The Most Important Concept For All Beginners...

This topic is about good calculation habits, and Dan Heisman's concept of hope chess. The title says for beginners, but this is useful information for most players below 1600.

I had a private message asking me to explain this, and thought I'd go ahead and reproduce it here.

Also because after a lot of Googling, and reading Dan Heisman's articles and watching his video, I have to be honest and say he does a poor job of explaining such an important concept.

This topic is about developing good calculation habits, but full credit to Dan Heisman who recognized this, and popularized the concept as "hope chess." His original article is reproduced here:  https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/the-secret-of-real-chess-by-dan-heisman

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I regard this as the first big hurdle any new player has to overcome. It's what separates the beginners from everyone else. Dan Heisman says that no matter how much you learn and play,  you'll never be rated above 1600 without mastering this.

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So ok, we're talking about calculation habits, and this comes in two parts.

First you should try to answer the question "was my opponent's last move a mistake?" Here's an example. You're playing as Black and White's move is Be2

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This move is a mistake, and maybe you already know why, but it's important to know the type of moves black should look at to answer the question "was my opponent's move a mistake?"

You should look at:

1) Checks
2) Captures
3) Threats (like attacking an undefended piece)

If one move order of checks, captures, or threats doesn't win material, try calculating a different move order to see if you can win something that way.

In this case white's move Be2 was a mistake because black can capture.

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So the first thing is checking whether your opponent's last move was a mistake.

The second thing you should calculate is the same, but for your own move. Before you play your candidate move, imagine it as if it's been made on the board, and now find all of the opponent's checks, captures, and threats. This way you'll be sure your move isn't a mistake.

Here's an example

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Black is excited about an idea he sees. He wants to play Nb4 and then fork white's king and rook. Looking at the above diagram, can you figure out why Nb4 is a mistake?

Below we'll look at what black is imagining right now.

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This is the typical thought process of a new player, but it is incorrect because black didn't consider all of white's checks, captures, and threats. So let's look again.

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So this is actually a lot of work. After each of your opponent's moves, you have to look for all of your checks, captures, and threats to see if you can punish your opponent's move. If you can't punish it, then you must find a move you want to play, imagine your candidate move as if it's been made, and find all the checks, captures, and threats your opponent can play against it.

It's hard, but it gets easier with time, and eventually becomes enough of a habit that you don't have to spend much conscious energy on it... but this takes a lot of practice, and some people play and improve for many years without doing it for 100% of their moves in 100% of their games.

This can be trained by playing long games, obviously, but it's also very useful when solving tactical puzzles. In almost all tactical puzzles, all of your moves will be a check, capture, or threat of some kind.

And remember that a move can attack in 2 different ways. In the diagram below, when white plays Nc6, what are all the new squares this move attacks?

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A new player will only see all the new squares the knight attacks, but we have to also look at all the new squares the queen attacks. In fact the white queen is putting black in check and the knight is attacking the black queen. Because of this, there is no way to save the black queen.

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By playing long games and solving puzzles, you can develop good calculation habits and eliminate "hope chess" from your game. It takes quite a lot of practice before you can do it for nearly 100% of your moves and in 100% of your games, but by doing this your results will improve tremendously.

Very informative to new chess players. ! Thanks for taking the time to post this, I'm sure it will help many users.

Great explanation!

Thanks for this post/article.  Good read and very helpful!  Need more value-add posts like this and fewer 'be my friend'/'join my club' recruiting posts.

Thank you very much, this is really useful for beginner players! 

Thanks for all the positive feedback

(and thanks for pointing out the error, it's corrected now)

Superb post.

Interesting concept. Gonna try to get better at not relying on hope chess and getting tunnel visioned on a certain plan without considering all the opponent's moves. 

thank you for your help

Thank you!  This is very helpful.

Thank you. As a beginning player myself, this opened my eyes to common mistakes that I make.

Nice post

This is really helpful. I've started playing more and I find I am losing a lot and really putting myself behind early.

My Llamu is great.

I wanted to add to the thanks for such an excellent post. I don't mind at all that it bumps this thread

I have always thought of "Hope Chess" as a form of confirmation bias. In looking for reasons why a candidate move is good, confirmation bias leads us to only consider the opponent moves that make the move work. So I see the 3 responses that make a move great, and overlook the forced mate in 2 I have just created. Instead, we need to be scientific and actively try to prove that a candidate move is bad. Your strategy is perfect for that.

Also, if you had a blog with stuff like this, I would follow for sure.