What actually makes a player better than another in chess?

They say that just after the first move there are billions of possibilities in a chess games which keep getting multiplied.. Is it time, luck or something else that makes a kid win over an adult? Is it experience, memorisation, intelligence, luck or something minute which is not in our dictionary yet?

Orange juice.

You mean without lemon???

I believe the biggest contributors to chess skill are:

(1) Visualization ability. Players need to be able to visualize lines out to 7-9 moves to play at expert level or beyond, in my experience and through my analysis. Beginners are often unaware of how far they need to look ahead, or cannot do so.

(2) Chunks. Psychological studies show that better players have learned more patterns than weaker players. Such patterns include things like typical pawn formations, typical mating positions, and so on.

(3) Memorized book lines. Many masters simply "outbook" their opponents, and thereby need to rely only on memory to detect when their opponent has erred, and how to take advantage of it.

(4) Other chess knowledge. For example, knowing where to place pieces properly in a given opening, how to win a certain type of rook-pawn ending, common attacks, etc.

So in general it comes down to only two things, in my opinion: (1) two types of memory (subconscious through much experience, conscious via memorization) and (2) visualization skill.

Wow Squod. Is it possible that a person plays the same set of moves unknowingly? For example against a machine? What difference do you feel when playing a machine?

I don't understand your first question. For your second question, the general advice is to play against the moves, not against your opponent. That's well-known and extremely wise advice in my opinion. I play the same against a computer as I do against a human. One time I failed to take that advice to heart was when I was playing against a little girl in a tournament. She was sitting there playing with her doll in between moves, people warned me beforehand she was good, but I didn't take their advice strongly enough. I foolishly grabbed her rook pawn with my bishop, she trapped my bishop, and eventually I resigned. Talk about humiliation. Next time I'll bring my own doll...

Squod my first question is actually about making moves from the subconscious, as you said memorisation. Lol you lost to the girl with the doll hahahaha.. One can con a human not a machine

What happens is that after enough experience a person subconsciously learns what looks normal and what doesn't. That equates to a very important issue in A.I. called commonsense reasoning. Using experience, a person automatically knows which moves are the most reasonable, even without being conscious of it, which narrows the number of moves that must be considered. Psychological studies discovered that where grandmasters differ from masters is that grandmasters would see additional candidate moves that the masters never even considered. Also related is that when the normal flow of a game breaks down, the situation becomes mostly tactical, in which commonsense and positional reasoning no longer apply anywhere near as much, which is where positional thinking must be replaced by tactical thinking, which goes back to that need for visualization that I mentioned.

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chapter 2
"Human chess skill"
Neil Charness
pp. 34-53

(p. 37)
The role of perception

"He saw everything!' is invariably the complaint of the chess player who
loses a game. Other variants to this lament are: "I completely missed
(seeing) his move" or "How could I overlook that move?" It is no accident
that the operation "seeing" is an element in all those statements. In the
final analysis, perception seems to be the key to skill in chess.

(p. 37)
The difference between the two players is usually tht one looks at the
promising moves, and the other spends his time going down blind alleys.
This, in a nutshell, is what de Groot discovered in his research into the
determinants of skill in chess in the early 1930's and 1940's. [sic]

(p. 37)
   The results are rather surprising and serve as a convincing refutation
for the myths mentioned earlier. The only measure which clearly differen-
tiates the Grandmasters from the experts is the one giving the estimated
value of the chosen move. Four of the five Grandmasters chose the objec-
tively correct move. None of the experts picked that move. Furthermore,
as de Groot shows elsewhere [31, p. 128], all of the Grandmasters men-
tioned the correct move at some time in their analysis. Only 2 of the 5
experts ever mentioned the correct move in their analysis.

(p. 40)
   A fascinating property of LTM is its organization. Information in LTM
seems to be highly interconnected. This property contrasts sharply with
most computer memory systems, where information is said to be location
addressable. That is, one piece of information is linked to another by a
location tag: e.g., "go from this cell (300) and get the contents of cell
385." Barring the existence of other pointers to cell 385, the only other
way to retrieve its contents is via exhaustive search of all memory cells
--a highly inefficient way to retrieve information. The only practical way
to get that information is to start from cell 300. What happens if the entry
cure is changed slightly such that it no longer activates cell 300? The
information in cell 385 cannot be retrieved.
   Human LTM appears to be content addressable. That is, functionally
similar items seem to be filed in the same location. Items may be grouped
together on the basis of semantic similarity (meaning), phonetic similarity
(sound) or other categorizations. An example of successful retrieval based
on semantic similarity occurs for most English speakers when they are
(p. 41)
asked for synonyms for "speedy." In short order people often report back
words like "quick," "rapid," "swift," "fast." Your ability to retrieve in-
formation via phonetic cues can be demonstrated when you are asked to
name words which rhyme with "bat." Words and concepts are not cross-
listed under every possible category, however. For instance, most people
have considerable difficulty in responding quickly to the demand "name
words whose fourth letter is 'a.'"
   When the memory system is confronted with a cue which is not
directly associated with the desired information, it can often search the
general area where the information is stored. This type of search is really
a form of problem solving. Thus there are many possible paths to get from
one piece of information to another, even when the items were never
activated together before: e.g., name a type of dog that rhymes with
"folly."

(p. 44)
What are the relations which bind pieces into
a chunk? Chase and Simon examined the pattern of pauses in a simple
perceptual task. The task required that chess players reconstruct a position
seen on one board onto a neighbouring board. Players had to glance back
and forth between the two boards (presumably to transfer pieces chunk by
chunk), and their head movements and reconstruction were recorded on
videotape. It was found that chess players paused significantly longer when
placing a new piece if the piece had fewer relational links with the
previously placed one than if it had many such links. These relations were
of two types: chess functional like attack and defence and visual-spatial
like proximity, color, and type of piece.

(p. 46)
Much of
the human's search through the tree of possible moves is goal directed and
the goals may well change as new information is integrated into the knowl-
edge base about the initial position.

Frey, Peter W, ed. 1978. Chess Skill in Man and Machine. New York: Springer-Verlag.

1) Strong player has a better intuitive sense of the entire chess board and appreciation for the squares than his opponent

2) The good player can cut through the noise and chatter going on in a game and figure out what matters most  he knows exactly what he wants and goes after it doesn't waste any valuable time 

3) He can concentrate and focus tune out all outside distractions around him that have nothing to do with his game 

4) Stronger player has nerves of ice we just saw in the last world championship it makes a difference in a tense game or match that can go either way who has the better nerves one mistake and that's it

5) Better player is fearless not afraid of anyone who sitting on the other side of the table he/she has fighting spirit doesn't play to lose ever

are you talking about chess or below 2200 elo internet blitz/bullet?

There is something to be said on how deep a player can visualize multiple variations and see one move further. Through reading some chess books on famous players I realized how much energy is put into calculation. Mikhail Tal for instance planned very deep calculations and for me to try and hold the information mentally was mind boggling.

Yes it's luck.

Visualization, IMO, is relatively easy to train.  If you can play blindfold you can basically visualize any length of variation.  Even some class players are decent blindfold players (in that their strength is not much diminished) and of course such players are still worlds away from Tal.

The trick is to know which moves to calculate.

Computers and humans play very differently.  Early chess programs employed a brute force approach to calculate every variation out to a certain depth/ply and then used a maximin weighting to choose the "optimal" move.  Humans will only pick a few lines to calculate; GMs may calculate more lines at a greater depth, but much of the talent/skill is picking candidate moves and deciding how deep to calculate each line.  This involves pattern recognition and position evaluation.  Chess AI's have improved and have learned evaluate positions more like a human, but still lack certain human "inisghts" -- although the immense advantage of being able to calculate hundreds of thousands to millions of potential lines does make up for machine intelligence deficiencies.  Notably, computers make different types of mistakes than humans make typically.  The top players will play computer opponents differently than human opponents.

Another big difference between computers and humans is that a computer algorithm will always play consistently at its full strength (which is affected only by the processor speed and memory limitations of the computer on which the algorithm is run).  Humans, in contrast, do not always play at the same level, and are affected by their environment, their emotions and even their prior interactions with their opponents.  I know that I play worse when I am hungry, thirsty, tired or bored.  How hard I concentrate depends on who I'm playing and the stakes of winning/losing.  For example, I will generally concentrate harder playing in a OTB tournament than in an internet chess match (e.g., on chess.com).  I will play more seriously against a higher rated player, even in a friendly match, than against a friend who is not a strong chess player.  The chess computer will treat every match exactly the same.

It's a good question Sabrina, one that I've thought about, and what I came up with is that, in general, the player who demonstrates superior applied understanding of the game over the other player is the one who wins. 

It's not necessarily the better player who wins--the better player may miss something, get bored, play way under his ability, and lose because the other player was able to demonstrate superior applied understanding over his opponent at a critical moment.

Luck is also a factor in chess, it is possible for a player to stumble onto a decisive move (without any real understanding at the time) that the other player simply missed, that's why I preface everyting with, "in general."

I say applied chess understanding, because it is possible to have knowledge without the ability or skill to utilize it--you must be able to apply your superior chess knowledge in order to win.

The subconscious kind of understanding you mention later is a natural consequence of applied chess understanding--it's the internalized knowledge acquired through applied understanding and experience.

The bottom line in all of this is that there are no real short cuts, the way to victory is superior chess knowledge coupled with necessary skill to demonstrate it. And the only way to prove yourself "better" that an opponent, is to win consistently over time.

Want to say to those who don't believe in luck.. Luck has been physically seen in action finally.

Please join free chess.com join my fun group : Rachelle's friends...!!!

Ms.Sabrina444.. can you please elaborate?

At every level of playing strength there is something specific that makes the difference. Chess skills tend to develop not always simultaneously but rather in steps one after another and then from the first theme (but at a higher level) on again, and that is connected with both their comprehensiveness or ease to grasp and their effectiveness (how much they influence one's games).

A beginner will win more often because of a slightly better ability not to hang material. For him book opening knowledge has no significance whatsoever because any advantage gained in the opening is negligible to the effect of a subsequent mistake. A master will, quite contrary, win more often because of that same better opening preparation possible and also independent on the exact proportion of his calculation acuteness to that of his opponent - because at that level mistakes are reduced a great deal anyway and aren't so decisive, while there's much more sustainability of middlegame play quality so that the opening variation (and preparation therefor) matters. Also more obvious deficiencies of one's game are easier to notice and change, hence their correction is usually preferred to devoting time to more intricate matters, and it subsequently improves one's play to a better state than his opponents' and makes one a better player.

The same can be said about any two tangibly different levels of playing strength. Moreover one tends to benefit more from having well-rounded abilities according to his overall performance quality than from one outstanding skill at the expense of others. So there's no single answer, or rather the answer depends on the player - on his general playing strength and on his particular skills.