Great column on a great topic, with a great, memorable, slogan ("Boring calculation wins games").
What we need is a book with such "ordinary" game positions, where the task is to calculate a few short lines and then decide what to do. I, like most students, find these kinds of calculations difficult. Part of the problem is evaluation, but part of the problem is that when there is not a clear goal (mate or win material), it's hard to choose candidate moves for both sides. Sharing your thought process is helpful, and if that kind of description went in your future book, that would be very helpful. This kind of thought process can be trained (right?), so seeing good examples of it and then practising on your own with well-chosen exercises ought to be a good way to train.
In one of his books Boris Gulko mentioned that the best training material for this kind of calculation is the books with annotated games of World champions
Interesting! Without calculation I thought cxd5 was the most logical - exd5 opens the e-file where white has a rook and we have our king; cxd5 increases the scope of our bishop. Even if we lose b5 we win a pawn in the center which should make up for it. Honestly I’m surprised that not more people find this move natural. I’ll ask my coach what he thinks.
what about quiet moves in general. I am not sure that it is only about forced move detection bias.
I find that puzzles I can do (at my level) as opposed to 600+ puzzles, are not only biased that way but are on everage shorter or do not have as deep a solution position with hopefully visible consequences there that one can consider a success (if it were not told by the puzzle system, eg.). In deeper puzzles, and therefore more probablilities of failure if one can consider some per position (or move) failture rate, being compounded, there is also the notion of depth of vision and abilitie to assess a wanted objective. This is not only calculation, but guding the calcuation. This is one thing, the other thing I find of those "out of my league" puzzles is that I often fail them on quiet moves. A quiet more is not the opposite of a forcing move (or sequence), yet, somehow I might relate it to your article take home. At my level those puzzle are both systematically deeper than I can set tactcal goals that are even in the bal park of the engine evaluation system, but also plenty of quiet moves. perhaps it is the quiet move experience that is missing. Not just the calcuation. The depth of the "forcing". Is forcing not in the eye chess visions breadth beholder of the word. soemthing like that. So i think it might be more about assessing positional clues that quiet moves are almost by definition about. and how we are puzzled trained at our band level with shorter and more immediate material altering moves more often. I did not look at the chess. that being said. only considered the prose. I can't follow prose and chess at same reading speed without a board full of arrows or a sequence of boards like that.
Great column on a great topic, with a great, memorable, slogan ("Boring calculation wins games").
What we need is a book with such "ordinary" game positions, where the task is to calculate a few short lines and then decide what to do. I, like most students, find these kinds of calculations difficult. Part of the problem is evaluation, but part of the problem is that when there is not a clear goal (mate or win material), it's hard to choose candidate moves for both sides. Sharing your thought process is helpful, and if that kind of description went in your future book, that would be very helpful. This kind of thought process can be trained (right?), so seeing good examples of it and then practising on your own with well-chosen exercises ought to be a good way to train.
In one of his books Boris Gulko mentioned that the best training material for this kind of calculation is the books with annotated games of World champions
Interesting! Without calculation I thought cxd5 was the most logical - exd5 opens the e-file where white has a rook and we have our king; cxd5 increases the scope of our bishop. Even if we lose b5 we win a pawn in the center which should make up for it. Honestly I’m surprised that not more people find this move natural. I’ll ask my coach what he thinks.
what about quiet moves in general. I am not sure that it is only about forced move detection bias.
I find that puzzles I can do (at my level) as opposed to 600+ puzzles, are not only biased that way but are on everage shorter or do not have as deep a solution position with hopefully visible consequences there that one can consider a success (if it were not told by the puzzle system, eg.). In deeper puzzles, and therefore more probablilities of failure if one can consider some per position (or move) failture rate, being compounded, there is also the notion of depth of vision and abilitie to assess a wanted objective. This is not only calculation, but guding the calcuation. This is one thing, the other thing I find of those "out of my league" puzzles is that I often fail them on quiet moves. A quiet more is not the opposite of a forcing move (or sequence), yet, somehow I might relate it to your article take home. At my level those puzzle are both systematically deeper than I can set tactcal goals that are even in the bal park of the engine evaluation system, but also plenty of quiet moves. perhaps it is the quiet move experience that is missing. Not just the calcuation. The depth of the "forcing". Is forcing not in the eye chess visions breadth beholder of the word. soemthing like that. So i think it might be more about assessing positional clues that quiet moves are almost by definition about. and how we are puzzled trained at our band level with shorter and more immediate material altering moves more often. I did not look at the chess. that being said. only considered the prose. I can't follow prose and chess at same reading speed without a board full of arrows or a sequence of boards like that.
My move would be Nb6