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THE THINKING CAP PART ONE By NM Dan Heisman

Hi! I would like to thank IM Jeremy Silman for inviting me to write these articles for his website. I hope everyone both enjoys and gets some good benefits from each article! The primary focus of The Thinking Cap will be about the chess thought process: * What it is. * What are the component parts? * Why it is important. * How it varies from individual to individual. * How it is mis-learned by almost all. * How it can be re-learned to improve your chess play. * How it is measured. * How it relates to other important issues, like Time Management, Exercises you can do to practice a good process, etc. It is important to note that The Thinking Cap is NOT normally about improving the content of your thought process, like your analysis, evaluation, or planning skills. Your humble author is not in the same league as IM Silman or his other website contributors when it comes to helping you identify strengths and weaknesses in a position and to come up with the appropriate plans, so I will usually leave that to them! But that does not mean I will not discuss those subjects and how they relate to having a good thought process. Let's start at the beginning: chess is a thinking game, so obviously your thought process (in addition to the other areas, chess skill and knowledge) is an extremely important part of how good a chess player you are. Yet almost no one is initially taught a good thought process, so almost all beginners immediately develop bad habits that must be overcome if they want to become a strong player. Normally, when someone learns chess, all they are taught is: * How to set up the pieces. * How the pieces move.

* Basic Rules such as checkmate and some draws (like stalemate or insufficient mating material), and * Some tips, like Keep all your pieces safe, In the opening, don't move your Queen out too early, and If you see a good move, look for a better one. This is all good stuff and usually adequate to start playing and enjoying the game, but it really begs the question of: Once your opponent makes his move and it is your turn, what is the process you should use to efficiently and effectively find and make your move? Now I will be the first to admit that all great players do not use the same process. For example Victor Korchnoi is known as a meticulous calculator, while Mikhail Tal would play the same position primarily on instinct and judgment. But all great players had as part of their thought process some key basic elements, such as not allowing their opponent to make a one-move threat that could not be defended. If they did not have such an inclusion, then you are I could beat a Korchnoi or Tal just by threatening a checkmate that they could not defend, and you had better believe they would never allow us to do that unless in severe time pressure and probably not even then! Moreover, a good thought process must be subconscious, because if one has to think about how you are thinking, that of course interferes with the process! For example, when you first learned how to walk your brain spent a lot of processing time trying to figure out how to prevent you from falling. But once you got the hang of it, you no longer thought anything about it now if you walk across the room you don't think about which foot to move next nor which muscles need to be told how to react in order to do so. But when you get into bad habits in your chess thought process and become aware of them, for a time you need to adjust your process, and this requires consciously being aware about what you are doing. So of course at first this intrusion into your chess thinking is awkward and possibly even counterproductive, but once you play lots of slow games and have a more effective and efficient process down pat, you start to think about the improved process less and less until you just do it, with markedly improved results. More on this in future Thinking Caps! Before we go any further, let's introduce some definitions, since there are no standard ones and chess authors tend to use some of these terms differently: Analysis The part of the thinking process where you say to yourself, If I go there, what is he going to do and then what I am going to do in reply? It is the part of the process which creates the mental tree of moves so to speak. Some players call this calculation, but I usually don't use that term. If pressed for a definition, I would say that calculation is the part of analysis that deals with tactics Evaluation Looking at a position and deciding who is better, by how much, and why. Static evaluation is when you evaluate a given position without trying to move the pieces. Dynamic evaluation is done at the end of each analysis line, after you have tried to determine a potential sequence of moves. Note: When someone says Evaluate this move, they are really saying Evaluate the positions that would result from this move assuming each player is

trying to make his best move. Planning What you do with the information of why someone is better (evaluation of strengths and weaknesses) in possibly occurring lines. It is how you will try to exploit opponent weaknesses, negate yours, use your strengths, and negate his. It is the way you are going to try to achieve some general short and long-term goals. Threat A move that, if left unattended, could do something harmful to the opponent (win material, checkmate, damage the position) on the next move. Attack To move a piece so that it can capture a piece on the next move. An attack on the King, since you cannot capture it, is of course called a check. (In this sense I am not using the other definition of attack, which is to play aggressively, keeping the initiative). Note that not all threats are attacks (a threat to checkmate is not an attack, nor is a threat to control an open file), and many attacks are not threats. A Queen move which attacks a guarded pawn is not usually a threat since taking the pawn next move usually results in loss of material. Candidate move A reasonable move a player might/should consider. Killer Move A move that would refute most potential moves and prevent them from becoming candidate moves. For example, if you consider making a move and find that in doing so you would allow your opponent to play Qh3 with a further unstoppable Qg2# on the next move, then Qh3 becomes a killer move and any possible move that allows Qh3 and mate on the next move is not a candidate move. Time Management The process of managing your time (in a timed game, as is required by serious chess rules) so that you can optimally find the best moves possible in the given time limit. Obviously, different time controls call for alteration of your basic thought process, and thus your skill in time management is a bigger part of the game than most players realize. Oh, and finally why do we call these articles The Thinking Cap? Because if you play chess, not only do you have to put on your Thinking Cap, but also if you have a faulty thinking process that will cap how good you can become! THE THINKING CAP PART TWO By NM Dan Heisman King Of The Hill There is a kid's game called King of the Hill. They don't play it much any more since video games have taken so much of youngster's time. Anyway, the idea is to find a mound of dirt and all the kids try to get to the top. The one who is there is the King of the Hill and the others try to knock him off and replace him with a successor. Programmers have something similar; it is called the first pass of a straight sort. They have a bunch of numbers and need to find the largest (or smallest). They start by assigning the value of negative infinity to the King of the Hill and proceed to look at each number. Each

time they find a number larger than the King of the Hill, it becomes the new King of the Hill until they find a larger one. Once they have examined all the numbers the King of the Hill is the largest. In chess we have a saying, If you see a good move, look for a better one you are trying to find the BEST one! During the time you are considering your move, the best one you have found so far is the King of the Hill. When you are finished your analysis of all your moves, the move you should play is the final King of the Hill. Every chess player should have this as part of their thought process each move, but they don't for various reasons. Take the following diagram from a recent event. A student of mine, rated 1680 USCF, had White and was on the move:

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White was sorely tempted by the smothering move 1.Nf7+ winning the exchange, and played it. However, after 1Rxf7 2.Rxf7 axb3 he soon ran into some trouble (if 3.Nxb3 Qb2) and was actually losing at one point, but later pulled out the win. When I reviewed the game with him, I did not yet know what he played, but I said, Well, you can win the exchange with 1.Nf7+, but when you see a good move, look for a better oneSuppose you play 1.Rxf8, what then? If Black plays 1Bxf8 then 2.Bf6+ Nxf6 3.Qxf6+ Bg7 4.Qd8+ Bf8 5.Qxf8# and if 2Bg7 then (I paused for a second or two) 3.Nf7 is a smothered mate! So yes, I would play 1.Rxf8. Things like this happen all the time in games of weaker players. A player gets enamored with an idea or a type of attack and pursues it without regard to other, possibly better options. Therefore, a good thought process needs to contain an efficient way to search for the best move. There are many ways to do this, but they mostly boil down to picking out the reasonable moves (perhaps the moves which implement your most reasonable plans), analyzing each, assuming the opponent will make his best move, finding which positions result, and then evaluating those positions. There is no way around it in most positions this takes some time, which is why the best players are usually the last ones finished at Open events. Suppose the first move you look at is OK, but you feel the position promises more. Then you

should surely feel that a further search is worthwhile and that you might beat your King of the Hill. If the first move you look at results in a bad position and you feel your position is not bad to begin with, then you might not even assign this one as King of the Hill, knowing that another reasonable candidate is sure to emerge. Suppose you find a move that exceeds all expectations. The temptation might be great to play the move immediately, but maybe you have underestimated your position and can get even more. Our example position above is a good one for this case. White thought he might be winning with 1.Nf7+ and stopped his search, but if he had thought the King of the Hill bar might be higher, he might have kept looking. When you run a computer chess program and ask it to show its analysis, most programs will show one or more lines that look something like this: 11 ply (1/42) +0.83 19.Rhe1 d5 20.cxd5 exd5 21.Bh4 If there is more than one line of sequences (Fritz defaults to show the expected variations of the top three moves), then the top line contains as its first move the King of the Hill in this case 19.Rhe1 - and the line of expected moves on that first line (the best moves for each side) is called the Principal Variation. Before the moves, the 11 indicates how many half-moves deep the computer is currently searching, the (1/42) means that it is analyzing its best current move out of the 42 legal possibilities, and the +0.83 means the computer thinks White is better by about 0.83 pawns. But once the computer finds a move it considers better, the first move of the sequence changes, e.g. 11 ply (7/42) +0.98 19.Rad1 d5 20.cxd5 Rxd5 21.Bf2 and that means the new King of the Hill is 19.Rad1. Note that the new evaluation, in this case 0.98, must be higher than 0.83 or it would not have changed its King of the Hill. Since it is searching for White's best move, the higher the evaluation, the better. Humans don't think exactly in this manner, but their intent should be similar: Consider reasonable moves, assume the opponent's best replies, evaluate what will happen, and then compare this evaluation with the one you estimated with your current King of the Hill. Replace your King of the Hill if the new move results in a superior position. Try and prove your King of the Hill is the best one you can find, given the time control restraints, and then play your King of the Hill move. THE THINKING CAP PART THREE By NM Dan Heisman IS IT SAFE? While a good thought process is flexible, there are certain elements that usually are included. A comprehensive checklist of what questions might go through your mind after your

opponent makes a move might start with: 1. Is it legal? 2. Am I in check? 3. Can I checkmate him by a series of forced moves? (If so, nothing else usually matters!) 4. Is his move safe (for him)? 5. What are all the things his move does? (In other words, how does his move change the position, and what can he do now that he could not do before? What are his threats for next move?) 6. What are my candidate moves? etc. In this month's Thinking Cap we are just going to consider #4, Is his move safe for him? Often I am going over my students' games and as soon as his opponent (or sometimes my student!) makes a move, I say out loud, He can't do that it's not safe! What I mean is that the move played leaves the piece in immediate jeopardy on that square. I am NOT talking about falling victim to a combination, but rather one of three simple possibilities: 1. The piece is en prise that is, it is attacked and not defended at all 2. The piece is subject to capture and there is a sequences of captures on that square that loses material for the player that just moved, or 3. The piece is instantly trappable usually that means it can be attacked by a piece of lesser value and has no safe way to retreat. As an example, take the sequence 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4??

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The Bishop is not safe because Black can perform a simplified Noah's Ark trap with 4b5 5.Bb3 c4. Yet interestingly enough, in many cases neither my student nor his opponent realizes right away that the piece is not safe! They are too busy asking themselves some of the other

questions, like What does that move do? or What are his threats or What are my candidate moves? Often when I show a position to a student and say, Black has just moved X. What should you do as White? the first thing they do is start to look for candidate moves! This may work if it is a White to play and win problem but, in a game, looking for candidate moves before you check for the safety and purpose of your opponent's move can be disastrous. I almost always see the unsafe piece immediately, but my student sometimes only sees the problem after I bring the issue to his attention! And the fact that sometimes they see it immediately means that the student's thought process is faulty, because they obviously can see the move was unsafe, they just never considered the possibility. So what is automatic and important to me, is not automatic for them. Another interesting aspect is that many students are almost as likely to spot an unsafe piece move by their opponent in a speed game as they are in a slow game! The reason is simple: in a speed game they expect their opponent to make silly, material-losing moves and look for this kind of mistake. In a slow game they assume their opponent will not make such a bad mistake and just skip that step of the thought process, even though the opponent might be weak or playing fast anyway and may just be giving them material. A common, related safety mistake is for a player to remove his own guard! He takes a piece that is defending another one and moves it away, leaving the one that was adequately defended as now un- or under-defended. For example, consider the position after 1.e4 c5 2.c3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.cxd4 d6 5.Nf3 g6 6.Bc4 Bg7 7.00 Nf6 8.Nbd2 00 9.Ng5?

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In this common beginner error Black often follows this White blunder by becoming so fixated on the new threat to f7 that he forgets that the Knight that moved to g5 was guarding d4 and is no longer doing so. So, since f7 is adequately guarded and 9.Ng5 has made the pawn on d4 unsafe, Black should just calmly capture it with 9Nxd4. Thanks for the pawn! From this example, you can see that you should not only ask yourself if the moving piece is safe, but if the moving piece is just leaving something else unsafe. Any basic safety issue that was affected by his move is equally important. Often players analyze a capturing sequence and evaluate a position which they think is worth evaluating, but it is too early because the forced sequence (all the checks, captures, and threats) are not complete. This is called a quiescence error because they think the position is quiet when it is not, and stop analyzing the sequence too soon. Consider the following simple

example:

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Black has just played 1Rd8-e8. Now White might calculate the sequence of captures on d5 and think that Black has removed his own guard as in the previous example, but the d5-pawn is still safe because if 1.Nxd5?? Nxd5 2.Rxd5? Re1 mate. To stop your analysis after 2.Rxd5 and conclude that you are up a pawn would be considered a quiescence error because you are not considering the further devastating check on e1. Sometimes players assume an opponent's piece is safe, but they don't consider all the aspects and see that the entire capturing sequence is good for them. An excellent example of this is in the Ruy Lopez after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 O-O? 7.Bxc6 dxc6 8.Nxe5 Qd4 9.Nf3 Bg4??

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Even after I tell my students that Black's move is a mistake and that now White can win, many often make the error of assuming that their Knight is pinned and cannot move, and so look to preserve their extra pawn with a move like 10.d3?. But when you see a good move, look for a better one, and White has a much better one by moving that pinned Knight with 10.Nxd4 Bxd1 11.Rxd1. This wins a Bishop since Black's Queen was unguarded and White's Queen was not. Therefore Black's move 9Bg4?? did not make his Queen safe, as you should readily see if you ask yourself the right questions. If White misses playing 10.Nxd4, this type of error is similar to a quiescence error because White wrongfully assumes the

position is quiet and bad for himself if he ever moves his Knight and allows his Queen to be captured. The tactic that wins the material after 10.Nxd4 I simply call COUNTING. Counting is one of the most important parts of chess, and it is clearly the most underrated and under-taught tactic. Readers of The Thinking Cap will encounter the subject of Counting again! None of the above mistakes involve difficult combinations; all are much more basic safety issues. Even good players can make these kinds of simple mistakes occasionally especially in time trouble. So unless you are playing a very high level of competition, don't assume that your opponent's move is safe even if it is safe only 99% of the time, that means once every 2-3 games you are likely going to be given a gift! So don't overlook this important part of the thought process. THE THINKING CAP PART FOUR By NM Dan Heisman

Three Levels of Chess Thinking I have studied players' thought processes for over 30 years (I hate to say that!). I am convinced that one way to differentiate levels of chess play is to separate players into three categories, depending on how they deal with threats when playing slow chess: * Does not pay attention to all (or sometimes even any!) of the threats generated by the opponent's previous move. * Does pay attention to all the threats generated by the opponent's previous move, but, before making their current move, does not check to make sure that all checks, captures, and threats by the opponent on the next move (in reply to that move) can be safely met. * Not only deals with opponent's threats from the previous move but, before making their move, also makes sure that the opponent will not have any checks, captures, or threats that cannot be met after that move, and does this check on every move possible/necessary. Several years ago I published this thesis and dubbed these three levels of thinking Flip-Coin Chess, Hope Chess, and Real Chess. The method of defining these levels via threats was published in my book Looking for Trouble. Perhaps Hope Chess was a bad choice for the middle level, because many readers confuse Hope Chess with the common hope problem of making a threat and hoping that your opponent will not see that threat or, similarly, making a bad move and hoping the opponent makes a worse one. I have dubbed these mistakes (they are not really thought processes as much as they are bad habits within a process) as just Bad Chess or perhaps even Hopeful Chess, but not Hope Chess, as defined in #2 above. Flip-Coin Chess describes the kind of process used by most young kids right after you teach them how to play. They really don't care what their opponent does, and the winner is the one who accidentally makes more, or larger, threats that are duly ignored. At this level of play threatening checkmate, no matter how bad the move is otherwise, is often rewarded (which of

course leads to bad habits). Hope Chess is practiced by 99%+ of the adults who do not play in tournaments, and by almost all tournament players rated under ~1600 USCF. Interestingly enough, I have run into several players rated ~1300 who tell me that they have read my material on Real Chess and are now happy to announce they no longer play Hope Chess. Unfortunately, upon testing them, it turns out they STILL play Hope Chess (else their rating would not likely still be 1300) and when I explain to them why, the most common answer is Oh! So that is what Hope Chess is! I thought it was XXX (most likely Hopeful Chess). I have had several strong players tell me that my theory is wrong and that they do not use what I describe as a Real Chess thought process. But upon inspection it almost always turns out that they actually do, or at least incorporate the minimal criteria. For example, if you don't play Real Chess, then you often allow your opponent to create unstoppable threats. Strong players rarely allow such threats and therefore must use this aspect of Real Chess to reject candidate moves that allow them. However, they may not realize they are using this process because they have been doing so automatically for a long time and are not consciously looking for all upcoming checks, captures, and threats. It just becomes natural for strong players to think, Suppose I do X, then what will he do? Suppose he then does move Y, threatening Z, what can I do? If the answer is Nothing, and then I lose, then they discard X as a candidate move. Of course it takes good board vision and analysis skills to quickly recognize all of the forcing Y's that the opponent can do to you and, further, to figure out whether the Y is stoppable or can be allowed. There is quite a bit of skill involved, which is one small reason why the rating variance of Real Chess players is so very large (1600 and up). In other words, if you don't play Real Chess, you probably never will be really good, but if you do play Real Chess, that is no guarantee you will be a very strong player! You still have to learn about all the other things that players study: openings, endgames, pawn structures, planning, lots of tactical patterns, etc. One key to promoting yourself from Hope Chess to Real Chess is checking for upcoming danger on every move, and not just most of the time. For example, suppose you only play Real Chess on 95% of your moves but on the other 5% you allow unstoppable threats. Then, assuming the average game is 40 moves, twice each game (5% x 40) you open yourself up to an immediate loss. If you allow these two oversights each game, then you will play MUCH weaker than you will if you play Real Chess on every move. After all, it only takes one bad move to lose a game! So if you otherwise play 1700 strength for 38 moves but on two moves you play at only a 500 level, what do you think your average playing strength will be for the entire 40 moves? No wonder that players who read tons of books and accumulate decent chess knowledge often lose to players with much less knowledge. The well-read losers can attribute their losses to talent or luck (usually the latter!), but often it is just that their opponent is playing Real Chess on every move, and they are not, and so their rating (and results) are relegated to the Hope Chess masses. This also explains why some 1900 players with relatively little chess experience (but good game players) can easily beat 1500-1600 players with far more experience the two main reasons are tactical talent and a better thought process. So what does it take to help graduate from Hope Chess to Real Chess?

1. The knowledge of what Real Chess requires. 2. The desire to do it (if it is fun, you will fun is an underrated factor as a reason to do things). 3. The opportunity to practice it (slow games at 90 minute or more per side are required). 4. Practicing it until you don't have to think about it this is actually one of the easier parts, since at first you will think about it and it will be distracting, but if you play enough it becomes unconscious, like walking. 5. Practicing Real Chess consistently and not letting down just because you don't feel like doing the work each move. There is a fine line here between desire and being careful no doubt, naturally careful players have an advantage starting out, just as players who are naturally good with spatial relationships also have an edge. Over the years I have gotten e-mail from all over the world from players saying Why didn't anyone ever tell me this before? I have read hundreds of books and I never got good but I didn't know why. Well, it could be lack of a specific talent or experience, but often a implementing a good thought process combined with the opportunity to play many slow games against strong opposition (good practice!) is a key to unlocking that barrier that separates you from the players at the next level or two!

THE THINKING CAP PART Five By NM Dan Heisman CHECKS, CAPTURES, AND THREATS Chess players use analysis primarily to determine what might happen if a certain move is played. This creates a tree of analysis with moves branching at each ply. However, the number of legal possibilities is very large, so humans prune their tree of moves to only include ones they think might be (at least at first glance) reasonable. If this is not done, then the tree can grow astronomically! For example, if each side has 30 legal moves, then to look at even 2 moves deep (4 ply) would require 30 x 30 x 30 x 30 sequences, or 810,000! Hardly possible for a human in a year, much less in a game requiring 40 moves in two hours. Similarly, pruning the tree is necessary even for computers, which use full-width search to examine all moves, but alpha-beta cutoffs to avoid looking at the entire tree. Of course a discussion of computer tree-searching is outside the scope of this article! One way to help categorize what happens when a human prunes his analysis tree is to break the type of moves into different categories: Checks Captures Threats Moves that increase your piece's activity or decrease the opponent's pieces activity

Forced moves, like only legal moves, or necessary recaptures (note that forced moves are almost the opposite of forcing moves like #1-3, although it is possible for a forced move to be a forcing move!). Other moves One way to control the tree and, happily, to find the best move is to try and maximize the number of opponent's moves that fall under category #5 in other words, the tree is not only smaller, but more under your control if your opponent has to play a forced move and does not have the flexibility to perform a more constructive purpose. If you can consistently force your opponent to reply to your move we call this pleasant situation having the initiative. For this reason, when you are searching for your best move, or considering your opponent's best reply, you want to start with (or assume) the most forcing moves, which are almost always checks, captures, and threats! Note that while most checks are more forcing than most captures, and most captures are more forcing than most threats, this is not always the correct order of how forcing your potential moves may be. For example, a threat to mate-in-one on the next move is often more forcing than any capture, and even some checks! So when searching for forcing moves, always consider mate-in-one threats near the top! I would like to point out that most students, while understanding intuitively what a threat is, cannot define it which usually means they cannot easily find all threats! A threat is a move by player A which, if nothing is done by player B in response, can do something positive on the next move for player A. By positive we mean win material, checkmate, or even gain some positional feature like control of a file or wrecking the opponent's pawn structure. But in order for a move to really be a threat, the execution of the threat next move, if allowed, should be meaningful. For example, if you are behind a Rook and threaten to win a pawn but in doing so you have to trade Queens, winning the pawn may not really be a threat since the net result may be positive for your opponent, not you! In the previous Thinking Cap we mentioned that a good thinking process requires you to look to see if your candidate move is refutable before considering it further, much less playing it. At a minimum, this usually means you must say to yourself, Suppose I make this move, then in response what are all my opponent's most forcing moves, and can I safely meet all of them? At this point you consider each of your opponent's checks, captures, and threats, making sure you have an adequate answer to each. If you do, then the move is plausible and it may remain a candidate move. Remember, not all forcing moves are good moves, but some bad-looking moves are often actually good moves because of their forcing nature. Let us consider two examples. The first is problem #225 in the first edition of John Bain's excellent book on beginning tactical motifs, Chess Tactics for Students:

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This is White to play and win. The answer, if you don't know, is 1.Rxe7 Kxe7 2.Bb4+ winning a piece. But for the moment let's ask a different question: Excluding checks and captures (which sometimes can also produce threats), how many moves does White have which are threats in this position? In this case we want immediate threats, not long-term threats such as to create an outside passed pawn. Hint: not all threats are good moves; they just have to be legitimate threats. To find a threat, make a move, skip the opponent's reply, and then move again and see if you can gain something. The answer is 5. They are 1.Ba6 and 1.Bc6 (they both threaten 2.Bxb7), 1.Bb4 (threatens to capture on e7), while 1.Ba5 and 1.Be5 threaten the removal of the guard tactic 2.Bxc7+ Kxc7 3.Rxe7+. On the other hand, 1.g4 does not strongly threaten 2.g5 since after 2.g5 Nh5 holds g7 for a while. Notice 1.Ba6, 1.Bc6, and 1.Bb4 are terrible moves that just allow a capture, but they are legitimate threats. But not all terrible-looking threats are actually terrible and you need to differentiate! Consider the second example, the famous position Bernstein-Capablanca 1914, with Black to play:

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Black's move 1Qb2! at first looks like a typographical error. However, it not only contains two strong threats, but the combination of both threats is unstoppable. White of course cannot

play 2.Qxb2 due to 2...Rd1 mate, but White must stop both of the threats: 2Qxe2 and 2 Qxc3. White resigned, but to show what might have happened, suppose White had played the tricky 2.Rc8. Then Black would play 2Qa1+ 3.Qf1 Qxf1+ and then win the Rook. Of course not 2Qxe2?? 3.Rxc8 mate, nor 2Rxc8?? when 3.Qxb2 stops the mate. Or White can try 2.Rc2, but then 2Qb1+ 3.Qf1 Qxc2 wins. Or 2.Qe1 Qxc3!. From these examples we can see that if you have the time, it pays to consider all forcing moves, including all threats; chronologically, these are: anything your opponent may be forcing from his previous move, your current forcing moves, plus (importantly) his possible forcing moves in response to your candidate moves. If you have the time, even consider the ones that may look silly at first. If, in looking for forcing replies to your candidate move, you do find a threat by your opponent on the next move that you cannot meet on your following move, it is possible that such an opponent's move may refute many of your possible candidates. For example, suppose in some imaginary position you say to yourself, If I play 1.Qd2, then suppose he plays 1 Qh3 and threatens 2Qg2 mate. How can I stop this? I cannot, so I cannot play 1.Qd2. But if this is true, then possibly 1Qh3 might force checkmate after many of your possible first moves, for example 1.Rb1. So you say to yourself, Suppose I play 1.Rb1, then does 1Qh3 still checkmate me? A move like 1Qh3 is called a killer move by programmers, and they will use this as the first reply to all candidates in order to efficiently cut off their analysis as quickly as possible. You can do the same thing, so that your thought process then includes something similar to What moves can I play which would stop 1Qh3 and 2Qg2 mate? Thus your search is made more efficient by only considering moves which prevent the killer move. In summary, when you are analyzing a game and looking for continuations, the ones that should most concern you are the forcing moves: checks, captures, and threats. On offense, if you can successfully continue to play moves of this type, you have the initiative. Defensively, if you can successfully identify and plan to meet forcing moves by your opponent (or avoid them altogether!), then you will not be surprised and can usually stay in the game and have good chances to win or at least draw against even formidable opponents. Therefore, learning to identify and deal with forcing moves is an important part of becoming proficient at chess analysis!

THE THINKING CAP PART SIX Space: A Means to an End By NM Dan Heisman

I am often asked questions about criteria used to evaluate chess positions. This is a subject I find very interesting: my first book, Elements of Positional Evaluation, was written 30 years ago on a typewriter and addressed this subject extensively.

One interesting criteria is space. In order to discuss space, we should first attempt to define it. How about: Space is the amount of area (roughly measured in squares) between your pawn chain and your first rank (including the first rank, but excluding the squares of the pawns, which are inaccessible to your other pieces). Let's try a test of this definition: As the pawns disappear, the amount of space becomes more amorphous and, as seems reasonable, disappears entirely in a pawnless endgame. That intuitively makes sense; therefore so far, so good. Having space is, hopefully and usually, good for all those advantages we hold near and dear: * Allows more room for your pieces to maneuver, * Gives less room for your opponent's pieces to maneuver, and * Gets your pawns closer to promotion, which also makes sacrificial promotion combinations possible. But now comes the important part. Consider the following pawn structure:

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I think it is pretty safe to state that, by any measure, White has a ton more space. Furthermore, if we place the pieces as follows, his advantage due to this space is devastating:

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A great triumph for White's space advantage! But suppose we leave the space unchanged (and even the King positions) and just change the positions of the other pieces:

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Now Black's pieces have managed to get around and penetrate the White space, resulting in an enormous reversal of fortune. You may think this example is far-fetched, but such penetration occurs fairly frequently. For example, this is often what happens in an Open Sicilian when White castles kingside and correctly pushes his pawns for a kingside attack. But if that attack is misplayed, fizzles, and Black breaks through in the center, then White's advanced pawns often leave him with an exposed King in the middlegame, and this can be the deciding factor in Black's favor. So, although the above diagrams are extreme examples, they help prove an important point! Space in and of itself is not an inherent advantage; it is a means toward an advantage. The real advantage of having space is that if utilized correctly, it allows your pieces to do more than your opponent's pieces (better army activity). No more, and no less. If a spacial advantage does not incur an activity advantage, then it can be and likely is meaningless. As another common example, consider a King-and-pawn endgame with both Kings centralized and the pawns locked, with one side having much more space (you can even use a

similar pawn structure to the previous examples). Then the side having more space is often at a disadvantage since the enemy King has gotten behind the lines and can be used to elbow out the King whose side enjoys the space advantage. As a simple example, consider the following position with Black to play:

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Here Black, with the space advantage, loses because White has the opposition, but also because Black's pawns are so advanced and vulnerable. So, on the average, having more space is an advantage, but the advantage usually has to be in the form of more activity. Of course we could state something similar about many so-called advantages (for example, time see the next paragraph), but it should be clear that the real end goal you are trying to achieve is more active play, not space. We could make the same argument about time as we did about space. For example, in a given position I can give you free extra tempos, but if you use them unwisely and place your pieces on squares less effective than they were (or just have no effective way of making them better; zugzwang being the extreme example), then having extra time would not be helpful. So again we see that time, like space, takes a back seat to the real goal having more and better things to do with your pieces. In Elements I designated the number of squares to which a piece can move its mobility. Mobility is extremely important since piece value is highly correlated with mobility a Queen is more valuable than a Rook because it can also move like a Bishop. But the value of mobility in a real position can, like space, also vary, in that a piece can have lots of useless moves (not usually, but it does happen). Therefore the real goal is good piece (or in total, army) activity. No matter how you define activity, if your pieces have lots of good things to do mobile, flexible, attacking key points, etc. then that is the real advantage. That is why, in my book, I call space a pseudo-element. I used that term to mean that space does exists as an understandable and useful concept, but is not really an elemental basis to evaluate a position. So what is a good measure of positional, static evaluation? From the above, you can deduce that I must use total piece activity to cover the useful byproducts of space and time. I claim the four most important static evaluation criteria, in order from most to least important, are:

* Material * King Safety (you can make this #1 if the King is extremely unsafe!) * Total Piece Activity * Pawn Structure The fifth, non-board consideration, is the clock/time factor, which can even become the most important consideration in the case of severe time pressure. Time remaining on the clock is always a big factor in faster time control games. Note: to get the proper dynamic evaluation you must mentally move the pieces, find each player's best moves, and see what can happen! It is not that pawn structure is unimportant it is, or it would not be on this list! For example, in common positions where the material is even, both Kings are safe and both armies relatively equally mobile, pawn structure can easily be the deciding factor. But otherwise many weaker players greatly overrate pawn structure and think they are winning when their pawn structure is somewhat better, even in the face of clearly more active enemy forces! Similarly, sometimes players strive for more space and get it, only to find that the active and flexible enemy pieces make their space advantage rather moot! This happens in many openings, but Open Sicilians and the Modern Defense are two that readily come to mind. In summary, next time you are considering pushing pawns to make space, evaluate the likely result to make sure you are not just weakening yourself but actually providing an advantage for your army. If so and there is nothing better to do go for it! Evaluation is an extremely important chess skill, and we will address it much more in future Thinking Caps! WHAT MAKES ONE MOVE BETTER THAN ANOTHER? By NM Dan Heisman

When I begin to instruct a student, one of the pertinent questions I ask is What is your main goal each move? Sometimes I get reasonable, but erroneous answers like: I am trying to win or I am trying to make my position better. but the correct answer is I am trying the play the best move or I am trying to play the best move I can find, given the time constraints. But the student is not off the hook yet! The obvious follow-up question is OK, but then what makes one move better than another? After all, if you are trying to find the best move, a criteria is that you have to know what makes one move better than another. We touched upon this question in The Thinking Cap #2, The King of the Hill, but now we are going to focus on exactly what this question pertains. And make no mistake this is important, for the question What makes one move better than another? is at the very heart of what it means to

play chess! First, I would like to eliminate the plausible but out-of-bounds answer The move that best follows the correct plan. While this may be an excellent way to help choose your candidate moves, at this point I would rather deal more with the theory of best moves rather than the practice. Again, lets start with some other common (but not correct) answers: 1. It leads to a win of something 2. It does more. 3. The position after the one move is better than the position after the other. This last answer is almost correct! In fact, in theory it is correct, but for humans it is usually impossible to apply (as will be shown below), so it wont do. However, this third answer does address the fact that we evaluate positions rather than moves, so if one move is better than another, that means it must lead to a position that is better than another, but which positions should we use? The problem with using the position immediately after the candidate move is that the position may be clearly non-quiescent. For example, suppose you compare a nothing move like Kh1 with a move like Qxh7+, capturing the h-pawn. It may seem better to win a pawn with check than just move the King, but what if your opponents next move is Kxh7, winning the Queen for the aforementioned pawn? So we must look further, to see what happens after Qxh7+, or else the evaluation that we are ahead a pawn is meaningless. Generally, we stop our analysis at a point where we can evaluate as follows: 1. The position is quiescent there are no more meaningful checks, captures, or threats which would change the evaluation, 2. We use our judgment for example we sacrifice a piece to expose the enemy King and even though we cannot practically analyze to quiescence, we judge whether the exposed King is worth the sacrifice, or 3. A sacrifice fails since the further possibilities cannot possibly give us a return equal to or greater than our sacrifice. For example, if you sacrifice your Queen and then later you might possibly win back a Rook, no sense analyzing further to see whether that is true, since either way you would reject that sacrifice. The first of these is the most common. However, even knowing where to stop analyzing a line still leaves us with the question: With a large tree branching from each move, which positions are the ones we want to evaluate? In other words, which branches of the tree are meaningful? The answer is that we must assume to the best of our ability to judge the best moves for each side: A move is only as good as the positions that will be reached from it, assuming best moves for both sides! Of course, if you are not good at judging what the best moves are during analysis, you will

arrive at the wrong positions and reach the wrong conclusions when you evaluate. This weakness, along with an inability to accurately evaluate positions with approximately equal material and the inability to recognize quickly and accurately the common tactical motifs, are the three biggest thinking problems of weaker players! So now we have our answer. Suppose we have moves A and B. Then we try to determine the best sequence after A and B, only going as deep as necessary to evaluate, for example: My move A followed by his best move A followed by my best move A => A A A vs. My move B followed by his best move B followed by my best move B, his best move B and my B => B B- B B B This leads to some position after A we feel we can evaluate. Lets call this position A* and the evaluation of this position E (A*). The same holds for B: the position after B we call B* and we evaluate it as E (B*). Then we compare the evaluations (good players spend a great deal of time doing this when they are thinking!) and decide which position we like better. If E (A*) is superior to E (B*) then we like move A better! Then we apply the King of the Hill method discussed in The Thinking Cap #2, and apply this to all our candidate moves in order to find the best one. There are shortcuts to this method (depending upon the position), and good players dont consciously go through all this, but this is basically what should be happening when you think, or else you will end up with a less than optimum move. For example, many beginners dont even follow the guideline When you see a good move, look for a better one you are trying to find the best one! Finally, lets see how this comes out when a computer does it. Did you ever see the analysis window in Fritz, where it defaults to show three lines? The first line, using the example from The Thinking Cap #2, shows something like: 11 ply (1/42) +0.83 19.Rhe1 d5 20.cxd5 exd5 21.Bh4 This means that after 11 ply (assuming quiescence and search extension, etc.) Fritz has evaluated the final position to be 0.83 pawns better for White, and the best move sequence follows. Since playing the best move keeps the current evaluation from the previous ply, (by game theory, your position cannot get better or worse if you make the best move in a game like chess), Fritz assigns the value from the final position back to the original move! So it judges 19.Rhe1 to be +0.83 and, since it has already ordered all the moves and placed this line at the top of the list of lines, then 19.Rhe1 at 11 ply is thought to be the best move, and the second best move, with a lower evaluation, will be on the next line. The top line is called the Principal Variation, or PV. So next time you are trying to find the best move, try to keep in mind that what you are really trying to do: Find the likely optimum position(s) that arise from this move and compare it to similar optimum positions that arise from each other candidate moves. The move that, in your judgment, leads by best play to the position you like the most is the one you should generally play. Of course, doing this in practice is difficult (and many books are filled with practical advice on doing so), but at least it helps to start by understanding what should be theoretically

happening. I hope laying this groundwork helps!

THE THINKING CAP PART eight By NM Dan Heisman Only Part of the Analysis Tree Changes Each Move!

One thing that makes chess easier is that only two things have changed on the board since the previous time you had to decide on a move:

1. Your previous move 2. Your opponents previous move

That means IF you perfectly understood what was happening on the board last move (and thats a big if!), then, unlike a problem in a book, you dont have to start over from scratch to figure out what is happening this move you only need take into account the consequences of the two moves that happened in-between.

The following is an easy example: Suppose your Rook on d1 was not in danger on the previous move, and no direct or indirect consequence of either new move affected d1, then the Rook must still not be in danger.

That is why we hear such guidelines as Each time your opponent makes a move, ask yourself Why did he make that move? and What can he do now that he could not do before? You can even ask, What are all the legal moves he can make now that he could not do before?

The above guidelines often overlook the other consequence of the opponents move, which is What was his piece doing before his move which it is not doing now? This idea of checking to see what a piece is no longer doing is even more important when considering your move: If I move this piece, then what was it doing before that it will no longer be doing now? I have many students who often lose material because they are so interested in what a piece will be doing after their move that they forget that it was doing something important (like guarding material or preventing checkmate) on the square where it resided and will no longer be doing so.

Interestingly, the extra knowledge about only taking into account recent changes works better for stronger players! Why? Because stronger players have better board vision and more seasoned logic to account for the changes since the previous move. Weaker players, due to lack of board vision or even carelessness, often do not take into account all the aspects of a position and move hastily or with incomplete knowledge. The consequence for a player who moves without considering the necessary information is that IF, on the next move, they only take into account the changes in the position, then they also continue to miss the carry-over problems from the previous move! We will call these leftover problems because they were left over from the previous move!

For example, suppose a player does not notice a particular weakness which his (also weak) opponent does not exploit. Since his opponents move does not exploit the weakness but rather does something else, then if the player just says, What can he do now? based solely upon the opponents previous move, he will continue to overlook the weakness and will again allow it to be exploited on his opponents upcoming move. When this happens to both players, this often leads to the so-called comedy of errors where both continue to miss something that was originally missed several moves ago.

This leftover problem does not occur nearly as much with stronger players, not just because of their superior board vision, but also because their opposition is much stronger, and does not leave unattended business lying about the board. In other words, if a strong player overlooks something, then his opponent usually exploits this error, and the overlooked problem is resolved in the opponents favor. But with weaker players, once both players have missed an idea, that leftover problem may remain around several moves until either 1) one player accidentally notices it and either fixes it (if that player was the culprit) or takes advantage of it (if the noticing player is the opponent), or 2) one of the players unknowingly makes a move which changes the position so that the leftover problem disappears.

The result of that difference between strong players and weaker ones is that weaker players, even if they are taught to look only for the differences caused by the previous move, often adjust their thought process to include looking for leftover problems. While this widening of their thought process is understandable, it is terribly inefficient, since that means a weaker player sometimes approaches a position more like a problem, in that he has to solve everything all over again each move, and not just carry over the correct information and account for the differences. This is a terrible burden for the weaker player who, probably correctly, does not trust himself.

So what can be done by a weaker player who wants to play efficiently but is afraid of

overlooking a leftover problem? There is no perfect answer, but here are some suggestions:

1. Look for leftover problems during your opponents move. But if you find one, dont slap your head and yell out loud Oh, what did I miss?!?! That tends to tip your opponent off too, and he will use his move to identify and fix or take advantage of what you found. Of course, some players make exclamations like this purposely as a plot to lure their opponent into a trap. However, that ploy is also dumb because if your opponent is smart and you alert him even as a ploy he will be LESS likely to fall into the trap, since the main two possibilities are that you blundered or that you are trapping him, and he will make sure to figure out which one it is! 2. Work on improving your board vision so you miss less. This can be done by doing board vision puzzles or just playing lots of slow games. 3. Take your time and be careful on each move. If you are thorough, then you are likely missing less. That in turn means you can be more efficient next move and not have to worry about leftover problems nearly as much. 4. Practice an efficient and consistent thought process. If you have a good thought process (such as one that includes the question If I make this move, what are all the checks, captures, and threats he can make in reply, and can I safely meet them all?), then you will find most, if not all, of the key problems in the position.

There is one instance where a leftover threat is normal and must not be overlooked! This normal leftover occurs when you meet an opponents threat with a zwischenzug an inbetween move or counterattack, and temporarily ignore the threat. In that case you purposely allow the original threat to still exist, so dont forget about it next move or you could lose the game immediately!

Lets summarize what should occur during analysis: A player creates a mental analysis tree of moves that are possible. Once a move is made, he can trim that tree to include only the moves that were actually made. If the opponent makes a move that was not on the tree, he should see how that move affects the position, and generate new branches. If his opponents move was on the tree, he should verify previous analysis of that move and add new analysis. In general, any new analysis is most efficient when it focuses on the changes in the position made by the previous move, including both the creation of new possibilities and the elimination of old ones.

So, from a practical standpoint, using the What are ALL the reasons my opponent made that move?, What are ALL the things he can do to me now and could not do before (and can no longer do)?, and What are his new threats, if any? type of questions are all very helpful in a practical sense, and powerful shortcuts for thought efficiency. However, these shortcuts work much better once a player is strong enough that leftover problems are likely a non-issue. So play slow games and learn to be thorough and careful!

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THE THINKING CAP PART nine By NM Dan Heisman Don't Waste Time on Lines That Don't Happen! One thing I have learned from listening to hundreds of amateurs analyze out loud is that they spend inordinate amounts of time analyzing lines that could never happen. This waste of time is due to one or more of the following reasons: 1. The player does not use deductive logic (and/or lacks the experience) to understand what is forced. Therefore he assumes moves that would never happen. 2. The player wishfully thinks his opponent will not make the best move and assumes a bad reply, thus resulting in the overestimation of his own move, or 3. The player does not know when to stop analyzing a particular line. Therefore he arrives at a position where he could have stopped and evaluated, but instead continues unnecessarily into lines that not only may not happen, but are irrelevant to the process of choosing the right move. One common example of this is when a player proves that a move is not best (at any point in a line), but nevertheless continues because he does not realize that analyzing past such a move is usually irrelevant since a player wont consciously play it. There is no instant cure for wasting time analyzing moves that cant or shouldnt happen, and even strong players do this occasionally. But it is important to be able to continually improve your ability to identify what is relevant and/or critical and what is not, so that you dont waste time on unnecessary lines.

So what can be done? From a practical side, playing lots of slow games against stronger players and then analyzing with them afterwards is a great step. Stronger players are better at weeding out what is relevant and, when they analyze with you, they often show and/or tell you why. Even watching strong players analyzing their games can be quite an eye opener. If you cannot play stronger players, at least play decent competition. That way, as you and your opponents improve over time, the moves you face will, more and more, tell you whether you were anticipating something relevant or not.

It is very helpful to first look for the forcing moves checks, captures, and threats for both sides. CLICK HERE to refer to the earlier Thinking Cap with that title. An example of how to find for one type of forcing reply would be to ask yourself If I move the piece there and he simply attacks it with a piece of lesser value, would I have anywhere safe to move? Looking for forcing moves is especially helpful if the reason you are wasting time looking at lines that could never happen is because you have no idea what to analyze at all!

If, in response to a candidate move (at any depth of the tree), there are no forcing move replies by your opponent, then likely you can cease analysis of that line and evaluate the resulting position. On the other hand, if your opponent has forcing moves, it can be wasteful to assume he wont play one and instead analyze a non-forcing move instead. If you find yourself constantly surprised by opponents tactics, then while you are not necessarily wasting time evaluating lines that wont happen, you have the opposite but possibly even more severe problem of not taking into account lines that will!

Another suggestion that should help is to ask yourself, Would my opponent really do this? or Why would my opponent make this move? If the answer is that he would not make this move for example because it is helpful to your cause or irrelevant to his then it is likely he will not, and analyzing it just to see how good it is for you is wasteful. Never forget that your opponent is trying to find his best move, so you must assume he will make his move with that in mind, and thus you should not resort to casually assuming moves which the opponent would have little reason to consider, much less play.

My students often tell me they often consider moves for their opponent which are possible but, with a little analysis, can clearly be eliminated. If that is so, then your opponent will likely come to the same conclusion and, while he may also consider such lines, he likely will not play them. Of course you do need to analyze any plausible reply at least lightly to see if it really might be playable for the opponent. However, once you determine that a move is not playable, further analysis of that line is detrimental.

You can also waste time by analyzing lines that are possible but not relevant. Suppose you determine the best move, but instead of making it, continue to analyze in order to find out what the future holds. This is a complete waste of time, and a common problem. For example, suppose your opponent puts you in check and you have only one legal response, but after that things get complicated. Your only reasonable choices are to either make the move immediately or resign. Looking ahead to see what will happen is not only unnecessary, but helpful to your opponent, because in that circumstance he can think about his next move with perfect efficiency on your clock time while you waste time looking to see what will happen. While the only one move to get out of check is the most extreme case, the same problem can happen in less extreme cases: players often find the best move but dont make it out of

curiosity, and this is most wasteful. Even if a player does not make the best move because he wants to triple-check whether it is really best, the time he spends doing so can get severely diminished returns, especially if this eventually leads to time trouble.

There was an earlier Thinking Cap where I designated three levels of thought process: Flip Coin Chess, Hope Chess, and Real Chess. We can name the problem of looking at more than is necessary Over-Real Chess because, although Over-Real Chess is not a thinking process, it is an bad extension of Real Chess where you look at more than is necessary to find the best move.

Let us take an example from Dr. Adrian de Groots seminal work Thought and Choice in Chess and see what World Champion Max Euwe has to say after he finds the best move:

Probably some more accidents will happen. Much is still up in the air.

and then shortly thereafter Euwe makes his move! Now it is pertinent to ask Why would a World Champion make a move when much is still up in the air? The answer is easy. Euwe knew that he had found the best move. The question of how much better the best move is than the 2nd best move is almost always irrelevant. Euwe did not really care whether his move was winning or just resulted in a superior position. His job was to find the best move, and once he did so his job was over! So he made the move without otherwise being able to predict what would happen. He looked only far enough ahead to determine the move was better than any other no more, no less. Perfect efficiency, but we should expect that from the World Champion. And we can all learn from him.

Of course even if you wanted to be as efficient as Dr. Euwe you could not, due to his superior board vision, analysis, and evaluation skills. But that does not mean you cannot improve your skills especially your thinking process to continually improve your efficiency so that more and more of your analysis is relevant. Do too little and you risk Hope Chess your opponent will continually surprise you with moves. Do too much and you confuse yourself and get into time trouble also very bad. So there is an efficient and happy medium, and knowing that it exists and working toward it is a great first step.

You usually want to go wide in your analysis before you go deep. In other words, there is no sense looking 10 ply (half-moves) down a line where the 3rd or 4th reply is implausible instead of considering either:

1)

other candidate moves for yourself (1st ply) or,

2) in response to your candidate moves, other reasonable replies for your opponent at the 2nd ply.

The deeper you analyze, the less likely the line to that point will occur. For example, suppose the chances that the move at each ply of a specific line your are considering are only 40% each. Then to look three moves ahead (6 ply), the chances of a complete occurrence of this line is only 0.4 to the sixth power, or about 0.4% overall (1 in 250). It is more efficient to consider the other occurrences at the first ply, which add up to 60%, or others at the 2nd ply, which are 24% (.4 x .6)! Or, if you want to argue that you are controlling the first ply and the chances are making that move are 100%, then that means you are definitely going to make that move, so you may as well do so and push the clock!

Much of the above can be summarized by #322 from Alburt and Lawrences book Chess Rules of Thumb: Think along the top of the variations. Before you go into a jungle of deep variations, search for different opportunities for yourself, and for your opponent, on the very first moves. Good advice!

One last piece of advice: In his book The Seven Deadly Chess Sins, GM Rowson advises that you always ask yourself What great things does this move do for my position? If you cant find one, then the move you are considering may be a waste of time. Similarly, if you are considering a reply by your opponent that does not do great things for his position, then you might want to ask yourself that reply is worth analyzing. More relevance means more likelihood, which in turn means a better chance of finding the best move efficiently and thats the goal.

THE THINKING CAP PART ten

THINKING ON YOUR OPPONENT'S TIME By NM Dan Heisman Suppose I told you that your chess thinking could become almost twice as efficient. I think (no pun intended) that most Thinking Cap readers would be very interested in how this could be accomplished. For players who waste their opponents thinking time such an increase might be possible. Lets consider the most efficient ways to use the half of the game when

your opponents clock is running. First, your opponents time is, of course, the best time to drink, eat, go to the bathroom, and stretch your legs. And indeed you should eat and drink during long games, and stretch your legs once in a while to keep your blood circulating and your body limber. Lets assume these activities take a certain percentage of your opponents thinking time. Even so, you should keep these extraneous activities down to a moderate amount. For example, suppose you get up and stroll around after every move, checking to see how your buddies games are going, etc. and only return to your table after you notice that your opponent has punched the clock. Even if you could be perfectly efficient and catch your opponent immediately as he punches the clock (in practice virtually impossible), then you still might waste 10 seconds or so each move getting back to your board and seeing what move was made. In a 40 move game, this would amount to about 400 seconds, or almost 7 minutes! And even if you walk around on only half your moves, that still amounts to over three minutes of wasted time, time that might be needed to save the game later. So that wasted time can add up, in addition to the lost opportunities to use the opponents thinking time more wisely. Therefore, the remainder of this article assumes you are both willing and able to use most of your opponents thinking time to augment yours what should you be doing?

The classic suggestion is to think specifics and tactics during your move and generalities and strategy during your opponents move and this indeed is good advice. For example, on your move you might analyze specific lines such as If I make move A, will he reply move B, and what is my evaluation of the position if he does?, while on his turn you might consider ideas such as With this pawn structure, should I push my queenside pawns and if so, which ones first or What would be the ideal square on which to maneuver this knight, and should it be the next piece that I need to reposition? If you learn to do this efficiently, you will be making good use of your opponents time, and that in turn should result in better performances.

Another part of general strategy that can be performed while your opponents clock is ticking is time management. For example, you can get a feel on whether you are playing too fast or too slow, based on considerations such as the complexity of the position, how many moves the game is likely to last, the time control, the current move number, and how much time is remaining on your clock. A periodic adjustment is necessary early in the time control, but that adjustment may become more frequent as time becomes more of a factor.

However, while considering general strategy is the most common practice that occurs on your opponents time, it is not the only one. There are ways to spend that time, and deciding which is the most efficient often depends on factors such as how much time is left on the clock and how efficiently you can predict your opponents next move. As was discussed in a prior Thinking Cap, suppose your opponent only has one legal move, but for some reason he (erroneously) is not making it. In this case you can predict your opponent move with perfect efficiency and, instead of thinking in generalities, you can assume that move will be made and start to decide on your reply, just as if it were already your turn.

With regards to your opponents likely move, there is an enormous grey area in-between forced and wide open, where his move is neither forced nor completely discretionary. In this grey area, the more you can anticipate your opponents move, the more you can think concretely on his time. For example, suppose your opponent has two crucial replies and is taking some time to decide between them. You should also figure out that he has two choices, assume the one you deem more dangerous and, while he is deciding, analyze what you would do if he made that move. If it turns out he makes the other move, you have lost very little especially if you were correct that the one you were analyzing was better!

A very common practice among stronger players is to assume your principal variation (PV the sequence you thought was most likely to happen when you were deciding your move) is going to be played. Since knowing the PV usually involves finding your opponents best move, you can assume that move at least initially and see if your intended reply still holds. Of course, if you dont have a PV this may not be helpful advice, but you may find that even if you do not have a PV that you can find one while your opponent is thinking.

Quite often when you use your PV it turns out that although your opponents next move may be optimum, your originally intended reply to it may only be sufficient. For example, you might say to yourself, I will play X, which is clearly the best move, and if he plays move Y, then I can reply with move Z. But all that logic usually proves is that your intended next move Z is sufficient to meet his expected move Y, not that Z is necessarily your best reply to Y. Therefore, while finding such a sufficient Z is usually necessary to play X, it does not mean that Z is what you should play if Y is actually made. So while your opponents clock is running you can think to yourself, Alright, I planned Z if he plays Y, but suppose he does plays Y can I both verify that Z is sufficient and possibly find a move better than Z?

By cleverly using your opponents time to determine if move Z would truly be best then, if your opponent does play Y as expected, you wont have to rely on Z as simply a basis for new analysis, but will have much more information to start your turn. In fact, while you are thinking during your opponents turn, you may unhappily refute your intended move Z, and need to find another move that is even playable. Hopefully that scenario wont happen too often, but when it does especially when you are short on time and those type of analysis errors occur more frequently starting your search for a sufficient move on your opponents time rather than just waiting and then finding out Z is inadequate on your time may be the difference between winning or losing a game! It has happened to me more than once.

Of course, sometimes when you are considering his reply Y, you realize Y is not best (your PV was not correct) and he would be making a mistake to play it. Then you should no longer

worry about Z, but can spend your energies seeing which replies are more likely than Y and what you can do about them.

Worse, sometimes when you are in time trouble you dont have time to find a PV. So in those cases it is especially important to make optimum use of your opponents time to calculate concrete variations in case they are played. Sometimes your opponent, even if he has quite a bit more time, may move quickly to stop you from doing so but, ironically, this is usually a big mistake on his part, because then he is negating his extra time advantage. The reason is that during your opponents thinking time you cant think as efficiently about what the opponent is going to do as your opponent can, and so it is usually a better strategy for the opponent to take his time and for you to use it as best possible. (Note: the major exception is when you are clearly winning, when it may indeed be correct for your opponent to play quickly in your time trouble even if he has adequate time!)

I read that world-class Grandmaster Michael Adams formerly took a stroll after almost every move, but became an even better player once he mastered the art of using his opponents thinking time efficiently. So next time you play a slow game, see if you can implement some of the strategies suggested above to improve your results, too. Good luck!

This completes the 10 part series of The Thinking Cap. I hope you have enjoyed the series and that reading it has been instructive. I would very much like to thank IM Jeremy Silman for giving me the opportunity to write for his website, and I hope to meet each and every one of you some day at the World Open or another tournament we both visit. If you have any feedback, I can be contacted at danheisman@comcast.net.

Best wishes and good health to all! NM Dan Heisman, Jan 2005.

Copyright 2004 Dan Heisman