Strange problem when the opponents miss a move which I see

Recently I have been facing this very strange problem. During the game when calculating, I find that some moves which look interesting does not give me a great position because there are some good responses for my opponent in the variations and so I don't play that move but instead play some other alternative move. After the game during post-mortems, my opponents ask why I did not play that particular move. When I show how that move does not lead to anything due to the variation I had calculated, they say that they had not seen that idea or they say that they would not have played that move which I had seen. This is happening fairly regularly which is annoying to me because if I had played the move which I had rejected, then I could have won my games easily because my opponents would not have found the right responses. Has anybody experienced something similar? If yes, then how have you overcome this problem?

I've had that happen in OTB but you should always play the best move you can find. Assuming your opponent won't find the right continuation, isn't normally a good idea. Now, if your move is still good, just not objectively best, and there is only one good reply, all other moves are losing, then it might be worth making the move anyway.

That comes down to evaluating if the move you want to play still has promise even if they find the line you found. What I hate is when I see a move, think I find a satisfactory defense on my opponent's part, do something else and find in post-game analysis that was the best move

Yes, exactly as you say! When I reject one of the best move and find out later that my opponent did not know the correct response.

If they cannot face a OK move then they will find more difficult to face the best move then...

By the way sir do you happen to know when is Inter-school State Level Chess tournament?

But "one of the best moves" is still "one of the best moves" if your opponent play the correct response - else it is a bad move no matter what. Remember Chess is not Poker.  

@KID_Harish, don't know the dates of inter-school competition.

@Pikelemi, sometimes best moves lead to equality if both sides play correctly. The problem is that I see the best line and judge that it might not be the best move since it does not yield to any advantage and then I might choose some sub-optimal move because it is unclear.

During the game, figuring out which move is superior than others is very tricky because good moves don't necessarily lead to advantage if played correctly by both sides and if we see the correct continuation then we most probably will think that it is not good enough.

In Bridge this is known as "playing on an assumption", and standard practice when you only stand a chance to make your contract if the assumption is correct. In Chess you can have similar situations. A famous example is from a computer game, when humans still could beat computers. The computer saw the opponent could mate him in 12 moves, and the only way to prevent it would be to sac a Rook on move 1. So that is what it did, because being mated is worse as being a Rook behind. Unfortunately the latter is not much better, and the human GM won the game easily, being a Rook up. Of course he did not miss the fact that the Rook was hanging. Everyone thought the computer was broken; the mate was only discovered in the post-mortem analysis. It was also much to deep for the opponent to see. The computer was just too smart for his own good.

The only sensible thing to do in a situation like that is to hope the opponent will miss the best move, because playing your objectively best move will be a certain loss that he cannot possibly miss.

It also relates to a stupidity that all engines still share: they try to delay being checkmated as long as possible. But the longest mate is usually not the mate that would be most difficult to find. Sacrificing a Queen for a Pawn with a spite check to delay the mate one move is worse than pointless. It basically forces the opponent to do the correct first move in a way he can impossibly miss, and after that the mate is as far away as it was before the sac without it. And the engine is now a Queen down, so if the opponent doesn't find the mate, it loses anyway. And worst of all, it alerts the opponent to the fact that he can checkmate you.

Completely agree with what you say!

@bb_gum234, thats a very valid point.

weren't you the arbiter??

No, I am not the arbiter.

The OP hits the nail on the head. I find that if I see 3 or 4 good moves it is very difficult for me to determine the best one although in post Morten the best move was almost always on my short list. I usually prefer quieter positions where there is only one good move apparent....those games seem easy for me. That may be what separates a really good player from just a good player, not so much seeing the candidate moves but knowing which one is best.

You make a good point there regarding finding the best move.

My view may be surprising! After some analysis, if I find several reolies for opponent, it must be  an unclear positon.

If it is unclear for me, it s ALSO unclear for my opponent. So I will play the arbitrary move ANYWAY, unless it is completely losing!

At a recent small tournament where there was only 1 section so there were mismatches in the ratings. While waiting for my opponent to show up, I saw a scholar's mate without any disguise. The guy who got checkmated was very talkative pre-game and claimed to have only started playing a few months ago... I'm thinking this may be a reason his opponent tried it.

Sometimes, I play a move that I know there's a good counter and think my opponent wouldn't see it; I only do that when I know something about the opponent.

I agree.  You're better off playing the best move you can find even if you think an inferior move is more likely to win against a weaker opponent.  And you avoid the worst case scenario of seeing the strongest move but instead playing a speculative move and losing because your opponent surprised you by finding the line you saw and thought he would miss.