a full decision-making process?

Hello,

This is a culmination of research I have done, and notes I have taken from different articles. I have attempted to present a thorough decision-making process for analyzing chess positions and how to decide which move to play.

Feedback is most welcome, and hoped for! Thank you. I apologize in advance for its length.

DECISION MAKING

-learn to consistently identify, analyze, evaluate, and differentiate candidate moves

-if a move is forced then play it (don’t spend too much time analyzing it)

-don’t think too much about moves in the opening (especially if you have prepared)

-design a decision-making process for organized thinking

General process:

1.       Positional evaluation

2.       Determine checks, threats, and captures

3.       Calculate the immediate checks, threats, captures

4.       Determine candidate moves

5.       Calculate, visualize, and assess

6.       Blunder check

7.       Move

If no immediate threat:

1.       Positional evaluation

2.       Determine a plan and create a to do list

3.       Determine candidate moves

4.       Calculate, visualize, and assess

5.       Blunder check

6.       Move

Positional Evaluation

1.       Look at material and consider the following:

passed pawns                   pawn islands                     connected pawns           

pawn majorities               isolated pawns                 doubled pawns

backward pawns              escape squares             control of files/ranks/diagonals

central control                  king safety                          outposts

initiative                             development                    roles of all pieces

2.       Look at tactical considerations:

forks                                      skewers                               battery

zwischenzug                      double check                     discovered attack

overloaded pieces          pins                                       guarded pieces

deflection                           interference                      double attacks

windmill                              decoy                                    blockade

x-ray                                      discovered checks           sacrifices

3.       Look for threats:

Tactics/forcing moves

If the threat is major, go on to calculation

Threatening moves that survive the initial list will go to the candidate move list

Ask yourself

How have things changed with your opponent’s last move?

What is the stage of the game?

What should I strive to do in this position?

Have I completed development?

Can I conduct an attack?

Where are my opponent’s weaknesses? How can I organize my pieces to attack those weaknesses?

Can I make immediate threats that will force my opponent into playing defensive moves?

What is my opponent trying to achieve? What are their threats and how serious are they?

                These questions gather information that you will use to identify candidate moves.

                The quality of this information will depend on your knowledge of chess strategy.

Determine a plan and create a to do list

Plans are strategic considerations (based on positional evaluation) that are used to generate candidate moves.

Do not play moves without conducting an analysis first.

1.       Make specific plans and think of moves to achieve them (candidate moves). (If they make threats, place more importance on them)

2.       If there are no serious threats, implement a plan (e.g. improve mobility, prevent castling, trade pieces, etc.)

3.       Every 3-10 moves (depending) make a list of things you want to accomplish. Create a list at critical moments, when the characteristics of the position change or may soon change, or when you have completed a task on your list

4.       If the resulting position is not possible, come up with new moves to reach your desired position

Determine candidate moves

Follow a certain thinking process, and do not analyze moves randomly.

Rely on knowledge and intuition to decide which moves (and responses) are worth deeper investigation.

Finding a suitable plan gives you the key to identify candidate moves (otherwise your candidate moves will be guesswork).

1.       After having calculated checks, threats, and captures, begin looking for candidate moves. Candidate moves should be in line with your strategic objectives, while still guarding against checks, threats, and captures.

2.       Prioritize candidate moves (biggest threats first)

3.       Analyze each one, beginning with the most likely candidate, while ruling out clearly bad ones

Consider attacking moves and forward moves first.

Candidate moves should improve the overall quality of your position and, ideally, restrict your opponent’s options.

4.       Calculate until the forcing moves quieten down

If your opponent has even one reply which you cannot meet, you will most likely have to abandon that candidate move

5.       Conduct a more thorough check of each move you have not ruled out. Stop at each move down the line and look for surprise tactics, etc. Identify new candidate moves that may have been missed.

Calculate, visualize, and assess

Good calculation comes from finding logical candidate moves

1.       Decide whether the position actually required calculating variations

2.       Select several possible moves (candidates), and begin calculating the most likely one

3.       Visualize after each reply down the line, while watching for unexpected in-between moves

4.       If they have a good reply to your moves, ask “what can I do to limit their reply?”

5.       Continue visualizing candidate moves and their responses and in-between moves to get a better overall picture (always consider your plan and strategy when calculating. Ask “how will my goals be affected by my moves?”

Blunder check

Look around to guard against traps, blunders, obvious captures, tactics etc. before making your move.

And each move takes what, a month or two?

Something like that, yeah.

Thanks for the tip. Would there be any reason to evaluate the position before determining checks, etc.? My thoughts were that evaluating the position beforehand would give you more ideas of how to respond to new immediate threats.

The concept of "weakness of the last move" can significantly speed up the process.

Thanks very much. Would you be able to expand on that? It sounds like I might have missed something.

I pretty much just assume that I'm making a crappy move, but that my opponent is an even bigger idiot. It usually works.

My decision making process goes something like this:

No immediate tactics...? Doesn't look like it.

Stare at board without really thinking about anything for a couple of minutes.

Move a piece.

Regret moving that piece.

I use the Analytical Method I learned from "Russian Chess Secrets Vol.2" and it works pretty good. What you have is good, but still needs a little work. Hopefully some IM/FM/GM will look at it and offer suggestions.

I got nothing to say except thanks for putting a big smile on my face this morning.  Very clever posts.

I think there is a fair amount of streamlining that can occur with successful results:

Materials. Die (from a pair of dice), Coin, Spinner with eight sections (optional), Randomized list of all pairs of integers between 1 and 8 inclusive.

1. Take out your handy-dandy die and do your magical throw and catch, read the number. This tells you what kind of piece to move (1. pawn, 2. rook, 3. knight, 4. bishop, 5. queen, 6. king). If it is impossible to move any of the kind indicated, decrease the number by one (if you have 1, go to 6) repeatedly until you get a mobile piece.

2. If there is a pair of mobile pieces, flip a coin (e.g. if you rolled a 3 in part 1 and you have two mobile knights, then heads: king's knight, tails: queen's knight).
You can construct a spinner or do (at most) three coin flips to make your pawn decisions.

3. You have a specific piece chosen. If it has exacly one legal move, do that. Otherwise, pull out your list of random pairs of integers between 1 and 8, choose a starting point and go through the list until you get a legal square for your piece to move to.

Please, provide any and all feedback.

There is one more system - not thinking too much, play a move that looks proper.Than, while opponent is still thinking, try to find any sense in the move you have played. Very much time saving system.

Here is my first game in my system (I played 1. e4 to prevent automatic abort).

This may interest some of you:

http://www.vikingskak.dk/RussellBlack/index.html

LOL.  Why can't I come across anyone rated that "high" who plays like that?  Or maybe he was just high ...

Throw in swearing and drinking beer and you pretty much have my evening all mapped out!

I have some proposals for the general process because  at first glance it doesn't seem a practical approach. Maybe my proposal is not the best but as for me it is a little more practical:

General Process:

1 Material evaluation

2 Positional evaluation

3 Determine your opponent checks, captures and threats

4 Determine candidate moves (checks, captures, threats)

5 Calculate the candidate moves starting with checks, captures and threats

6 Evaluate the final poition of all candidate moves

7 Blunder check

8 Move

I will check the other part of Your writing later.

that post should be pinned and act as a must read for every newcomer, a must read for every diamond and star wanna bees

I wanna bee!

Awwww