⚡ First Candidate Moves (Quick Lesson)

Hi, it's Aidan.

We have to be wary of our first candidate move.

Sometimes they can be amazing, sometimes they can be awful, but whatever the move that

jumps out to us first is going to be dictated mostly by intuition.

Sometimes this means our intuition has picked up some pattern in the position that we're

not consciously aware of yet, and with a little bit more investigation we'll find the answer.

Because it's just the principled move that jumps out of us, and sometimes the thing that

jumps out of us is the pattern recognition again, but it's pattern recognition misfiring

and can cause all sorts of problems.

We all understand this about calculation that we have to double check and make sure that

our calculation is correct, but we have to always be extra wary of whatever this first

candidate move is because it holds a power over us and over our intuition that is

hard to ignore.

So I'll give you an example unrelated to chess for something that you can do yourself

right now.

You may have already heard this question before that will show you what I mean, how this

intuition experience works.

Play along if you want the sort of full experience of this.

So answer the following question, a bat and a ball.

So a baseball bat and a baseball ball together cost $1.10.

The bat costs $1 more than the ball does.

How much does the ball cost?

Now I'll give you a couple of seconds.

Nice.

So pause if you want another couple of seconds with that, but here's what just happened.

I would say, my guess, unless you are particularly trained in this, but I've had this happen

with like world class physicists and grandmasters and mathematicians.

Probably what just happened is you heard that equation.

So your brain heard $1.10 and that it's a dollar more than the ball.

And your brain, some party brain went 10 cents, 10 cents is the answer.

It's possible that you just accepted 10 cents as the answer because it seems like it makes

sense intuitively.

It's what your intuition said.

It seems like an easy calculation.

It's also possible that some party of brain went way to second.

That doesn't quite make sense.

If the ball costs 10 cents, then the bat would have to cost $1.10 and together, they would

cost $1.20, which doesn't fulfill the rules of the riddle.

Then the actual calculation bit becomes very, very difficult because your brain knows 10

cents is not the right answer, but it doesn't stop your intuition from screaming 10 cents

at you the whole time.

I've done this with, yeah, world class physicists, it's exactly the same situation that brain

will say 10 cents, 10 cents, 10 cents, 10 cents, they're going way to say, I know that's

not right.

But then their brain has to do this dual task of finding the correct answer, but also actively

fighting against the wrong answer.

That part is why our first candidate move can be such a danger for us because even once

we've disproven it, even once our calculation has gone through, decided there's something

wrong with it.

It still holds this extra power, it's still part of our brain yelling 10 cents, 10 cents,

10 cents, 10 cents, while we're trying to think about other things, because that's just

how intuition works.

I had this experience myself in a game against a titled player, I had a, it was a

simple, and I had an opportunity to win this game, I had won a knight in this line in

the Dutch that I'm a big fan of, and was ahead of beating a title player in a symbol,

it was a great moment.

We get to this sort of critical position, and my brain gives me this queen move, I can't

remember the specifics of the queen move, but it's a queen move.

And I calculated the move, and I realized that it doesn't work because at the end of

this line, I lose a knight back.

So it looks promising, but it gives the opponent a shot and allows them to take back their

piece.

So I decided not to play the queen move, instead I decided to make this quiet bishop move

that would, yeah, just keep everything moving, keep the momentum in my direction.

However, with this symbol, I was not allowed to play my move until the master was back

at my board.

So I decided on the move, but I couldn't physically commit to it on the board.

As the master was going around the symbol, the MC for the day announced that the games

needed to hurry up, because they needed the room for something else, and that little

bit of distraction and the lift of intensity and energy in the room, a little bit more

frantic energy in the room, put a little bit of extra strain on the old working memory

in that moment, like to raise the pressure.

And I looked back at the board, and here's where the damage happened.

Here's my brain yelled 10 cents.

I saw my original queen move again.

And for some reason, I started calculating again.

And I found that the reason I decided not to play it wasn't actually correct.

In that line, the opponent doesn't get to win the night back.

I was like, oh, great!

The master arrived at the table, I played the queen move.

Now you may have noticed the bit that I didn't do, which is actually recalculate the queen

move.

All I did is disprove the reason I decided against it before.

I didn't look at it properly again.

I played the queen move, and surprise, surprise, a few moves later, everything's equal and

we have to go for a draw.

The best move in the position?

The bishop move I decided on before, but couldn't play in the moment.

This is the danger of the first candidate move.

It holds this place.

Even though I had already decided on a different move, it's hanging about there.

It's yelling 10 cents, 10 cents, 10 cents, it's sort of, it's existing in every time

you look at the position, your patent recognition fires.

So we have to be aware of this in our calculations.

We have to be aware of this in our games and keep vigilance around that first candidate move.

It might be amazing, but also could lead you to make the sorts of mistakes that I made

in that game, or that many of us make with that bat and ball question.

It's that 10 cents, raw patent recognition that can hold so much power, especially when

pressure is at play in the position or on the clock or wherever, and we just need to be

wary of that at all times to keep our healthy skepticism of whatever our intuition is suggesting

at the start of our move.

That's all from me today.

Here's to the journey.