27 articles Thinking Process

Chess Strategy

chess strategy thought process

What is Chess Strategy? It is the creation of long term plans that will dictate your next several moves. In order to achieve these plans, you can argue that the chess player will resort to either positional, tactical or endgame devices. Aspect of chess playing concerned with evaluation of chess positions and setting of goals…

Chess Tips: Patience at the Chess board

Win more chess games

“Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game, or drawing games that should have been won.” – Bent Larsen Patience in Chess This is the first entry in our chess tips series. Winning and losing in chess is many times a result not of what you do not know, but…

Thought Process Framework

Building Blocks

Moves are linked with other moves, and we have already looked at the simplest relationship between moves: the relationship between a move and your opponent’s response, but there exists a more complex relationship between moves.  The objective in a game is usually long term, and cannot be accomplished in one move, and it is essential…

Thought Process Checklist

Chess Blunder Checklist

Core Evaluation 1. How has the opponent’s last move changed the position? Has your opponent made a blunder? 2. What is he trying to achieve? 3. Has he weakened his position (positional concession, piece en prise, open to a tactic) ? 4. Are there any threats? Tactical Evaluation If 1 or more of the following…

Threats in Chess Pt. 2

I wasn’t planning on making this a series of posts on threats, but I feel I’m on to something. My chess has improved since I have restructured my thought process to incorporate threat analysis . Threat Based Evaluation Process 1. What are my opponent’s threats?     a. Is there a mate threat?     b. Is…

Think Like a Chess Engine

In Kotov’s great book “Think Like a Grandmaster” he taught the average chess player the inner workings of how a chess master thinks about a position by creating a tree of candidates and then proceeding along the tree. While there is much to learn from Kotov’s work, I have always been facinated how computers can…

Positional Evaluation Checklist

I have created a PDF document that is based on Karpov and Mazukevich’s thought process guidelines, and includes Herman Grooten’s modifications. You can download it here. The idea is to use it when going over annotated games, or when performing Stokyo exercises. Hopefully, by using it during your training sessions, the questions will sink into…