Seeing Ghosts

It's important when you play chess to see your opponent's threats, and on a more general level understand what your opponent is trying to accomplish. Beginners often have a lot of trouble with this, as it's as much as they can handle to try to come up with their own ideas; trying to figure out what the opponent is trying to do on top of that is just too much. To improve beyond a certain level, though, eventually you've got to develop this habit (ability?) or you won't be able to win because your opponent will surprise you with moves you didn't see coming.

But if you overdo it, you can have the problem of Seeing Ghosts. That's what happens when your opponent makes a move and you decide that what he's about to do is a tremendous problem for you when it actually isn't. As a consequence, you go out of your way to stop your opponent from doing something that wouldn't have hurt you, and in the process you harm your own position.

I decided to look for some examples from my own games and thought it would take awhile. Actually I found three examples in about ten minutes from games I've played in the last couple of weeks. One of the side effects of being a relatively weak player is that it doesn't take long to find instructive examples of what not to do.

I'm playing White and my opponent has just played 10. ... b6. I figured his idea was to play 11. ... c5 and pressure my center. This isn't wrong, but I got way too concerned about it. I couldn't take on c5 because he'd play 12. ... Bxc5 and I no longer have a center pawn further than the third rank and his bishop has a nice square that I can't chase away with b4 without playing a3 first.

So I decided to avoid all of that by striking first and played 11. e4?? which just blunders a pawn to 11. ... Nxe4 12. Nxe4 Bxh4. This was an easy tactic to see, but I missed it because I was so concerned about the harm to my position caused by a potential 11. ... c5.

But 11. ... c5 wouldn't have harmed my position at all. Black would threaten to play 12. ... cxd4 but so what? I just recapture and that's it. There was no reason to try to stop 11. ... c5 and White is better if I use the tempo to continue to develop with 11. Rc1 or 11. Qe2 or 11. Qc2. In retrospect my concern about a possible 11. ... c5 bordered on hysteria, and it caused me to blunder a pawn.

Here's another example:

Again I'm playing White. I've got a terrific position here and it's my move. Black is attacking my bishop on c4 so I've got to do something about that. I should have just retreated my bishop with 21. Bb3, but somehow I got the idea into my head that this allowed 21. ... b4 and that this was dangerous. Obviously it isn't; it just loses a pawn to 22. Bxb4. I don't know what I was thinking.

Because I thought I couldn't allow 21. ... b4 I decided to sacrifice my knight for two pawns and played 21. Nxb5 axb5 22. Bxb5. I thought this won material since if Black moves the e8 rook guarding the knight on e7 then I just take it, so instead he has to leave the rook on e8, so I win the Exchange and ultimately get a rook and two pawns for two minor pieces. It didn't quite work out that way; Black played 22. ... Bf4 attacking my rook on c1, which objectively is not a good move but I got lost in the tactics, blundered, and only eventually won because my opponent counter-blundered.

The point, though, is that there was no reason to sacrifice and go into that tactical sequence to begin with. The simple 21. Bb3 saving my bishop would have left me with a winning position because of the pin on the knight on e7. There's no way for Black to prevent material loss after I play Rce1 followed by advancing the f-pawn. I completely derailed my own game because I thought there was something dangerous about 21. ... b4 when there wasn't.

One more:

This time I'm playing Black. I've won a pawn but I'm slightly behind in development and White's bishops and queen are looking menacingly toward my kingside. The move I wanted to play was 11. ... d5, protecting the knight and opening a diagonal for my bishop. But White's queen threatened to go to g4 or h5 with mating threats on g7 and/or h7--or at least that was what I thought. I had a move that guarded against both of these threats, so instead of playing 11. .... d5 I played 11. ... Nf6, getting me further behind in development and giving me a lousy position. I was fortunate to eventually draw.

Thinking that 11. ... d5 allowed White to play 12. Qg4 was just silly; with the bishop's diagonal open the g4 square is guarded so 12. Qg4?? just loses instantly for White. The possibility of 12. Qh5 was slightly more plausible but as long as my knight stays on the e4 square it's blocking the diagonal of the White light-squared bishop so there isn't a one-move mate threat. On 12. Qh5 Black can more or less force a queen trade with 12. ... Qg5 and Black is fine (Stockfish says Black's best move is 12. ... c5 which is winning for Black, but just avoiding any mating threat is enough).

It's easy to laugh at these brain freezes, but Seeing Ghosts is very common and happens even to much stronger players. The errors aren't as egregious but the phenomenon is the same. Unfortunately there isn't an easy solution. You can't just stop being concerned with your opponents' moves, and you have to evaluate possible threats. About all you can do is ask yourself, when it looks like an opponent has a potential threat, "What if he played that? What would actually happen? Is it really that bad?" Maybe it is, in which case you have to take remedial measures. But in many cases there's no reason to stop what your opponent is doing, and his "threat" is actually no threat at all.