Don't Waste Time on Lines That Don't Happen!

One thing I have learned from listening to hundreds of amateurs analyze out loud is that they spend inordinate amounts of time analyzing lines that could never happen. This waste of time is due to one or more of the following reasons:

1. The player does not use deductive logic (and/or lacks the experience) to understand what is forced. Therefore he assumes moves that would never happen.
   
2. The player wishfully thinks his opponent will not make the best move and assumes a bad reply, thus resulting in the overestimation of his own move, or
   
3. The player does not know when to stop analyzing a particular line. Therefore he arrives at a position where he could have stopped and evaluated, but instead continues unnecessarily into lines that not only may not happen, but are irrelevant to the process of choosing the right move. One common example of this is when a player proves that a move is not best (at any point in a line), but nevertheless continues because he does not realize that analyzing past such a move is usually irrelevant since a player won’t consciously play it.

There is no instant cure for wasting time analyzing moves that can’t – or shouldn’t – happen, and even strong players do this occasionally. But it is important to be able to continually improve your ability to identify what is relevant and/or critical and what is not, so that you don’t waste time on unnecessary lines.

So what can be done? From a practical side, playing lots of slow games against stronger players and then analyzing with them afterwards is a great step. Stronger players are better at weeding out what is relevant and, when they analyze with you, they often show and/or tell you why. Even watching strong players analyzing their games can be quite an eye opener. If you cannot play stronger players, at least play decent competition. That way, as you and your opponents improve over time, the moves you face will, more and more, tell you whether you were anticipating something relevant or not.

It is very helpful to first look for the forcing moves – checks, captures, and threats for both sides. CLICK HERE to refer to the earlier Thinking Cap with that title. An example of how to find for one type of forcing reply would be to ask yourself “If I move the piece there and he simply attacks it with a piece of lesser value, would I have anywhere safe to move?” Looking for forcing moves is especially helpful if the reason you are wasting time looking at lines that could never happen is because you have no idea what to analyze at all!

If, in response to a candidate move (at any depth of the tree), there are no forcing move replies by your opponent, then likely you can cease analysis of that line and evaluate the resulting position. On the other hand, if your opponent has forcing moves, it can be wasteful to assume he won’t play one and instead analyze a non-forcing move instead. If you find yourself constantly surprised by opponents’ tactics, then while you are not necessarily wasting time evaluating lines that won’t happen, you have the opposite but possibly even more severe problem of not taking into account lines that will!

Another suggestion that should help is to ask yourself, “Would my opponent really do this?” or “Why would my opponent make this move?” If the answer is that he would not make this move – for example because it is helpful to your cause or irrelevant to his – then it is likely he will not, and analyzing it just to see how good it is for you is wasteful. Never forget that your opponent is trying to find his best move, so you must assume he will make his move with that in mind, and thus you should not resort to casually assuming moves which the opponent would have little reason to consider, much less play.

My students often tell me they often consider moves for their opponent which are possible but, with a little analysis, can clearly be eliminated. If that is so, then your opponent will likely come to the same conclusion and, while he may also consider such lines, he likely will not play them. Of course you do need to analyze any plausible reply at least lightly to see if it really might be playable for the opponent. However, once you determine that a move is not playable, further analysis of that line is detrimental.

You can also waste time by analyzing lines that are possible but not relevant. Suppose you determine the best move, but instead of making it, continue to analyze in order to find out what the future holds. This is a complete waste of time, and a common problem. For example, suppose your opponent puts you in check and you have only one legal response, but after that things get complicated. Your only reasonable choices are to either make the move immediately or resign. Looking ahead to see what will happen is not only unnecessary, but helpful to your opponent, because in that circumstance he can think about his next move with perfect efficiency on your clock time while you waste time looking to see what will happen. While the “only one move to get out of check” is the most extreme case, the same problem can happen in less extreme cases: players often find the best move but don’t make it out of curiosity, and this is most wasteful. Even if a player does not make the best move because he wants to triple-check whether it is really best, the time he spends doing so can get severely diminished returns, especially if this eventually leads to time trouble.

There was an earlier Thinking Cap where I designated three levels of thought process: Flip Coin Chess, Hope Chess, and Real Chess. We can name the problem of looking at more than is necessary “Over-Real Chess” because, although Over-Real Chess is not a thinking process, it is an “bad” extension of Real Chess where you look at more than is necessary to find the best move.

Let us take an example from Dr. Adrian de Groot’s seminal work Thought and Choice in Chess and see what World Champion Max Euwe has to say after he finds the best move:

“…Probably some more accidents will happen. Much is still up in the air….”

…and then shortly thereafter Euwe makes his move! Now it is pertinent to ask “Why would a World Champion make a move when ‘much is still up in the air’”? The answer is easy. Euwe knew that he had found the best move. The question of how much better the best move is than the 2^nd best move is almost always irrelevant. Euwe did not really care whether his move was winning or just resulted in a superior position. His job was to find the best move, and once he did so his job was over! So he made the move without otherwise being able to predict what would happen. He looked only far enough ahead to determine the move was better than any other – no more, no less. Perfect efficiency, but we should expect that from the World Champion. And we can all learn from him.

Of course even if you wanted to be as efficient as Dr. Euwe you could not, due to his superior board vision, analysis, and evaluation skills. But that does not mean you cannot improve your skills – especially your thinking process – to continually improve your efficiency so that more and more of your analysis is relevant. Do too little and you risk Hope Chess – your opponent will continually surprise you with moves. Do too much and you confuse yourself and get into time trouble – also very bad. So there is an efficient and happy medium, and knowing that it exists and working toward it is a great first step.

You usually want to go “wide” in your analysis before you go “deep”. In other words, there is no sense looking 10 ply (half-moves) down a line where the 3^rd or 4^th reply is implausible instead of considering either:

1)      other candidate moves for yourself (1^st ply) or,

2)      in response to your candidate moves, other reasonable replies for your opponent at the 2^nd ply.

The deeper you analyze, the less likely the line to that point will occur. For example, suppose the chances that the move at each ply of a specific line your are considering are only 40% each. Then to look three moves ahead (6 ply), the chances of a complete occurrence of this line is only 0.4 to the sixth power, or about 0.4% overall (1 in 250). It is more efficient to consider the other occurrences at the first ply, which add up to 60%, or others at the 2^nd ply, which are 24% (.4 x .6)! Or, if you want to argue that you are controlling the first ply and the chances are making that move are 100%, then that means you are definitely going to make that move, so you may as well do so and push the clock!

Much of the above can be summarized by #322 from Alburt and Lawrence’s book Chess Rules of Thumb: “Think along the top of the variations. Before you go into a jungle of deep variations, search for different opportunities for yourself, and for your opponent, on the very first moves.” Good advice!

One last piece of advice: In his book The Seven Deadly Chess Sins, GM Rowson advises that you always ask yourself “What great things does this move do for my position?” If you can’t find one, then the move you are considering may be a waste of time. Similarly, if you are considering a reply by your opponent that does not do “great things for his position”, then you might want to ask yourself that reply is worth analyzing. More relevance means more likelihood, which in turn means a better chance of finding the best move efficiently – and that’s the goal.