Blitz is Screwing Up Your Thought Process

Yesterday, I got a question from a friend who often comes to me for chess advice:

"I wanted to share with you a thinking vice I noticed. When I'm considering what to play, I often notice that my mind jumps from one consideration to another, often in the middle of a calculation, without a proper assessment of the line I was considering before. It goes on cycling like that in a loop. Is this due to weak calculation ability, or is it a cognitive/bad thinking process corrected with proper thinking methods?"

Of course, anyone who has read Kotov's Think Like a Grandmaster knows that this is precisely what Kotov talks about in the beginning of that book. Kotov describes a player who jumps around from one candidate move to the next and finally settles on some other candidate move that he didn't even consider.

Kotov's advice is to pick a set of candidate moves and calculate each one to the end, never returning to the same candidate move twice. Now, many have pointed out that Kotov's advice is unrealistic, if not bad, because often you discover things when analyzing one candidate move that can be applied to a different branch. However, Kotov is getting at something; players tend to flit around from one idea to another and fail to analyze one idea to its conclusion. Kotov's advice addresses that problem. However, he doesn't get to the root of the problem to explain why human nature makes it so hard for us to concentrate.

In my opinion, the difficulty stems from a lack of confidence. It takes commitment to embark on a deep line of calculation, and you're never sure if that line will prove correct, so it's easier to avoid calculating and move on to a different candidate move.

Here's an example I came across on a recent Reddit post. Someone posted the following position:

Someone commented "...sac the queen, ah aha sac the queen, aha aha sac the queen oh omg omg." In other words, panic.

But why? The position isn't that hard, because all of Black's moves are essentially forced. As long as you notice the idea of double check after 1.Qxg7+ Kxg7 2.Be5+, calculating the rest should be easy. The difficulty of this puzzle should be finding the idea of the queen sacrifice and the double check, not calculating it through to the end. However, from the comments, it was apparent that people found the sacrifice easily enough, but didn't know what to do after. But it's easy enough. Just look for checks. After 2.Be5+, Black only has one move. In fact, after every single check, Black has only one move.

So why were people finding this difficult? It seems that what made them panic was the fact that after 2.Kh6, White has the choice between several checks: 2...Bh6+, 2...Bf4+, and 2...Rh1+. In fact, all three lead to mate, but 2...Bh6+ is the fastest. But there's no way of knowing that unless you calculate. Well, why not just calculate each one of these moves and see if any of them lead to forced mate? In fact, if you find that one leads to a forced mate, you don't even have to bother calculating the others.

So why weren't people continuing the line after 2.Bg7+ (or one of the other two moves if they chose to start with those)? The simple fact that they ran into a fork in the road made them panic, because they were scared that if they went down one of these roads and it proved unsuccessful, they would have to backtrack and calculate the other option. It wasn't a lack of visualization skill or creativity. It was fear of failure. As soon as they were presented with a choice, they panicked.

I think that this problem is a result of playing too much Blitz and not playing enough Classical.

When you're on the clock, it's very hard to hunker down and commit to calculating a long line, even if it's completely forced. In Blitz (and even in Rapid), when you run into a branch in your variation tree, you can't afford to calculate one line to the end and risk it not working and having to backtrack and calculate a different line. Tactical skill is a matter of homing in on the right idea quickly, not holding multiple ideas in your head. If you are an intuitive player, that's great, but this style of play is not conducive to calculation.

Quickly homing in on the right idea isn't how "real" calculation is done in Classical games. If you don't play Classical regularly, you never learn how to hunker down and commit to a long, twenty-minute think. You'll get into the habit of always just avoiding calculating.

When you run into a choice, what happens in your subconscious is that before your mind goes down the path of calculating any of the choices, it first makes a quick assessment of whether it's worth committing to the effort. It's like standing at the entrance of a dark cave, not knowing how deep it goes. In a flash, your mind says, "Okay, I can start calculating this line, but I see that there will be a lot to work out. If I commit to going down this line of calculation, I might have to put in some serious effort for the next ten minutes, and it might not even lead to anything". So your mind says, "Nah! This isn't worth it. Let's just move on to an easier task". That's why you keep jumping around from one candidate move to the next.

When you play Classical, you break this fear, and train your mind to say, "Okay, this might take a few minutes, but let's focus, because I know I can calculate this to the end. Yes, it will take ten minutes, but there's plenty of time on the clock. I'm ready to enter this cave."

If you are always playing Blitz or Rapid and never Classical, you train your mind to avoid calculation. When you reach such junctures, your mind quickly makes the decision that there's no way you can go down an uncertain path, because the clock is ticking. Just move on to something else. Doing this again and again reinforces this way of thinking.

It goes further than that. Blitz not only trains you not to analyze, but it also messes with your ability to accurately evaluate positions. You train your mind to associate complex positions with bad positions. In Blitz, when you analyze a move and see that it hits a critical position with choices to analyze, you are forced to avoid that move, because there's no time to calculate. You train your mind to think: if I hit a position that requires deep calculation to verify if it's good, that's not a position worth going after... You're reinforcing to your mind that a position that requires commitment to calculate is equivalent to "bad". That screws with your evaluation function.

Many beginners and intermediate players struggle with calculation. They know that they often make blunders that are beneath them, but don't understand why. Often, they think that the solution is to train intuition, perhaps by memorizing patterns, or by creating a calculation checklist (checks, captures, threats; blunder checks, etc.). But perhaps the problem is simply that they're playing too much Blitz and not enough Classical, and that is screwing with their thinking process.