Bobby Fischer could easily do five move checkmates from memory, and I'm sure up to eight-ten at an actual board. There's no telling how many moves Anand can do. There's no telling how many moves Mikhail Tal was capable of either.
I can do three to four move combinations with lots of concentration, but I'm working hard on improving that.
Cool!
well when i play a move, if all goes well i can come up with a four or five move tactic or mate, but usually i make a mistake in calculating and screw up. I can do up to a 4 move one relitively well, but i never see any great ones
I'm pretty good at seeing how open lines and diagonals can improve my position. Also I'm pretty good at capitalizing on opponent's mistakes. Apart from that I'm not that great a tactician.
Yeah me too. Three or four move combinations. Most of the time I'm looking for queen sacrifices or bishop sacrifices to gain position or material by discoveries. I guess that you have to know the patterns first, because they are sometimes hard to recognize on the board and knowing them is a greatful help.
I'm usually pretty intuitive about tactics. I like to make some aggressive-looking moves to stir up the board tactically while looking for opportunities a few moves out.
Looking back at some of my better games, I realize that when it works well, it sometimes appears that I've been planning a great, complex combination. But really, I've just picked up on some repeated patterns, and try to make up the rest of the moves to reach that pattern as I go along. 
There is a story of Alekhine announcing a mate in 10 over the board!!
Cool!@!@!@!@
I read somewhere that someone had studied grandmasters and average chess players and found that the GMs did not calculate all that much more than average players. Their advantage was a much superior ability to recognize patterns, which saves you having to calculate out every move.
My tactics stink. I routinely drop pieces because I don't see the whole board.
Hm, the routine >< what is that mean ><! Like the routine you get by doing something repeatedly?
I read somewhere that someone had studied grandmasters and average chess players and found that the GMs did not calculate all that much more than average players. Their advantage was a much superior ability to recognize patterns, which saves you having to calculate out every move.
My tactics stink. I routinely drop pieces because I don't see the whole board.
I think that was in regard to selecting candidate moves in positions where there
are several candidates. When it comes to calculating combinations and visualizing the board as it may be, GMs are great.
I'd expect that for the average 1800 USCF player, calculating 10 moves of a
straightforward line (mostly forced, for example) will not tax him at all.
I read somewhere that someone had studied grandmasters and average chess players and found that the GMs did not calculate all that much more than average players. Their advantage was a much superior ability to recognize patterns, which saves you having to calculate out every move.
My tactics stink. I routinely drop pieces because I don't see the whole board.
I think that was in regard to selecting candidate moves in positions where there
are several candidates. When it comes to calculating combinations and visualizing the board as it may be, GMs are great.
I'd expect that for the average 1800 USCF player, calculating 10 moves of a
straightforward line (mostly forced, for example) will not tax him at all.
WOW!
I read somewhere that someone had studied grandmasters and average chess players and found that the GMs did not calculate all that much more than average players. Their advantage was a much superior ability to recognize patterns, which saves you having to calculate out every move.
My tactics stink. I routinely drop pieces because I don't see the whole board.
I think that was in regard to selecting candidate moves in positions where there
are several candidates. When it comes to calculating combinations and visualizing the board as it may be, GMs are great.
I'd expect that for the average 1800 USCF player, calculating 10 moves of a
straightforward line (mostly forced, for example) will not tax him at all.
WOW!
No big deal. You practice and you can do it just the same.
I basically live and die by tactics, I have a tendency to try to finish off a game in the middlegame which is why most of my games do not reach an endgame. I've either ripped apart my opponent with winning sacrifices and tactics or I've run out of pieces to throw at him and/or I've simply been outplayed. Either way it's always fun. I really have no clue how far ahead I can see but I'm guessing it's about average. I feel if I keep opting for sharp lines it'll serve my tactical vision well in the long run. Then again I'm a bit weak in the endgame so I guess this strategy is a double-edged sword.
Wow thats Cool "Much Afraid"!
hehe thanks but then again I probably play this way because I have no confidence in my endgame skills. 
Um... this topic is IMHO pretty important to understand... and so far the contributors are pretty wide of the mark I think.
There's a chess tournament held every year called the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament. Top GMs compete at Blind chess... they can't see the board at all. The whole game is played from memory. Take a look at the games, if you didn't know they were blindfold you think they were normal, deep, intense, tactically sharp GM games... IOWs: Strong GMs have no trouble playing an entire game against another grandmaster blindfolded -- or at least no more trouble than they do looking at the board.
So, when someone says: Bobby Fischer "could do five move checkmates from memory" LOL~! Yes, and he could recite the whole alphabet and count by fives backwards from 50 too!
Ordinary GMs (*well, really is there such a thing as an "ordinary" grandmaster?) and IMs regularly calculate 20+ moves in the endgame... that's why they're GMs and IMs!
BUT At the same time someone -- maybe Botvinnik -- said of world champion Tigran Petrosian he only sees ONE MOVE ahead but he sees everything worth seeing! Sounds crazy but when you start to understand chess (and I'm starting to understand I think) it makes sense. There's a lot that can be seen in a position, a lot more than a beginner understands. A strong player sees things clearly that weak players just don't percieve at all. Chess is played one move at a time. If you play the best move -- who cares how many moves ahead you saw to play it?
But my point though is that strong chess players (Petrosian too, be assured) can calculate quite deeply when they need too. At the same time they see much much more in a position than an ordinary player sees. The combination -- better calculation + better assessment of the position as it exists = makes the strong player the winner.
If you're seriously trying to get better at chess... don't shy away from thinking as deeply into a position as you can. You get better at it when you try/practice. Slowly but surely you develop the ability to work with chess positions in your mind, without having the pieces move on the board. It happens overnight for some blessed, lucky, .0001 percent of the population... the rest of us develop as best we can, over years.
Hi people, i am thinking about the tactics in chess!
I can usually can do a 2 move tactic, meaning: I use a bait(sometimes a force one) then let my opponent take it and I get in for the kill. Sometimes I can do 3 to 4 moves tactic ^_^.
I am thinking how many moves can a pro do ><! And hows yours?