The Simplified Thought Process
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to the coolest chess solo podcast from a grandmaster. And I give myself this title because I think I'm the only one, so I'm pretty confident on it. Anyway, today you are in for a treat. I'm really looking forward to today's episode because I talk about my simplified thought process.

This is something so important for everybody that plays chess. When we play chess, what should we actually think about? And I came up with this four step thought process. It's simplified, it's applicable for different levels. It is something that you can actually do during a game. You don't need to have a PhD in thinking for even understanding the thought process.

That's a [00:01:00] problem I see with a lot of other thought processes. That you have a huge checklist. It's so complex and you'll never ever do it. So my simplified thought process is the following. It's called T.I.P.S., and that's an acronym. Okay. TIPS. And it stands for first threats. So we're looking at opponent's threats.

Second step ideas. We're looking at our own tactical ideas. Third steps plans. We want to find strategical ideas for ourselves and what I call finding good enough moves. And then last but certainly not least, the control mechanism is the as standing for safety. That's when we do the blunder check to make sure we haven't missed something egregious in the thinking that went on [00:02:00] beforehand, and then we can make that move.

So that's the four steps, TIPS. Now I want to talk a little bit more in depth about each of these steps, but before I go into that, I just wanna say a few things on the application of a new thought process. So when I learn something new, I very often have this experience that I learn something, a new way to think about life or improve my health, improve my mental state, my physical state, whatever it is, I have the tendency to just try to do it perfectly from the get go, right?

So, oh, meditation helps. Let's do one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening. And then I'll be a monk in a week or whatever. And usually it doesn't work like this. I usually then do it for a few days. I can't make it a habit because it's just too much and then I give it up. And that has happened so often [00:03:00] in my life. 

Why am I saying that? Because you might have the same reaction when you hear of a new thought process. You might feel like, oh yeah, let's do it. TIPS, TIPS, every single move. And you put yourself this image in the head that from now on, you will always just have these four steps.

You'll do them. And life and chess will be amazing. And the problem is it's not going to work out very likely like this. So here's my suggestion. No matter how hopefully excited you are about this thought process, and no matter how much I try to really keep it simple, I highly recommend to take it one step at a time.

So when you go away from this podcast episode and you try to apply this thought process, don't try to do all four steps in the first game that you're doing, but actually focus on one of these steps I recommend for simplicity. You can start just from the start. Some students [00:04:00] have found it helpful because they already tangled with the blunder check at the end to just think how they thought usually, and just make the blunder check really a habit and then start from the beginning.

That is up to you, but it's just super important focus on one thing. So focus on threats, for example, and then when you play a game, try to just think, okay, first thing I do, threat analysis, threat analysis, threat analysis. When this becomes a habit, that will be depending on how much you play, depending on several factors, how often, how long you played with a different thought process, how ingrained this habit is, and so on and so forth.

It'll take anywhere between a week and a month maybe. Actually, in science, they usually talk about habits that it takes like 21 days. I think that's the latest thing I heard to take on a completely new habit. So it might be 21 days, but sometimes it's quicker. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer.

So you take that one step. Then [00:05:00] once you have it as a habit, you add the second step. So you go for threats, then you go for ideas. Then you have that as a habit. Then you go for plans, and then for safety. Now this might sound like a very long process. It can be, but the thing is, only if you do it like this, you actually stick to it.

What otherwise happens is you will have a maybe a week, maybe even a month of, oh, this works so well. Oh, I'm so excited, and then you'll crash back down to zero. Your bad habits are starting again. You're then thinking differently or thinking just completely chaotically during your games, and you need to restart from zero, and you might have to do that a few times.

Like I did in my life to then learn, Hmm, it's probably not the smartest, and by the way, I still make that mistake from time to time, but I'm trying to correct myself and say, okay, let's start with one thing at a time. So that's how you learn this new thought process. And as a side note, also, if you want more [00:06:00] details on this, there's everything in my Simplified Chess Improvement System.

You have a link wherever you listen to this podcast in the description. If you have that system already, you get access to this module completely free. If you don't have the system, you can go check it out and see if you want to join, because then you get video instructions on how to apply this and examples of games and so on and so forth.

Okay. Now let's get into the four steps. Let's start with threats. What should we do for threats? And this is super, super important when we are looking at threats, especially when you start out with this method, and especially if you're not that high rated. Then you need to keep every of these four steps also in and of itself as simple as possible.

So four threats. What I recommend doing is when your opponent makes a move, when you start learning about threats, right? The kind of thought process of [00:07:00] looking at threats. So you're doing your opponent moves, and now what you're thinking to yourself is what pieces that I have are hanging? Are there any hanging pieces of my side. That's it. That's the threat analysis. Now, why should it be so simple? Because then again, you can create the habit and later on you can make it more complex. Exactly. The same idea applies here if you're trying to look for all the threats. So we might include positional threats. We might include, oh, maneuvers they want to think about in the future if you have to do so complicated things, when you start using that thought process, you will never get to the end of it, and you just simply don't have enough time, right? 

If you have to do four things and already the first one is taking you minutes, well, it's not going to work out. So what you're doing is your opponent makes a move and you're just asking yourself what is hanging?

Okay? So, [00:08:00] often what people see is the piece that is moving from our opponent. So let's say there is a bishop move, right? So we look at this bishop, is this bishop attacking something? Okay. So that's the super simple threat analysis. But what often gets forgotten is what is happening because of that bishop moving.

So let's imagine this is way easier to explain with a chess board. This is a podcast. So let's imagine behind that bishop, there's a rook. Okay? So by moving the bishop, the file is opening up and maybe the rook is attacking your queen. So there are two things you need to look out for. 

You need to look out for what is the piece doing that just moved, but you also want to look, did that piece move away and 'cause of that, another piece is attacking something of my pieces. So that's the basic thing you want to do. You do that for a few games and then you can always [00:09:00] add a little layer on top. As a grandmaster, if I want to do this thought process right?

I think I'm sitting at the board, maybe I'm playing a classical game. I'm not just looking at what is hanging, but I look at deep positional threats. For example, there might be a knight that is threatening to maneuver three, four times and then land on a beautiful square. So then I'm thinking about how can I stop that maneuver?

That would be a very deep threat analysis, but for most of you, that's not even needed. And especially if you're starting out, you don't need that. So you start by looking at hanging pieces and then you can add on, for example, after hanging pieces you can say yourself: is there any kind of square or what would be my opponent's next move can be a nice question then. So it's not only about something hanging, but maybe there is a threat of a fork coming. There's nothing hanging on that square yet. But if the fork is happening, we then afterwards lose material. So you [00:10:00] can slightly just increase the difficulty. Okay, that is threats. T for threats. 

Let's move to I for ideas. I for ideas is basically the same thing, but just turning it around for ourselves, and this is probably the step that is easiest for most of you. Because that's what we are doing in tactics training. So very often when you solve tactical positions, you are looking at ideas for yourself. 

More often than not, or nearly always, there is a solution for yourself. There is a checkmate. You can win something. So you're looking at ideas and you're used to that. So now after you have looked at the threats from your opponent, it's time to look at your own ideas. And again, we can break it down, make it as simple as possible, and we can ask ourselves, is anything from our opponent hanging?

And we just look for hanging pieces or we look for pieces that we can, let's say a pawn [00:11:00] that takes a bishop. That's always a good trade. A rook that takes a queen, always a good trade. So these kind of things. We ask ourself, is anything hanging from our opponent? 

Very often what I see, especially on beginner level is that you are looking at what you can do after you make your move. So you have a certain threat, you're attacking something or whatever.

This is very easy to see if your opponent doesn't do anything against it. We had that thought already. We can now capture that piece. What can also happen is that at the moment, nothing is hanging, but because your opponent moves a piece away, now they take a defender away from some pawn or piece or whatever, and now something is hanging.

So we also want to look at that. Really just look at the position. Is anything hanging? And if it is, if the answer is yes, we just want to go to safety. Do the blunder check, because if we can take something, or [00:12:00] if even better, there is a checkmate, we don't need to look at plans. We don't need the third step.

And by the way, also, if something big is hanging from our side, yes, we wanna look at what is hanging from our opponent because maybe opponent is hanging from us, but a piece is hanging from our opponent. So we prefer to take that piece. But also their plans. So the more strategic positional part of the thought process will not even come into play because, who cares about a long-term plan if material is hanging right here, right now?

Okay, so, we have threats, that's for opponent. We have ideas, that's tactical things for ideas. We really want to focus on the tactics. Now, if both of these things are cleared and actually many moves, you will realize, for example, just at the beginning of the game, right there is not really anything hanging.

So we want to get to P for plans and finding good enough moves. And what I realized is for [00:13:00] many people, this takes way too much time, and the other parts take too little time. Many people get wound up in thinking very deeply. That has to do with a lot of chess improvers, studying things that are way above their level.

So you hear some grandmaster ideas, some strategical principles, and you want to apply them in your own game. So you're thinking about that all the time, but then, oops, what is happening? Something gets hung and then this decides the game. That's why it's so important to first do threats, then ideas, focus on tactics, and then only P for plans.

And our goal here is to play good enough moves. So you go into this thought process, not thinking, what is the absolute best positional move I can play in this position? Because that's very hard to answer and it takes a lot of time for you to answer that, and you might just get stuck and waste a lot of time as well.

But instead, you ask yourself, do I [00:14:00] see a good enough move? A good enough move, for example, on a beginner level is just, you've checked that nothing was hanging. You've checked that you can't take anything. So now you just develop a piece and that's it. The higher level you go up, the more sophisticated it can be.

So on grandmaster level, again, a good enough move might be looking at again, this positional idea from our opponent, four, five moves down the line and already starting a plan that stops that positional idea. Because on grandmaster level, you should see these things. Otherwise you get outplayed. Again, for most of you listening to this, not really relevant.

So good enough moves can be very, very simple to spot. When you have the right mindset, it's like, can I improve a piece? Can I develop a piece? There might be a position where you can simply castle. Nothing is hanging. You can simply castle. You might think, oh, should I put this bishop out first or castle first, or put the [00:15:00] knight out first, and then you tell yourself, I need to find a good enough move, so I'll just make one of them.

I don't need to find out which one is best. So that will be for P for plans. Really the focus on finding good enough moves, and this only matters if there is nothing hanging or no big threat that we need to stop. Obviously if there is a big threat, we need to focus on that threat. And then we get to the last part of this thought process, which is S for safety.

So basically we have thought about different things. Either we have seen a threat from our opponent and we found a move that wants to stop that threat. Or we have found our own idea of tactical nature. So this tactical idea, and again, we wanna check it or we have found a good enough move.

And what is left to do is just to check shortly if we missed anything egregious in any of [00:16:00] these cases. And this is super important. I like to talk about this blunder check, but I think sometimes it gets misunderstood. Some people at home, they're doing the blunder check and thinking for like 10, 15, 20 seconds and in classical games, maybe even longer, rethinking about everything they just did.

And that's not the idea. The idea of a blunder check, and that's also actually applying for grandmaster level is really just having a short look. And this is really seconds like, did I miss anything egregious? Or even better the question, if I make the move that you have thought about making. You took a decision, but you just don't play it immediately.

You do the blunder check. If I make this move, am I hanging anything big? That's it. You're not looking for positional things. You're not trying to reevaluate if the bishop move or the night move or the OR castling is a little bit more precise. [00:17:00] We don't care about that. It's a blunder check after all.

So we just wanna check if we would've blundered anything. So when you start out with this thought process for the blunder check, what do we do? We just mirror what we had to do for the threats. If for the threats, we are only looking at pieces that are hanging, then our blunder check should also be is if I make that move, is any piece hanging?

Am I leaving any piece hanging when I make that move? If the answer is no, boom, we can go for it. Blunder check, succeed. We only wanna check for what we anyway had to think about. The blunder check is more complex than what we are looking at in the first three steps. Then we are just redoing the whole thought process, but more difficult and we'll never get to a decision.

So I hope that's clear. It's really just a way of looking if we made any error, and if we didn't, we can play the move. And that's how you can simplify your thought process [00:18:00] during a game. Again, tips. T for threats. Look at opponent threats. I for ideas, look for your own tactical ideas. P for plans, look for strategical moves, but mostly focus on good enough moves.

And then S for safety. Shortly check if you missed anything egregious. It's called the blunder check. Look, if you missed a hanging piece, something like that. And if you didn't, go ahead and play your move. And that's a simple way of thinking during a game. And as I mentioned already the start of the episode, this will not be a once now you heard it, you will always do it. 

But it's really a slow process to start implementing this in your own game. What I hope this episode does most for you is to take away a lot of confusion of what you should see during a game, [00:19:00] what you should think about, and just simplify that whole thing when you can simplify and forget about a lot of these subtleties that many of you are thinking about during the game. You get more space, you get more time, you get more energy for the things that actually decide the games. Especially if you realize, well, I'm so much stronger. I have such a better understanding, but I always end up plundering.

Very, very likely you are using so much energy for the subtleties that there's no energy left for the basic things that actually decide the game, and that's what's then happening. So, implement TIPS tips in every single game you play. Be patient and let me know how it goes. I'm really excited for you trying out the simplified thought process.

And for those interested, click the link to the simplified Chess Improvement System below. You can check [00:20:00] it out. 

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