What Stops You from Seeing the Best Move When It’s Right in Front of You?

This has surely happened to you: you’re playing an attacking game, you see a sacrifice, you get excited, and you get lost in endless calculations trying to prove that it works. Because you know it has to work. But... in reality, the sacrifice didn’t work at all, and all you did was waste time. Or even the game. You thought you were calculating, but in reality you were defending your first idea.

Now imagine a position with two possibilities: one is a natural, reasonable move; the other is better, but strange.
Question: why would even strong players get this wrong?

Contents

1. The experiment
2. Test yourself with some problems
3. What is happening?
4. How can you avoid the Einstellung Effect?
5. Geeky data
6. Bibliography

The experiment

In 1942, Abraham Luchins carried out an experiment in which he asked a group of volunteers to solve a series of problems (do you remember Die Hard with a Vengeance, when John and Zeus have to defuse a bomb by filling water jugs?):

For example, they had to imagine three empty jugs with capacities of 21, 127, and 3 units of liquid, respectively, and find a way to measure exactly 100 units by transferring water from one jug to another. Each jug could be filled and emptied as many times as they wanted, but whenever water was poured into one, it always had to be filled to the top.
The solution was not particularly complicated, but it did follow a specific procedure (I’m sure you could solve it easily ).

Then they were given a problem with a very simple two-step solution. However, that same problem could also be approached using the previous, longer method. What did they do? Many participants used the learned procedure instead of the simple solution.

Then something interesting happened.

They were given another problem that also had a two-step solution, but this time the learned method could no longer be applied. And then came the real surprise. Many participants failed to find the solution and came to believe that the problem had no solution at all.

And now you may be wondering... what does this have to do with chess, and how can it help me improve my game?

Let’s do an experiment right now. I’m going to show you 4 positions, and your task is to say which move is best in each one. At the end of the article you will be able to see the tables with the solutions; for now, just pay attention to whether you got them right or not. You have 3 minutes to decide.

Problem 1

Problem 2

Problem 3

Problem 4

Solutions (if you’re already curious)

If you got any of the positions wrong, it may not be because of a lack of calculation (or is it?). In fact, you probably saw a reasonable move... and convinced yourself that it was the best one. The problem is that a move that seems good enough, familiar, or logical can make you stop looking exactly where the best move is.

What is happening?

 When we face a problem, our brain tends to look for patterns in order to find the solution. These patterns are built from our knowledge and experience. And the more knowledge and experience we have in a field (for example, chess), the easier it becomes for our brain to find a solution. Very often, this way of reacting gives us a useful heuristic — a kind of shortcut. Once we have found an effective method for solving a certain kind of problem, it makes little sense to search for new solutions every time we meet a similar one. Sometimes, however, this shortcut can work against us: because we already have preconceived ideas about how the problem should be solved, we fail to notice that there may be better solutions.

This bias is known as the Einstellung Effect (from the German Einstellung, meaning “attitude” or “disposition”).

Studies carried out with chess players suggest that the first idea biases attention toward one part of the board and draws the eyes away from the optimal solution. This probably happened to you in those four problems. It is very tempting to start calculating sacrifices and small combinations.

So we get a kind of paradox: the more you know, the easier it becomes for a familiar idea to block you and make you overlook better ones. This is why beginners can sometimes find moves that stronger players fail to see. However, the Einstellung Effect is weakened again when experience gives you patterns for a huge number of different positions.

The studies can be summarized like this:

1. Experts notice the “trap” sooner.
2. The wrong solution literally captures visual attention. The eyes are drawn to the area where it looks as if the action will be.
3. If a move looks good, the brain tends to stop searching. It saves energy.
4. If the player is experienced enough, they will gradually widen their focus to different areas of the board and find the best move.
5. If you become obsessed with a move that looks good, it does not matter whether you are strong or weak — you can still get stuck in that false solution.
6. When the first idea is clearly a blunder, the brain is more willing to shift its attention to other parts of the board. (That is why in Problem 1 very few people found the best move. Ba7+ was still good, after all.)

And now you may be wondering... how do I fix this “bug” in my brain?

The first step is to understand when it appears. The Einstellung Effect is especially dangerous when you do not realize that what you are calculating is bad. So the first step is obvious: reduce calculation mistakes. If your first idea fails on calculation, there is nothing to save. So you need to do calculation exercises.

Once your calculation is good enough, it is important to fill your brain with different patterns that can help you find the most brilliant solution in new situations. More patterns make you more creative and help you think “outside the box.” To do this, you should work on tactics, strategy, annotated games, and analysis of your own games... the more patterns you see, the better.

Another important thing is to take some distance from the problem, and not let preconceived ideas or the flow of the game carry you away. You have to avoid letting the branches hide the forest. The more emotionally invested you are in an idea, the harder it is to abandon it. You have probably noticed this yourself: we tend to be more accurate and more creative when we are deciding for someone else rather than for ourselves. As the (spanish) saying goes: "with someone else’s gunpowder, anyone can fire".

I hope this blog has helped you understand what is sometimes happening in your mind, and how to deal with it. Now let’s move on to some explanations of the problems and some “geeky” data from the study.
   

Solutions:

Problem 1

In this position, the best move is Ng2. The next-best move, which is also winning, is Ba7+. Another good move is Nc2. Both knight moves take the play away from the area where all the action seems to be happening, which makes them hard to spot. They are not “intuitive.” Both knight moves were found by the experts, but not by the novices. On the other hand, and quite surprisingly, Ba7+ was the most frequently chosen move by both experts and novices. However, sooner or later that knight on e3 will have to move. Very hard to see, even for experts! According to the study, this was the most difficult problem.

In this position, the experts who chose Ba7+ behaved just like the novices in terms of where they looked.

Interestingly, one expert thought Ba7+ led to mate. One novice flatly stated that Ba7+ was mate.

Problem 2

Here, Na3!! is by far the best move. Rf3, Ne1, and Rf4 are also good. All the best moves are outside the framed area, and the experts found them. Of those moves, the only one chosen by the novices was Na3; they preferred much weaker moves such as Nd5, f7, or Qg7+ (moves that are either inside the critical area, or very close to it).

The marked area is the one that draws the players’ attention.

 
Problem 3

This is the simplest one. h4 is under attack and must be defended. There is no need to force combinations on the queenside. It makes no sense to allow Qxh4, since the queen would then come to f2 either to defend its king or to attack White’s king. In this case, most of the experts found the move, although some chose c4 or Nd6 instead. The novices, on the other hand, scattered their choices among many of the ten “best” moves, including several losing ones such as Qa7+ (?????).

A good alternative is b3, but it complicates the game unnecessarily.

 
Problem 4

This time the solution is simple, but it requires spending a while looking at the framed area, because it really feels as though something should be happening there... Once the combinations are ruled out, the idea of Rb3 appears, with the simple threat of taking on b7. There is also the idea of Rd1, heading for h1. Both are immediately winning. According to the study, this was the easiest problem.

The marked area is the one that draws the players’ attention.

Geeky data

The moves marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones suggested by experience — the study’s “trap” moves.

The evaluation of the moves was carried out by masters who were not involved in the study.

Bibliography

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstellung_effect
The study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3790829/

Translated from my original Spanish version with ChatGPT: https://www.chess.com/es/blog/damafe/que-te-impide-ver-la-mejor-jugada-cuando-esta-delante-de-ti