Our brains are designed to help us achieve our goals. But our brains don't really understand Chess.

Obviously, we understand Chess. The conscious part of our brain understands Chess.

(As much as anyone actually understands it, I suppose.)

Not the instinctual part of us, though. It's got no idea what's happening.

During a game of Chess, we like to think we're using a totally conscious, rational part of our mind. But this conscious, rational layer sits atop a whole bunch of less-conscious, less-rational processes that are running at all times.

These processes are much better suited to keeping us safe, navigating the wilderness, or finding food. Situations where there's a lot of unimportant information, and a small amount of critical information.

Chess is rarely that.

Despite that, these processes are still at the core of how our brains engage with the game. They're operating in the background, making loads of tiny decisions that we rarely notice. We just feel their effects.

One critical way they affect our game is how they manage and prioritize our limited working memory resources. Our seven slots.

They dictate what gets priority, and when.

I like to picture them as a labrador running around inside my mind. This beautiful creature loves me and will do anything it can to protect me and help me succeed.

I picture it in a room, surrounded by balls of every color and shape. Each ball represents some cognitive function I might need to manage. Some nugget of information, or some mental process that could be worth taking up some of my limited working memory space.

Along the wall are seven slots, each large enough to hold only one ball at a time.

It's a smart dog. It knows that when it places a ball into one of those slots, then my conscious mind is able to use that ball. When the ball isn't in a slot, I don't have access to it.

For our waking hours, our labrador trots around the room. It spends its time picking up balls, placing them in slots. Taking them back out when it thinks we don't need them anymore.

The labrador is tireless, and fiercely loyal. It never rests. Its life is devoted to helping us navigate the world. We'd be totally lost without it.

But it's still just a labrador, and only understands the things a labrador understands. It doesn't have the deeper level of thinking that you and I can achieve in our conscious thoughts.

When we sit down to play Chess, our labrador has to work very hard.

Around its feet are balls containing various chunks of the Chess position. But there are also balls for our self-control, balls for our emotional processing and regulation, our thinking, and our idea generation.

For us to access any of these functions, our labrador needs to load the relevant ball into a slot.

It runs out of those seven slots very quickly. We have more demand than we have space. Something's gotta give. We overload.

When there's too much going on, our labrador has to make some tough decisions. It has to choose what to keep in our seven slots and what to discard.

It chooses with care, and with love. But it chooses with the mind of a dog. And dogs have no concept of how Chess works.

The decisions our labrador makes are rarely Chess appropriate. It means well, it's just not capable of understanding the complexity.

The part of our mind that can understand complexity is simply too slow to help right now. Our labrador has to act by itself.

It rapidly rips balls from slots, throws new ones in. Ruthless in its prioritization and trying desperately to help us.

Each situation, threat, or goal, will cause the labrador to prioritize the slots differently.

Balls the labrador thinks are important right now will find slots. And everything else will be left discarded on the ground. We don't experience these choices as they happen, just the results of them.

In the event of an overload, the labrador prioritizes our slots based on two criteria: threats and attention.

If the labrador thinks something is a threat to our physical or emotional safety, balls related to that get top priority.

(Note that I mean "threat" in the instinctual sense, not the Chess sense. Our labrador doesn't really understand Chess threats.)

If it doesn't sense a threat, it will look to where our attention is going instead. It will prioritize things that help us to keep engaging with whatever has our attention in that moment.

If our attention is on the kingside, our labrador will prioritize things related to the kingside. If our attention is on playing quickly, then that will get priority.

But anything not directly in our spotlight of attention is fair game. The labrador will sacrifice it in a heartbeat if it senses an overload coming.

And we won't notice until it's too late.

We experience the results of these sacrifices in three main ways: Freezing, Forgetting, and Freewheeling.

Freezing is when the labrador sacrifices thinking space.

We stall, unable to create new ideas or navigate the position. We spin our wheels either thinking through the same variations over and over again, or being unable to think at all.

Forgetting is when the labrador sacrifices information.

We're able to think quite clearly, but we don't have access to all of the information in the position. That long distance bishop is invisible to us, or we forget about our opponents' threats for a moment.

When people talk about "tunnel vision" in Chess, Forgetting is what they mean.

Freewheeling is when the labrador sacrifices your self-control.

Your intuition runs rampant, jumps to conclusions, offers over-simplified ideas, and you don't have the working memory space to assert your will over it.

You become reactive, superficial. Playing on autopilot.

We can't really be mad at our labrador. It's trying to help us. It means well. It sees we're struggling, and it leaps into action with fierce determination.

And, more often than not, it succeeds in letting us continue doing whatever we were doing.

We can keep calculating our big attack on the kingside! Good job, labrador!

... We just forgot all about the counterplay we were trying to prevent in the process.

We can keep track of everything happening in the position. Good job, labrador!

... But now we don't have any space left to think and do anything with that information.

Our labrador takes action, then turns to us, tail wagging, and waits for the pats and congratulations on a job well done.

Our labrador has helped us to keep functioning, but we don't know what it's had to sacrifice to do it.

We only work that out when we've let go of the piece and spotted our horrible blunder.

These issues are universal to every Chess player, regardless of skill. Even at the top level, many of the worst blunders can be traced back to overloads and Freezing, Forgetting, or Freewheeling.

They happen because we're human. And our brains aren't designed to play Chess.

Over this 5-part series, we will deep-dive into Freezing, Forgetting, and Freewheeling. We'll look at exactly what causes each, how they show up in our games.

We'll look at what training you can do and habits you can build to help your labrador out. Arm it to resist pressure and make the best decisions it can.

Combatting the Three Fs is a lifelong journey. These issues will never fully go away. But we can take steps to protect ourselves and reduce their frequency and impact.

Just a little more resilience against them could be the key to stopping your most painful blunders and breaking through your plateau.

Over the next few parts, I want to help you do just that.

To get the most out of this series, you'll need to do a little homework. Whenever you make a blunder between now and the end of this series, save it somewhere. Then take a moment to reflect on it.

Was the blunder a Chess error (unknown opening, positional mistake, complex calculation, etc), or a slots error (Freezing, Forgetting, Freewheeling)?

What do you think caused the blunder?

As we go through the series, you'll build a better sense of what each of the slots errors are. Then you'll be able to use your saved blunder collection to identify and target your biggest problems.

A problem correctly targeted is already a long way toward resolution.

I'll see you in Part Two.

Here's to the journey,
Aiden