You look at a position, and three candidate moves jump out at you.

You start to calculate Candidate One. It's unclear, there's loads of branches for both sides. You push deeper hoping to find something to hang on to, but eventually give up. You might come back to it if your other ideas don't work.

The clock ticks away. Three minutes down.

Candidate Two is interesting. It seems exciting and forcing. You consider their response to your threat, then your next response, maybe a move or two more, then think, "I'm an idiot!"

Because Candidate Two straight hangs a piece and you didn't notice until something deeper in the line drew your attention to it. Lucky catch! You certainly can't play that move.

Tick tock. Five minutes down.

You're getting tired and you're starting to get a little wary of the clock situation. Time for Candidate Three.

Instantly Candidate Three seems better. Something about it had felt right, but it's not until you really look at it that you see just how much pressure it puts on your opponent.

You feel a burst of energy, and you calculate, and it's very clear, quite quickly, that this is the move to play.

So on minute seven, you play your third idea. And it is the best move, well done.

It'd have been fantastic if you didn't need to spend all that time and energy on lines that amounted to nothing though, huh?

Calculating lines is expensive work for our brains to do. It takes time, energy, and jams up our working memory with loads of data.

We need a step between identifying a candidate and calculating a line. Something that helps us decide what's even worth investigating further.

We need to consider our options before we consider lines.

For each candidate, before you calculate anything, ask "how would this move change the position?"

What would it mean if your piece vacated that square? Check for any pieces or squares you'd be weakening, any diagonals you'd be opening.

What would it mean when your piece goes to its new square? Check that it would be defended, and if not, check that it's safe there. Check what it'd be attacking or threatening. What pressure would it place on your opponent?

Okay, so same position as before, same three candidates. This time, options before lines.

You consider Candidate One.

Last time you calculated until the line fizzled and you got overwhelmed with all the branches. This time, you really look at what Candidate One does, and you notice it doesn't do much at all.

It looks natural, but it places no pressure on the position. No wonder your previous calculation fizzled, there was nothing specific your opponent needed to attend to in their response.

That took maybe 30 seconds.

Candidate Two jumped out initially because it looks like a forcing attack on your opponent. But instead of looking at how they might respond to your threat, you take a moment to investigate your own move first.

You see that your piece would be hanging on its new square. A huge blunder, noticed and avoided quickly.

You go to Candidate Three, and once you start looking at it, it's clearly more compelling than the other two. You notice the pressure it places on your opponent, maybe that it also fixes a smaller weakness in your position, and your spidey-sense tingles again.

Because you handled the other candidates better, you don't feel rushed or tired this time around. You give this option the effort it deserves, and you calculate.

Maybe three minutes later, you play Candidate Three.

Same end result, same decision, but a whole lot less time and strain to get there.

I've been training a few of my coaching students in this Options Before Lines approach recently. Each of them reports better time management, less fatigue, and clearer decisions during classical games since we started with the technique.

One even took down a player rated 600 points higher than him in a tournament with it.

I'm not quite at the level of recommending this as highly as blindfold training or Jessika's Review, it's still early days. But I encourage you to try it.

Let your brain come up with candidate moves.

Next, properly investigate what each of those candidates would actually do, before you consider what your opponent would play in response.

Then, and only then, calculate.

Options before lines.

Here's to the journey,
Aiden