Should you always have a plan?

It's not that you should always have a plan in the form of a number of moves that you happened to like more than others, as that's in the neighborhood of Woodpushing 101.

What you should try to do is to understand, by analysis, the activity on the board for both sides. It goes like this: No activity -> activity -> threats -> initiative -> unstoppable initiative -> checkmate.

Going from one stage to the next one usually involves more than one solitaire move, and those moves happen to be called "a plan".

What I mean with a "plan" is, perhaps, what could be considered some kind of strategic improvement of your position (or the worsening of your opponent's position) that's not merely some kind of immediate obvious gain (like material gain) or an urgent move (eg. defending a piece that's in danger of being captured with no or too little compensation). In other words, how to improve your position in the long run (ie. more than just a move or two) in a situation where there isn't anything absolutely urgent going on.

Examples of such "plans" could include things like:

• Noticing that one of your minor pieces is not doing anything relevant and, eventually, getting it to a position where it's actually doing (or could potentially do) something more useful.
• When one of your minor pieces is trapped behind your own pawns, getting it free and making it useful (a special case of the above).
• Mounting pressure on a weak enemy pawn (even if there's no immediate obvious way of capturing it with gain) tying enemy pieces into defending it, away from attacking you.
• Improving your king safety, or weakening the opponent's.
• Trying to open a file for your rooks.

Perhaps another way of putting it is that every time you make a move, there should be a reason for that move. You should be able to explain why you made that move. A reason better than just "I couldn't think of anything else", or "it felt good".

@DjVortex: It's not that we choose but that we try to understand the needs of the situation and play accordingly. That's the reason for the guideline: No activity -> activity -> threats -> initiative -> unstoppable initiative -> checkmate.

Check the following game. It can be said that each annotation there is about "an idea", often labeled as "a plan". Sometimes an idea is carried out by a single move, sometimes it involves prerequisites. That's why it's said that playing without a plan means playing without an idea derived from the position. Pretty much as Treybal trying to play the Stonewall in that game.

I think it was Kramnik who first introduced me to the idea of:

Tactics - short term forcing moves
Positional play - short term non-forcing moves (his example was Karpov)
Strategic play - long term plan or big idea (his example was Petrosian)

What you're describing in the quoted post above is positional play, not planning. For example you put your rook on the open file. Why? Because it's more active. That's a positional judgement. It's a short term logical move that isn't necessarily justified via calculation.

(At worst what you're describing is beginner tips that are stop gap solutions and have nothing to do with chess played at a higher level)

IMO @Nicator65 's posts are consistently excellent. Pay attention to this:

He's giving you the general flow of a game, from one stage to the next. The series of elements that work together to progress you through these stages (from no activity to checkmate) can be thought of as a plan. In other words plans can change dynamically as you and your opponent make decisions.

So like I was saying, a plan is something organic. It arises naturally when you do proper analysis (and if you have enough knowledge and experience). Thinking to yourself during a game "I'm going to make a plan now" is putting the horse before the cart so to speak.

So anyway, what you're describing above is something like beginner tips or positional ideas, not a plan.

(and now that I look, I see this is posted in the beginner section, so maybe that's appropriate, in any case I don't mean it as an insult)

Wow! That's an amazing game

Tactics - short term forcing moves
Positional play - short term non-forcing moves (his example was Karpov)>>

This seems a bit mixed up somehow.

I think since "positional" and "strategic" are often used interchangeably it comes off as something of a mistranslation at first. At least for me, at first I thought he was contradicting himself in certain places.

But then you remember Kramnik speaks English and is pretty good at chess, so he probably means what he says

(the topic is world champs, but notice how he uses the words strategic and positional. And anyway, an interesting interview worth reading IMO)

https://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/vladimir-kramnik-from-steinitz-to-kasparov

For example:

"Petrosian is a very deep and hard to understand player. I think that he's presented wrongly . . . He was a brilliant tactician and a brilliant strategist. But his positional playing wasn't on par with, say, Smyslov. However, it's thought for some reason that Petrosian is a master of positional game . . ."

OK, firstly, would you say that tactics are always forcing? I know this is a question I could have answered 20 years ago but what does "forcing" mean? Doesn't it imply a sort of over-view based on the best possible chess analysis which isn't available at the time of the game?

Interviewer:
"To add some "humanity": what were Karpov's weaknesses, relatively speaking?"

Kramnik: 
I think that he didn't pay much attention to strategy. As I said, he could easily forget what happened at the board before, and perhaps he lacked a deep strategical thread in his games. Karpov is a player who likes to do many short, 2-3 move long operations. Here we do a knight's tour, here we capture some space, here we weaken a pawn... I think he wasn't a natural strategist. "

Yeah, I don't know.

In a real game it tends to all mix together. Tactics, strategy, the clock, your personal level of energy. It's what makes chess so much fun  Maybe "pure" tactics only exist as example positions in books.

So what are tactics by themselves? I'm not sure. Off the top of my head I'd say they're forcing sequences that you can calculate to a definite conclusion. Their gains are concrete and immediate.

Now to throw in more convoluted chess terms... a combination is like a tactic with all the other stuff mixed in. A combination can have all sorts of elements, partly forcing, partly positional, partly strategic. A combination's gains may be less concrete and impossible to calculate fully to the end.

And I'd say forcing means you have few options.

For example if I capture your rook you basically only have 2 options: recapture, or create an equivalent threat somewhere else.

I can be sure you are "forced" to do this, because I assume I can win if I'm ahead a rook and my opponent has no compensation.

In my view it means you only have one possible reply or you lose. Never mind, we've just demonstrated the complete ambiguity of at least one chess term that people think they understand. Of course, I completely accept the authenticity of your own answer.

So what are tactics by themselves? I'm not sure. Off the top of my head I'd say they're forcing sequences that you can calculate to a definite conclusion. Their gains are concrete and immediate.>>

Again, that is a perfectly reasonable and intelligent answer and I don't know at this time whether questioning it is due to devilry or the possible fact that I think that tactics can be subtler than that.

The third option is that some years ago I bought about 50 bottles of a 1972 German Piesporter. This is a wine that needs to be drunk within 3 years and so it was a bit past its sell-by and the effect of the bottle my wife and I just shared was a bit weird, like all the esters had had time to get complex. From school chemistry in the 1960s, acid+ alcohol = ester + water, which is reversible and is a catalysed reaction. We thoroughly ejoyed it, especially as it cost 30 pence a bottle, this is about 40 of your cents. Half of what it would have cost in 1972 or less! So I feel a bit fuzzy.

My plan is to offer comprehensive investigation of Paul Morphy play for only 99 cents, lol: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Move-Morphy-Lyudmil-Tsvetkov-ebook/dp/B085WX4Q4J/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=morphy&qid=1584382077&s=digital-text&sr=1-4

take your time

It's good to have a general plan.. it's called chess strategy. Expect the strategy to change as the game changes. Good strategy is not so much a decked out plan, as much as it's positioning pieces along the way that can maximize your chances to win. That's long term strategy. For example playing the C file and a1-h1 diagonal can be a strategy, and you play your opening accordingly.

But there is also strategy on a smaller scale, where you adjust you overall strategy to the current position of the board. Smaller scale strategy sorta leads you to more immediate tactics. Of course, immediate tactics can pop up at anytime, depending on what your opponent moves.

But short term strategy can sorta lead you a wealth of different possible tactics if you opponent doesn't play accurately. Short term strategy can also just lead to a better overall position, and anything in between. No doubt your opponent is also doing the same thing, so it's not a done deal that you'll win. 😉