How many moves are you capable of calculating in advance?

I calculate 5 moves in advance in a classical game which has 3 hours or more time... I believe that stronger players with higher ratings can calculate deeper...the game dosent have to necessarily go down that exact route...but I was curious...so I wanted to ask.... plz post your rating and the depth to which you calculate moves in advance... showoffs and people with nothing to share bur hatred and sarcasm...dont bother...

Depends on the position.

Calculating moves in advance i think, which i can be wrong, does not matter much for beginners, intermediate players like most of you are. They are simple too terrible to see best replies and their opponent often plays something different.

Amateurs thinks , title players must see 10-20+ moves deep or something. Most of the cases thats not truth. Maybe sometimes at pawn endings, which you have to see who queen first etc.  Chess is memory - Pattern recognition. If you are skilled and know a lot of stuff, you don't reall need to see more that few moves ahead. But the best ones.

I don't really see much far. In fact even at tactic trainer here, where you can calculate in your comfort at home, being calm etc. i don't see many moves ahead. Most of the time is just ~2-3 and i don't see every possible (sometimes good reply)

Three or two moves ahead is the average I calculate, but in some cases 5 moves ahead if those moves a forced. It really depends on the position, I would not bother calculating in some positions, but in tactical sequences 5 or 4 moves ahead seems ok.

Well, it depends on the position.  In general I can calculate a line through several moves, but the further I go, the more likely it is I'll miss a good move or a tactical shot. Especially zwischenzug stuff. Problem is mainly my laziness, rather than calculation, i.e. I won't bother to calculate, and then lose all my pieces lol. If I know I need to be calculating, I'm not terrible. This is probably why I've got so much higher in Tactics Trainer than in actual chess. 

I can calculate all the moves to checkmate... but my opponent rarely ever makes the moves that I need him to!

Seriously though... usually around 3-6 moves, on a forced line.

4 to 12 ply for normal positions.

Endgames are sometimes easy to see very very far. Even to the end of the game if it were necessary.

In difficult middlegames once I start getting close to 10 moves (20 ply) I seem to always discover I've made some kind of basic visualization mistake late in the calculation. Luckily in calculations this long, as the position approaches you usually have time to make adjustments.

I have a fairly easy time predicting how my opponent will move in OTB chess, but I can't visualize very far at all (thus I miss a lot of the more complicated tactical and strategical opportunities). The depth I can calculate is dependent on the position. In a complex middlegame I usually calculate around 5 ply deep (that's 2 1/2 moves), but in simple cut and dry endgame's I can see much farther ahead. A typical problem I have is when I am playing much higher rated competition I hallucinate and give in to their plans (I am afraid of non-existent threats and respond accordingly when the best idea in the position turned out to be an attacking idea that I had considered earlier).

Yeah, most skill levels calculate about the same depth for most positions.

Depth isn't nearly as useful as deciding which moves to calculate and which moves to ignore, and how accurate your evaluation of the position is.

If I played a GM I would almost certainly calculate more than them... which is why they're better than me

Totally depends on the position . If theres no contact between pieces and everything is protected u dont have to calculate anything  U can just make moves based on ur judment .On the other hand if theres contact between pieces and there r lots of options for captures and treaths u have to calculate till the position is quiet,  meaning there r no more checks , captures or threaths for u or ur oponent .And that can be up to 10 moves in some positions or more.

My goal is 4, however, I usually plan 1-3 moves ahead. Then my opponent rarely complies with my calculations, so then I'm back to 1.

But this should be very exausting... ^chessking. When i was 1000-1250.. i just.. saw nothing. I mean i barely could see 1-2 moves ahead - wrong ones and only few times for whole game and at the same time miss something on other side of the board. What i did is usually focus with 1-2 pieces holping i don't hang something.. But my opponent usually was the same as me so game continued like normal for that level.

read again thats basically what i said. But about you calculating 13 moves in standart chess and 5-7 in blitz ... Just no.

AIM - It is exhausting.

How deep do I look? Typically 2-4 moves, and I have serious trouble seeing more than five moves ahead in most positions. I visualize and calculate worse than any other master I know. My playing method is more about having a feel for where pieces need to go & finding a way to get them there.

From what I've read, grandmasters typically don't look at more variations than amateurs. They just look at the *right* variations. They are able to calculate deeply when they have to, but usually they don't have to.

It depends.  Sometimes you don't need to calculate 5 moves ahead.  Sometimes you wished you calculated more than just one move ahead :).  

The skill needed to be learned is the ability to discern what type of position calls for deep thought, and not thinking too fast.

I've posted this before but apparently some people didn't take psych 1A like I did in college.  Your brain can only process 5 to 9 "pieces" of information at a time.  What ever comes in excess just falls off.  People that can think 20 moves ahead, can only do it, simply because of memorized patterns, and relating the next move with the last one which essentially burns the information into long term memory sometimes...this is called "chunking".  So 20 moves really is about 5 to 9 moves to these Super GMs that can calculate 20 moves ahead, if they could... but it has been said that even they, can't.  It's not just about that though.  It's about remembering the sleeping bishop, the weak squares on d5 and c5, and sometimes many other things that are on the board.  You could theoretically get into a position that has so many things going on at one time that the beginner just simply cannot keep track of them all, because, in addition to calculating variations, they must remember all the problems on the board.  (remember you can only be thinking of about 5 to 9 different items at a given time)If the information is not chunked, like, you've never seen or even know what a bodens mate it and one occurs, you might be trying so hard just to find a way to break into the position that you forgot that your opponent had a mate in 4 but you previously saw it.  If the pattern of bodens mate was simply in your head, you wouldn't have to think much about it, and just do it, but before doing it you would make sure to defend the mate in 4, and it would be easier for you to do it, because you have more "space" in your head.  Get the idea?

There is no simple answer.

If there is only one legal reply to each move, it will obviously be easier.

If we rule out opponents' responses that are clearly suicidal, we might imagine a case where there are 3 reaonable responses to each move we make.

In that hypothetical case the number of possible board positions 5 moves further along is over 200

This is a silly question. I can calculate infinitely many moves ahead because I can simply visualize any position I like, like most chess players.

The problem is finding the right moves. WIthin just 4 ply there are tens of thousands of moves to check...

And it's not just being able to check the moves quickly either. My infinitely deep caculation doesn't help me when I fail to consider or overlook options my opponent had, or options I had.

And Gms can definitely calculate 20 moves ahead. Again, it's just a matter of checking the right moves. Any player that can play chess blindfolded simply has access to a mental chessboard where he can move the pieces around however he likes, so there is no mental block to calculation. It's as if you have a board in front of you with pieces you can interact with. Why is the position 20 moves from now any harder to visualize than the position currently on the board? Carlsen can see both with his eyes closed anyways.