As a quarterback, Alex Smith lacks obvious skills. He does not throw the ball or run particularly well. He’s what commentators sometimes call a “game manager,” meaning he excels at the intangible parts of the game: controlling the clock, avoiding turnovers, encouraging his teammates. Or perhaps game manager is just something to call a quarterback who excels at nothing in particular.
While in football, the moniker of game manager is overused, in chess, game management is an underrated skill. When you analyze games with the computer, what you usually find on most moves is many options with similar evaluations. Often, the game continues in a rough equilibrium until one player makes a big mistake. In the post-mortem, this will be identified as the critical moment that decided the game.
So what about all those other moves, where many options were acceptable, and the evaluation stayed more or less the same? Do they matter? Is chess basically about waiting around for someone to make a big mistake?
I think they do, but in a way that isn’t captured by computer evaluations. In these fallow periods of the game, many things are going on - provoking, asking, developing, insinuating, cajoling, joking, thinking, menacing, worrying, maneuvering, answering, bluffing, teasing - that have no meaning in computer evaluations, but great meaning in a struggle between humans. The ability to harness these dynamics to your advantage has a lot to say about who will ultimately make the big mistake. In short, you need to manage the game.
When I analyze with grandmasters, I often have the sense that the biggest difference between us is not in finding the best moves, but in managing the game. All of these ideas sound quite abstract, so maybe it’s a good idea to illustrate them with a game.
In this game I had white against a very talented junior, Martha Samadashvili. One of my annoying sidelines in the London had worked to perfection and after eight moves I found myself up a pawn for more or less no compensation. Nonetheless, by advancing her kingside pawns, my opponent signaled her intention to make up for the pawn deficit with a combination of creativity and maniacal aggression. I was already feeling more nervous than the position warranted.
In this position I was deciding between Nf3 and Rb1. I was worried about the bishop lined up with my knight and rook on the long diagonal, but didn’t want to “waste” a move with the rook if I didn’t have to. I calculated lines like 1. Nf3 Ne4 2. Nxe4 Bxa1 3. Qxa1 where white comes out on top thanks to the attack on the rook on h8. I spent a long time convincing myself I could get a way with Nf3 and finally played… Rb1. At the end of the day I just didn’t trust the lines I had calculated.
When I checked the game with the computer, it confirmed that I had calculated the lines correctly and I could have gotten away with Nf3. My takeaway from this was that I need to calculate accurately and trust my conclusons.
But when I showed this game to my coach at the time, GM Krasimir Rusev, his response surprised me.
“I would play Rb1 quickly.”
I showed him all my lines justifying Nf3.
“Yeah, but if you’re wrong, you just lose.”
Several things stood out to me about his assessment. First, that his analysis included time management: he would play Rb1 quickly. Second, that it included a concept of risk management. He considered not only the calculations, but the possibility that they could be wrong, and the consequences if they were.
Implied in this is the idea of weighing alternatives against each other. The conclusion is certainly not to never calculate. In some positions, you absolutely must calculate accurately. But in this exact position, it’s pretty obvious that Rb1 is a good move, so it’s not a good investment to devote a lot of time trying to work out a slightly better, but riskier, move. You can just play Rb1 and save your time for a more critical decision.
After thinking about this more, I realized we were asking different questions about the position. I was asking myself, “What’s the best move?”
He was asking himself, “What is the course of action that maximizes my chances for a win (or draw)?” Where course of action includes not only the moves, but also time management, the state of mind of yourself and your opponent, and a sense of how the game is likely to develop.
This would be my advice to you if you want to play more like a GM: think less about the best move, and more about maximizing your chances to win. In other words, manage the game like Alex Smith.