Method of Planning, Making Logical Decisions, and Recognizing Threats/Consequences

The first category, your method of planning, essentially sets the stage for your entire game, and all aspects of it. In order to develop a strong understanding of chess strategy in general, you must have an effective and efficient method for planning. This, of course, is personal, and you will thus have to experiment with what works best for you; however, most players find it much easier to establish solid strategies in chess games by making the old fashioned "to-do list". What to put on this list is where players come to an issue.

In this "to-do list" I recommend you start by considering the position on the board. You want to be able to distinguish between what threats of your opponents are actually worth being implemented into your own strategy, and which threats are either not really threatening you or you are sure your threats are much stronger and will not be hindered by your opponents actions. After making sure your opponents threats are in check (these threats can include: development, material, space, pawn structure, tempo/time, opening diagonals/files/ranks, securing outposts for pieces such as the knight in deep territory, creating/abolishing weaknesses, increasing/decreasing the "value" of a given piece, etc) you may then plot your own strategy. Of course you also have to consider the consequences of your plans, and your opponents plans. A well thought out strategy requires well thought out consequences, and not just analysis of your attack. The very base of your strategy should be focused around one objective. This objective is obtaining advantages for your position and/or decreasing advantages your opponent has; thus the greater the advantage you obtain with a move, the better the move is. Note that this also means you are not required to find the best move every single move of every game; instead, you want to save time (assuming you are playing a timed game like almost all games are) and simply make good moves. Also note that I'm not suggesting you neglect certain parts of analysis, nor am I suggesting you don't try to find the best move. What I am suggesting is that you find a good move, and learn to balance your time with the effectiveness of your moves. This is also an area in strategy that you will need if you aim on becoming a highly ranked tournament player. Time management and your ability to see and analyze quickly will benefit you much more than reading on the latest variation of the Sicilian hyper accelerated dragon, or attempting to complete your 80th tactics problem of the day.

After these two steps are considered, you must know how to obtain these "advantages". It sounds like an obvious question, however, a novice trying to answer this question might find himself in trouble, and remembering to apply this in games is another challenge in itself. There are two main types of advantages in chess. These are "Qualitative" and "Quantitative" advantages.

Quantitative advantage deals with: material on the board, concentration of pieces in and control of a certain area on the board, and establishing solid plans of play in general. You should be clear of what a material advantage constitutes - simply having a greater total piece value than your opponent. Your "concentration of pieces in and their control of a certain area on the chess board" is a more complicated task to achieve. What this means is that you must try to find areas where you can overpower your opponent and take control of. Saying this and doing it are two different things though. This is where accumulating small and big advantages becomes more clear in importance. At first attaining an advantage like piece mobility might not seem like something will change the tide of the game in the next few moves, in a situation several moves away it might be extremely important. For example your opponent may not be able to move his pieces quickly over to the queen side to prevent an attack, however, your piece mobility is stronger and you can wage an overpowering attack where your opponent cannot defend. Even if it takes you several moves to get your pieces over there, your opponent can not do the same, and you thus win the battle in that area. If you can determine that your attack on this side is stronger than any counterattacking possibilities your opponent might have, you very well may have turned the tide of the game.

Qualitative advantage refers to: The safety of your king/lack of protection of your opponents king, the strength of your individual and groups of pieces, the strength and stability of your pawn structure, gains in tempo/time and "initiative". an advantage in space (mainly in the opening or middle game). The safety of your king and your opponents king is quite obvious, an unprotected king is an easy target and easy advantage. The "strength" of your pieces refers to the positional value of a given piece. For example say one bishop is trapped by its own pawns while another bishop is on a long and open diagonal or in the center of the board that you have secured. Its quite obvious that the "strength" of the bishop in the center or on the open diagonal is greater than the trapped bishop, and thus the qualitative value of that piece is greater. The pawn structure is also very important, even though it may not seem so to novices of chess. I consistently see players start out with e4 or d4 and set up a solid fight in the middle, but then fail to stabilize their pawn structure and often times let it fall apart so they can get their queen in the middle of the board or attempt to set up a royal fork that happens to be refutable anyway. Thinking of pawns as a group instead of individual pieces will increase your understanding of what purpose the pawns actually serve. Essentially you want to view your pawns as a structure that abides to the same rules/advantages as your other pieces (mobility, strength and security in position, and the role they play in that position). Initiative is also very important; if you are ahead in tempo you have the opportunity (and duty) to implement threats against your opponent, who in turn must deal with prior to developing his own plans. The advantage of obtaining more space than your opponent is another obvious, but important advantage. The main reason why it is so important is simply because it increases the potential of all your pieces, as well as hindering that of your opponent.

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