"Noobs use approximately 95% calculation and 5% intuition, whereas a grand master has a ratio closer to 40% calculation and 60% intuition."
I vaguely paraphrased this from a paperback chess guide of mine (hopefully more credible than the internet). According to my guide, grand masters can effortlessly memorize the positions of realistic matches. But for "nonsensical chess matches" where the positions were randomly generated, the masters were just as bad at recall as the noobs. From this data, my guide inferred that masters rely on recalling attack-patterns from their experience more than brute-force calculation. Similar to how a tourney-strength player has openings memorized by heart, I imagine that a master recognizes common middle-game patterns like the back of his hand.
I think we're talking about two different uses of the word "intuition".
One is basically to grok. To understand so deeply that you don't have to do the calculations anymore - you can just "feel" the truth, based off of the prior work you did.
The other use of intuition is isn't necessarily connected to prior calculation or heavy effort. Whether it's a rule-of-thumb, a gut feeling, a flash of insight or a lateral leap.
Reasoning from first principles isn't a good counterbalance to the first definition, and that's because the person doing the intuiting has already internalized those first principles.
But it is an effective counterbalance to the latter, for various reasons already discussed.
I vaguely paraphrased this from a paperback chess guide of mine (hopefully more credible than the internet). According to my guide, grand masters can effortlessly memorize the positions of realistic matches. But for "nonsensical chess matches" where the positions were randomly generated, the masters were just as bad at recall as the noobs. From this data, my guide inferred that masters rely on recalling attack-patterns from their experience more than brute-force calculation. Similar to how a tourney-strength player has openings memorized by heart, I imagine that a master recognizes common middle-game patterns like the back of his hand.