How does a game of chess work between two top level players? Do they have to think like 25 moves ahead to find any sort of opening against the opponent?
In: 347
Yes and no; it’s weirder than that.
Studies show that chess masters are better at recalling what a board looks like at a glance [William Chase (1940-1983) and Herbert Simon (1916-2001)]. A normal person might accurately recall ~4 piece positions on a board after 5 seconds to look. Masters could recall upwards of 20 in the same time.
The reason why is that when you play chess for long enough, you start to get good at recognizing patters in the game. You don’t have to think “10 moves ahead” most of the time, because you can just recognize a chunk of the board as “a shit situation to be in”.
You can then choose to either not exacerbate that situation, or try to find a way to fix it. But either case is a lot easier than “I shall look into the next 10^37 theoretical ways this could play out and only then make my choice!!” It’s more just they know what doesn’t bode well
The only time in which thinking that far ahead is relevant is when you have very few choices; and in those cases, you’re typically being forced into the choice by a fairly obvious threat; that is, it’s clear what the intent of your opponent is, and it’s easier to see what’s gonna happen.
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