Every player has, at some time or other, reflected on how it came about that after studying the position, both sitting there staring at it and seeing it in the mind's eye, he decided on a move and then sent a message to the hand to reach out and play the decided upon move only to realize that somehow the whole process went south and the hand played a different move.
Excitement, fatigue, nervousness, time pressure...all these are possible reasons, but there are others, too. Sometimes a player can become so deeply absorbed in a certain move that he overlooks something that is all too obvious to the onlookers...including his opponent. This is a case of chess tunnel vision.
Then there are times a player calculates everything accurately and as he reaches out his hand to move, he has a sudden odd notion or unpredictable change and decides on another move...one that may even be calamitous.
There have also been times where we have seen that a move is bad and so continued searching only to forget why the move is bad and
end up playing it any way.
We have all asked ourselves why we made made a certain choice only to realize we don't actually know, but psychological science can offer some surprising insights.
One finding comes from a psychologist named Benjamin Libet back in the 1980s. He devised an experiment which was deceptively simple, but it has created a lot of debate.
Participants sat in a relaxed manner in front of a clock that had a small light revolving around the face. All they had to do was flex their finger whenever they felt the urge and remember the position of the light on the clock face when they experienced the initial urge to move their finger.
The experiment showed that the electrical activity in the brain built up well before people consciously intended to flex their finger and then did it.
What that means is unconscious mechanisms prepare us for any action we decide to take, but this all happens before we consciously experience intending to do something. The experiment suggests our unconscious rules all actions we take.
Can we make good decisions without consciously thinking? One study examined whether the best choices were based on active thinking or not. The startling findings were that people often made better choices when not thinking at all.
The argument is that our unconscious processes are less constrained than conscious processes. Unconscious processes, such as intuition, function in ways that automatically and rapidly synthesize a wide range of complex information and this gives an advantage over thinking deliberately. Think of Grandmasters playing blitz of one minute games..they are surprisingly good...better than most of us are even with unlimited thinking time.
So, where do all these scientific observations leave us when it comes to avoiding blunders? I have no idea; I just thought it was interesting.
IM Nikolay Minev was born in Bulgaria November 8, 1931 and was the the country's champion in 1953, 1965, and 1966. Minev and his wife emigrated to the United States in the mid-1980s and settled in Seattle, Washington where he passed away on March 10, 2-17. He was also a noted author and one of his books, David Bronstein: Fifty Great Short Games, published in 1997 is well worth the $19 and change price tag.
Here's an example of what's in the book...it's a game Bronstein played against Ewfim Geller in Moscow in the 1961 USSR Championship.
link to the crosstable HERE.
David Bronstein–Efim Geller1–0E27USSR Championship 1961Moscow URS11.01.1961Stockfish 15.1
Nimzo-Indian: Saemisch 1.d4 f6 2.c4 e6 3.c3 b4 4.a3 In the Saemisch
white gives up a tempo and concedes doubled c-Pawns to gain the Bishop pair. xc3+ 5.bxc3 Black has several possibilities, the most common of which is to
blockade the doubled Pawns with 5....c5 then attack the P on c4 with ...b6, ...
Ba6, ...Nc6–a5 and ...Rc8. In the meantime white establishes a powerful
center which he hopes to use for an attack. 0-0 6.f3 This seems to give
white better results than the equally popular. 6.e3 d5 Black reacts quickly
to hinder 7.e4 7.cxd5 exd5 8.e3 f5 9.e2 bd7 10.f4 c5 10...b6
was played in Koneru,H (2578)-Dzagnidze,N (2573) Monaco 2015, but it didn't
turn out so well for black. 11.f2 c8 12.g4 xg4 13.fxg4 e4+ 14.g1 h4 15.e2 c5 Appearance to the contrary, thgis position favors white and she
went on to win. 11.d3 An interesting possibility was 11.g4 xd3 12.xd3 e8 13.0-0 c8 14.b1 a5 This is, as one would expect from Geller, much
more active than defending with 14...Nb6 14...b6 15.xb7 While
there is nothing wrong with this, it is not without risk. The option was to
forego taking the b-Pawn and playing 15.g4 at once. b6 16.g4 h6 Black should probably not have wasted a move trying to stop the advance of
the g-Pawn and counterattacked with 16...c4 16...c4 This, however, leads
to some very tricky play with an obscure outcome that would not be possible to
calculate OTB! 17.f5 h6 17...b8 18.c7 c8 18...ec8 19.e7 a4 19...f8 20.g5 20.g5 White is winning. 19.xc8 exc8 20.g5 e8 21.xd5 d8 22.e4 with an excellent position. 18.h4 a6 19.xb6 xb6 20.g5 hxg5 21.hxg5 g6 22.xf6 c6 23.xd5 xf6 24.xf6+ h8 25.xe8 with about
equal chances. 17.h4 White is in control. cxd4 Keeps
fighting. 17...c4 18.c2 18.f5 leads to the same murky results as in
the previous note. a6 19.xb6 xb6 20.g5 hxg5 21.hxg5 g6 22.xf6 c6 23.xd5 xf6 24.xf6+ h8 25.xe8 18...a6 19.xb6 xb6 20.g5 hxg5 21.hxg5 h7 22.xd5 b3 23.g2 c6 24.e4 18.g5 18.exd4 is less accurate. xc3 19.xa7 xd3 20.xa5 xd4 with equal chances. 18...dxe3 This is the
losing blunder, but who could have anticipated the finish? 18...hxg5
At this point I took a break for breakfast and let Stockfish 15.1 running.
Upon return this was it's best line... 19.hxg5 fd7 20.cxd4 a4 21.g6 fxg6 22.xg6 c2 23.a4 xg6+ 24.xg6 b8 25.xa7 a8 26.c7 xa4 27.f2 c4 28.c2 xc2 29.xc2 f6 30.e5 fd7 31.xd7 xd7 32.f2 And white is a P
up, but the previous play is engine play and the game's outcome is in doubt. 19.gxf6 Black is already lost and there is no way of saving the game so it
really is a moot point that Geller missed the fact that this move threatens
mate. xc3 19...c5 20.g6 Now this fails. e2+ 21.g2 exf1+ 22.xf1 f8 22...fxg6 23.xg7+ h8 24.xg6# 23.g3 xc3 with equal chances. 20.g6 An abrupt end. Geller resigned. 20.xf7 It's
interesting that after this white also has a Q sacrifice that mates in 6! c7 21.xc7 d7 22.xd7 e4 23.xe4 dxe4 24.xg7+ f8 25.e6+ e8 26.e7# 20.g6 fxg6 21.xg7+ h8 22.xg6# 1–0
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