Characteristics of Skilled Option Generation in Chess

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that skilled decision makers generate satisfactory options as the first ones they consider, thereby avoiding the need to perform extensive generation and evaluation. A total of 16 chess players were divided into groups of high and medium skill ratings. Four different chess positions were presented, and the task of the subjects was to generate the next move to he played, articulating every move they thought of, no matter how weak. Only a small proportion of legal moves were worth playing, but the majority of initial moves that the subjects generated were good ones, with a mean rating of 3.59 on a 5-point scale. These results suggest that decision makers may be able to pursue deep rather than broad searches, relying on their ability to generate feasible options as the first ones considered.