Find Your Next Move Candidate Moves and Thinking Tools Jul 24, 2025

What If Thinking Up Good Chess Moves Felt as Smooth and Reliable as an Assembly Line?

Enter Find Your Next Move. This course was inspired by the Chessable science team’s research on candidate moves. It hands you a chess thinking loop. So you can produce good moves — even under pressure or against higher-rated players.

Meet your coach, Karel van Delft.

He’s a Dutch psychologist and trailblazer in chess education.

Van Delft made it his life’s work to decode how top players think.

So he teamed up with legendary trainers, like Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov. He gathered their insights. Then he designed his own science-based techniques.

Many of these techniques were tested at Schaakacademie Apeldoorn. There, Van Delft uses chess to help students thrive — from prodigies to learners with autism.

In 2024, he led a Chessable research study on candidate moves.

He tested 207 players across 10 positions. He also surveyed the top literature on the topic… before bringing the study’s best insights into this course.

Also joining you is Grandmaster Sipke Ernst.

Dubbed the “local hero” of the Groningen Chess Festival, Ernst took home the title 3 times.

At the 22nd European Club Cup, he won the gold medal for board 2 — scoring 5.5/7 with a 2725 performance rating.

Once a cautious player afraid of losing, he transformed himself into a “jazzy” fighter. And this psychological evolution makes him the ideal presenter in this…

“No Stone Unturned” Guide
To Structured Thinking

Find Your Next Move starts by laying down the process for better decision-making. You’ll be shown:

🧠 The 2 essential chess thinking tools every player needs. One stops your emotions from sabotaging your moves. The other turns raw board features into actionable insights.

🧠 The minimum number of candidate moves you must take into account, so you don’t miss your chance to take the lead.

🧠 How to guide your calculation by first weighing the position using these 9 key factors.

🧠 Plus a complete decision-making loop… from picking candidates to sizing up positions and avoiding mistakes.

From here, Van Delft and Ernst add powerful thinking tools into each step of your loop.

They show you how to:

🧠 Come up with your first batch of candidate moves. All while scanning for tactical shots using good ol’ CCT — checks, captures, and threats.

🧠 Use the Drawback Principle to find candidates that exploit your opponent’s last move.

With the Drawback Principle, you can turn
the opponent’s “good” move like 1…Nd5
into your brilliancy! See the conclusion
of White’s attack in chapter 14.

🧠 And apply Reverse Thinking to map out a path from your current position to a winning endgame.

Using Reverse Thinking, you can
bridge the gap between this difficult
endgame two pawns down…

And this drawn endgame with
opposite-colored bishops

By now, you’re getting into the groove of finding candidates. Next, you’ll learn how to process them and choose the best one.

Back against the wall and unsure what to do? Boost your chances of surviving and staging a comeback with the Elimination Method.

Torn between 2 similar lines? Compare these exact moves in chapter 9 to find the point-clinching difference.

And before diving into a sharp exchange, you’ll map out an Emergency Exit. So you can bail out if things go sideways.

You’ll level up your positional play, too — with chapters on improving your worst piece, breaking through with pawns, smart regrouping, and more.

But as you can tell from experience, finding the best moves takes more than a clear-cut process. You also need to stay in the right mindset to follow the steps through.

You’ll face higher-rated opponents, time trouble, and passive positions.

But don’t worry. Chapters 20 to 31 show you how to handle these challenges and come out on top.