Look for a Better Move: Lasker’s Rule
Contents
You spot a reasonable move, you play it, and you move on. That is human, and it is also one of the biggest sources of dropped points and half-points between 800 and 1400. Emanuel Lasker, world champion for twenty-seven years, summed up the cure in a single famous line: "When you see a good move, look for a better one." The idea is not to doubt everything, but to build a simple discipline: before you move, compare at least two candidates. Often the first move is good. But "good" is not "best," and in chess the gap between the two sometimes decides the game. In this article we will see how to draw up a short list of candidate moves, how to choose between them, and above all how this habit wins you material, endgames, and whole games you used to let slip away.
Why the First Move Is a Trap
Our brain loves efficiency. As soon as it finds an acceptable solution to a problem, it stops: why keep searching if you already have an answer? Psychologists call this "satisficing": settling for the first option that is good enough. In chess, that reflex is exactly what makes you play a good move instead of the best one.
Lasker’s rule fights this reflex with a mechanical instruction. You see a sound move? Good: make a mental note of it, then ask one simple question: "Is there something better?" You are not abandoning your first move, you are looking for a rival to it. If nothing is better, you play your move with a clear conscience. If something is better, you have just earned a half-point or a full point.
The beginner’s mistake is not playing a bad move: it is never having looked at the others. Strength does not come from calculating ten moves in a row, but from comparing two or three good candidates before deciding.
Building a Candidate Move List
Before you can compare, you need things to compare. This is the idea of "candidate moves," popularised by Alexander Kotov: at every important turn, identify two or three plausible moves before calculating a single one in depth. Look wide first, then dig.
A reliable method is to always examine the "forcing" moves first: checks, captures and threats. These change the position the most, so they are the ones that most often hide a move better than your first quiet reflex.