Question about calculation

What is the best technique to calculate better in chess?

Drink 5 cans of red bull.

You will probably get a variety of responses from us amateurs, so I would recommend getting a book or video on the subject (from a titled player) and practice over and over what you are taught, until it becomes automatic.

Unfortunately the answer is very boring:

practice the skill you want to improve.

 

For example try to follow the notation in books / articles / diagrams as far as you can without moving the pieces. After you try a few times, then move the pieces and keep going.

When solving tactics online, don't make even 1 move until you're sure you've calculated the whole solution... even if it takes 20 or 30 minutes of calculating over and over trying to get a clear image of the last position.

Play long games (at least 60 minutes per side) and use almost all your time. This is also good calculation practice.

 

Preggo is right. You have to train calculation.

For people with poor visualisation I recommend to solve a lot of simple tactics (2 or 3 thousand) and forcing yourself to see the finals position. You don't have necessary to do this when you see for the first time a new motif. But you should make sure to play all the moves mentally after you saw the solution.

It is important to force yourself to see which piece is giving mate and in which square, and which pieces are helping in the mating net. After some months of training you begin to improve. The younger you are, the faster will be your improvement.

Another way to train is to agree with a friend to play blindfold chess, but only four moves. After this you move the pieces on the board and repeat the thing until the end of the game.
With the time you can play more moves blindly.

If you want you can play a long game, like Daily Chess, and I can try to help you in the analysis after the game is finish.

Tbm sou brasileiro

I am interested in the same question. Good answers so far. 

A related question is how deep I should be able to calculate OTB. How deep do GMs calculate?

 

 

Surprising question given your rating, IMO.

 

The position dictates how much calculation is necessary. In some positions, no calculation is necessary. In fact you're just wasting time and energy if you do. Yes, even GMs will play a move without calculating.

In other positions, usually critical positions, it demands more than we're capable of, so we end up having to make our best guess even though a wrong move may result in an objectively lost position.

 

An interesting study showed that the players who had the most total calculation (total over the whole game) were in the 2000-2100 range. Players below them calculated less because they weren't capable. Players above them calculated less because their knowledge made them more efficient.

Sure in a single position a GM may go super deep, but most positions don't require more than a few moves. I'd guess about 6-8 ply.

Opening Principles:

1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5

2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key

3. Castle

4. Connect your rooks

Tactics...tactics...tactics...

 

Pre Move Checklist:

1. Make sure all your pieces are safe. 

2. Look for forcing move: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) this will force you look at, and see the entire board. 

3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board. 

4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece. 

5. After each move by your opponent, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"

 

calculate the calculable

I find 6-8 to be quite tough unless it is an obvious sequence of the type «I take, he takes, I take,...»

 

You may think the question is strange, but I got very different answers so far. (In rl)

IM Bacon, I am not sure if your post has much to do with the OPs question.

In real life people give all sorts of weird answers because they've probably never bothered to think about it.

Just IMO.

But, you know, listen to a super GM interview after a game, or watch them play blitz and give commentary. Sure some positions are ridiculously deep and it's very impressive... but other times they'll point out some 3 move variation and say "I didn't like this position" or "I thought this was necessary" or something like that.

He pastes that a lot, sometimes it's not relevant to the OP.

 

I think it's his way of saying "if you want to improve, your question is not useful, instead you should focus on these things"

I believe that in this case its very relevant.  I think what happens with these types of posts, is that the vast majority of people that respond dont take the time to look at the OP's games.  

The OP is losing to 600 players in 13 moves. Asking about how to calculate is above his pay grade (so to say).  When your losing games due to basic mistakes.  Asking how to calculate is putting the cart before the horse. 

Ha! I fit in 2 old sayings...

I think ChessVis is a good app, which allow up to 6 move tactical calculation with maximum 4 back-up move (you have to visualize the position in your mind then start calculating the tacti s)

Yusupov in his book states that it is more important to find a lot of options in the first few moves than to calculate deeply (Chapter 9), "Build Up Your Chess, The Fundamentals". After all, as he points out what good is it to calculate a long variation if your opponent ruins it all with a reply on move 1 that negates it all.

Most people stress tactics, but I have the impression that beginners should invest a lot in learning to play good moves in the defense.

What I mean is that beginners usually are very poor in moving attacking pieces to safe squares. I think that we all know the situation when playing weak players. We usually play normal moves and wait that the opponent lose something by a fork or something else.

For this reason I recommend the OP to try the book “Learn Chess the Right Way” book 3, by Susan Polgar.

The whole book is about how to defend. It is like a book on tactics, but you are playing to prevent the tactics by the opponent. For example, where to move after the king is attacked? Usually you have only one right move. You can from the exercises that Susan Polgar is not only a terrific player but also a very good chess instructor.

I purchased the book today and although I first though it is to basic for me, the exercises begin later to get a little bit more complex. For people under 1200 is the book great, but even for me around 1600 here is the book very helpful.

You will find he book also in Chessable.com