Stopping Counterplay

In this lesson we will cover how to identify your opponent’s plans and learn how to choose the correct plan

In chess we are constantly trying to figure out how to achieve our own goals that we often forget about what our opponent wants. This causes us to blunder pieces to tactics, or lose games because our plan is too slow compared to our opponent’s. So how do we fix this? The very simple solution, and commonly forgotten, is to look at our opponent’s plans before looking at our own. Going through this process allows us to fully evaluate the position and identify the correct plan, whether to continue with our own or stopping our opponent’s.

Identifying Plans

First of all, what is a plan? In chess we should have at least two plans, a long term plan, and a short term plan. Long term plans are goals that take a long time to achieve (wow who would've thought) that if successful will win the game or achieve some kind of positional trump. Long term plans usually take the form of checkmating the king, winning enough material to win the game, breaking through on the queenside. Ultimately, long term plans are goals you want to achieve that will have lasting effects on your opponent.

So then what is a short term plan? A short term plan are plans that can be quickly executed to achieve the overall long term plan. Often there are many short term plans to choose from and only 1 or 2 are correct. Examples of short term plans would be achieving a space advantage, kicking back an opponent’s piece, opening up the position with a pawn break, and many more. Short term plans are often executed by tactics too, so just because you are in a positional game, with many maneuvers doesn’t mean you should shut your eyes to potential tactics.

As you can see from Hikaru’s famous immortal game, it is important to identify plans and to evaluate if you or your opponent’s plan is more important and what the responses should be. This second example is from a friend’s OTB game, where she had a strong advantage out of the opening, but failed to identify the correct plan.

A term you will hear a lot is prophylaxis, which is to take action to prevent a disease before you get sick, or when in relation to chess, the active prevention of an opponent’s plan. Prophylaxis often is a mark of chess mastery, and is commonly marked as brilliant by chess literature. In the next game Karpov showcases prophylaxis by preventing black’s only chance for counterplay, and slowly improving his position. Yusupov, who played black, eventually crumbled under the pressure.

Now that you’ve seen 3 games of identify plans, and preventing their opponent’s I encourage you to look at your own games, try to identify both yours and your opponent’s plans and then once you complete your game, go back and analyze. Figure out if you correctly identified the plans in the position. It might be a poor plan positionally, or it might fail tactically. So you must be extra careful when analyzing. Lastly, I encourage you to send me your positions that you have questions about, and I will answer them to the best of my ability.