Thus, a grandmaster or a world champion chess player may look 10 or more moves into the future, though not much more than that. There is a limit to the human capability to visualize complex solutions and it seems likely that if chess players haven’t hit this limit that they have come very close to it.

A weaker player will visualize much less. A beginner may not visualize at all and a decent player in a general tournament may only look 4 or 5 moves ahead which is enough to give them a big advantage over a beginner but probably ensures a thrashing from a grandmaster.

Computers, on the other hand, can look 20 or more moves ahead and they can check all variations. This is the reason that a grandmaster cannot beat a computer without the computer assuming some sort of handicap

the current handicap appears to be the computer has to give up at least a knight before the grandmaster has a chance of winning.

Thus, if you want to improve your chess game despite the complexity of the game, you should work on your visualization skills. The further ahead you can plan your game, the stronger you will become.

But what if you don’t want to work on your visualization skills? What if chess is just not for you?