Common Chess Reasoning is Flawed

I'm going to keep this blog post short - but as a reminder of some things I have noticed about chess.

1. Openings are not bad simply because "they bring out the queen early", even though this line of reasoning is repeated over and over again.

If you bring a queen out early and win, and the engine agrees that you should have won, then it was actually the right thing to do.

At the end of the day, a move is objectively good or bad because it's either advantageous or disadvantageous. It's is subjectively good or bad based on whether or not you THINK it's advantageous or disadvantageous.

The further away from this core truth a line of reasoning is, the less grounded it is in truth.

"Bringing the queen out early" may be something to idiomatically avoid in chess - by convention - it is by no means a reason in and of itself.

Same applies to most forms of "reasoning" in chess. Chess comes with many powerful rules of thumb, but those are merely guiding principles and tools one can use to get a quick start evaluating a position.

2. Grandmasters need to turn on "multiple move arrows" in their game analysis. I've seen far too many GMs use analysis tools to try and find "the right move" when you can turn on analysis and find that there are multiple moves of roughly equivalent advantage.

3. Advantage is ultimately about whether or not you can win the game.

Engines sometimes don't see certain lines, for whatever reason, even though engines are very strong.

And you - and GMs, and anyone else - can still win or at the very least draw a game even if as far as -1.5 in most cases.

Theoretical perfect play blah blah blah, I get it. First of all, theoretical perfect play to 8 moves and beyond hasn't even been fully proven yet. Second of all, someone who could play theoretically perfect wouldn't have to worry about any of this would they? I mean OK that's also not a great form of reasoning but I think theoretical perfect play - something which has yet to be proven to even exist - is not the strongest foundation on which to hold onto.

In PRACTICE, even if you are 1.5 behind (material-wise), you can AT THE VERY LEAST draw the game most of the time. This goes as far as -5 in some case with certain positions revealing forced draw lines even if you are way behind (or ahead).

My point is... Advantage is about winning, not material.

4. Tempo is the most important factor in chess. Start thinking more about tempos.

In 90% of the variations one could come up with on a chess board, if you could somehow magically buy yourself one, two, or more tempos, you could find a win, with basically any piece or any practice number of piece differences. Heck, with enough free tempos, you could just promote a pawn up and convert it to a queen and checkmate.

COUNT. YOUR. TEMPOS.

Many tactics and much strategy relies on understanding that it takes a certain minimum number of tempos for your opponent's queen on a black square, for example, to unblock itself and threaten your piece which is on a white square all the way across the board.

When you learn to count tempos, you can then refine your "search" for good moves by only having to worry about positions achievable within the next N tempos - however many that is.

I often use tempos when I'm considering tactics. If I know that I can guarantee a pawn promotion or mate faster than my opponent can develop their counter, then of course I should usually just go for it.