Calculation and Evaluation

how much do you think you can calculate and how much does a chess player rely on intuitive judgement and planning.

i know that in the end game calculation is most important and that in the middle game evaluation is more important.

this is the reason why i prefer end game over middlegame.

i can't calculate in the middle game AT ALL since the number of pieces is overwhelming. what should i do about this and how to rectify this?

The goal of the middlegame can be one of two things:

1 - a direct attack on the opponents king

2 - setup for the endgame

I found that once I developed a goal in the middlegame, I started to improve more naturally. If I can't move my pieces to good squares, I try to remove my opponent's pieces from their good squares. This is evaluation, like you mentioned.

One thing I've picked up is that top players move their knights around a lot, whereas I kept mine quite static. Another thing I have picked up is that if there is no obvious attack, getting my pieces as close to the enemy king as possible always ends well - provided that doesn't leave any gaping holes, of course.

A good way to assess your middlegame is to open up a couple of Karpov's games, get through the first 10-15 moves, and then ask, "What would I play?" Try to find similar positions in other master games and see what they played, then compare how the games flowed from there. The patterns will emerge quite quickly.

One point worth stressing is that good calculation almost invariably requires evaluation since very rarely the position can be calculated to the mate/draw. Therefore player has to cut the calculation short at some point and ask how the final position should be evaluated.Even computers at some point have to use their evaluation function although they can calculate millions of variations.

You certainly should be aiming to calculate variations in the middlegame. The fact that there's too much going on to calculate everything is no excuse for not trying. It's an important part - actually possibly the most important part - of chess skill to learn to recognize the crucial candidate moves and concentrate your calculation on them. This requires knowing typical positions and typical plans for them - here again good strategy and good tactics go hand in hand. Studying chess strategy and master games can help to improve this crucial skill.