Don't Calculate! Use The Force, Luke!

Yep. Part of something from Star Wars. Use the force, Luke.

In Natalia Pogonina's latest article, Make A Choice, she says that we can't be top chess players without intuition. What is it, really - this intuition?

http://www.chess.com/article/view/making-a-choice

I've heard IM David Pruess in his videos say something like, "this move doesn't feel right to me".

Where do feelings come into play in this cold, cruel, calculating world of chess? I thought that chess was a brain game, a thinking game.

Now, I have heard of women's intuition. Do men have it? 

Feel free to ponder these deep, morning mussings of mine, while I go about my day teaching elementary music students and work a little on tactics and calculation.

I feel that this topic will lead to something...no...that's not right...umm....hmm...thinking...processing...

Intuition in chess merely means an appreciation for the character of the position. If you take thousands of games played in an opening, put them in a database, then you can look at tendancies. You'll find that certain pieces tend to end up on certain squares, certain manouvers are common, certain tactics repeat over and over again. "Intuition" is just our brain telling us "Hey, I've recognize the move you're making as fitting a pattern I recognize." (Or not fitting if it's a move that is contrary to the norm).

Kasparov talks about some moves being the sort of move that someone aware of chess culture would not make. He's talking about the same sort of thing: awareness of positional demands based on the accumulation of years of exposure to similar positions.

 yes, men have it...it's called 'gut feeling', though.

you can't go on feelings. if someone hangs their queen, it might feel right to take it. but if that hanging queen is really a queen sac, then that 'feeling' can turn out to be a quick loss for you.

The OP is a music teacher, there is certainly a lot of intuition involved in music, and yes men have it, just as women have logic. 

Well said. I fear that...um...oops...that is a feeling...I think that Natalia is treading in dangerous waters with this notion of intuition in chess. How can you make a safe move on the board by feeling it in your gut?

As always, I went to Wiki for guidance.

"Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.[1] "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'."[2] Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify. For this reason, it has been the subject of study in psychology, as well as a topic of interest in the supernatural."

No reason? Looking inside? Contemplating? Beliefs that can't be justified? Interest in the supernatural?

This all sounds like a bunch of 60's hippie stuff. A time when in 1967, Timothy Leary spoke to 30,000 hippies at the Human Be-In gathering, about turn on, tune in, drop out. So, are we supposed to lose our minds in chess?

Interest in the supernatural, intuition and chess

This thing about interest in the supernatural and chess, does it have anything to do with Russian psychic Nina Kulagina's display of psychokinesis? Luke Skywalker, with the help of Yoda, did call on the force to move objects, like moving his spacecraft out of the water. I loved that scene, and being at an impressionable age, tried to focus my mind on moving things, to no avail. I guess I don't have intuition.

I have a hunch WGM Pogonina is correct.

Chess intuition = Subconscious pattern recognition

For many years ago when I was student, I had to answer in a examination hunderts of "multiple choice" questions. Very often I was not shure what´s the right answer, but I could solve it, because I had "the feeling" (or intuition) which answer is right and which is wrong.

Later I understand: It was not a "feeling" or "intuition", it was the knowledge. But a knowledge which you can´t use aktiv. Only passive. It means: Without studying you have no intuition.

The problem with all this talk of intuition is that it only works until you face somebody with better intuition (then yours tends to fall apart).

... or solid calculation skills.

 Intuition may also make it feel "not right" to take the hanging queen. Your brain may say "Wow, he hung his queen!" and your gut may say "Something's not right. Be very careful".

Just like WGM Pogonina says in her article. At any point in a game, you'll run out of theory and you'll have to do it on your own. You can't go calculating just any move and 2-3 moves your opponent could respond, you'll be out of time at move 15. So study lot's of GM games: you get a feeling what moves are common in what positions. That's what feeling in chess means; it's not some kind of magical force. It's a, possibly unconscious, knowledge about what moves are good in typical positions.

For example: many people play Nd5 with white in the najdorf at a point. Though not 100% calculated, it's still played because it leaves you with either a really good knight or a really annoying (passed) pawn. In this case the move Nd5 just feels good.

+1 

You nailed it. Back to tactics and checkmate studies for building pattern recognition, where after time and effort both my conscious and subconscious brain will just know the correct move.