Magnus Carlsen FIDE I'd always heard that what makes a chess player great is an ability to "see" several moves ahead in their mind's eye.

I always took this to mean that when a great player is about to make a move, something like a video would play in their head, revealing what would happen over the next several moves.

If that video had a positive outcome, the player would make the move.

If the video had a negative outcome, the player would not make the move, and would begin looking for another.

Perhaps I imagined this because it's how I play chess (badly). Every time I'm about to make a move, I try to go through all the possibilities of how my opponent would react and how I would react to that reaction.

It turns out I had it all wrong.

Yesterday at the DLD conference in New York, I got to interview world chess champion Magnus Carlsen.

Carlsen told me that, yes, while he plays he does have "an image of the board" in his head, where he is "moving the pieces around."

But he said that he does not sit there and weigh the outcomes of various moves, based on some sort of predicted consequences he can visualize in his mind.

It's more of a feel thing.

"When I make a move, it is partly subconscious. There will be a decision-making process in my mind, and suddenly I make a move and I don't know why I did it."

Some say Carlsen is the greatest champion living. He rarely makes bad moves. But when he does, he knows it "immediately," he says.

"When I make a bad move I see immediately why it is a bad move. That happens to many strong players."

Carlsen told me the immediacy of the sensation often makes him wonder why he can't see that bad move are bad moves before he makes them.

"Maybe it is a bit easier to see the move when it is actually on the board rather than just in your head," he says.

"It is a fascinating problem.”