The Three Pillars of Chess Ability

What determines a player's strength?  Said differently, what makes a good player different from a weaker one?  Fundamentally, better players find better moves, and they do it more consistently.  Easy enough, but that begs the question: how do you find good moves?  What determines chess skill?

This is a huge question with many different subtleties, but I think it breaks down into three broad areas: there's understanding (knowing what to do generally), there's pattern recognition (seeing ideas without effort), and there's calculation (seeing ideas with effort).  Taken together, these pillars make up most if not all of your chess ability, so let's dive in and take a closer look.

Inside, I will look at each pillar: what it is, how it helps and how to improve it.  I also warn what happens if we rely on one too much.

Understanding

What it is: This amounts to our theoretical knowledge of chess and includes our most general rules: develop in the opening, put pawns in the center, protect your King, passed pawns must be pushed, etc.  It also includes the most fundamental concepts of space, time and material (eg, a Knight is worth 3 pawns, a Queen is worth 9, etc), but it can also become hyper-specific. For example, trading off Black's light-square Bishop in the Mar del Plata pawn structure greatly reduces his attacking chances; this is an application of understanding to a given structure.

If you don't know it, it can be hard to believe Black's attack depends on that Bishop.

Its Strength: Understanding helps you evaluate and make decisions.  Should you enter the endgame or stay in the middlegame?  Should you trade a pair of Rooks or keep them on?  Is a potential attack worth giving up a pawn?  The better your understanding, the easier these decisions become.

I believe understanding makes up most of our intuition.  When you look at a position and think, "X has to be the right move (or the right plan)," then that's your understanding.  The more you develop this aspect, the more you can play quickly, almost on autopilot.

Conversely, having a weak or under-developed understanding makes all of this harder.  If you look at a position and don't know what to do, that's likely a weakness in understanding.  Now, sometimes you have a bad position and no moves are good, but if you are in a normal equal position and drawing a blank, that's certainly a hole in your chess understanding.

Danger of Over-Reliance: Many amateurs rely on their understanding too much, relying on "natural" looking moves.  I'm 100% guilty as charged here.  Understanding, by its very nature, is general, and so specific tactics fall through the cracks.  I frequently fall for tactics, cheapos and blunders because I'm too general and not engaged with the specific needs of the position.

A related danger is missing critical positions.  Every game has a moment where things become critical and hard calculation reveals the narrow path.  If you think too generally, you may miss these signposts.  If you frequently get good positions but cannot find the way to convert, this may be an over-reliance on general understanding.

Improving our Understanding: This is relatively straightforward.  Basically every book, course, video and other chess content aims to teach us "stuff", and that forms part of our overall understanding.  The more you learn, the better your understanding becomes. 

Further, your understanding increases as you get exposed to good chess.  Learning about good knight vs bad bishop is one thing, but witnessing Karpov effortlessly destroy world-class masters with it is another.  Reviewing master games, especially annotated games, is an excellent way to improve, doubly so if the games all focus on a given theme.  Reshevsky's classic "Art of Positional Play" is one such excellent collection.

There's certainly no shortage of free online material, but there is a risk that we learn things in a random, hodge-podge manner, reducing its effectiveness.  Further, there's a difference between learning something and being able to use it a game. For these reasons, it makes sense to pay for a book, a course or a coach to teach you in a consistent and logical way.  For paid products, I highly recommend GM Smirnov's "Grandmaster's Positional Understanding," as it boosted my own understanding tremendously.  For free options, check my Resources page, where I list my favourite free tools.

Pattern Recognition

What It Is: Pattern recognition is your ability to quickly and easily see certain moves and ideas.  Every time you see a Knight fork or take advantage of a Bishop's pin, that's pattern recognition.  I would extend this even further and include certain thematic middlegame attacks (eg, pawn storms against fianchetto structures) and even endgame decisions (eg, trading into king and pawn endgames).  If you recognize these instantly, that's pattern recognition.

Black to move.  If you know this pattern, you probably see it instantly.

Its Strength: Speed is the most obvious advantage.  When you recognize patterns, it happens quickly, often instantly, and with no effort.  The more patterns you know, the more often this happens.  Most games are decided by relatively simple tactical blunders, especially at the beginner levels.  Here, pattern recognition is the largest factor in determining who wins, and it's not even close.

Pattern recognition aids in calculation.  If you can see patterns 2-3 moves out, that effectively extends your visualization range by that many moves.  The farther you see, the more potential patterns you can pick up, the more potential tactics you can use.  Pattern recognition makes everything else you do easier.

I should note that pattern recognition helps with blunder prevention, but seemingly not that much.  Many amateur players have excellent tactical vision, as seen by sky-high online puzzle ratings, and yet drop material in 50% of their games.  Pattern recognition certainly does not hurt, but it is not, by itself, a panacea for blunders.  That said, if you frequently miss very obvious tactics, that's likely a sign your pattern recognition is under-developed.

Danger of Over-Reliance: Many chess players rely on pattern recognition too much.  Again, guilty as charged.  I will scan ahead 2-3 moves, looking for potential tactics; if I see nothing, I make a general improving move.  This can lead to superficial play, where I have no plan and simply react to what my opponent does.  If you frequently find yourself drifting, playing moves but not making progress or having a clear goal, that's likely an over-reliance on patterns.

Relatedly, if you only ever look 2-3 ply ahead, you miss idea that are 3-4 ply ahead.  I've missed some very obvious tactics because it lay just outside my comfort zone.  Similar to my critique of understanding, this is effectively not being engaged enough with the current position.

Improving Pattern Recognition: This one has broad consensus: do lots of tactics.  The more you do, the more the patterns get ingrained.  In my experience, doing lots of simpler tactics helps more than struggling with harder problems.  Also, spend time focusing on certain themes: doing 50 Knight forks in a row will help you learn that much faster than doing 50 random problems, only some of which have Knight forks.  Once you have those forks down cold, that is when it makes sense to train random problems.

So your task is simple: go to any of the chess problem sites and do lots of tactical puzzles, preferably by theme.  My favourite has always been ChessTempo.com, which offers an incredible amount of customization and control for a very small membership (and unlimited problems on free accounts).  For beginners, it may be overkill, and lichess's simpler puzzle page is a compelling alternative.

If you do something like 5-15min of relatively easy puzzles 4-5 days a week, that will be more than enough.

Calculation

What It Is: Hard.  Calculation is the hardest thing we do in chess.  Nothing else comes close.

My attempt at being Hikaru.

At its core, calculation is, "I go here, he goes there, so I go here."  It entails a number of sub-skills: visualization, candidate moves and evaluation most prominently.  Visualization determines how deep you can calculate; determining candidate moves affects your accuracy; evaluation compares one possible line with another to determine which is better.  A deficiency in any of these sub-skills may throw off the entire process, hence why it is so difficult.

The upside, though, is near limitless.

Its Strength: The better you calculate, the better you are at chess.  It is the prime skill.  You can have holes in your game, but strong calculation smooths most of them over.  You make fewer mistakes and more accurate moves.  Take a good player and a great player: the great player is strong across all three pillars, but the difference in calculation is usually the most pronounced.  Calculation doesn't just win games, it wins tournaments.

Danger of Over-Reliance: Surprisingly, you can calculate too much.  It takes time and effort: if you calculate dozens of variations in a calm position, you eat mental energy as well as time off your clock for little if any benefit.  You end up in time trouble, and worse, you've used up most of your mental reserves, making it that much harder to dig in when it matters most.

Over-calculation typically occurs in simpler positions. There's little tension, no obvious tactics nor even many potential targets, but sometimes we spend 5min calculating everything to make sure.  That's 5min we won't have later in the game when it matters.

In short, it's not enough to know how to calculate, but to know when to calculate.  Beginners tend to over-calculate because they lack in understanding; they literally do not know what to do.  Some stronger players over-calculate because of nerves.  We worry about mistakes and triple-check every possibility.  A little caution is good, but don't become paralyzed by your fear.

Improving Your Calculation: There's no mystery here.  Take a hard position, from a game or a puzzle, and spend quality time calculating lines.  Don't move the pieces; do everything in your head. Take as long as you need. The general advice is between 60-75% success rate: anything higher and you aren't pushing yourself enough, while anything lower is too hard and likely not getting any benefit.  You need to find that sweetspot where the puzzles are hard but not overwhelming.

I suggest spending a maximum of 10min on any given position.  If you don't know the answer after that, you probably won't after another five minutes either.  Look at the answer and see what you missed.  It's a better use of your time, in my opinion.

Of course, puzzles aren't the only option: blindfold training, "guess-the-move" game reviews, endgame studies, all of these are effective ways to improve ... and equally hard to do.  There is no easy way to become a good calculator, which is precisely why the skill is so highly coveted.  It is the hardest thing to develop, but doing so separates you from the pack.  It is well worth it.

My Profile

For discussion purposes, here's how I'd rate myself on these three pillars.  All of this is relative to other people at my rating:

My understanding is my best skill: I generally know what to do in each position and intuitively come up with appropriate plans.  Pattern recognition is also good, but not as good.  I've trained some simple tactics over the summer and felt a noticeable increase here, so that's trending in the right direction.

Like most people, calculation is my Achilles heel.  I can calculate, but I frequently don't.  It's much easier to rely on general principles and simple patterns.  Calculation takes effort, and I shy away from that.

This means my fix is NOT more puzzles.  I don't need to improve my calculation, I need to apply it.  I need to play some training games, either against bots or people, where I force myself to calculate in game-like settings.  The more I do that, the more likely I will calculate in game.  Of course, this is hard work, and it's much easier to just load up a new puzzle...

Conclusion

If you know where you lie on these three pillars, you know where to focus your training.  Maybe you need to learn some chess knowledge in a systematized way, or maybe you have poor pattern recognition relative to your rating.  Focus on that area, and be strong in the knowledge that you are improving one of the three most important aspects of chess skill.

I've played around with this idea for years now, but I'm only writing it down now. Curious to hear any thoughts: do you agree with this breakdown?  Have I overlooked a fourth important skill?  Given too much focus on one of these, when it should really be a sub-skill of another?  Or maybe you just want to share where you fall on these pillars.  Love to hear it.