Most decisions in a chess game are not critically important, where only a single narrow path leads to a large advantage (or avoiding a large loss) [footnote 1] . At the end of the day, my chess puzzle rating is just a vanity metric, but it makes me wonder: is there anything else that I'm doing, where I play by instinct instead of calculating to the true solution? : I haven't played many real chess games in quite a while, so let me know if you'd like to play.