Most people think chess is about seeing ten moves ahead, or about clever tactics. Past a certain strength, the game becomes less about seeing long sequences than about finding the move that most improves the position in front of you.
The Slant
None of those moves wins anything on its own. Each one leaves your pieces a little better placed and your opponent’s a little worse, and together they slant the board. You slide toward a win while your opponent pushes uphill.
You can see it most clearly when the players aren’t evenly matched. The weaker player looks at the board and can’t find a good move. Every piece seems stuck and every plan runs into something. The stronger player looks at the same position and has several good moves every turn.
Neither of them is imagining it. The stronger player built that slant one move at a time.
The Next Move
The skill is picking the very next move so it leaves you with more good options and your opponent with fewer. The ten moves after it will be played in positions nobody can see yet.
It is the chess version of every decision being just another marker. The move isn’t valuable because it wins immediately. It’s valuable because it changes the position from which every future move will be made.
Roadmaps
Most product roadmaps are written the ten-moves-ahead way: a dozen features in a fixed order across four quarters, each one assuming the ones before it landed as planned. By the third quarter the team is building a sequence chosen for a position that no longer exists.
The chess version keeps the direction and holds the sequence loosely. A feature that teaches you what customers actually do, or makes the next three cheaper to build, slants the board. A feature that only fits the plan doesn’t. Away from the board, the question is the same:
Which choice right now leaves me the most good choices next?
