Exclamation Marks are Important!

If you have ever visited the r/chessbeginners subreddit, you may have come across posts titled "My first brilliant move!", or "Why is this move brilliant?", referring to chess.com's system of classifying moves. Of course (and as people in the comments are happy to point out),

• • the way brilliant moves are assigned is fairly meaningless;
  • if you don't understand why the move is brilliant then it's just a blunder; moreover,
  • it's actually a pretty obvious move and probably doesn't even deserve a single exclamation mark, let alone two.

So on and so forth, you should feel bad.

Admittedly, I also tended to roll my eyes at posts like these, but I do recall a time, very early on in my chess journey, when I was similarly enamoured with the mystical "!!".

Not-so-humble beginnings 

I would come across some beautiful tactic played by a strong player of the past, and be itching to try it out myself. So, setting up my chess board, I would invent a game playing both sides, basically cooperating to allow myself my own "brilliancy". Then I would annotate this masterpiece, happily adorning all my moves with !'s and !!'s. I recently dug up some of these old games and have selected one of the more egregious examples, presented exactly the way my younger self had annotated it.

A wonderfully creative attack reminiscent of Anderssen's Immortal Game, culminating in a beautiful, almost pure, checkmate. Haters will point out that Black was winning as late as the penultimate move of the game with the simple 18...Nc6.

I am particularly amused by the confidence required to award a double exclam to 11.Nxg5, a move for which perhaps two question marks are not enough... Nevertheless, I believe that this erstwhile endeavour helped me to improve rapidly, as I was spending hours at a time engaged in deep analysis purely for the pleasure of it. I became quite good at tactics, relatively speaking, and played every game with vigour as I was always on the lookout for the brilliancy.

Fast forward over a decade and things have changed, but not all for the better...

Are you proud of this move? 

Before a recent tournament, I had started reading Mikhail Tal's wonderful autobiography in order to rekindle some of my enthusiasm simply for the beauty of chess. It was very refreshing to see one of the greatest tacticians of all time honestly admit all the simple miscalculations which occur in his games. It wasn't false modesty on his part - it just shows that chess is too hard for the best of us humans. Hey, I do that too, I thought.

"The idea of a fantastically beautiful win came into my head. I played for it... and suddenly discovered that the whole point of my combination lay in the move Bf8-g5(!!!). Since bishops don't move that way, I had to resign."

- The life and games of Mikhail Tal

Inspired by the magician, I played a creative attacking game in the first round, which I was very proud of despite the numerous mistakes (it was to be the only one - the "spell" soon wore off and my three remaining wins all came from protracted Rook endgames).

After the tournament, I did my usual self-analysis of the games without an engine before discussing them with my coach. As we worked through the first game, we eventually came to the following moment.

"Are you proud of this move?", my coach asked.

I replied that yes, I was very happy with the move.

"Then why do you not add an exclamation mark?" 

I had no answer. 

I was not aware of it until that moment, but I had gone too far the other way. From a naive youth discovering beautiful chess moves for the first time, to a sourpuss afraid to appreciate his own good moves. Experience had made me cynical - after all, when I think of great chess moves I think of Shirov's ...Bh3!!, or any one of Tal's brilliant sacrifices. How could any move I make compare? How could I attach an exclamation mark to my own move? I felt intense discomfort at the very thought.

Looking back at my recent annotations to my games, it became apparent that I never gave myself any credit for good moves. On the other hand, I was quite generous with ?'s and ??'s, maybe only a ?! if I felt sorry for myself. It only made sense - moves can be objectively mistakes or blunders, but good moves are much more subjective, and I wasn't willing to praise any of my moves if there was a chance it wasn't merited. I realised that in my entire chess career, I could count on one hand the number of my moves to which I would feel comfortable awarding an exclamation mark. Here they are. 

Puzzle break

That's five good moves in almost fifteen years of playing chess, not a very good average. 

Perhaps I felt some misplaced pride in my exacting standards. But on reflection, I can see that my attitude needs to change, for at least three reasons.

1. Chess without good moves is depressing

There are no good moves in chess, only optimal moves and moves which worsen your position. This is true in a technical sense (the least useful and most annoying kind of sense). But if all we have to look forward to in our games are mistakes, then chess becomes an exercise in futility. It is much more rewarding to imagine the powerful moves we might make, and enjoy the process of searching for them. As Tal put it, he intended to play his best game every time he sat down at the board.

Moreover, it is more practical for our decision-making to think there is something to gain with every move. We don't move our Rook to the seventh rank because it is the optimal move, while every other move worsens the evaluation - we move it there because it improves our position. On the other hand, futilely trying to avoid all mistakes is a recipe for pessimism, paralysis and subsequent time-trouble (speaking from bitter experience). 

2. It's okay to be subjective

Although attaching an exclamation mark to a move is largely subjective, this is a beautiful thing as it allows us to distinguish the moves which appeal to our personal sensibilities. And more practically, they can track our chess improvement. All five of my "good moves" I had listed previously were reflective of my own chess journey, my own strengths and weaknesses.

For many people, those moves would be completely unremarkable, but I value them because for me they were the result of logic, courage and hard work on and off the board, often demonstrating a recent improvement in my chess. Similarly, there would doubtless be other moves I've made which some may find more impressive, but were simply natural based on my strengths. 

Not to mention, chess is inherently a subjective game! Yes, there is an objective truth to every position, but we don't have access to it during the game (I hope), and thus have to be comfortable making decision after decision based on our own subjective evaluations.

3. It's okay to be wrong

This is my biggest fear - praising one of my moves which turns out to be a mistake, thus revealing the big-headed and deluded person I am.

Yet I already do this in every game - I select a move because I think it's good, but very often it is a mistake. That's why I lose games, after all. 

In post-mortems, I find that my opponents are more confident in their assessments than I am, which leads them to make more "incorrect" claims after the game. But who cares? During the game, my reluctance to give a clear assessment only got me in time-trouble as I couldn't decide which possibility was better. As one strong opponent correctly put it, "I can only say what I think. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong". 

A changed man?

I had been musing on all this directly before a tournament a couple of months ago. In my subsequent analysis of my games, I decided to stretch myself and attached exclamation marks to no fewer than three (!) out of my 272 moves. Perhaps some of them will turn out to be undeserved. If the world ends, I apologise.