How many moves (permutation) could chess grandmasters think?[Read more]

Question

I'm talking about the people who reached an ELO rating of 2800, how many moves could they actually foresee?

-Another thing, does the permutation that grandmasters think have to be the best moves that for both players, in order to ply and reply the moves?

Sorry, this could be a little confusing..but hopefully you understand my English.

Answer 1

For openings, they probably understand these inside and out as they have been studied thoroughly.  If you stray from a standard opening against a grandmaster, it is almost guaranteed that they have an answer that starts you off a pawn down and in poor position.  So at the beginning of a game, they are five to twenty-five moves ahead of you.  

Once you are in the game, I think they are looking more at position, space and threats, but do have the benefit of experience that tells them 'anytime I do this thing, that and that are going to happen next', so they are probably two to five moves ahead of the game at any point.

Answer 2

In the words of the greatest World Champion in his time (Jose Raul Capablanca),

"I see only one move ahead, but it is always the right one."

Answer 3

Nobody can asses this.It all depends on opponents capability.

Answer 4

The Soviet grandmaster Kotov wrote a book that addresses that.  It was titled "Think Like a Grandmaster" and describes in detail how grandmasters assess a position.

His answer was not a specific number, but rather that the grandmaster would analize all the reasonable moves at any node in the "tree of analysis".

Much of the art of being a chess-master is to toss out the lines that are almost certainly worthless.

Answer 5

The only way to really know would be to ask a grandmaster. But i imagine 30 moves ahead.

and yes they would only go through the best moves for both players and make a mental note of alternate moves.