Zenón Franco - Planning: Move by Move: First the idea and then the move!

The topic of planning in chess is very broad. It can consist of improving the position of a piece, neutralising an opponents piece, beginning an attack on the king, trying to weaken your opponents structure, improving your own structure, deciding which piece to exchange etc. In this book well look at many different scenarios.

Emanuel Lasker wrote: An intelligent plan makes heroes of us, and absence of plan cowards and dullards. Another well known saying is Better a bad plan than no plan at all, along with a number of others which agree on the importance of playing with a definite plan in mind.

I was surprised to discover that there are very few books on this topic. There are certainly sections on planning in classics such as Play Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov, School of Chess Excellence by Mark Dvoretsky, Understanding Chess Middle Games by John Nunn, etc., and grandmasters refer to the topic when they comment on their games.

I believe that the reason why there are so few books about planning is because fortunately chess is so broad and complex that the plans are many and varied. Its impossible to deal with all the plans in one book, because they are practically infinite; fortunately almost every position is different and requires a new plan.

That doesnt mean that we are powerless. Initially we can certainly learn from certain typical positions and structures, where there are general plans which serve as a guide. For the remaining positions we can improve by training in planning through the analysis of different kinds of positions and so the improvement of such an important aspect of the chess struggle will come about.

Its a continual learning process; finding the correct plan is not something that often leaps out at us immediately. Its necessary to evaluate fully the requirements of the position and then work out a plan of action, without neglecting the tactics needed to implement it.

Something we must remember is that just as important as making progress with the plan itself is putting difficulties in the way of our opponents plans. Of course, the optimum outcome is to combine both of these in one single move because Its better to be rich and healthy than poor and ill, as the Russian saying goes.

When I learnt to play chess in my childhood, most of the books and magazines with annotated games contained a lot of prose and few variations. There were exceptions, of course, but most of them, even the ones which were considered good, had annotations containing few lines of analysis; they were useful, but incomplete. The reader could be left without an answer to his questions, especially as regards tactics.

At present the opposite seems to be more often the case; thanks to the progress made with analysis engines, there is more and better analysis, but fewer verbal annotations.

Of course there are positions where the tactical element predominates almost exclusively, but this is not so in the majority of cases.

Objectively, modern day annotations can be more accurate but for someone who wants to learn, looking at variations with very little explanation is also inadequate.

When writing this book, I include, as I always do, comments by the players themselves, as they are an important source of information.

As ever, all phases of producing this book were pleasurable, from the initial stage of thinking about how to structure and organise it, searching my memory for useful examples, looking in books and magazines, and finally writing and revising it.

To finish off this introduction I want to comment on a position which made an impact on me when I was a youngster.
E.Znosko-Borovsky-A.Alekhine
Paris 1933

White to Play

Alekhines impressive account of the current position and the plans he conceived is as follows:

The endgame position thus reached is by no means as easy to conduct especially for the first player. Blacks plan of campaign, which will prove a complete success, is divided into the following parts: