The Difference Between Words and Moves
Explanation vs Calculation
When you are analyzing a position do you think in words or moves? Do your thoughts during a game look something like this?
“I have the bishop pair so I should trade pawns”
”I know that I should be trying to trade off my bad bishop”
”There’s an open e-file. Let me put a rook there”
Or do your thoughts look like this?
“If I play …Bc6 then White might play Kd2 then I can play …a4, Bc4 Bd5 which looks good”
”Black cannot play …Bxg5 because of Bxh7+ Kxh7, Nxg5+ Kg6, Qg4 and my attack is strong”
Let’s test this out. Look at the three positions below and think about how you would play. Note how your own thought process works in each position:
Most likely, your thoughts while looking at these three positions were some combination of words (explanation) and moves (calculation). You probably use words, reasoning and explanation in some positions and move-by-move calculation in other positions. And while there is nothing wrong with this, I would argue that most club-level players lean too far on the explanation side of things while stronger players tend to lean more on the calculation side of things.
As a test, I gave each of these three positions to a few students of mine and had them think out loud for each position (a la “Amateur’s Mind”). I will show the rating level of the student and parts of how they thought about each position:
POSITION #1
1300-rated player: “White’s attacking the h7 and f7 pawns but h7 is the more dangerous attack since it would be checkmate. I have to stop this move. I can play …Nf6 to hit the queen or …h6 to hit the knight. I’m going to do …Nf6(??) since it makes a bigger threat and stops checkmate at the same time.”
1750-rated player: “White is threatening checkmate on h7. I can either do …h6 or …Nf6 to stop checkmate… (thinks for a while) I think I have to do …h6 because if I do 1…Nf6 White can play 2. Qxf7+! Qxf7 3. Nxf7 Kxf7 4. Bxc6 Bxc6 5. Ne5+ and then Nxc6 when White is ahead a pawn). If I play 1…h6 instead then I don’t see a tactic follow-up for White and once the knight goes back to f3 or e4 then I can figure out what to do afterwards. It’s probably a relatively balanced situation.”
Summary: The 1300-rated player decided on …Nf6 with no calculation and used the explanation of “it makes a bigger threat and stops checkmate at the same time” to rationalize their decision. While this reasoning isn’t wrong, it fails to hold up with move-by-move calculation and ends up being a blunder. In comparison, the 1750-rated player calculated and figured out why …Nf6 doesn’t work and used the process of elimination to deduce that …h6 is the better move option.
POSITION #2
1350-rated player: “White’s c-pawn is attacking our knight. I’m going to play b3(?) in order to counterattack white’s bishop and if White takes the pawn then I can take their bishop and win the bishop pair. I’ll be down a pawn but maybe I can play …f5 one day to open things up and attack on the kingside.”
1900-rated player: “Our knight is hit. I don’t really want to retreat to c6 since it looks fairly passive. Let’s see if I can do something else… (thinks for a bit) It looks like I can trade pawns on c3 with 1…bxc3 2. bxc3 and instead of retreating the knight I can play 2…Bxd5 getting rid of the knight on d5 which is defending the c3-pawn. If White plays 3. Nxd5 then 3…Nxd5 where White will either lose the c3-pawn or have to play 4. cxd4 Nc3 which looks rough for them. If White plays 3. cxd4 instead then we can play 3…Bxa2 4. Rxa2 and I think the position is becoming a bit more even. I was able to trade off a few pieces and get rid of white’s strong knight on d5. I’m still behind on space in the center but I should be able to play around that.”
Summary: The 1350-rated player ended up going for a “positional pawn sacrifice” (I’m being a bit generous with the description here) with 1…b3? 2. Bxb3 Nxb3 3. Qxb3 but will not get enough compensation to make up for the pawn deficit. On the other hand, the 1900-rated player was able to come up with a sequence of moves that dealt with white’s threat while also avoiding passive play with a move like 1…Nc6.
So far you could definitely make the argument that the two higher-rated players are simply stronger players (and better calculators) so that’s why they figured out the best way to play in each position. But notice how each player approached the position. The two lower-rated players said a lot of words and used very few (if any) specific moves in their answers. In comparison, the two higher-rated players also used words to explain things but had a much higher use of specific move-by-move calculation. They thought about not only what they wanted to play but also how the opponent might respond. After they calculated sequences then they also looked to give some kind of evaluation at the end of things: “It’s probably a relatively balanced situation” and “I’m still behind on space in the center but I should be able to play around that”.
Ok, so far each of the first two positions actually had some specific calculation sequence that could be done to figure out the best way to play. What if there isn’t any specific calculation sequence to be worked through? Let’s move to…
POSITION #3
1700-rated player: “I think we should be attacking on the kingside due to our pawn chain pointing that direction, white’s king being a bit exposed with the f-pawn having been moved and all of our pieces being on that side of the board… (thinks) One way of playing might be to play …Re6-h6 and …Qh5 to attack the h2-pawn. Another option is …h5 with the plan of playing …h4 to break apart the pawns on the kingside or create a weakness. Finally, there is …g5 to do a quicker pawn break but that moves the pawn directly in front of my king which looks risky. I think I like the …h5-h4 plan a bit more so that’s what I would play.”
2000-rated player: “We definitely should be targeting white’s king and attacking. All of our pieces are active and ready to strike so we can either try to use them right away or look for active pawn moves… (thinks) I see a few choices. We have …Re6-h6 and targeting the h2-pawn. Another option is …h5-h4 to go for a pawn break there. Finally, there is …g5 right away to go for an immediate pawn break. If I go for …Re6-h6 I think that White can do something like Rf2 and Bf1 to defend the h2-pawn pretty well and it feels difficult to break through even if I play …Qh5 too. If I go for …h5 then White might be able to play h4 and block my pawn break. That does weaken the g3-pawn but I can really only attack that two times with a rook and queen on the g-file while it’s easy for White to defend it two times. It looks like …g5 is probably the way to go here since I don’t see a way for White to prevent the kingside opening up. Even though it opens our own king a bit, I don’t see how White could exploit that. We’ll play …gxf4 or maybe …h5-h4 with the pawn staying on g5 since it prevents White from playing h4 themselves. Yeah, I like …g5 here.”
Summary: Both the 1700 and 2000-rated players had the correct plans of attacking on the kingside. Both of them also figured out the same three candidate move options. However, the biggest difference between these two thought processes was that the higher-rated player not only considered their own moves but also what the opponent might do in response. It wasn’t necessarily deep calculation but it was also not so shallow as to not consider white’s potential defenses against black’s attack. By considering what white’s responses might be, the 2000-rated player was able to figure out the strongest move (1…g5!) which pretty much guarantees the position will open up on the kingside. Note that the 1700-rated player actually had this move as one of his options but ruled it out prematurely since it “looked risky”. On the other hand, the 2000-rated player recognized that this move does open the king but said they didn’t “see how White could exploit that” (which is true).
At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with using words for the explanation of ideas but I would highly recommend that this explanation is backed up with concrete move-by-move calculation as well. From my experience, this is how stronger players tend to think through positions and is something that club-level players can definitely work towards improving at. Don’t just use explanation but also make sure to use calculation.
If you like this type of content where you can read the thoughts of various rating-level of players who are given the same positions, then I would recommend the books “The Amateur’s Mind” and “Think Like a Super GM”.
Hopefully these tips and advice will help you out in your own games! Let me know in the comments what you thought of this blog post. Finally, if you enjoyed this post then feel free to subscribe to the blog below and share it with your friends :-)
Until you mentioned it in your last paragraph, I was going to jump in and rave about the "Think Like a Super-GM". In terms of highlighting the differences in various levels of thinking process, there's really nothing like it. Though my game needs a lot of work, I gained a lot of confidence from seeing that I was getting problems that some stronger players missed (including *quite* strong players). And as you point out, much of the difference relates to calculating out concrete variations. The really strong players seem to take much of the explanation for granted and then, crunch crunch crunch.
Great post, as usual Dalton. If I could chime in with one more related book rec, Move First Think Later tackles this issue in depth.