The Thinking Process of a Grandmaster

Hi everyone, so I've seen lots of videos,movies, software, and Chess courses and have noticed they all say the same thing. A GrandMaster knows what questions to ask himself when presented with a position. They have "Mastered" the application of their chess understanding. So I always wonder the same thing and get no answer. What are those Questions!? What are the so called Mastered Questions that can help them understand and see all of the ideas of the board. Thanks for those who reply. 

Aloha, BlooTooth!  I have wondered about that, too, and, I think I have come up with a few questions that they ask themselves: 1. Is my King safe?  Can I make a move that would make him safer?  2.  Can I make a move that would take control of the center or strengthen it.  3.  Am I taking a good look at my opponent's last move?  Am I developing my pieces in a way that not only develops, but also finds the best square for each piece.  4.  Am I playing the whole board, or am I getting hung up in a small area, especially looking for a quick win?  5. Can I check my opponents King and win a piece?  6.  Am I getting greedy and taking a "poisoned pawn?   Hope these suggestions can help a little!

Thanks alot

Makes sense, I really wish someone would just make a book that gives some sort of lesson plan or study guide. It seems that Chess can be explored through many different ways, I just wonder which one has the best results.

well hey i usually play 15 min games but I have alot of free time in the day so I usually play 5 minutes games on my phone and then when I get home I play 15 min. Im now reading Silman's Endgame course then will later read Reassess your Chess. But theres so much Theory in Chess, Im looking for a study guide that best suits my Chess Personality. Reading book after book until I find a System.

There are no magic questions. Grandmasters know intuitively what are the relevant candidates in most positions because of their vast experience and pattern recognition skills. When necessary, they can make a choice by calculation and (superior) evaluation of end positions. 

It's a bit like you answering a common question in your native language : ie. you don't need to think long to answer : "who is the President of the United States ?", or "could you explain what 'having dinner' means ?" - However, if you were challenged to answer those same questons in another language you were taught in school (say French or German), you'd probably need to revert to some guidelines to help your thought process - same in chess.

For more information about these matters, have a look at GM Soltis' 'Studying chess made easy'.

Hi Bloo:

I just bought "What it takes to become a chess master" by Soltis. I started reading it and it is very interesting. Its divided into 8 chapters that one should master, or that make chess masters..well...masters! Maybe you should check it out.However, I don't know if this is the type of thing you should be focusing on right now or not. I like to read and study from books, so its what I do.

Getting to GM level is outrageously difficult and you need to take baby steps. Even getting to Master level requires an enormous amount of work and devotion. Maybe Phren or hice knows (?) of this book, and maybe its above your level...I don't know.

The other books I would get if I were you, even before the one above is Artur Yusupov's 9 book course. I read and studied the first 10 chapters of book one and I already notice a huge improvement. Its pretty much a tactics book that gives you an introduction to a topic, explains examples, then gives you a test at the end that gives you an idea of how much you understand.

But like Phren says playing long games and not blundering/dropping pieces will get you to a pretty high rating just by itself. I talked to so many people, including a few presidents of chess clubs. They say when you start out, the most important thing is tactics and not blundering.

Well i have somewhat of a plan, im focusing most of my chess time studying the Endgame. I like the logic in "If you cant handle 4 Pieces, how can you handle 16!" But I will most definitely consider your recommendation. Books are so much fun and IM Phren is a Beast!

Hey I want to become a top lawyer. How is the thinking process of a top lawyer?

1. Go to school

2. Go to high school

3. Go to college etc, etc. You don't become a lawyer just by thinking like a lawyer.

First get to 1500, them to 1800, then 2000 and so on. Step by step.

As far as I know, it's not just a matter of thinking; the amount of information they have stored in their heads makes most of the difference. Why was Fischer much better at 32 than at 15? Probably the thinking process was roughly the same, but he had much more info stored, and experience is also part of this information.

Well, Im 16 my goal isnt to get to GrandMaster Status in a year. Thats impractical, I want to get there in say 10-12 years, I want the Title GrandMaster to be one of my Life Achievements.

I think this is a really difficult question to answer. I like the analogy with learning how to drive. At first everything is new, makes you nervous, you over/under-compensate for small turns....wreck more often. Then after a while (long work...driving a lot)...it just comes natural. Its just like how we drive to work in the morning...Its automatic..you dont think about it the entire trip.

Carlsen was asked something along these lines in that 60 minutes interview. He said he couldn't explain it...it just comes naturally.....After 10 years and tens of hundreds of hours of play and study.

I think Phren is right the more and more I play. I think that my goal of becomming a master is going to be hard, but its very possible. I'm not aiming for GM because, like he said, thats when you turn professional and it becomes your profession, hobby...your life. It requires too much time.

Can you imagine working 8 hrs, then coming home, working another 8-10 hrs. Getting 4 h sleep a night. You have to eat and support your family after all....its just not practical.

BTW...here's an interesting Q. Think about how many people play chess in the world...now think about this..Who was the oldest person to become GM, and how many more were within a few years of him.

Check this out..its in my Oldest in chess post:

"The oldest person to become a grandmaster may be Janis Klvans (1933- ). He became GM in 1997 at the age of 62 after he won the senior world championship. His title was an automatic result of his championship."

Does that mean the "prize" was the title of GM?

Actually...this doesn't really matter much. Only the statistics would tell us anything.

Well, Im no newbie. I don't have a real Rating yet, I just started. Online Rating isn't accurate. I just placed first in a tournament against some 1200-1300. But Ive played 2000 rated people in OTB and have almost won. They've said Im at least a 1600. I already dedicate 6 hours of my time to Chess Study(Not counting the free time I have in my day). Money and Transportation isn't a problem, I have the Passion for Chess. Im going to take it one step at a time.

There was a study in Chess Life about young GM's and what they had to do to get to were they were. The result was the hours, money, time spent was close to at least a masters degree in college, to me its easier to get a degree than a GM title.

I have recently started asking myself 

1. What is the central structure? (Fixed, Mobile, open, closed, Dynamic) 

2. Who has more space and where?

3. Weak pawns?

4. Holes to put pieces on?

5. Open files diagonals and ranks ? do they hit targets?

6. Any poorly placed pieces? I.e a weak king, exposed queen or a piece superiority that makes my opponents pieces look innefectual. 

I just started this a few weeks ago but my slow chess has improved markedly. It is loosly based on play like a GM 

There's a classic study by Adriaan D. de Groot, Thought and Choice in Chess, that looks at the thinking processes of players (including 5 GMs). Among his conclusions? Grandmasters don't think any differently than untitled, weak amateur players. The difference is that GMs see things faster, mainly because of their vast experience and knowledge of chess.

This wasn't one of de Groot's conclusions. He did conclude that GMs have memorized more positions, but he considered that to be "thinking differently" than others. It wasn't just a matter of experience though, it was also the method of recall which he argued was more efficient than amateur players' recall. He also pointed out that Grandmasters evaluate positions differently than amateurs do. This is clearly a difference in the thinking process.

If you are interested, Dan Heisman wrote an article summarizing de Groot's findings here:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman29.pdf

Here's another description of de Groot's work, as published in an obituary by Chessbase:

De Groot drew attention to the role of memory and visual perception in these processes, and to how strong players, especially grandmasters, used experience with past positions to expediate the processes listed above.

Drawing on earlier studies (by Djakow, Petrowski and Rudik in the 20s) de Groot also exposed subjects very briefly, for 3-4 seconds, to positions taken from a game. He found that grandmasters and masters were able to recall the location of 93% of the pieces, while the experts remembered 72% and the class players merely 51%.

...

SOURCE: http://en.chessbase.com/home/TabId/211/PostId/4003290

I hate to disgaree with someone named SmyslovFan, being a huge one myself. ;) But I must. I've read de Groot's book. The part I'm quoting from is de Groot's answer to his own question: since the striking difference in class between masters and expert-level and lower-level players "is not rooted in tangible, quantitatively computable properties of the actual thought process, on what is it based?" He answers:

"On the fast and efficient problem formation and -specialization which derives from the (grand)master's 'experience'. He immediately knows what it is all about, in which direction he must search; he immediately 'sees' the core of the problem in the position, whereas the expert player finds it with difficulty - or misses it completely...."

This is an interesting point. In the 1970s, people tried to make (what we now call) chess engines perform in the same way that GMs did. Botvinnik himself pushed this method. It failed miserably. They just couldn't formalize how GMs do this naturally, so that a computer could. People eventually turned to brute force computation, since that's what computers are far better at than humans. Thus our chess engines today. Anyway, continuing with de Groot:

"The master does not necessarily calculate deeper, but the variations that he does calculate are much more to the point; he sizes up positions more easily and, especially, more accurately. Of course, other differences must not be minimized. If need be, it is certainly easier for the master to calculate to a depth of five, six, or seven moves, to analyze a certain situation, systematically to work out an intricate plan, or even to digest multibranched networks of variations. All of the methods and operations founds in ordinary thought processes of seasoned players must be assumed to run more smoothly and easily in the master, to be on a much higher level, and to have a larger scope -- but these are all differences of degree which cannot possibly explain the large difference in performance. The visible formal characteristics (variables, statistics) of the working thought process cannot reflect what is basic to mastership, namely, the system of experiential linkings that has been built up over the years." (My emphasis.)

A bit further: "The gist of [de Groot's] argument [about what constitutes chess mastership] is that a chess position, and, a fortiori, an entire game are typical to the master. A chess position is easily recognized as one belonging to a certain class, that can be handled in a certain specific way. It is the presence of a largely implicit, differentiated system of classification principles - with corresponding experiential linkings...." (Second emphases mine, first original.)

De Groot thus goes on to agree with previous Russian investigators that "chess memory is equivalent to a specifically developed professional memory in other fields and that it is based on 'nothing more than' routine and experience."

But!

"[T]his 'experience' is not the obvious, not the ordinary thing that can be taken for granted, but precisely the most fundamental and distinguishing hallmark of the master. The very fact that he has managed to build up such an extensive and finely differentiated system of fecund experience, that he has become so extraordinarily skilled, is the pristine proof for his 'masterly' disposition."

In summary, then, it's the experience of the master that makes him or her a master. But then how do young children and teenagers become masters? They aren't masters from the beginning. They've been intensively playing and training from a young age, more than likely. And children have an enormous capacity to learn, especially when what they're learning is based on repetitions of patterns (see children learning different languages with relative ease, compared to adults).

As to your quote about remembering the pieces on the board, de Groot gives a fascinating diagram that a GM drew to illustrate what it is that he 'saw' when he was playing blindfold game. They don't remember the exact positions of all the pieces at all times. They remember the general orientation of the pieces and what amounts to lines of force radiating out of the pieces (where 'lines of force' = movement potential of the pieces). I should copy the diagram and post it. It's really interesting in itself for what it says about 'visualization.'

dmvdc, do you see that what you are describing as differences in memory is a difference in thinking?

De Groot's point about thought processes is that both amateurs and GMs calculate in similar manners. But they have different goals in mind (evaluations) and different abilities to memorize and recall key positions. 

Those are real differences in thinking.