Pondering skills

Need to gain an advantage.
Discover the problems of every piece.
Note your options by focusing on the horizon of each piece.
Get a global picture: Include the past facts & present developments.
Determine the next move: Identify the disadvantages, in small chunks.
Ideally attack a piece indirectly by first reducing it's mobility, like planning a checkmate.
Piece safety is important: Checkmating threats should be prioritized first, relative valued threats second.
Timing is important: Explorer the consequences of delaying a tempo or wasting actual game time.
Know which piece should move first. Expect the correct corresponding move. Don't assume the next move is correct.
To be effective, an active move must give a positive result.

There are seemingly two components to good chess.

a) Creativity, art, vision, ingenuity, intention.

b) Calculation, tactical absolutes, cost-benefit analysis.

Use them both in order to produce opportunities for one another.
They are symbiotic.

-

At my current stage in chess, I find myself repeating, "Chess is really all about proving an objective and efficient argument. It's about putting your pieces on the best squares possible."

Assuming computers play perfect chess, we can literally put a number value on the validity of the *ARGUMENT* of any individual move;

because at it's root, that's what chess is. It's an argument. It's a debate. Where nobody can run, nobody can hide, nobody can lie, nobody can slant, nobody can spin, nobody can fabricate, nobody can hide their glaring blemishes, nobody can manufacture blemishes in their opponents that don't exist. All of these flaws end up in ++.

How much influence you have, how big your microphone can yell, how many people you can reach...

...none of that matters...

"Chess is a sea in which a mosquito can bathe and elephants can drown" - indian proverb.

-

Chess is the only debate forum where objective-reality, where fact, where truth, rule the kingdom, with an absolute, persistent, mathematical, mechanical, integrity.

Chess is the only spot, where lying, hypocrisy, complacency, double-standards, lack of empathy, and every other disgusting terrorist tendency, is proven, brought to light, and fatally punished.

It's unfortunate that when I close my board, I enter a world, where at gunpoint, these traits are, instead, rewarded.

-

"The Chessboard is a hallowed, sacred, and godly realm. It is the sport of the civilized." - SummerSparkle

-