When you see a good move, look for a better one

I believe it was Emanuel Lasker who advised not playing the first good move you find, but instead to look for a better one. It makes a lot of sense on the surface. But when I thought about it, I couldn't think of any instances in my own games where I found a good move but then searched and found a better one and it ended up helping me. Instead what usually happens is I find a good move, look for a better one, think I've found one, play that instead and then find out that my "better" move is actually worse and often a blunder.

Here's what happened in a recent Rapid game. Black has just captured my bishop on e3 so I'm temporarily down a piece. My clock is at 1:44 with a 10 second increment--enough time for some quick calculation but not a deep think.

The obvious move is just to recapture on e3, but that gives Black time to save his knight on f6. I thought I saw something better. What if I attacked his queen by playing 19. d6? Then both his queen and his knight would be under attack and he couldn't save both. If he plays 19. ... Nxf1 then I just take his queen, so he's got no choice but to move his queen. Then I play 20. exf6 which threatens the bishop on g7, so he still has two pieces attacked. The best he can do is 20. ... Nxf1, but then I take the bishop on g7 with 21. fxg7 and capture the knight on the next move and I emerge with two minor pieces for a rook.

So after thinking for about 30 seconds I played 19. d6 and congratulated myself for being so clever. It took a lot less than 30 seconds after I moved before I realized that I had just blundered. The fatal flaw in my calculation was that somehow I had failed to realize that when Black plays ... Nxf1 he is now attacking my queen. It's amazing how these important details remain completely hidden when I'm actually calculating and deciding on a move, and then become immediately obvious after I've already blundered.

In the game I lost the Exchange because of this blunder and eventually lost. My lack of tactical acumen is nothing new, and I'm not that surprised that I screwed up the analysis considering that I didn't have the time for proper analysis and had to play based on intuition, which in my case is almost always wrong. What's really aggravating is that I had a perfectly good simple move, just recapturing on e3, that would have left me with a nice advantage. After 19. Qxe3 exd5 20. Nxd5 Nxd5 21. cxd5 White wins no material but has a terrific position:

That's what hurts. The simplest, obvious move was the best one. It usually is. I've lost many games this way, where just playing the obvious move would leave me with a good position, but I thought there was something even better and I ended up self-destructing by seeing something that wasn't there.

The advice isn't wrong. When you see a good move, look for a better one. But make sure it's better. Most of the time it isn't and you'll save yourself a lot of heartache by just playing the obvious move.