How to become a top-notch chess player

OK -- agreed. Good concept. I don't even think that ALL the moves should be put in, as you can see from the example I posted.

As I said above, I find what you call the "deep think" to be most useful when there are several competing moves which are roughly equal at first sight, for a couple of ply. Before you know it, there are 4-6 positions you're evaluating relative to each other. If you don't do it in a structured manner, you'll just pick one "for no good reason".

Yeah I think the "structured manner" is the key.  But I don't like the way it's being done here. It has flaws, but can probably be improved and that may be the way to find the very best move in tough positions. And I can spot those critical moments in a game where this could be helpful.

But anyways doesn't everyone go through candidate moves? Don't most developing chess players use a candidate method anyways? So what's so unique about this (More long winded) method?

In that case, I see this as a decent method, though I would still suggest limiting to several candidates, and perhaps extending it to other moves if you aren't liking where your analysis is going or see something new in the position.

"And no, I have mentioned umpteen times, it is NOT suitable for OTB or live - only for online CC." It is more important to improve at OTB chess. You have too many benefits in CC and doing that takes advantage of them to the extreme. OTB or live is when you have to do well under some pressure and calculate without using any references. I like CC, but I don't consider having a high rating there proves nearly as much as having a good OTB rating.

"And no, I do not use it for every move - only in complicated positions." Did you not just tell beginners to do this every move?! Now, it may take awhile in complex positions, but imagine a beginner, with his slow calculation, do that for every move like you said! You're just modifying your rules a bit which admittedly should be done. And Wandering Winder, even after making it only in complicated positions you can see the flaws. I think it has a good concept only and needs to be significantly tweaked. Looking at so many moves as a beginner really isn't going to help your chess in general. There is only the rare situation (usually in CC anyways) where it requires you to look at many candidates pretty deeply. Now, this should still take forever if you're considering too many moves EVEN with an analysis board, because there would be so many variations you may forget about them when you start analyzing the others, kind of like forgetting opening theory. But it would definitley be suited to that, but not ANYTHING else and even then it needs changes! Dsarkar, in that vote chess game I could imagine it was one of those moments. What did you do? Analyze every single move or cancel out moves? Isn't that similar to finding candidates but slower?

lol!

So your two points I guess are: 1. I'm judging by saying OTB is more important than correspondence. To prove true chess skill, you need to play well OTB. Because in CC, I will admit that the best strategy would be to use your method because you actually have the time (hours!) to use it. There are masters who play about as well as GM's in correspondence because they can easily work out all the key tactics with the analysis board so the trick a GM had for many moves probably would very rarely work. Of course, it's not like a 1200 could become 2000 at CC, because they would have all the time in the world to think but don't understand chess enough to make use of it, similar to how a beginner wouldn't know right move from wrong anyway. Your second point is that it is a way for a beginner to get a structured way of thinking without books. But without knowing anything about chess, do you think a beginner could make any use of calcualting almost endless variations (in CC too; can't get away with that in live controls)? I mean IM's like Silman are saying that you should make a plan before mindlessly calculating and what you do calcualte is based on your strategic goals and taking advantage of tactical themes of a position. Before you say that some people don't get books, then yes, this may be some way of improving... slightly. But books are so much better. I see it as a major "upgrade" from when a beginner doesn't have books and uses this method and then a few months later can afford them because this is by far the best way to go.

And I don't hate correspondence chess at all. I like it quite a bit. But i will use resources like the analysis board and so I won't claim to be a great player at all just because I have a 2100 chess.com rating, because I'm not. You may be suprised how hard it can be to use knowledge in a timed, tournament game. Your performance is significantly worse than all the stuff you learned that seemed so clear at the time until you improve how you actually play when it's time to play a game under some pressure. You also don't have to calculate so fast in cc where in live games if you don't you can't look at as many variations in general. So for these reasons, I personally don't find this necessary for me. You said it was for beginners, but now you're saying that it helps people like you too. I know that you want to help and that's good, but that doesn't mean you are automatically right. And don't complain about the criticism. Do you want people to lie and say you're absolutely right so you can look like a hero? I literally don't have the time to try it either.

Like this doesn't make much sense. If a beginner doesn't know good from bad as you said, then why would calculating everything not knowing the evaluation of each(and I hope you know how long this would take) be good as opposed to learning about chess at least first? You need resources to play good chess period. if a beginner doesn't have a lot of money, well I guess it's just too bad. Maybe they will make it to 1000 or 1200 if they are lucky, but no further. I'm just taking the good and bad parts of the method and the only good part about it is when you have effectively infinite time it could do well in a complex position. But I just found a flaw in this as well. Would it help a beginner in a complex position?? No, they would probably make the wrong move no matter what at least at some point. Maybe a stronger player but I thought it was for beginners?

I suppose I'm in the minority, in that I agree with the main points of dsarkar.

• Actually writing down (not in your head) some sort of a variation tree helps your OTB play.
• This is especially true for lower rated players, because they can develop good habits early.

But it is a HUGE tree dsarkar is recomending. The tree HAS to be modified and since it's still big it's only good in cc in certain positions. It's better than nothing, but I would prefer to aquire more knowledge of chess and based on that just create candidates that you understand and calculate those and that is fairly efficient. Dsarkar, did you create this with the idea to help make someone a good correspondence player or OTB player? And what happened to the first pages in this thread? Basically this thinking technique would mostly replace all other ways of learning chess no? That's how long it would take each day. I may take some time analyzing positions in cc, but that's part of it and my process couldn't be any further than a full tree. I analyze a decent amount of variations sometimes and those alone can take awhile depending on position but how could you possibly use that method and only take "40 mins per move"? You do know that it's not really "per move" because it adds up over time. It seems to be the total amount of time you take on all of the moves combined. Even if that's incorrect my time/move will never go down here because it's impossible for it to go down.

Don't focus on the specifics.

I don't even support the idea of writing down every possible move. But I think it is a good idea, for one or two games, to write down the candidate move tree, and to do it for the whole game. Here's how it works:

In the opening, just use games explorer, or make simple looking move. No need to try to guess your opponent's strategy at this point, it's too difficult.

In the middlegame, you end up doing a sprinting strategy. At some more, you do the deep dive analysis, and it may end up covering anywhere from 2-5 moves, or even more in some key variations. It's sort of important to have all of the variations end at least with a statement like "this position is ok for me".

So then you make whatever move you want, and the opponent thinks and moves. If their response is in your responses, you can "quickly" check your analysis, but no need to create anything new. So you can respond pretty quickly. And so on, until you think that your old tree is becoming stale, and you should create a new one.

That might be doable, but in my opinion it's a little too much work for too little. But I might try that in correspondence at certain points of the game.