What's your mental checklist during a game?

What things do you look after or think of before committing to a move?

I just go with intuition. Which is actually a bad habit. I'm too old to be calculating everything 😔

There are 3 checklists.

1) When on the move:
What are 3 candidate moves?
For candidate move #1: what can opponent do, what can I do... what is the evaluation?
For candidate move #2: what can opponent do, what can I do... what is the evaluation?
For candidate move #3: what can opponent do, what can I do... what is the evaluation? 
Which of candidate moves #1, #2, #3 is better?

2) Before playing the intended move:
Assume the move played, what could the opponent do? Captures, checks, threats? Do not I hang a piece or a pawn or endanger my king?

3) When the opponent is on the move:
Is the position draw/won/lost?
Who would win the endgame?
What are good squares for my pieces and my opponent's pieces?
What trades to aim for or to avoid?
What pawn moves to aim for or to avoid?

But you did calculate something correct? It can't be 100% intuition...

That's a good one squirrel i may try these 😁

1. Maryanne or Ginger?

2. Do fish get thirsty?

3. Is it correct to put "use to" or "used to"?

4. Did I leave the oven on?

5. Ah yes,  Ne5 it is!

My pre-move mental checklist includes entries like "I wonder what's for dinner?".

I only calculate if I "feel" I can win material or bring about a position that I think will win. So you're right but 90% of the time I just play by intuition. That doesn't mean I'm making good moves. I'm just saying I am very lazy when it comes to calculating lines of play and I have horrible blunders to prove it 😉. 

Um, so I’m supposed to have a mental check…what?

1) does my move help my pieces develop and/or control better squares? 2) does my move weaken my pawn structure? 3) does my move open up threats toward my king?

I have ADHD and when I played classical OTB chess, I had a pretty significant checklist. This crashes and burns in fast time controls.

1. Is this still theory. If so, what am I supposed to do again?

2. What is my opponent trying to do with that last move. What is their plan. Where can their pieces go and do they put me in danger. Especially double check where knight can go with two moves because those little devils can be tricksy. Is this setting up some kind of tactic that I'm afraid of?

3. If I don't already have a plan, I try to come up with one. If I do have a plan, is it still a good one? Did that last move change my plan? How do I make my plan happen?

4. Look at every one of your opponent's pieces one by one. Are there any weak squares that I can exploit. Are there any backwards pawns or pieces that are either hanging or weakly defended that I can exploit.  If so, how do I make that happen? If I could magically move my pieces some place on the board, where would that be? Can I get them there, and if so, how?

5. What are my candidate moves? How do they best serve my plan. What are the upsides/downsides of each move.

6. Did I miss any tactics that I could make work? Do a spot check for possible tactics including any piece sacrifices that might work. Look especially hard at the king and queen to see if maybe they might be vulnerable.

7. Decide upon a move.... then double check to see that it's not hanging anything and is not susceptible to any tactics.

8. Stop. Don't move. Go through the checklist again.

9. Stop. Don't move. Go through the checklist again.

10. Move

This works really well in bullet chess.... just kidding.

In scholastic chess, I was the kid that used up all their time while everyone else was done in 20 minutes. Some kids hated this and sometimes called me the Human Time Machine. Needless to say, this list less practical as time controls get shorter and shorter, but it's very useful in long format games. I forced myself to do this even if the move was obvious, because as I said, I have ADHD, and am incapable of visualizing the board. If I didn't I would forget where my pieces were and hang my queen... which I do routinely in short time controls.

This is a tactical process I sort of automatically do for every position before I move to positional considerations. 

The Tactical Process updated
1. Analyze All Checks to a resolve (Start with most forcing checks, checks that leave your opponent the least amount of moves possible to choose from, double checks if available should certainly be looked at first)
2. Analyze All Captures to resolve (Analyzing to a resolve or end point that can be clearly evaluated is the goal of any line of analysis.)
3. Analyze All Threats (Forks, Skewers, Pawn promotion etc.) Generally the answer is in the first 3 steps, here if you still haven't found your answer you should go through the first three steps just in case.
4. Try reversing move order if your original move order isn't working.
5. Analyze Active moves (Pins, dangerous objectives, etc.)
6. Consider Defense. (Avoiding mate, playing for stalemate, etc)
7. Always consider the material on the board, this might guide you in what your objective should be.
8. Remember to approach each position in each puzzle in this fashion.
9. Be creative, consider all kinds of moves if you still haven't found the answer. Consider, strange looking moves, interesting or exciting ideas.
10. Don't take too much time. If you get a puzzle wrong that's fine.
11. When you get a puzzle wrong, go over it, see what you missed and ask yourself why you played the incorrect solution, why the actual solution was correct, and what you can do to ensure your success in the future. Often the answer will be that you skipped one of these steps.
12. Finally, understand, this guide is primarily for tactics puzzles but this is more or less the process you should be going through in every middle game/endgame position before you move to positional considerations.

Where has my time gone? Is my mental checklist. Think I’m mainly focused on delivering checkmate and developing an attack, otherwise playing moves which gain a tempo and improve my position generally towards a checkmate.

As odd as this might sound, I tend to analyze in reverse.

That is... instead of looking at the position in front of me, examining the moves that I can make and calculating their consequences, I do the opposite: I ask myself what sort of position I would want to have... my Pawns arranged like THIS, Queen and Bishop on THOSE squares... and then I try to draw a straight line between my current position and the fantasy position that I've pictured.

Nice trick, will def try this out! Thanks!