Our brains don't like to work hard. They're super lazy. During a Chess game, we need to keep this in mind at all times.

When presented with an easy path and a hard path, our brains will slip toward the easy path. It's more comfortable. Less effort. Simpler.

The recent Intuition Series deep-dived (deep-dove?) into the broader implications of this. But today I want to keep it specific.

When has something like this happened to you:

You're in a middle game, lots of pieces still on the board. Both players jostling for initiative and advantage.

Your opponent places their queen on a slightly strange square. It feels like an inaccuracy. You notice immediately you can attack their queen with your bishop. Better yet, you notice that you're skewering their rook. You're about to go up an exchange!

So you play your bishop out, attacking their queen.

They have to move their queen away, and obviously they'll put it on a safe square. Your tactic's gonna work! You're about to win a rook!

They move their queen away as expected. You take the rook.

Your opponent grins: Qxg2#. Ouch.

When they moved their queen away from your bishop, they had to move it to a safe square. Obviously. And because that rationale is so obvious, we often neglect to look at it any deeper.

The safe square they chose also threatened checkmate. To notice that, we need to push past the obvious reasons and assess the move properly.

But that's very hard to do.

If you looked at the queen move properly you would have seen the threat. You would probably have played the excellent f4! with a strong advantage for White. The pawn move isn't hard to find.

The difficult part here is pushing past the obvious explanation.

Studies have shown that the faster and easier a "superficially plausible" answer pops into our head, the less likely our brain is to give it deep thought.

If there's an answer that seems obvious, it has a way of switching off our brains.

Researcher Shane Frederick, creator of the bat-and-ball problem, has spent much of his career exploring this cognitive bias. Time and again his work has shown that humans are unlikely to think any deeper when an easy answer presents itself.

When his participants weren't tempted by an easy answer, they were able to solve much more difficult problems. But when a seemingly obvious (but incorrect) answer came to them, a staggering percentage of them (up to 80%!) accept it with no further thought.

In Chess, it's the same. We attack their queen. They moved their queen to safety. Thinking complete. Take the rook.

If we'd considered the move even a second longer, we'd have seen the checkmate threat. But obviously their queen had to move to safety. We stopped thinking there.

One of the most important things we need to do on each move in a Chess game is identify the effects of our opponent's move.

Some effects are easy to find. Others are hidden. And some are so obvious that they can switch off our brain for a moment.

And a moment is all we need to blunder.

Many opening traps exploit this. Pretty much all stalemate traps do too. Take this classic stalemate trap, for example.

In this example, you've just played Qh3. It's a last ditch effort of a move. The computer obviously hates it.

But the computer doesn't have human psychology. Your opponent does. And tricks like this can even work right at the top level.

When your opponent sees Qh3 hit the board, they're likely to think you've blundered under pressure. Or misclicked. Maybe they think you're going for a sneaky swindle, hoping they won't notice.

Either way, there's an obvious explanation that will instantly pop into their mind.

So, depending on whether they've seen this trap before, your opponent is likely to accept that obvious explanation without further thought. They'll capture your "free" queen.

Qh3. Qxh3. Stalemate. Pain for one of you. Jubilation for the other.

Positive emotions multiply the issue. If the reason your brain gives you is both obvious and exciting, look out.

In the first example, we thought we were winning a rook. In the second example, our opponent thought they were winning a queen.

We all get excited when we spot a free piece or a tactic. They're two of the main joys of the game. They're also among the moments we're most likely to make a mistake. I know I've played many-a-move that started off feeling like an awesome tactic and ended with my resignation.

Excitement brings our guard down. Obvious moves bring our guard down. Together, they're quite the combo.

So we must stay vigilant. Watch for when these issues occur. Try to catch them before we blunder. Train ourselves to look deeper.

There is a silver lining to all this: This is a part of Chess psychology that you can weaponize in your own games.

In faster time controls especially, the most dangerous moves you can make are often the ones that seem obvious but hide serious venom.

There've been plenty of swindles that exploited this particular cognitive weakness. Look for opportunities in your own games too.

There are few things that can do more damage to our awareness than an obvious reason.

Stay alert.

Here's to the journey,
Aiden