How To Make A Plan

Intro

We all make plans in our life. Good or bad, we make them. Even in chess, we are constantly thinking of what to do next (in other words, what is our plan here?). In life, a bad plan might not affect you so much, but in chess, a bad plan can ruin your winning chances. So today, I will give you some examples which will hopefully give you a gist of when to trade. Note that this is a pretty short blog :0

DONT SKIP THE ANNOTATIONS

What is a good plan?

A process which improves your position and increases your winning chances is a good plan.

A bad plan would be the literal opposite.

Assess the position, find your strengths and weaknesses, find your opponent's strengths and weaknesses, figure out if you need to play offense or defense, and then play to the strengths/weaknesses accordingly. Piece development and placement, space on the board, and pawn structure are fairly important here.

Example 1

Black to play.

So what would you play?

White’s King is castled but we have not. Even if we castle though, our position would not improve (so it wouldn’t be a good plan). 
We can’t move our minor pieces anywhere meaningful either.

The best move here is b5. We now have the chance of forming an attack on White’s King.

So by playing b4, we got

• An attack on the Queenside (on the King)
• An attack on the Kingside (on the f3 knight and the h1 rook)

So we improved our position and are now slightly winning!
This is a good plan :0

Example 2

So in the above position, what would you play?

A nice plan would be to launch an attack on White’s King with our pawns. But which one to move first?

h6 is a good plan in my opinion, because now we can play f5 and attack the Queen, and try to open our rooks on White’s King.

So we made a good plan again! :0

Example 3

This is a more complicated one :0

Black to play again. 

This looks like a regular position. If we want to get an advantage. What does that move do? 

• A lot of White’s pawns are on dark squares, if we can trade off the light squared bishops, white would have a disadvantage. Playing Qd7 forms a battery with our bishop which makes it easier to trade.
• It will weaken White’s King.

This was a good plan. We went for a certain piece trade to then allow us to attack our opponent and do some damage.

Example 4

Finally, a game with white.

So our c-pawn is kinda in danger.

So in this example, we sacrificed a pawn with the strategic idea of making our pieces better. By making these pawn moves, we force a reaction from our opponents. Push, capture or ignore.

I hope this blog gave you a gist of what to think when you are making a plan. 

That’s it from me! Thanks!