The importance of planning in Chess

In this article, CoolchessGM explains the importance of planning.

A good plan helps your pieces; a better plan helps your pieces and at the same time hinders the opponent’s pieces; the best plan of all meets the needs of the position. I shall seek to explain what ‘the needs of the position’ means. We should begin by examining the different aspects of chess thinking.

1. Assessing a position

There is an old saying that life is no dress rehearsal: we only get one chance to shine. In chess, it is rather different. At various moments we have the power to choose between possible futures for our position.

2. Tactical Continuation

An obvious way of doing so is to visualize a series of moves from a given position – that is, hold a series of moves in our head, not literally see them being played in ghostly fashion on the board. In that way we can calculate two or more possible futures for our position. If we see a future that leaves us with an extra pawn, everything else being equal, we will choose one which leave us with equal material.

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