Possible number of positions.

There are something on the order of 10 to the 120Th power possible chess moves in a single game. That is a very large number considering that  scientist estimate the number of atoms in the known universe to be 10 to the 75Th power.

How is that GM's and their lower ranked prodigies are able to filter out the undesirable moves so quickly and use the correct ones to decrease the number at hand while also increasing the chance of victory?

Is this a gift or talent, or is it a discipline of the mind that anyone can achieve with practice?

Is it possible that people can see all the complexities involved in a chess game the very first time they play?

Do superior players use this overwhelming number of possibilities to reduce the chance that an inferior player will make the correct counter-movement?

How do you do it?

GM's do it the same way, except their brains are faster and smarter than a mere mortal's. And they study--a lot.

After the first move? I find that to be very unlikey. But, if so, then how? let us say that the first move is the traditional E-4, are you saying that you know who will win or lose off of that one move! Hmm, I don't know about that. But if you say so, and I cannot prove otherwise, then why play the game? What enjoyment is found in certainty? Why take the path less traveled if you already know where it will lead!

It's not what the moves are, it's how and when they're made that give you hints on who will win. Uh, especially the  last one.

By the next-to-last move, I know who will win most of the time. Sometimes, I am surprised that a particular move is the next-to-last move in the game, so I scratch my head and go for coffee.

Now, I'm from a small town and good coffee is hard to find. Finding next-to-good coffee is a piece of cake (and finding a good piece of cake here in rural America is as easy as pie....which is the easiest thing of all to find. Except for a parking spot downtown on a Sunday: that's terribly easy to find)

Our coffee here is good to the next-to-last drop. The trick is knowing when that last drop is: it's terrible and worth avoiding. You think it would be easy, but YOU try timing your sips so that Annie will amble by for the re-fill before you get to that final swallow!

She's not the sharpest crayon in the old box (which is why they made crayon sharpeners built into the side of the box in the first place. If you weren't as sharp as the next-to-dullest crayon, you'd probably lose the sharpener if it wasn't for that! In fact, I imagine if you WERE the dullest crayon in the box, you hadn't even noticed there was a sharpener there to begin with. Or that it was a crayon sharpener at all. Maybe you'd think is was a convenient place to put the broken tips of your crayons in.) but she'll get around to you often enough if you flirt a bit.

(Don't tell my wife I do that...she'd have a fit. Annie and I are just friends. Why, she'll even give me a bigger slice of cake whenever I order it, heat up my pie the way I like it, or toss me a quarter for the parking meter [don't tell Annie the parking is free on Sundays])

So, in summation, that's how I know who's going to win a chess game.

CzarWithinMoons wrote:

pawnsolo2 wrote:

After the first move? I find that to be very unlikey. But, if so, then how? let us say that the first move is the traditional E-4, are you saying that you know who will win or lose off of that one move! Hmm, I don't know about that. But if you say so, and I cannot prove otherwise, then why play the game? What enjoyment is found in certainty? Why take the path less traveled if you already know where it will lead!

   e4, huh? Mate in 82.  I win.  Thats how its done.

do you always see the win in 82 moves?

for instance, if you were playing 2 games simultaneously, and both of the other players opened with 1. e4, might you look at board one and say 'I win, it's mate in 64' and then turn to board two and say 'I win here too, this one's mate in 308'?

pawnsolo2 wrote:

How is that GM's and their lower ranked prodigies are able to filter out the undesirable moves so quickly and use the correct ones to decrease the number at hand while also increasing the chance of victory?

Is this a gift or talent, or is it a discipline of the mind that anyone can achieve with practice?

To give a serious answer, you speak as though chess is a solved game.  It is not.  GM's and other good players do not play a move in the opening because they know it is a move that will win them the game.  They play the move because they know -- via hundreds of years of cumulative analysis and agreed-upon follow-ups -- what sort of position will likely arise, and they have a plan to try to steer that position into their favor (say, good pawn structure leading to a powerfully-placed knight).  They then will try to parlay that advantage or imbalance into a win.

The fact that quality chess players still lose -- often, and sometimes to inferior opponents -- should tell you that they do not see through to the end of the game from an early stage.  Czar's claim notwithstanding.  Don't be so afraid of a highly-rated player that you assume they see how to beat you from the word "go".  They don't.  They're probably just more experienced and creating and converting advantages.

The problem of winning against everybody who is ranked 400+ pts below you is addressed by many GMs by creating imbalances in the position (opportunities for the opponent to go astray) and then "not losing".

This is what I do also, but it just doesn't work as well. :-)

"Not losing" is an excellent phrase. I tend to not "Not Lose" which is one of the few times a double negative is still a negative.

Building your position is similar to creating good or bad luck for yourself. It's not that some people are lucky and others not, it's that some people build a good decision tree around themselves or capitalize on a position of strong footing.

Or, fail to see doom coming.

I know a gal that is simply a lightning rod for 'bad luck'. I have watched her life for years and it seems an un-ending string of mis-fortune (in fact, I call her "Miss Fortune") It isn't that there is a mystical haze of ill-omen around her, it's that she is not terribly aware of life's machinations going on in her world. Thus, she can't seize a strong position that favors odds of the dice rolling her way, and she doesn't see the freight train coming at an otherwise empty (but well-marked) crossroad.

Chess is like that: set your self up not to fail as easily (strong locked positional play), look for avenues of advancement that (should the unforseen befall you) allow for Plan B, and be patient.

When under an aggressive attack, I look for the lack of these basics in my opponent: what has she just sacrificed to make this bold thrust? Pinned pieces? Land-locked defenses? King in the corner?

Usually, I don't see any of these things and play by reaction rather than planned strategem...but then, I'm not a terribly experienced player. I'm experienced at being terrible. But I am very patient and know that, as in Life, these lessons at the board though at times distasteful, are good for me if I remember them for the future.

You're funny "capcloud" ,best read of the day .

So can I, mate in one is usually sometime after the first move.

I can calculate the outcome of a game before the first move.  I'm going to win!   jkjk  =P

So in the end it is all about practice practice practice and natural talent. I know that within a years time I went from below 1200 to above 1700, but I see as I raise up my rating, so to does the difficulty in winning against same level of competition. Defeating players at a 1700 + while I am at 1700 + is much more of a challenge that when I was 1300 + playing 1300+. But the sheer number of moves is staggering: something on the order of 10 to the 120Th power possible chess moves in a single game is insane.

Designing a chess program is an awesome task. In a 1950 Scientific American article, Claude Shannon argued that only an artificial intelligence program could play computer chess. A computer that explored every possible move and countermove, he said, would have to store a total equal to 10 to the 120th power moves, and "a machine calculating one variation each millionth of a second would require over 10 to the 95th power years to decide on its first move.

I fear, given the quality of this post by CapCloud, that nothing better can be written on this site.  Chess.com may have jumped its shark, and it's all downhill from here!