Finding the Right Answers
In the absence of a chess tutor or any other structured training framework, you won’t always have the proper answers to these super important questions. This is probably why many non-professional players have turned chess engines into their go-to analysis pals.
These pals are indeed very good in finding the best continuation: A chess engine contains a search function that can calculate millions of possible continuations from a given position, and an evaluation function that operates as a knowledge base to estimate the positional factors of the position. The combination of those two components creates a monstrous chess player which can find very good paths and usually recommends the best moves to play.
In addition, chess engines are found in every popular online chess playing platform (lichess, chess.com, chess24, etc.) and can even be downloaded freely to your own computer.
(+0.2 – depth 17) 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. d3 d6 5. O-O Be7 6. Nc3 O-O
A typical chess engine answer to what’s the next best move
However, a chess engine does not understand the position the way we humans do. It solves the problem of finding the best move by searching many positions and cannot explain why it recommends this move over another. That’s why for non-professional players, a chess engine can easily turn into an indecipherable cheatsheet; even if motivated, you might find yourself “lost in translation”, unable to convert your mistakes to success on your next game.
If we humans wish to play chess better, we must improve our understanding and learn how to find the answers by ourselves.