How to Choose a Chess Move

1: It's Your Move

Making a decision is one of life's basic skills. Good decisions bring us almost everything we hold valuable. Bad decisions cost us friendships, time, money and mental ease.

Schools don't teach us how to make good decisions. But chess can. Some of the first difficult choices we make in life are at a chessboard.

Years later we forget how bewildering choosing a move can be. Here's a position that masters would call "quiet."

Firouzja - Mamedyarov

Norway (blitz) 2023

White to play

Quiet perhaps. Yet White must choose from among 42 (!) different moves.

Of course, only a computer considers all 42. Humans quickly learn how to whittle the number down. Even players who have just learned how the pieces move can grasp how truly awful 1 xb4?? is.

As a player improves, he or she learns shortcuts to trim the list further. A "post-beginner" eventually discovers how to rule out pointless retreats, such as 1 h1.

Gradually, that player goes beyond rejecting bad moves, pointless moves, innocuous moves and such to spotting moves that may be good. These are moves that might improve winning chances in some way. For example, 1 dc1 looks forward to a time when the c5-pawn can be safely captured (e.g. 1.c6? 2 xc5!).

Masters have a name for moves that survive the trim-down cut. They are "candidate" moves. In a position like this, only a handful of the 42 legal moves could properly be called candidates. That should tell you how hard it is to find a good move.

In this game, White chose 1 e3. It was a good choice because White may want to gain space and expand the power of his queen and d1-rook with d3-d4.

Now let's switch seats and think about how Black should reply.

Black to play

It is purely a coincidence that Black has nearly as many legal moves to choose from. Once again we can identify blunders. Nine of Black's 41 moves lose enough material to cost Black the game. For instance, 1.xh3?? allows 2 xh3.

Another half dozen or so are pointless, such as 1.a8. They could turn Black's slightly favorable position into an equal or inferior one. So would any of several weakening moves such as 1.h5.

But there are alternatives that improve Black's chances in various ways. For example, 1.d7 develops the queen while making a threat (.xh3). Also, 1.b6 protects a potentially vulnerable pawn. A master might consider them and two or three other moves before choosing one to play.

But chess teachers rarely explain how to make that choice. Instead, they provide an avalanche of advice - about pawn structure, material values, and so on. Then they tell students to sort it all out.

"It's easy," they say. "Just pick the right move."

TWO TYPES

It is not easy. But we can make it easier, starting with this:

There are two basic types of candidates. The first are those that improve your position according to "general principles." Those are the guidelines that all beginners are taught.

Some are very broad: Develop your pieces and improve their range. Protect them and your pawns. Try to control the center squares. Defend pieces and pawns under attack.

Other general principles are more specific. "Improve the range of your pieces" can mean "Put rooks on open files" and "Don't move knights to the edge of the board."

The second basic kind of candidate is tactical. Moves that give check or make a capture are tactical. So are moves that threaten to make a damaging check or capture.

Most of the moves you make in a typical game are either "principled" or tactical. If you want to make a move but can't describe it in one of those two ways, you should take more time to consider it.

Some positions are so tactical, that principled moves take a back seat until the tactics are over. After 1 e3 in the last diagram Black passed up various principled moves and chose the tactical 1.f5.

White to play

White's reply 2 c3 could also be called tactical. By responding to Black's threat of .fxe4, it frees him to threaten 3 xe5. Black met the threat with 2.f6.

Masters would say the position has become "sharper." This just means there are more tactical candidates than before. They tend to crowd out the principled candidates and get more of our attention than, say, 3 ac1.

After Black plays 2.f6, the tactical candidates begin with a capture, 3 xd5. Masters say such a move is "forcing." Black would be forced to recapture or accept the loss of a knight.

White has other forcing moves, including 3 e4 and 3 a3, which threaten Black knights, and 3 e2 and 3 a4, which open the way for 4 xe5 or 4 xe5.

3 xd5!

In sharp positions it pays to think of tactics first, general principles second. Now 3.xd5 would cost Black the e5-pawn. So would 3.xd5 because 4 xe5! discovers a xd5 attack on the queen.

The position has become very sharp. It should be no surprise that more forcing captures and threats followed:

3 . xd5

4 e4 fxe4

5 dxe4 xe4?

6 e3!

White makes two threats (7 xd8 and 7 xe4) and seeks a growing advantage.

6 . d5

7 xe5

There are fewer pieces on the board. Does this make it easier to choose a move?

Actually, Black has more legal moves, 42, than in the first position we examined. And the situation is more perilous. More than half of those moves lose enough material to cost Black the game.

Even the forking 7.c2 would lose eventually after 8 f4 xa1 9 xd5 -moves 10 xa1, for example.

Nor can Black relax and think about making a principle-based move. Given time, White would win the pinned d5-bishop with 8 d2 followed by 9 ad1 or 9 a3. Play went:

7 . d6

8 xd5 xd5

9 e4 cd8

10 d2

Black's situation is critical. After the game it was found that only the forcing 10.xe5! 11 xe5 f6! would reduce his plight to the loss of a pawn.

10 . e6?

And Black resigned when he saw how 11 g6+! and 12 xe6 would win his queen.

PRIORITIES

"I was half right," a novice might complain about his latest loss. "I centralized my knight. It was a good move. Except I allowed him to take my queen."

Wrong. Blunders are never "half right." They are 100 percent wrong. Tactical moves have an annoying habit of making principled moves look stupid.

Beginners feel this makes chess too hard. In fact, it makes it easier. It sets priorities. It tells you that making a good decision begins with watching for tactical moves - both yours and your opponent's.

Nakamura - Carlsen

Chess.com 2016

Black to play

White threatens xc5. A simple way for Black to avert that is by moving his bishop.

He has three ways of doing that. He can reject 1.b5? because it relinquishes control of d5 and allows 2 xd5!. But there is nothing wrong with 1.b7.

However the best was:

1 . d7!

This is not only forcing but prepares to post the bishop on a better square, f5. For example, 2 d3 c4 3 c3? and now 3.f5! wins material by threatening .xb1.

2 f4

There are several reasons to play White's last move. The queen remains fairly well centralized. It...