Consistency in chess and our thought process.

While I thought that simply playing by intuition was enough i have come to the realisation that its not.  Now intuition is key to develop kind of like a spider sense  but in order to be consistent one needs something else, something that will make us consistent. 

Now there has been a plethora of material written on the subject of planning in chess but the fact of the matter is that very often the battle is simply hand to hand fighting in which no amount  of planning can prepare one for, especially at beginner and intermediate levels and I suspect even higher up the chess mountain.

If the truth be told the essence of chess is based on threats and this realisation has led me to adopt an algorithm which I try to go through prior to every move.  It looks overly simplistic but i can tell you from practice that its very very difficult during a practical game of chess to employ at every turn.  Why this should be the case I cannot say but my hope is that eventually it will become habitual resulting in more consistent results.

It is based upon a safety first approach, this was necessary because i had the tendency and suspect many others too have the same problem of ignoring my opponents threats.  Here is my algorithm.

Does my opponent have any threats?
    Yes – can I ignore them?
        Yes – do I have any threats?
            Yes – can my opponent ignore them?
                No - visualise move, check for any threats – play move
                Yes - strengthen my position
        No – can I create a threat my next move
                Yes – visualise move and check for any threats – play move
                No – Strengthen position
    No? - neutralise the threat

Threats are defined as checks, captures or forcing/attacking moves.

I experimented against computer hard and computer medium to see what would happen and I am somewhat encouraged by the results.  In the last ten or so games I have only lost one.  This is quite amazing as before I adopted this system of thinking  i was losing perhaps eighty percent of my games to the computer.

Perhaps if it works for me it might also work for you?

I like it. I believe that in most chess literature, a threat is different from a check or a capture. You might consider expanding to differentiate between looking for checks, threats, and captures.

It would be perfect for a flowchart.

Shouldn't the first thing to check be whether you can win in one move or force a win in a few moves?

There is an order, checks because these are the most forcing, captures the next forcing and attacking moves the least forcing.

no because if I ask 'does my opponent have any threats' and I find that even if the answer is yes I will ascertain if 'i can ignore it 'because I have a greater threat and if the answer is yes then I will automatically find the most forcing continuation.  The idea of asking does my opponent have any threats first and foremost is to avoid overlooking factors which cause us to blunder for how many times do we think we have a promising attack only for it to fail because we have overlooked our opponents threats which may be stronger.

Makes sense. Of course, you don't want to just spite check. It has to do something useful. It may not always be the best move...but I'm sure most people know that.

yes its simply important to be aware of the possibilities, the most forcing lines, both for us and our opponent.

There are two books written on this topic. 'The Process of Decision Making in Chess' by Philip Ochman. Volumes 1 and 2.

For a lot of players this stuff is probably just common sense, but for those of us who sort of just wandered aimlessly at the chess board (like me) it was a huge breakthrough to read these books. It's not practical to go through the entire process OTB, but you can in correspondence games, and it's helpful to be aware of the process in OTB situations when you encounter a position that is either very complicated or just a position that you do not understand, it gives you a fighting chance to select a good move.

Actually I find that in blitz there is not enough time but in ten minute games with a little increment there is. All that we are attempting to do is streamline moves down to those which are the most forcing and like you say many players probably do this automatically but for us that dont i think simply mentally noting all the most forcing variations should not only help us avoid many needless mistakes but it helps us find candidate moves to consider.  Not only that it makes calculation easier as well because its just much easier to calculate forcing lines.

The problem that I see arising from this approach though is that it has no kind of overall strategic approach associated with it, its simply a kind of attack and defence approach.  This is interesting in itself because as we understand it, this is the way computers play chess as they have no real strategic understanding.  Then again we are human and not computers.  If we adopt this approach will we also not play rather haphazard chess, simply reacting and trying to create a counter reaction? Perhaps that's all chess really is? I dunno it throws up all kinds of questions in ones mind.

Yes, its not enough is it to simply think in terms of attack and defence.  There surely needs to be some kind of mechanism for a positional evaluation, but how to keep it simple? really simple? its difficult to say. 

Perhaps asking does this increase or decrease the mobility of my pieces?  Does it increase or decrease the mobility of my opponents pieces? after all a so called 'bad bishop' is 'bad' because it lacks mobility, or a rook ineffective because it has no open/half open files to operate upon. 

Yes, I think therfore a kind of reduction to simplicity is nesessary, like that of Capablanca whose games are noteworthy because of their simplicity. 

yes but please dont hold it against me.

Thats very kind of you to say so.  If you have any amateur games that you like or find interesting let me know and ill see if i can feature them.

LOL, 'stuff is free' and not a single youtube advertisment in sight! strategic planning, hmmm, i did do some, 'stuff', on pawn structures which is related to strategic planning and some stuff on IM Bangievs square strategy theory (which i still find very difficult to explain in clear terms, probably because i dont really understand it well enough myself) and some stuff on minor pieces, bishops v knights.

Magnus style looks very simple on the surface but try finding those moves yourself.  Its just not that easy.  He engages in schematic thinking which is very interesting.

I wrote about this thought process recently and use a similar list:

http://becomingachessmaster.com/2015/04/09/how-to-choose-a-chess-move/

yes i have read your blog many times and drawn much encouragement from it.

Love that algorithm, it is completely rational and similar to what i use for tactics training....my only trouble is when playing a game i tend to see ghost moves for my opponent and overvalue their threats, which causes me to react more often than not....still got a ways to go, but glad im on the right track

I dont think its working Ben, I am getting beat up way more than i win now from that silly computer, something is wrong. Huston we have a problem.