Planning, strategy, and tactics.

Planning, Strategy And Tactics

Planning

Attacking the king:
In a kingside attack you must have more pieces to attack with than your opponent has to defend with. Open lines are also helpful.

Stonewall
1. d4 d5, 2. e3 Nf6, 3. Bd3 e6, 4. f4 Nbd7, 5. Nd2 c5, 6. c3 cd, 7. ed Be7, 8. Ngf3 b6, 9. Ne5 NxN, 10. fe Nd7, 11. O-O a5, 12. Qg4 g6, 13. Bc2 Bg5, 14. Nc4 dc, 15. BxB Qc7, 16. RxP KxR, 17. Rf1 Kg7, 18. Bh6 KxB, 19. Rf7 Qd8, 20. RxP KxR, 21. QxP mate

Queenside attack:
Usually only possible with a pawn majority on that wing (unless you want to try a minority attack which can sometimes work). Preventative measures are often necessary on the other wing such as g3 to contain counterplay.

Caro Kann
1. e4 c6?, 2. d4 d5, 3. ed cd, 4. c4 Nf6, 5. Nc3 Nc6, 6. Bg5 e6, 7. c5 Be7, 8. Bb5 O-O, 9. Nf3 Ne4, 10. BxB NxB, 11. Rc1 Ng6, 12. O-O Bd7, 13. Bd3 f5, 14. b4 Be8, 15. g3 Rc8, 16. Re1 Qf6, 17. a3 Ne7, 18. Ne5 Qh6, 19. f3 Nf2, 20. Qe2 Nh3, 21. Kg2 g5, 22. Nb5 BxN, 23. BxB Rf6, 24. Bd7 Rd8, 25. b5 Qh5, 26. c6 Rh6, 27. Kh1 Black resigned.

Tactics

Relatively speaking, this is the easiest element of chess to teach (which is why for many youngsters this is the strongest area of their game). It relies a great deal on pattern recognition and cool calculation, both of which can be learnt (to a certain extent). The general advice is to play through ad many games as possible, thinking for a moment about each move and trying to pick up on is tactical implications. Tactical weaknesses which are most commonly taken advantage of are pins, loose pieces, and pieces set up in such a way as to allow a fork or skewer to take advantage of them. Try to avoid there in your own camp and create them in your opponent's position.

Strategy

Your strategy is your grand scheme, your overall plan, rather than a mini plan. Strategy requires both consideration of the plans and tactics available to you and to your opponent. It may also involve psychological considertaions and possibly considerations of time (who is ahead on the clock and which players position will be more difficult to play in time trouble). Grand schemes tend to change less during a game than plans.

How chess players think

One of the most commonly asked questions when people begin to play chess is how far ahead good chess players look or calculate. This varies a great deal, not only from player to player but from game to game and even in different positions during the same game. In general good players look between 3 and 5 moves ahead by both sides but will concentrate only on the plausible moves. It is possible, when very little time is available, to play entirely on instinct, and still play good moves. This instinct comes from experience.
It is often useful to compare the way in which human chess players think and the way in which computers calculate. The number of positions which can occur after only three moves by each player is well over 64,000,000, there are far more possible games of chess than there are particles in the known universe, and the number of chess positions, though far fewer, is still astronomical. Some computers can analyse huge numbers of positions; Deeper blue for example was able to consider 200,000,000 positions a second. Quite clearly it is impossible for a human to calculate such a massive number of positions and so he relies on instinct and feeling (which come from experience) in order to cut down the number of positions.
The way in which a human player calculates is fairly straightforward. Players construct what is known as the tree of analysis, where each branch represents a different position. It usually appears disorganised. The reason is that two variations can sometimes lead to the same position and that a player will not always calculate the same number of moves from each position or in the same depth. Only a small number of positions are considered at each level. This rejection of the vast majority of available options is known as thinning the tree. It has been estimated that humans will only consider around three dozen positions before choosing a move.
The actual process of "looking" at positions is not a case of thinking "I have a pawn there and a bishop there and if he goes there then I go here and I will have a rook there and a knight here" etc. After someone has played a number of games the important characteristics of the positions become obvious to the person's mind and little conscious effort is needed to hold positions close to the one in front of you together.
Humans do not choose their moves solely on the basis of cold logic and calculation. Players usually have a plan around which specific variations can be constructed. This plan is usually based on position considerations. This sounds complicated but in fact it is little more than a gut feeling which is usually innate and is extremely difficult to teach or explain. Attempts to do his usually consist of ideas of thousands of positions from previous games flashing past the minds eye and making an almost subconscious impression which can somehow be detected by the player. Positional considerations are things such as weakness of King position, and space available for manoeuvring.
The most important element of a chess player's thinking is how well he evaluates positions. That is, how well he can decide who is winning and why. Again an analogy to the chess computer is useful. A chess computer program will first check if the position is the end of the game for example checkmate, and if not it will add up the pieces giving a numerical value to each position. It will do this crude evaluation in each position it looks at and will choose a move based on which sequence of moves gives it the biggest end number. A human player has a much more advanced evaluation function. In most cases he will carry most of his evaluation over from the last move editing it as appropriate to save time. He will check the material balance, consider the strengths and weaknesses of the relative positions of the two sides, both in terms of long term and short term factors, and will decide what plan each player will form. He will then select the sequence of moves which will either;
a) give him a material advantage (more pieces) or
b) give him the more straight forward and reliable plan.
The conclusion must be that a chess player's thinking is far more general than is usually thought, and far more effective and advanced than the way in which computers play.

Endgame Studies

In each case begin with a clear board and place the pieces as stated. Try to prove the results given in each case.

White pieces Ke1, Black pieces Kf3, Pe2.
White to move-Black wins Black to move-Draw

White pieces Ke6, Pe5 Black pieces Ke8.
White to move Draw Black to move White wins

White pieces Ke1, Pe2 Black pieces Ke8.
White to play White wins Black to play White wins

White pieces Kh5, Ph6, Bg6 Black pieces Kh8.
White to move-Draw Black to move Draw.

Cochrane defence:
White pieces Kd4, Bd5, Ra2 Black pieces Kd1, Rd8.
White to move-Draw Black to move Draw.

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