How to Find the Best Move: Use Candidate Moves, Then Check for Tactics

You find the best move by listing candidate moves, then checking each for tactics

You find the best move by picking two or three candidate moves, then checking each one for tactics and safety before you commit to any of them. That is the whole routine. It is not magic. It is a repeatable check you run every single turn.

Candidate moves are the two or three moves you seriously consider before you choose. You do not scan the whole board for every possible move. You narrow it down first, then compare.

A tactic is a short, forced sequence that wins material or delivers checkmate. Forks and hanging pieces are the two most common tactics at your level, so they are the two you check for first.

A hanging piece is a piece left undefended, sitting there for free. If your candidate move walks a piece onto a square nobody protects, that candidate is out.

A fork is one move that attacks two of your pieces at the same time. You cannot save both. If a candidate move opens a square where the opponent's knight, bishop, or queen could fork you next move, that candidate needs a second look.

This two-step check, list candidates, then screen for tactics, directly targets the two mistakes that show up most in BlackBox Chess data for players rated 1000 to 1600. Hanging pieces hit most players in every band tested. Getting forked hits most players too. Running this routine on every move is how you stop handing those points away.

Start by asking what changed after your opponent's move

Before you think about your own move, look at what your opponent just did. Ask one question: what changed? A move on the board is never just a move. It opens a line, closes a line, adds an attacker somewhere, or removes a defender somewhere else.

Say your opponent just moved a knight. That knight now attacks new squares it did not attack a move ago. Say your opponent just moved a pawn. That pawn used to block a diagonal, and now it does not. Both of those changes can create a threat that was not there before.

This step matters because it is exactly where a fork or a hanging piece sneaks in. A fork is one move that attacks two of your pieces at once, so you can only save one of them. A hanging piece is a piece left undefended, so your opponent can take it for free. Neither one exists in a vacuum. Both come from something that just changed on the board, usually your opponent's last move, sometimes your own move from a turn or two before.

If you skip this question and jump straight to picking your next move, you are choosing blind. You might play a perfectly reasonable-looking move that ignores a brand-new threat sitting right there. Asking what changed takes a few seconds. It is the one habit that catches a threat before it becomes a piece you lost.

List two or three candidate moves before you commit to any of them

Do not play the first move that looks reasonable. Stop, and find two or three candidate moves first. Candidate moves are the moves you seriously consider before you choose one. Comparing two or three options catches problems that jump out only when you hold them side by side.

Start by scanning for moves that change something real on the board. One candidate might open a file. A file is a column with no pawns on it. Opening a file gives your rook a straight line to push down, with nothing blocking it.

A second candidate might aim a rook at the 7th rank. That means putting your rook on the opponent's second row. From there it attacks pawns that are hard to defend, and it boxes in their king. A rook sitting on the 7th rank is one of the most useful pieces on the board, so ask if any move gets you there this turn.

A third candidate might just activate a passive piece. A passive piece has no good squares. It sits and does nothing while the rest of your army fights. Say your bishop has been stuck behind your own pawns for ten moves. A candidate that finally gives it a diagonal to work with is worth comparing against the others, even if it does not look flashy.

Write down your two or three candidates before you touch a piece. Then compare them. One might win a pawn. One might trade into a safer position. Comparing them side by side is what separates picking a move from finding the best one.

Check each candidate for tactics: does it drop a piece or allow a fork

Once you have two or three candidate moves, run each one through the same check before you play it. Ask two questions. Does this move hang a piece? Does it allow a fork? A hanging piece is a piece left undefended, so your opponent can take it for free. A fork is one move that attacks two of your pieces at once, so you can only save one of them.

This is not a minor check. It is the single most valuable habit you can build, because of how often it actually matters. In BlackBox Chess's data, hanging pieces show up in 82% of players rated 1000 to 1199, 77% of players rated 1200 to 1399, and 73% of players rated 1400 to 1599. Getting forked hits 74%, 70%, and 78% of players across those same three bands. That means most players in this entire range are still losing material to exactly the two things this check is built to catch.

Run the check on every candidate, not just the one you are leaning toward. Say one candidate move develops a bishop but leaves a knight undefended on the far side of the board. Say another candidate looks quieter but keeps everything covered. The quieter move wins, every time, if the flashier one hangs material.

This step is also where most players quietly skip a beat. It feels slow. It feels unnecessary when a move looks obviously fine. But hanging pieces and forks dominate every rating band from 1000 to 1600 precisely because this exact check gets skipped, over and over, in favor of moves that just look right.

Find out which check you skip most before you drill it

You can know this whole routine and still lose the same way, game after game. That is normal. The gap is usually not knowledge. It is one specific step you skip under time pressure, without noticing.

BlackBox Chess is a tool built to find that step for you. It runs Stockfish across your last 10 games, free, no account needed. Stockfish is a strong chess engine, a program that scores every position and finds the best move. BlackBox uses it to check every move you played, then names your number one recurring mistake. The whole check takes about 60 seconds. You connect your Chess.com or Lichess account. Or you can upload a PGN file instead. A PGN file is just a text file. It lists every move made in a game.

The result tells you which part of this routine you actually skip. Maybe you always ask what changed after your opponent's move, but you stop checking for forks when the clock gets low. Maybe you never look past your first candidate move at all. You cannot fix a habit you cannot name, and guessing wastes your practice time on the wrong drill.

If you want the full picture, the paid report is $10, one time. It covers 100 games instead of 10, and ranks every mistake pattern you have by severity and how often it repeats. It comes with a fix course built around your actual patterns, not a generic list. You can see what a finished report looks like at https://blackboxchess.app/report/3f128113-1baa-4d77-ad1e-ccbada689fa0.

Aimchess offers a similar kind of automated review, if you want to compare. But the fastest way to find out which check you skip is to just run your own last 10 games and see the name of your number one mistake. Start at https://blackboxchess.app/.