Hi! I would like to thank IM Jeremy Silman for inviting me to write these articles for his website. I hope everyone both enjoys and gets some good benefits from each article!

The primary focus of The Thinking Cap will be about the chess thought process:

* What it is.

* What are the component parts?

* Why it is important.

* How it varies from individual to individual.

* How it is mis-learned by almost all.

* How it can be re-learned to improve your chess play.

* How it is measured.

* How it relates to other important issues, like Time Management, Exercises you can do to practice a good process, etc.

It is important to note that The Thinking Cap is NOT normally about improving the content of your thought process, like your analysis, evaluation, or planning skills. Your humble author is not in the same league as IM Silman or his other website contributors when it comes to helping you identify strengths and weaknesses in a position and to come up with the appropriate plans, so I will usually leave that to them! But that does not mean I will not discuss those subjects and how they relate to having a good thought process.

Let's start at the beginning: chess is a thinking game, so obviously your thought process (in addition to the other areas, chess skill and knowledge) is an extremely important part of how good a chess player you are. Yet almost no one is initially taught a good thought process, so almost all beginners immediately develop bad habits that must be overcome if they want to become a strong player.

Normally, when someone learns chess, all they are taught is:

* How to set up the pieces.

* How the pieces move.

* Basic Rules such as checkmate and some draws (like stalemate or insufficient mating material), and

* Some tips, like “Keep all your pieces safe”, “In the opening, don't move your Queen out too early”, and “If you see a good move, look for a better one.”

This is all good stuff and usually adequate to start playing and enjoying the game, but it really begs the question of: Once your opponent makes his move and it is your turn, what is the process you should use to efficiently and effectively find and make your move?

Now I will be the first to admit that all great players do not use the same process. For example Victor Korchnoi is known as a meticulous calculator, while Mikhail Tal would play the same position primarily on instinct and judgment. But all great players had as part of their thought process some key basic elements, such as not allowing their opponent to make a one-move threat that could not be defended. If they did not have such an inclusion, then you are I could beat a Korchnoi or Tal just by threatening a checkmate that they could not defend, and you had better believe they would never allow us to do that unless in severe time pressure – and probably not even then!

Moreover, a good thought process must be subconscious, because if one has to think about how you are thinking, that of course interferes with the process! For example, when you first learned how to walk your brain spent a lot of processing time trying to figure out how to prevent you from falling. But once you got the hang of it, you no longer thought anything about it – now if you walk across the room you don't think about which foot to move next nor which muscles need to be told how to react in order to do so.

But when you get into bad habits in your chess thought process and become aware of them, for a time you need to adjust your process, and this requires consciously being aware about what you are doing. So of course at first this intrusion into your chess thinking is awkward and possibly even counterproductive, but once you play lots of slow games and have a more effective and efficient process down pat, you start to think about the improved process less and less until you just do it, with markedly improved results. More on this in future Thinking Caps!

Before we go any further, let's introduce some definitions, since there are no standard ones and chess authors tend to use some of these terms differently:

Analysis – The part of the thinking process where you say to yourself, “If I go there, what is he going to do and then what I am going to do in reply?” – It is the part of the process which creates the mental “tree of moves” so to speak. Some players call this calculation, but I usually don't use that term. If pressed for a definition, I would say that calculation is the part of analysis that deals with tactics

Evaluation – Looking at a position and deciding who is better, by how much, and why. Static evaluation is when you evaluate a given position without trying to move the pieces. Dynamic evaluation is done at the end of each analysis line, after you have tried to determine a potential sequence of moves. Note: When someone says “Evaluate this move”, they are really saying “Evaluate the positions that would result from this move – assuming each player is trying to make his best move.”

Planning – What you do with the information of why someone is better (evaluation of strengths and weaknesses) in possibly occurring lines. It is how you will try to exploit opponent weaknesses, negate yours, use your strengths, and negate his. It is the way you are going to try to achieve some general short and long-term goals.

Threat – A move that, if left unattended, could do something harmful to the opponent (win material, checkmate, damage the position) on the next move.

Attack – To move a piece so that it can capture a piece on the next move. An attack on the King, since you cannot capture it, is of course called a check. (In this sense I am not using the other definition of attack, which is to play aggressively, keeping the initiative). Note that not all threats are attacks (a threat to checkmate is not an attack, nor is a threat to control an open file), and many attacks are not threats. A Queen move which attacks a guarded pawn is not usually a threat since taking the pawn next move usually results in loss of material.

Candidate move – A reasonable move a player might/should consider.

Killer Move – A move that would refute most potential moves and prevent them from becoming candidate moves. For example, if you consider making a move and find that in doing so you would allow your opponent to play …Qh3 with a further unstoppable …Qg2# on the next move, then …Qh3 becomes a killer move and any possible move that allows Qh3 and mate on the next move is not a candidate move.

Time Management – The process of managing your time (in a timed game, as is required by serious chess rules) so that you can optimally find the best moves possible in the given time limit. Obviously, different time controls call for alteration of your basic thought process, and thus your skill in time management is a bigger part of the game than most players realize.

Oh, and finally why do we call these articles The Thinking Cap? Because if you play chess, not only do you have to put on your Thinking Cap, but also if you have a faulty thinking process that will “cap” how good you can become!