Thought process: chess training wheels

Thinking more about the back-and-forth on thought processes in chess (as exemplified in my previous post and in J'adoube's recent post here), I think I've come to a better understanding of what a thought process will add to a beginner's game (note I am not talking about GMs, but to people who believe there is something missing from their game other than just pattern recognition).

There are certain things you must do if you are going to play well against players at your level in slow time-control games. Most relevant are:
1) Consider alternatives. You need to have the restraint to consider multiple candidate moves, not just the first one that pops out at you.
2) Analyze. That is, when considering candidates, you have to be able to think through continuations to see which candidate leads to the best position.
3) Evaluate (implied from 2): you need to be able to determine who is doing better (otherwise you will pick stupid candidate moves because you have evaluated the resulting lines incorrectly).

If you aren't doing 1-3 on some moves, you are either playing blitz-style chess, or are in positions you have played before so are operating on pattern recognition. In those common middlegame positions where we don't see any obvious single patterns and need to actually think, the above three things need to be done, and beginners should be told this.

A chess thought process, by which I now mean those explicit lists of steps to go through when finding a move, is an extremely helpful device to force beginners to appreciate what they need to do to play well in slow games against their peers. We don't just naturally do 1-3. Beginners tend to impulsively want to go with the first move that pops into their heads. They are well advised to slow down, stop, and think about what they are doing. Providing a neat little algorithm is a great pedagogical tool, which is like a ladder that they will discard once it becomes automatic and second nature. Making it explicit provides a common language for discussion and evaluation of their performance, and gives them things to work on (e.g., their visualization skills).

As I said in my Chessplanner document, the fact that most thought processes are written as a serial set of steps, like a computer algorithm, should not be taken that seriously. There, I wrote (and I still completely agree)

[I]s it important to go through the steps in order? No. While it is important to apply each step on each move, the order of application is not essential. Though the Chessplanner decision procedure is written as a serial thought process, this is largely an artifact of the medium used to describe it (namely, written English), and things are rarely so tidy in practice. For instance, when a material threat pops out in Step 1, I typically consider multiple defensive moves right away, and eliminate some of them as obviously foolish (officially part of Step 3). This seems to work for me, and trying to impose a serial order on such a spontaneous and useful process would be foolish. Pattern recognition is not independent of board evaluation (Step 2) or understanding move consequences (Step 3), so with practice, many aspects of Chessplanner will fall under the purview of "pattern recognition." I welcome this as a sign of developing chess expertise.

So, in sum, an explicit thought process is like training wheels on a bike. You don't expect to need it forever, but it lets you build up good habits and provides a safety net so you don't crash and burn. There is nothing sacrosanct about the linear, step-like nature of the thought processes. What is important is that you do the thinking, not the order in which you do it or whether you are consciously working down a set of boxes you are checking off in your head.

Finally, I'll end with a quote from MDLM where he describes his experience after completing the Seven Tactical Circles:

When I first developed this study program there was no third step. I thought that the first two steps [vision drills and the seven circles] would be enough. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that transferring my tactical ability to OTB games was quite difficult. Repeatedly I would look at the board for a few seconds, decide that there was no tactical shot and then make what I thought was a reasonable move. Time and time again I would turn out to be wrong and lose my queen or give up a mate. As a result, I decided that I needed to develop a more structured way to think about my move during the game. I experimented with several recipes and finally arrived at an eight-step procedure.

Even for Michael, knowing the patterns in a computer tactical puzzle context wasn't enough for the knowledge to show itself in real games. In my experience, without a thought process, the knowledge I've gained about chess is much less likely to show up in games. If you are beyond that stage, then congratulations. You have graduated to a two-wheeler.