

"And no, I have mentioned umpteen times, it is NOT suitable for OTB or live - only for online CC." It is more important to improve at OTB chess. You have too many benefits in CC and doing that takes advantage of them to the extreme. OTB or live is when you have to do well under some pressure and calculate without using any references. I like CC, but I don't consider having a high rating there proves nearly as much as having a good OTB rating.

"And no, I do not use it for every move - only in complicated positions." Did you not just tell beginners to do this every move?! Now, it may take awhile in complex positions, but imagine a beginner, with his slow calculation, do that for every move like you said! You're just modifying your rules a bit which admittedly should be done. And Wandering Winder, even after making it only in complicated positions you can see the flaws. I think it has a good concept only and needs to be significantly tweaked. Looking at so many moves as a beginner really isn't going to help your chess in general. There is only the rare situation (usually in CC anyways) where it requires you to look at many candidates pretty deeply. Now, this should still take forever if you're considering too many moves EVEN with an analysis board, because there would be so many variations you may forget about them when you start analyzing the others, kind of like forgetting opening theory. But it would definitley be suited to that, but not ANYTHING else and even then it needs changes! Dsarkar, in that vote chess game I could imagine it was one of those moments. What did you do? Analyze every single move or cancel out moves? Isn't that similar to finding candidates but slower?

lol!

So your two points I guess are: 1. I'm judging by saying OTB is more important than correspondence. To prove true chess skill, you need to play well OTB. Because in CC, I will admit that the best strategy would be to use your method because you actually have the time (hours!) to use it. There are masters who play about as well as GM's in correspondence because they can easily work out all the key tactics with the analysis board so the trick a GM had for many moves probably would very rarely work. Of course, it's not like a 1200 could become 2000 at CC, because they would have all the time in the world to think but don't understand chess enough to make use of it, similar to how a beginner wouldn't know right move from wrong anyway. Your second point is that it is a way for a beginner to get a structured way of thinking without books. But without knowing anything about chess, do you think a beginner could make any use of calcualting almost endless variations (in CC too; can't get away with that in live controls)? I mean IM's like Silman are saying that you should make a plan before mindlessly calculating and what you do calcualte is based on your strategic goals and taking advantage of tactical themes of a position. Before you say that some people don't get books, then yes, this may be some way of improving... slightly. But books are so much better. I see it as a major "upgrade" from when a beginner doesn't have books and uses this method and then a few months later can afford them because this is by far the best way to go.

And I don't hate correspondence chess at all. I like it quite a bit. But i will use resources like the analysis board and so I won't claim to be a great player at all just because I have a 2100 chess.com rating, because I'm not. You may be suprised how hard it can be to use knowledge in a timed, tournament game. Your performance is significantly worse than all the stuff you learned that seemed so clear at the time until you improve how you actually play when it's time to play a game under some pressure. You also don't have to calculate so fast in cc where in live games if you don't you can't look at as many variations in general. So for these reasons, I personally don't find this necessary for me. You said it was for beginners, but now you're saying that it helps people like you too. I know that you want to help and that's good, but that doesn't mean you are automatically right. And don't complain about the criticism. Do you want people to lie and say you're absolutely right so you can look like a hero? I literally don't have the time to try it either.