Calculating Ahead

One of the oldest strategies in chess is calculating ahead. Calculating ahead in its most basic form is predicting what your opponent will play in response to your move. Here is an example.

There's an unprotected pawn on f3, so should we play Qxf3? No, of course not! If we play Qxf3, they will play Nxc2+, forking our king and rook.

In blitz or bullet, you probably won't be able to calculate ahead that much, but in rapid, classical, and daily (correspondence) matches, you can do a lot. Try moves that seem bad, and see if they could actually turn out good. Sometimes you can find a brilliancy from what seems like a blunder! In the game in the thumbnail of this blog, Bobby Fischer calculated ahead to find a winning combination from a bishop sacrifice.

Try all the moves you can think of and see how they would work out!

Puzzles:

How can you checkmate?

A bit more advanced: How can you win material?

What happens if the queen takes on g6?

I hope you enjoyed this blog! Also, make sure to comment what you think.  Make sure to calculate ahead.