Calculation Techniques: Looking Ahead One "Extra" Move

Every chess player has lost games because they have failed to employ this technique. The following scenario will probably seem familiar:

It's your turn in your game. You think you see a tactic to win the opponent's queen. You play the move.
The tactic you saw begins unfolding on the board. You play a sequence of forcing moves, your opponent responds the way you predicted.
You take their queen. It worked!
You immediately get back-rank mated. Oops!

What happened? We could say that you failed to accurately identify your opponent's forcing moves, which would be true. But perhaps we can make a more useful observation.

At some point when calculating any variation you must decide to stop and assess the position. Often this decision is made intuitively. In the generic example above, we likely stopped calculating after we captured the opponent's queen, assuming that the position would be winning. So, the rule to avoid these types of blunders is:

Always try to look one "extra" move ahead, after you think or feel the variation is over. Your goal is to find any tactics or tricks in the final position.

If your variation ends with you capturing a piece and being up material, you need to spend a moment looking to ensure that the opponent doesn't have a counter-tactic in the final position. If your variation ends with the opponent capturing something and being up material, you need to see if you have a counter-tactic of your own. If you employ this technique consistently you will quickly realize that many players don't use it, because you will start catching them in all sorts of traps that occur immediately after they play flawed tactics they believe are good. Often when you see a promising "extra" move, that move leads to more tactics and you will naturally have another sequence of forcing moves to examine.

To be honest, I don't recall where I learned this technique, but it was probably taught to me by my childhood chess coach Zoran who I believe was responsible for most of my rating gains from 1300 to 2000ish.

Examples

Let's see some examples! Our first position occurred in the recently concluded 2026 Oregon State Championship. In this game I was playing with the black pieces against a National Master. I just played ...Na5 hinting at some tactics with ...Nxb3 exploiting white's potentially overworked king. I admit that at this point in the game I was becoming slightly frustrated that my opponent had been consistently finding strong defensive moves! And I suppose I was hoping that this move would scare him a bit. In response my opponent blitzed out Ng2. Can black win a pawn? Think about it, then you can scroll down to the next diagram which contains the answer.

In this example it was very tempting for me to stop calculating after seeing the move...Nxb3. If he plays Kxb3, I play Rxd2, easy! I probably would have played this blunder in a blitz game. But because I used the "think one extra move ahead" technique I found white's counter-tactic and avoided playing a flawed tactic. Interestingly, my opponent blundered a tactic involving the same motifs a couple moves later, likely because he failed to employ this technique! Let's see it. First think about the question posed in the first diagram, then scroll down to see the answer.

In this example white blundered because they failed to look one extra move ahead. Or perhaps more accurately they failed to look for their opponent's counter-tactics after their own tactic, which is of course the point of the rule. They saw that I could play ...Nxa3+ and stopped calculating after Kb3, assuming that they would win since both of black's knights are hanging. In the game white realized their mistake and met ...Nxa3+ with Kc1 and I went on to win the pawn-up endgame.

Let's look at one more quite complicated example. I've been using this "look one extra move ahead" technique for as long as I can remember and now I usually just do it naturally without consciously thinking about it. As a result sometimes I have accurately calculated tactics that are quite deep because I keep looking one extra move ahead, keep finding an additional layer of tactics, looking one extra move after that tactic, finding another one, etc. The following position occurred in the 2025 Oregon State Championship, in this game I was black against a FIDE Master. I just played the move ...b5. Should white capture on b5 to win a pawn? Once again you can think about the position in the first diagram, then scroll down to see the answer. Hint: there are many layers of tactics after the captures on b5.

This final example was quite complicated. After the game my opponent told me that he thought I had prematurely stopped calculating after 14...Qxb5 and missed 15. Bxe7. In reality he was the one who missed black's follow up tactic to that tactic, 15...Qxb2! If he had seen that resource, he probably wouldn't have taken on b5 in the original position, and would have simply maintained his advantage with a move like 12. 0-0. When I played ...b5 I had seen all the way to the position where white plays 19. Nxd6 and I was confident that I was going to get my pawn back with 19...Ba6. These variations were definitely challenging for me to see, but the main point is that by always trying to look ahead one extra move after each tactic I was able to accurately find all of the additional tactical layers in the position.

Let's conclude. When you are calculating variations you will naturally reach a spot where you feel like you can stop, for example when a series of checks or captures finally comes to an end, or when one side gains a huge amount of material. It's essential to always try to see one extra move beyond that point!