[jvanderbot]

The article is fine, inspirational, interesting, and all that, but one quibble: reporting ratios is potentially misleading. If grandmasters spend 4 minutes falsifying for every minute ideating, and amateurs spend .5 / 1, that's great. But what if amateurs spend 30 minutes coming up with a move vs 1 for masters? Could be the grandmaster is faster at ideation by a larger fraction than he is faster at falsification. That also makes sense in a "just so" sense, because maybe falsification is brute force with a large depth of search, and ideation is more like a lookup table - just see where your pieces can move.

I thought maybe I could find some primary sources, but the [1] notation is just footnotes.

[nqureshi]

The primary source is the book mentioned in the post: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Super-GM-Michael-Adams/dp/...

You’re right that GMs are much faster ideating, I point this out later in the essay. But they also spend longer on falsification, even in absolute terms.

[ajkjk]

To an extent it depends what ELO you're talking about, but I'm an amateur (~1950 rated on lichess) and I find, when I watch GM videos, that I have about the same move ideation as them, at least in the midgame. Sometimes better, depending on the GM, since everyone has different strengths. But the GMs consistently better than me by a lot, of course, especially in overall calculation and in knowing openings and endgame theory.