Shown a Position: Do You Calculate Lines First or Do You Assess Positional Factors First? The Case

This was some months ago and I was watching an interview of Fabio Caruana on Chess.com/tv after one of his games.  I think it was the Isle of Man Tournament.  Anyways, they were showing Fabio some positions from games on other boards, and he would like instanteously start rattling off lines from his supersonic calculating speed about what's a good move in a position.

And I'm like, "Holy Moly, how does he do that?  I'm still looking at the position and just trying to get the material count, and what's hanging, and what's strong and what's weak, and I'm just basically still counting the number of pawns on each side while he's already rattling off lines and variations!"  

I'm like, how does he do that?!!!  Aren't you supposed to, like, you know, look at the position first, AND THEN, start looking at moves?  Have I been doing it wrong and in the wrong order?  Should I just start calculating concretely, and then hope that the positional and strategic essence will come to me at some time later during my calculations?

What do you guys do?  Someone shows you a position and you just start calculating right away?  Or do you get the lay of the land first, and then start looking at lines afterwards?

He's not doing this cold, remember. First of all he's coming out of a tournament game, so he's already in chess mode. That helps a lot.

Secondly, they're following everyone else's games as they play. Not in depth, but they get up, walk around, and check what openings everyone has played, then what strategic/tactical things are happening. You hear them all the time say something like "30 minutes ago I saw he was in trouble, I'm surprised it's so equal now"

He's also one of the strongest GMs in the world. Study chess for 8 hours a day for 10 years and you're not going to have to count individual pawns, you'll see whole structures all at once and just from this you'll understand dozens of strategic and tactical implications all at once.

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Anyway, to answer your question, it's a chicken and egg question. Do you calculate first or do some static evaluations? It's always back and forth. You do a little of each over and over, each time a little longer than the last. And it has to be said there are SO MANY unconscious patters that help you evaluate and calculate. There are so many and it's so intuitive it can't even be expressed if someone tried.

By the way all this may happen in just a few seconds depending on the player and the position.

Anyway, after the initial short calculations and static evals (and patter recognition) you'll have a feel for the position and only then (and if the position requires it) you do any long calculation or careful positional analysis.

I only have a system if I know it's going to be a really hard tactical puzzle. I take my time and do really basic stuff like check if material is equal. Then I look for every possible check no matter how suicidal. Then I look at each individual non-pawn and trace its line of movement with my eyes to the edge of the board no matter how many pieces it goes through. It's just a way of trying to be thorough before I go into long calculation.

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But if it's something like chess.com's daily puzzle, I almost instantly look at the enemy king, and trace lines backwards toward my side looking for all the checks. This happens so fast and nearly unconsciously it's hard to even talk about. I mean, this is even before my eyes have seen all 64 squares, in a sense. I'm not even sure if I'm down 5 pieces yet 

Then yeah, I look at a few short forcing sequences.

Only then do I calm down and look at the whole board... but these short sequences are important because e.g. you'll notice ____ would be checkmate if it weren't for ____. And then you see the whole board and see a piece that can help you do it. After that comes the slow and careful calculation.

Again this is really hard to talk about accurately because it's so fast, intuitive, and so much pattern recognition involved

I'm seeking to understand.  So if I ask a poor question, please bear with me.  Now I understand the concept of active piece coordination.  Or maximum piece activity.

But someone shows you a position, be it an opening position, middlegame, or endgame.  Or it's a puzzle.  Do you start calculating lines right away, or do you assess the positional factors for both sides first?

Do you look at forcing moves first?  Or does it even matter what sequence your chess thinking process takes?  Perhaps it doesn't matter.  I don't know.  Just calculate forcing moves.  If nothing's there, then look at positional factors to maximize your piece activity and coordination, whilst restricting your opponent's?

Or do a positional assessment, and then calculate?

Or it's irrelevant in what order you "process" the position, you'll eventually arrive at the same place in your decision-making?

My .02 worth...

I remember in one of kasparovs last tournaments.  He had reached a position, and he knew there was something familiar about it, but couldnt quite recall what it was.  After awhile, he remembered a very similiar position from something like 20 years ago.  He then knew what to play in the game.  

I remember reading something regarding pattern recognition, and how many patterns players of different abilities knew.  Now im going to misremember this, so keep in mind that this is an estimate.  

GM's on average knew something like 20,000 patterns.

IM's knew something like 10,000 patterns.

And on down the line.  So to me, it seems that they look at a position, and either know it, or they dont.  So it would make sense (to me) that they would look at a position, and if they know it, they know what to play.  If they dont know the position, then they look at piece placement, pawn structure, and calculate out lines.  

I guess what im rambling on about is that look at the position first, and calculate lines second.

Wow.  That's really good and really helpful.  I wrote my prior comment to JMurakami before I even saw your comment #4.

That's actually a good point.

Think of a position (maybe something soon after an opening you often play) that you know very well. You've played it 100s of times, and are very comfortable with it.

A super GM is likely to know any random position better than you know that one lol

I'm serious. Because there aren't 10^42 different types of positions. First of all there's only something like ~12 basic pawn structures, and that alone already sets a lot of the strategic tone and suggests which moves and piece placement will be good/bad.

An example from one of my games.  I "saw" things in the position, and that caused me to calculate next.

Yeas,in the daily puzzle & the tactics trainer, I find the other color's King and make a plan to get it

Moving from general positional musings to more specific calculations is an important part of chess growth. Many players below ~2000 only assess positional factors and barely even get to calculating lines. You can see this from how they analyze the game afterwards, in the postmortem and in analytic write-ups. It's important to push yourself to calculate and get specific in finding resources for both sides and evaluating the position. Beyond a certain level, evaluation and calculation are organically intertwined and take place simultaneously when you think about your move.

This has to be it.  When I watch live commentary of blitz games and rapid games on chess.com/tv the commentators see so fast and speak so fast on both positional and tactical-calculational aspects of the game nearly simultaneously.

I'm just in awe; marvelling at both the speed, accuracy, and understanding that these commentators have in communicating the game during their commentary.  

The less candidate moves you have, the better you are.

It is all about memory.

The better player prunes more and evaluates better, just like engines.

Why so?

Because he has seen more chess positions, from which he can conclude which moves to prune and which to consider.

The internals of this best move selection process are very complicated, though, just like with engines.

Millions of operations occur in the human mind each and every second, just like with machines.

The human brain is a computer, actually, maybe the most sophisticated one.

So, the 3000 player uses 10 000 rules to select the best move.

The 1500 player just 100.

But those 10 000 rules are processed extremely fast using specific algorithms, for example, you have a certain position, where rule 1, rule 2 and rule 3 apply.

The 300 player knows about all those and, as he also knows that, whenever rule 1 is valid, rules 2 and 3 are inapplicable, he is skipping the consideration of where rules 2 and 3 will lead you, and entirely focuses on rule 1 to find the solution.

Hence the speed.

The 1500 player might know about all these 3 rules, but, as he DOES NOT know rule 1244, namely that when rule 1 is valid, rules 2 and 3 are invalid, he is wasting an enormous amount of time considering the solution based on false rules and irrelevant hints.

That is why the process goes slow and inaccurately.

The more rules you know, the better player you are.

However, knowing more rules is also synonymous with thinking faster.

The stronger player calculates less, he uses more pattern recognition.

The extensive calculations done in the past have built up a larger pool of applicable patterns.

This fish bites, lol.  What happens after 12. Bxf8 instead of the move played 12. Bb4?

I would say that this willingness to calculate concretely has been the most important reason for my recent rating rises (FIDE 1758 -> 2085; ECF 178 -> 198). It's a factor that's often overlooked - if you don't calculate and rely solely on intuition and don't blundercheck just before you're ready to play your move to check whether you've missed something early on in your lines, you will miss things.

12.Bf8 Qf8 followed by 13.Kd2 Qc5 threatening the knight, preventing white from catling, and playing some combination of ...Qf2+ at some point, if i remember correctly.  Now my head hurts...

Lol.  After 12.... Qxf8, 13. Kd1 to escape the pin.  If 13. .... Qc5, then 14. Na4 forking Q and R.  

re: the highlighted part... I think I know what you're trying to say, I guess.

But going from something like 1200 to 1600, for me, was just sitting at the board doing nothing but calculating forcing lines over and over.... and then some more, waiting to see a tactic. If I got tired of it, I'm make a random move and then do it again next turn.

Ok, not a totally random move, but you get the idea.

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Also it's a little weird because statistically players @2000 calculate the most... more than 1200 because they can visualize better, and less than 2800 because they're less efficient. So to move on beyond expert I've heard you need to not calculate so much... but what they're really saying (and maybe you too) is just to be more purposeful with your calculation.

I remember the first time I read a strategy book and then right after that an endgame book.

Afterwards I was better at solving tactical puzzles. Why? Because not only the candidate moves in the current position, but during calculation, deciding which moves to ignore and which branches to explore was more efficient.

Strategy and endgames are often all about (at least at a fundamental level) keeping pieces active and coordinated. So in a tactic puzzle if a candidate didn't do that, I was more likely to ignore it (and if a sacrifice left me with a lot of active pieces, then I was more likely to consider it).

I almost always find my move (and my candidate-moves) by intuition rather than by calculation. Calculating lines comes after I've narrowed it down to two or three candidate-moves to examine.

Off the top of my head, I can recall only one occasion when I found my move by the brute-force approach of examining and calculating almost every reasonable alternative:

In this position I found Bc4 by brute-force... but this is very much the exception.