The 3x3 Method

How to find a move

Welcome back to Chess in Small Doses. Today we’re going to talk about one of the hardest things to do in chess, finding a good move. In his book How to Choose a Chess Move, GM Andy Soltis said as you get better it actually gets harder to find a good move. You have more things to consider in positions than before. I have found this to be true myself. In reviewing my games with my coach, it’s clear I may be thinking many things when I choose a chess move but I’m probably not thinking enough… or at least in the right way. Now I believe I have hit upon a “simplified” process that can be used to find the way forward in almost any position. I call it the 3x3 Method.

The essence of any good thought process will help you do at least 3 things. It will allow you to: #1) understand what changed with the last move; #2) see the possible moves in the position for you and; #3) help you calculate what the consequence of any move will be. While that is straightforward, I find I need to break these concepts down into something more digestible and easier to recall. The 3x3 Method is my best attempt at a thought process that not only preserves the best practices highlighted by others, but also works to address common amateur mistakes. (I’m not saying you’ll play like a grandmaster, but you’ll play more consistently.)

The Structure

A brief comment here about the colors and structure of the method.   The colored boxes are the essential steps any thought process must have.   We must consider what our opponent’s move does and how it changes the board.   We must look widely for potential useful moves and consider each one.    Lastly, we must ensure that we’ve done a blunder check to make sure our move is safe.    These three color coded boxes for the 3 things we must do before every move if we are to play strong chess.

The other boxes are habits and best practices that amateurs often miss.   Things like asking if the last move was a mistake or consistently looking for tactical themes in every position.   Also things like calculating each line separately and then considering alternative moves your opponent might have.   Let me try to walk you through the method.

Step 1: What was that?

The first step is fundamental to playing better chess. Simply, what kind of move did our opponent just play? Does it attack, defend, or is it neutral? Neutral moves are basically repositioning a piece to a different square, like developing or maneuvering. If we are to play strong chess we need to understand all the things our opponent’s last move does. What does it attack? What does it un-defend or uncover? This step seems simple enough that we can often just do it without thinking, but that’s where the danger comes in. Do not just assume we know what the move does, but instead become intentional about identifying what kind of move it was and how it changed the position.

One extra step you can take is to ask what’s their plan? As players get better, every move has an intention behind it. If you can see the plan behind the move, you can better anticipate what is to come next and account for it. You don’t have to go very deep. It’s just enough to understand what the move enables. Things like “they’re going to attack on the kingside” or “they want to create an outpost” or “they want to get the bishop pair”. Just try to see if there is a plan or intent behind the move.

If you can’t see one then ask is it a mistake? Amateurs like myself often give their opponents the “benefit of the doubt” when they make a move and assume it’s safe. However, they make mistakes too. Does the move uncover something? Does it restrict another piece’s mobility? Every move does positive and negative things. It’s worth it to habitually look to see if they made a mistake. We may find an opportunity we might otherwise miss.

Step 2: Wide not deep

Once we’ve identified the opponent’s move, now we can shift our focus to our move. One common flaw in amateur (meaning below Expert level or <UCSF 2000) play is that we often hyper-focus on one area at the expense of the other areas of the board. The best practice to begin to find a good move is to look wide, not deep. This is simply looking at all the one-move options you have in a position. IM Hendricks said something similar in Move First, Think Later, to look for moves first, then plans, and then judge the results. Looking wide is just searching the position for potentially useful moves that you don’t initially see. There’s no point in calculating yet, we’re just taking inventory of moves we might play here. Just take a tour of the pieces starting with the King and moving down (Queen, then Rooks, then Minors, then pawns). Look at the whole board before you settle on moves to compare.

If you want to improve on this search, you can look for the tactical themes in the position. Things like loose pieces, checks, X-rays, forks, pins & skewers, etc… Just again we’re trying to notice and become aware of all that’s going on in the position. If there’s a pin, can we attack it? If there’s an X-ray, can we do a discovery? If there is a loose or hanging piece, can we attack or take it? The tactical themes of a position will help show you which moves are potentially useful. Making it a consistent habit to notice tactical themes in our training will means we don’t really have to force ourselves to look, we’ll be doing it intuitively.

When we’ve finished looking wide, the best practice is to have at least 2 (or possibly more) moves to compare. We call these candidate moves but GM Aagaard likes to call them “options”. I like this term better, because it really clarifies what we’re doing when we play better chess. My biggest mistakes have come when I only consider one move or one piece in a position. We will play better if we consistently compare move A against move B. There may only be one good move in a position, but often we have more options than we think. The best practice for players is to look widely for moves to compare. Only then can we begin to calculate (although if you’re like me your brain has already started doing that).

Step 3: Is it safe?

The most critical question to ask before moving is the overly simplistic “is it safe?” You would think this should be obvious for our brains, that we would recognize safe moves from unsafe moves. However amateurs are vulnerable to seeing only one line in a position, usually the one that works best for us. Our opponents are highly motivated to not play that line however. My old coach would ask things like “why doesn’t this work” to find his opponent’s best replies. Asking “is it safe” begins our search for the opponents best move. It makes us look at what our opponent might be able to do that maybe we missed. Can the piece be captured? Did we miss a check? Is there a tactic we missed that is now possible after our proposed move? “Is it safe” is a simple question that changes our mental framework, allowing us to anticipate our opponent’s strongest response.

Of course to get to our move we would do well to compare our options. Many people will do that automatically, but if we want to be more intentional we need to go line by line. IM Andras Toth has a fantastic video about calculating that helps here. The process of looking at one line at a time and evaluating the resulting position (better for us or worse for us) is how we take complex positions and simplify them. No need to go back and wonder about a move, just go down one line at a time. The minimum depth is 1 1/2 moves (our move, their move, our move). If there’s lots of forcing moves try to keep going until it’s a quiet position. If we find a forced mate, no need to keep going just double check to make sure it’s forced and then play it. If we find a losing line then we can discard that line and move on to the next. Please watch Toth’s video for further explanation, it’s worth the time.

Once you’ve gotten to what you think, is the right line ask if the opponent has any alternatives? Maybe they don’t need to capture back, or maybe they will push that pawn. We are playing humans and humans can do surprising things. They may see the board very differently than we do. Again, we do not need to go deep only wide. Looking for one move alternatives to the line we’ve chosen can save us from nasty surprises. It’s very easy to fall in love with a line, only to find the opponent disagrees.

Once we know our move is safe we can confidently play it. It’s the best practice to calculate a line and evaluate the resulting position. We will play better if we consider all our opponents alternative moves in response instead of assuming they see the board like we do.

Conclusion

The 3x3 Method is a simplified process involving three steps.

• Step 1: What was that?

• Step 2: Wide not deep

• Step 3: Is it safe?

Each step has some best practices to account for common amateur errors. In Step 1 we should look for any plans. If we can’t see one, maybe they made a mistake? In Step 2, we need to look widely for our options. Moves that fit the tactical themes in the position will be the strongest. Giving ourselves options will allow us to find moves we may have initially missed. In Step 3 calculate each line one by one and come to an evaluation. Choose the best line but then consider all the opponents alternative replies to our move.

Thank you for reading! This may seem a lot, an no one really has to do any of this when they play. However, I’ve found that when I don’t do these steps I will either lose games or fail to win the “won” position I had. Please leave a comment and tell me what you think. Share if you liked it!

P.S… The Backstory

Prior to starting my serious work on chess, I was a blitz and rapid player. My only thought process was “see move, make move.” I just didn’t really understand what people did when they played longer games. One day I read Dan Heisman’s The Improving Chess Thinker and he talked about “real chess” where you identify your opponent’s threats before you move. Seemed simple enough to me. Then I’d play chess and miss stuff. Fast forward to getting lessons and doing the Steps Method, my coach suggested I play in the Lichess 4545 league and play OTB. In those games I began to practice a very simple thought process called “Their move/my move/their move.” That is about as simple as “real chess” gets.

• What does their move do?

• What can I do?

• What will they do if I go there?

I won 3/4 games in my first tournament but it was also the start of something unfortunately I have continued. I won my first two games by thinking through each move but then I reverted to old habits of “see move, make move” in the last 2 games. I lost my next game and would have lost my last game had my opponent not blundered his Queen (FYI that kid I think is over USCF 2000 now).

So it has gone since then. Sometimes I can keep up the habit, other times I just play chess and get surprised. That I suppose is normal but I am focused on controlling what I can control. I am focused on the process of improvement. It is clear to me now that I will not ever progress to where I want to go until I make a consistent habit of thinking through each move and doublechecking as I go.

Coming up with the 3x3 Method required two things. First, I needed to look critically at the best practices from my training. Secondly I needed to look at where I went wrong the most often. I worked recently with a coach to help identify what those common errors were. I also went back to the Steps Method material to look at their ideas. Though they don’t publish it the workbooks per se, there is a three part framework in the Steps Method to finding a move.

1. Orient to the position

2. Generate candidate moves

3. Calculate the lines

My coach at the time had a far more involved diagram of what to do for each step. I found it overwhelming however. Later, I stumbled across CM Axel Chua’s course on Calculation and appreciated his focus on tactical themes. There was a lot of overlap between my old coach’s process and the calculation course. They both focus on noticing the tactical themes and forcing moves in a position and then try to fit moves to the position.

That seemed straightforward and logical, but being amateur (and human) I would make mistakes. Sometimes I would miss critical alternative moves my opponents had in a position. Other times I would hyper-focus on one area of the board and neglect the other sides. These represent common blind spots for many amateurs. So I started to expand the old “their move/my move/their move” to include questions designed to account for these common errors. Doing so allowed me to arrive at the 3x3 Method. It’s an intentional thought process that goes from their move, to my move, and back again to their possible responses. It asks questions along the way to widen my view of the board and think differently.

To be clear, I could put a lot more steps in here but I wanted to keep it simplified and light enough that amateurs could conceivably use it.   Of course I am USCF 1550 roughly so take my advice with a grain of salt.   It’s just my opinion but I hope you find it useful.