English Chess Forum

Easy moves.

Not sure about you but I occasionally like when I’m put in the position where there is only one move on the board. A tense positional game where long thinking is required it can be nice to get a move closer to the time control without having to think. Moves I’m talking about are recaptures where there are no tactics in the air, being checked and having only one sensible reply or moves such as knight retreats near the edge of the board and only having one square available. Good to make a fast move

The interesting feature of this is that oh so many players of such a range of ability spend ages thinking about it! The logical approach is to do what must be done and then do the frantic thinking in the opponent's time (or in your own if absolutely necessary, but not now). But folks (including, I regrect to admit, self) fail to do this. What is going through their thinking paths:
(a) Is this it? Time to do the Roman thing? Have I the courage?
(b) What will my next but one move be?
(c) Surely, surely, surely there's another move? (I know there isn't, but surely...)

You just have to trust your intuition/sub concious. Not always easy to do though!

Some people do of course have the opposite problem - their intuition trims off candidate moves so strongly that they only ever see one move, so end up playing too fast. I do that at times, although I think my problems end up more along the lines of playing plausible but not precise moves so letting advantages drift to nothing over time etc.

move numbers 1 and 2 can also be fast easy ones. move 1 as white is fine too

You have to turn up on time first of course.....

Michael Farthing wrote:The interesting feature of this is that oh so many players of such a range of ability spend ages thinking about it! The logical approach is to do what must be done and then do the frantic thinking in the opponent's time (or in your own if absolutely necessary, but not now). But folks (including, I regrect to admit, self) fail to do this. What is going through their thinking paths:
(a) Is this it? Time to do the Roman thing? Have I the courage?
(b) What will my next but one move be?
(c) Surely, surely, surely there's another move? (I know there isn't, but surely...)

To which I’d add

(d) Yes, it looks like there’s a forced recapture here but what about all those times when I lost a game - and ruined a whole weekends tournament - with a move that I played after 10 seconds thought?