My advices to Improve your 'Vista' (Vision) in chess !

what we call calculation in chess is a bit of a misnomer. Even if we have common points with arithmetic calculation. since mathematics is the science of real or hypothetical numbers. Our need is to find a sequence of real or hypothetical moves.
we are not doing multiplication or division, we just want to know if our next move is good and how many good moves after this one we can make. what we have in common with math is logic. numbers and moves are just entities. replace the number like 1 with Knf3. replace the mathematical equation with a chess result: one of the solutions is victory, the other a draw, and finally defeat. everything between the first move and the solution, find it.

this is complex. and that is why many of you get lost there. there was a time when chess was played professionally without a computer. Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker or Reti did not use computer things because this was not physically existing.
but chess calculation existed.

chess calculation is in fact an advanced vision of the game

and that's what i want to show : rather than having a "professional" mathematical mindset when you're an amateur, have a sporting mindset. the most striking example for my purposes is simple, football. Most footballers don't care about the relationship between mathematics and their game. However, they also do mathematics when they play, and the scenario that I am going to show you proves it.

Think like a footballer/soccer player

imagine you are a great soccer player, you are playing a champions league final. you are a midfielder and you play with stars like Messi, Ronaldo, Iniesta, Rodri... Your whole dream team ! your team has the ball in an attacking zone, your teammates pass to you, you are 20m from the opposing goal. you have several solutions: 1. you pass to Messi, who is less well placed than you but more technical. 2. you pass behind to build the play in this area. 3. you make a through ball to Mbappe but there is a risk of going offside. 4. you take a long-range shot.

• for each hypothetical solution, there are probabilities that it will work and probabilities that it will fail.

imagine that you give the ball to Messi, Messi will also have several possible solutions, including giving you the ball back with a powerful pass so that you can shoot harder. or that Messi will shoot a curved shot into the top corner. several solutions can therefore be mixed.

it's the same as chess. Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Iniesta are your pieces, your pawns, knights, bishops. and unlike football where you also depend on the decisions of your teammates, you have total control of your pieces. you put them wherever you want in relation to the rules of the game.
you are a bit like the coach who positions his team and tries to find the best scheme. Realize that you have the tactical talent of Mourinho with the practical talent of Ronaldo.

So, it’s all about organization. and vision.

in the footballer's mind, there is the pitch in front of him, his position and that of his teammates as well as a rigorous analysis of the opposing position. you won't do the same if you have 3 defenders in front of you or if you have a one-on-one with the goalkeeper. However, footballers do not realize this arithmetic, it comes through experience. the most talented know this, they must know and trust their teammates. you must trust your abilities and know your choices. you must be wondering : where i want to go?

Practice !

I recommend that you think about the position for 1 to 2 minutes. time control was blitz but you can take as much time as you want.

• I often say that as a tactic is a critical point of the game, a climax, a successful tactic is where the outcome of a calculation, when you succes to provoke an error on the part of your opponent.

I'll take a concrete example: here, black has just played Knd7. it's white's turn to play. here I have several choices, one good, one average, and several bad, but first looked at the position. we are still in the opening and development of the pieces, we have a knight at the e5 outpost.

This knight is your Leo Messi, you can take an advantage: knxg6!

you gain material, because if black plays bxf4, you just have to do knxf4 and you're good to go. if instead of bxf4 black plays fxg6 or hxg6, you win anyway with bxd6.

a bad choice but a natural move would have been knxd7? bad because it doesn't take any particular advantage. Most of the time I bet if it was your choice it was because you only saw a small area of the board. your sight focused on the knight d7 and not on the bishop of g6. Why ?

• there are two elements that play into this: spatialization and time.

the bishop g6 is on the side, and is not your opponent's last move. and that's why you didn't see him immediately. The human mind sometimes needs time to see a thing, and that time you must use examining the position and each potential threat or gain. another good but relatively average move would have been knxf7. with this move, you gain a pawn and a certain positional advantage but you lose the quality of the knight despite a good position. this move is rarer and less likely to be played, because by seeing this pawn f7, you see the bishop g6 which is right next to it, therefore, improbable unless you are short of time or really want to play knxf8.

it is a behavior inherited from the caveman. A caveman who looks at the antelope in front of him but does not see the saber-toothed tiger on the left, hidden in a bush, a saber-toothed tiger who would like to eat something bigger than an antelope. those who succeed are those who make choices: you can run away, choose to chase the tiger, or wait for the tiger to attack the antelope and then throw your spear at the tiger. assess risks based on position.

the example of play that I showed in this first game is neither difficult nor easy, and since it is in between, you can absolutely have seen the right move in 20s, but the goal is not a speed race but simply making you see what you may forget to see on the chessboard.

The road notion, find these road and use them well.

my advice :

• as the human eyes tends to be naturally focused on a specific point, try to have a more global view, the Vista .

To do this, examine your opponent's different pieces without hurrying. no need to look from left to right or right to left, proceed by visualizing the main avenues of activity.

here is another example. here, no tactics to find, but ideas to bring to fruition. By visually analyzing the position, you should see the main paths where pieces could pass or control

Here another exemple

• White has a positional advantage at this time. but there is enough chance to keep things in hand and why not equalize the position.

here, black to play

first of all, the notion of road is squarely present on D and white has the queen who can control this "road". it is therefore necessary to find a plan to keep control over d. so that's the main idea. then we have a threat, white has a wave of pawns on queenside, we have to find an escape or a potential square for our c5 bishop. this one nevertheless has an interesting range, c5 is a strategic square and our bishop can aim for f2 and for the moment prevent the opponent from castling. but White's next strategy will be b4 to make our bishop leave. one of the only free squares is e3, which coincidentally can allow us to take White's d2 knight. so we need to eliminate this knight and then find a way to be able to control d. so I have to develop my bishop c8 and an interesting square is b7

So here is the position a few moves further. now it is possible to put a few things on d8, but first, let's save the knight! Knd5 is a control move, knd7 would have been a loss of development, here we notice that white has immense unoccupied space in the diagonals between h1 and d5 and d5 a2. the problem is that it is very well defended by white's knd2, so my idea was to rather concentrate all the activity around this knight that it is impossible for me to take correctly, i will forget this knight who will inevitably have to move from there.
therefore i put my king in safety to have the reinforcement of an additional rook.
finally, a6 for my bishop because this will serve as an escape

That's a simple calculation. By logic. it is not obligatory to say I play this, and then I play that... You'll be lost. Ask yourself : I will go there, and then here. while waiting to calculate a long sequence of moves, and if the position is not inspiring for you, you have the means to proceed logically and save your position. this is very useful, especially in Blitz or rapid.

Conclusion

The Vista is therefore a panorama, an overview. In football, as in team sports, it is an ability to read the game and the activity on the pitch to find concrete solutions. This entirely applies to chess, where you control your pieces by being the tactician who creates long-term plans and a sportsman who must know how to evaluate plans in real time to get the most out of them. so, if you are an amateur (in the sense of a non-professional or non-titled player) and the calculation is problematic for you, I have offered you some keys to progress, and above all to make you think, because reflection is the basis of action. so, stay safe and greetings!

bibliography

both games come from my own games, here are the links:

the main image comes from the pexels site and I made the second on canva. Thanks everyone!