42, because 42 is the answer to everything

I think maybe 4-5 moves ahead

 

I found a carrot

I found a carrot

I found a carrot

I found a carrot

I found a carrot

I found a carrot

i really meant how many of your own moves can you think without interruption

no you should have said 4

 

ok?

sorry... should I have said something simple and false? 

ok... 

It makes a lot more sense to ask about the branching factor one is capable of coping with, than to ask how many you can think ahead. It also makes sense to talk about ply rather than moves, where a ply is each side's response (while a move consists of two responses, one from each side).

As demonstrated by my ability to solve mating puzzles that involve more than six moves, it is easy enough to think ahead more than six moves (more than 12 ply) if the decent replies of your opponent are limited to 1 at each stage.

However, if I am considering 4 potential moves (ply 1), and if the opponent has 3 foreseeable reactions to each move (ply 2), and (even just looking at my 1 gut response to each reaction--ply 3) then 2 foreseeable reactions to each second move (ply 4), then at 4 ply I am already faced with considering 24 variants. I would in this case probably not get beyond 2 moves (i.e., 4 ply).

I would estimate that I can cope, generally, with a branching factor as low as about 12 and not much more. So if I see six potential moves for me, and none of them seem to force the opponent's response, I would probably be limited to looking ahead 2 ply (i.e., just one move).

Only looking ahead with a branching factor of 12 is usually not going to produce very bad chess because humans (unlike computers) use "evaluation functions" at each depth that take account more of the patterns on the board and principles of play, which keep us from having to evaluate as many positions as a computer.