The problem, as many of these players discovered, is that most of their “original” concepts were rare for good reason. The virtue of innovation only rarely compensates for the vice of inadequacy.

In life there is no such obligation to move. If you can’t find a useful plan, you can watch television, stick with business as usual, and believe that no news is good news. Human beings are brilliantly creative at finding ways to pass time in unconstructive ways. At these times, a true strategist shines by finding the means to make progress, to str

The strategist starts with a goal in the distant future and works backward to the present. A Grandmaster makes the best moves because they are based on what he wants the board to look like ten or twenty moves in the future. This doesn’t require the calculation of countless twenty-move variations. He evaluates where his fortunes lie in the position

Studies performed by Dutch psychologist Adriaan de Groot have shown that elite players don’t in fact look ahead that much further than considerably weaker players while solving chess problems. They can, on occasion, but it doesn’t define their superior play. A computer may look at millions of moves per second, but lacks a deep sense of why one move

What exactly do you do when there is nothing to do? We call these phases “positional play” because our goal is to improve our position. You must avoid creating weaknesses, find small ways to improve your pieces, and think small—but never stop thinking. One tends to get lazy in quiet positions, which is why positional masters such as Karpov and Petr

A key to developing successful strategies is to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, to know what you do well. Two strong chess players can have very different strategies in the same position and they might be equally effective—leaving aside those positions in which a single forced winning line is available. Each player has his own style, his

It’s not enough to be talented. It’s not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions.

In competitive play, though, that theory rarely holds up. Long before a player becomes a master, he realizes that rote memorization, however prodigious, is useless without understanding. At some point, he’ll reach the end of his memory’s rope and be without a premade fix in a position he doesn’t really understand. Without knowing why all the moves

Fantasy isn’t something you can turn on with the flip of a switch. The key is to indulge it as often as you can to encourage the habit, to allow your unconventional side to flourish. Everyone develops his own device for prompting his muse. The goal is for it to become continuous and unconscious, so your fantasy is always active.