Quiet move

A quiet move neither checks nor captures, and is nevertheless the strongest move in the position. It is hard to find because the eye scans checks and captures first and stops there. The quiet move is the threat the opponent cannot meet, the retreat that wins, the pawn step that changes nothing except who has to move.

What makes it work is the threat behind it. A quiet move has to threaten more than the opponent can do with the free tempo it hands over: usually mate, or the win of the queen. Or it takes away a last square, or passes the move in a position where every move loses. Before playing it, list the replies. A quiet move is only good when none of them works.

To find one, ask what you would play if you had two moves in a row. That second move is the threat; the quiet move is the one that prepares it while leaving the opponent nothing better to do. Often it brings the last piece into the attack: a rook lift, a bishop onto the long diagonal, a pawn that takes a flight square from the king.

At higher level the quiet move is the second move of most combinations. The sacrifice is loud; the quiet move after it, the one the defender did not calculate, is what wins. In the endgame it is the tempo move: a pawn pushed one square, so that the opponent's king is the one that has to give way.