Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.
Magnus Carlsen
How is this intuition guided by factors external to the chess position itself?
White to move
When I did encounter this position in tactics training on Chess.com, my first thought was to threaten checkmate with 1.Kc4. My intuition was influenced by the knowledge that there was a tactical opportunity. I quickly deduced that some sort of rook sacrifice to deflect Black's rook from the h-file was the intent of the exercise. After examining a line or two that begins with the mate threat, I spent a minute (or less) on Ke4, too.
Try it yourself at Puzzle 42645.
Instructive example. I’m not entirely sure it fits the “intuition versus analysis” lesson, though.
ReplyDeleteI too found the correct answer quickly, based on exploiting the black K position to either divert or block (via white achieving Rh5!) his R from stopping the h-pawn.
But as with so many puzzles, my chief takeaway from this was, “If told, ‘White wins,’ I will find it. But if not — i.e., if reached in a game — I probably would overlook it.”
Thanks for the comment. What I was getting at was not intuition vs. analysis, but how intuition leads to different ideas in puzzles than in play.
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