calculating in chess


Some GM's say they only look a couple moves ahead, but that's misleading because the see a lot more in the positions than other players do.
Grandmasters have the advantage of seeing more tactical patterns than others and that often simplifies their calculating. They also know positional and strategic motifs better. In Keres' and Kotov;s The Art of the Middlegame, GM Kotov says in Chapter 2, "Strategy and Tactics of Attacks on the King" that when he was a boy playing chess after school, he quickly learned that when you castled on opposite sides that the game was won by whoever first could get in a Pawn Storm to break-up the opponent's King's defenses. There are surely hundreds of situations GM's know that the avg. player doesn't.

Think of a multiple choice test where you kind of knew the answer. You eliminated the nonsense quickly and carefully looked over the 2-3 most plausible choices. The more ignorant students, though, would need to try to make sense of even the garbage options. How does that help the rest of us in terms of how to study? It doesn’t. But it is fun to talk about.