Play Chess Like a Firefighter

What we can learn from research on high pressure decisions

When Gary Klein started studying the decision-making of firefighters the standard assumption was that they used a process something like this: list the options, analyze them, compare, and choose the best one. But when Klein interviewed actual firefighters, he found that this wasn’t how they made decisions at all. Well, there was one group who used a process like this: beginners.

But expert firefighters used a much different approach. Rather than list out all the possible strategies, they took in the situation and immediately gravitated towards a strategy. They then mentally simulated how this strategy would play out. If the simulation seemed okay, they took action immediately. Only if they identified a problem would they look for alternative strategies.

Photo by Matt C on Unsplash

For non-chess players, a chess game might seem a lot more like taking a quiz than fighting a fire, but chess players know that chess is full of uncertainty, emotion, and time pressure. Klein’s insights have relevance for chess players. In Alexander Kotov’s famous book Think Like a Grandmaster he suggests a process similar to the assumed decision-making process for firefighters:

1. Make a list of candidate moves

2. Analyze each in turn

3. Compare the results

4. Go with the most favorable move

But in Improve Your Chess Now Jonathan Tisdall argues that this isn’t really how strong players make decisions. He quotes GM Anatoly Lein: “I don’t think like a tree – do you think like a tree?” (Lein happens to be the first GM I ever beat. A true gentleman, he analyzed the endgame with me for a long time after the game.) Rather than Kotov’s tree of analysis, Tisdall suggests “To aim towards the choice of a single critical variation (heresy!). Branches are dealt with when unavoidable, and primarily to navigate the chief variation.”

He adds that “Checking for a wide selection of feasible candidate moves is primarily reserved for situations where one is checking for errors (verifying not having overlooked a critical line) or when the general trend of the analysis is unsatisfactory and one seeks new possibilities.”

This sounds to me quite a lot like the process Klein identified in expert firefighters. Rather than identifying a wide range of candidates and comparing them, the process is anchored to a single main candidate. Only if there are insurmountable problems with this option do you branch out and look for alternatives.

That leaves the big question of how to identify the critical line in the first place. According to Klein, the firefighters did this by rapidly comparing the situation they were facing to previous ones they had encountered. It’s similar for chess players. Novice players often want an algorithm they can apply to any position to find a good move, but if this exists, I’ve yet to find it. The way strong players actually find good moves is by recognizing (consciously or unconsciously) similarities between the current position and other positions they’ve seen before.

One classic decision-making framework is see-decide-act. In chess it’s natural to focus on the “decide” step, but it may be that the “see” step carries far more weight than is initially apparent. That is, if you can see the position clearly, the decision follows naturally. As Klein says, “Experienced decision makers see a different world than novices do. And what they see tells them what they should do. Ultimately, intuition is all about perception. The formal rules of decision making are almost incidental.”

Acquiring the ability to see situations clearly requires building up a large mental database of experiences. Maybe this is why so many of the strongest young players these days play enormous amounts of speed chess. It’s a way to see a lot of positions very quickly.

I tend to be an intuitive player, but even so, this degree of trusting your gut still makes me a little uncomfortable. Why can’t we just learn to be more logical? Well, we can, to a degree. Chess players do have more time to make a decision than firefighters, unless maybe we’re playing bullet chess. But I’m also reminded of a memorably odd phrase of Jonathan Rowson: “Our autopilots need our tender loving care.” My way of unpacking this is, like it or not, our subconscious is driving most of the time. The proper role of the conscious mind is not to take the wheel and drive – which it’s not very good at – but to nurture, manage, and position the subconscious for success.

Wrapping up…

• Expert firefighters don’t analyze alternatives and compare. They intuitively choose a strategy and mentally simulate it to check for problems.

• Similarly (according to Tisdall) strong chess players don’t really compare candidates ala Kotov, they start with a critical variation and try to make it work.

• More structured thinking is not always better. According to Klein, the analyze-and-compare approach was characteristic of beginners.

• To improve your intuition you need to see and internalize a large number of positions.