The complete accurate space of "EV" of any chess position is 1, 0, and -1. Obviously anything in between is by definition inaccurate and based on probability.

In poker the EV is continuous and not discrete, and it is up for debate as to which is harder to calculate completely accurately. In order to solve EV completely accurately, you need to know your complete strategy, and your opponents complete strategy. These tasks seem as daunting as solving chess.

Humans surely seem to be a lot closer to the GTO strategy in poker than in chess. But you can't really draw a comparison since the games are fundamentally different.

This is gold.

Which guy said strong players calculate less?
GMs have no difficulty visualizing 20 moves ahead, even Anand (best blindfold player) will beat you blindfolded in 3 minutes game.
Weak player? "Oh I thought the knight was still in c3" after visualizing 5 half-moves.

Isn't it though

Many variations strong players will stop calculating after 1-3 moves because they know its wrong vs a weaker player who will continue to calculate cause they don't have the same instincts. I never said that strong players cant visualize or calculate far ahead. Does that make sense to you?

a fascinating topic for discussion I agree but for the bolded part do you realize this is never true? You can never have a set of aces ( or kings for that matter) and never be facing a possibility of a straight or better with one card to come.

Of course. They sit 7 hours at the table only to tell themselves "Oh that can't be right" after calculating 3 moves ahead. lol

Strong chess players don't calculate less, they calculate more and much deeper. This is possible because they can effectively reduce the list of candidate moves down to 2-3 and this goes on with the whole tree of variations.

Another advantage of players with IM-strength and above is that they can usually visualize the chessboard like a diagram from a book. Basically they can reduce every position to a 1-move problem that way. Weaker players on the other hand usually cannot play blindfold and can only visualize chunks of the board (like 4x4 squares) at best.

In a nutshell: Very strong chess players are usually running on better bio-hardware. It also seems that lefthanders (Kasparov, Aronian, MVL) are doing rather well.

You phrased it much better then I did, reducing the amount of candidate moves, which reduces the tree of variations. SicilianTaimanov I think you are better off going back to grinding 2nl as I don't feel your ready for discussions on chess. Do you even have a Fide or USCF rating?

From my own experience I can say that grandmasters do not do an inordinate amount of calculating. Tests support me in this claim. If anything, grandmasters often consider fewer alternatives; they tend not to look at as many possible moves as weaker players do. And so, perversely, chess skill often seems to reflect the ability to avoid calculations . . ."
- Artur Yusupov

I think that's what the other poster wants to say - they are not brute force calculating, they are using feel to reduce candidate moves to a few after only 1 or three steps in the tree and only analysing deeper along certain lines.

A very long time ago I read an old David Levy book about computer chess and he said one of the big problems was knowing when the computer had looked far enough, because until you see the next move you never know. I suppose that problem is solved in modern computer chess, but human players' instincts solve it all the time in human chess.

People who are living under the impression that GMs don't calculate much, should watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06i23iyswoY

I have to admit one thing though: MVL is not your typical GM

I agree, they calculate plenty deep - I just think they other poster is saying they don't need to calculate as wide as a computer because they are (or were?) better than a computer at reducing the list of candidate moves at every node to just the lines that need to be analysed - I'm pretty sure he's not saying they only analyse 3 moves ahead total on every line - just that 3 moves is often enough to discard a particular line.

I also think that the rest of are not saying that Anand can calculate every possible position 20 moves in advance, just the main lines. So I don't really understand why everyone's posts have the form and tone of disagreement here.

I recall hearing there's two types of chess players.

1) The intuitive ones who don't calculate deep and base their moves off of heuristics.
2) Then there's the calculating ones who calculate multiple variations several moves deep.

I think I fall under 1. The only times I recall myself calculating is when I'm in a simple endgame or debating on whether a tactic works or not. I'm not sure if this is true for stronger players, but I recall reading somewhere that Anand is a very intuitive player.

Regarding a GM being better than a computer at reducing candidate moves, this is both true and not true at the same time. If you start at a point before any thinking(or in the computer's case, calculating) has occurred, this is true. A GM will intuitively eliminate moves that are irrelevant, and won't even register other possible moves outside those few. However, a computer will arrive at a similar list almost instantly, for essentially the same reason. Typically, only a few moves have any value, and arriving at those doesn't take much.

This speaks more about the power of the human subconscious than anything else. That's why chess engines have only fairly recently surpassed humans as well. The human intuition and subconscious is a beautiful thing. An enormous amount of work and advancement in technology was required for a computer to rival a skilled human's ability to see why a move is better due to the effect it will have at a much later point. That's what's really fascinating, I think.

Me too.