Considering a move

I would like to know what a strong player ponders before making a move?

e.g. Can I take a piece ?
Can one of my pieces be taken? etc.

Sometimes nothing at all. You see a position and immediately you know what to move. Relying on a pool of let's say 100 (amateur) or 10.000 patterns (chunks, motifs) of a pro sometimes makes the choice and calculating easy.

One myth which I do not believe any more: strong players don't have todo lists. They look at a position and start shuffling with the pieces. There are no n points to work through to assess the position. It is explored by virtual moving in the head.

Read Rowson, Watson and MFTL! :)

honestly, totally disagree with #2. Sure, strong players dont always use, f.i., Kotov's way of assessing positions or assessing candidate moves. There are "todo lists" for this, strong players definetly use. You maybe don't use it.... Maybe you should.

I don't believe in Kotov. There are to many synergistic points between the "branches", I calculate them more than once and benefit from the results to create new candidates which I considered not in the first "leg".

Btw, reading modern books and talking to strong players I rarely find someone who belives in rigid thinking like the old guys taught.

PS: what I noticed since ever: the same guys teach & pray and play diametrically opposite. I to the contrary don't think that fuzzy thinking is bad and I'll teach that. :D (Nunn, Rowson and so on support these views)

What works for one does not for another. I benefitted greatly from the Kotov advice. Do not calculate during opponent's turn, but consider strategy instead. During own turn look at candidate moves and go through each line only once.

If I had calculated every line only once I would have missed 90% percent of my "!!" moves and would had missed important candidates...

Ok, I talked about what works for me. But if one reads Rowson's 7 sins, Zebras, MFTL, John Nunn - they say more or less the same. Maybe they can explain it better than I can do.

People are different. Some players like Bronstein and Botvinnik have described a kind of silent dialogue with themselves on deciding on their move. I do never internally talk to myself and have sort of visual thought process.
Rowson, Nunn, Hendriks are all much weaker than Kotov was.
We do not know for sure if Kotov thought the Kotov way.

Well, try here to find the relative best move / idea which lead to draw in the game. ;)

What did Black play and what was the idea? Determine candidate moves first and calculate every branch only once!

lichess.org/editor/5bk1/5p1p/2p1p1p1/3nP3/qPQ4P/PN4P1/1B3P2/6K1_b_-_-

PS: As mentioned above I will never believe that Kotov thought only the way he taught. He wouldn't have been as good as he was when he pruned his thinking in such a grave way.

Well, I got to 1...c5 quickly, but get someway lost after that.
Bb2 is a bad bishop on the colour of all the pawns, that consequently white is weak on the light squares (Qd1+) and that it would be good to exchange Be7 for Nb3.

If you keep the idea of c5 and combine it with another idea than you will find a new candidate to save the day. Kotov would have found it if he had jumped over his system. ;)