Chess Masters have the ability to imagine many moves ahead using patterns based on a range of possible moves by an opponent, all done within seconds (Coates 2013). Chess requires the same intellectual savvy as illustrated by a footballer (Coates 2013; Pasolini 1971; Wood 2017), but without the need for physical conditioning. The mental projections of many moves ahead, as utilized by a Chess Master, depend on a spatial mapping (Coates 2013; Hassabis et al. 2007b; Johnson and Redish 2007; O’Keefe and Speakman 1987) that has access to information acquired over many years of intense competition.

With the development of chess heuristics, e.g., capture pawns toward the center of the board, a knight functions best in the middle of the board, an isolated pawn is not a winning strategy, and so on, required centuries of play before being universally accepted as successful tactics (Coates 2013). Also, contrary to common belief, humans play chess differently from a computer. It was shown by Mihai Neghina in 2009 that certain moves against a computer will defeat the computer, since computers use brute force to assess all possible moves across an entire board, whereas humans can focus on key sections of a board to optimize their performance (Coates 2013).

Coates presumes that the information about the next move by a chess player is stored in chunks (Miller 1956), which he presumes decreases decision time. For a particular move, a Master chess player can still out-perform a computer (i.e., endgame as studied by Mihai Neghina as posted on the internet in 2009, p. 231 for details). Despite all the hyperbole due to ChatGPT, humans will always think differently from computers.