hi everybody and welcome to another chess tips video where if you give me about 10 minutes of
your time i'll teach you or help you strengthen a chess concept today we're going to be talking
about making a plan in chess let's define what that means i describe it as a slow or a fast
process to improve your position and increase your winning chances and all of the examples i
have for you today are from my own personal games let's jump into them we're going to start out with
tactical plans which go a little bit faster those involve attacks potentially on a king
on the side of the board and we have this position in front of us where i was playing with the black
pieces here i began an attack immediately on my opponent with the move b5 and so my plan was to
bring the queen before i move this pawn since if i go b4 right away he's just gonna pop his
knight out to the side and then maybe play like this and i'm not gonna make any sort of progress
into his position so my plan here was queen a5 and then the move b4 dislodging the defender of this
pawn and potentially getting into the territory he played h3 which looks like it doesn't do anything
but it does it is setting up a plan of his own he's trying to counter attack me in the center
of the board so my tactical plan is going to start transforming the position very quickly
after the next few moves king b1 bishop b7 this move is also kind of tactical although it's sort
of hard to see why i know that he's gonna go g4 and that will actually weaken this knight
and the rook will be visible in front of it and so total chaos broke out when i moved both of
these pawns forward one square creating attacking chances and opening up my light squared bishop
the game got very crazy i had a better position i ended up not winning it just because of how
tactical it got i sort of played with fire and i got burned but this is one example of a tactical
plan notice how my king is in the center when the king is not castled or is castled in the other
side of the king that you're trying to attack it makes attacking a lot easier and so you see
a tactical plan creates threats right away you have an attack on the king or the pieces and so on
one more position i have for you let me just flip this one around is this position that i played
with the black pieces also several years ago and we see another situation where i castled queen
side my opponent already went this way and watch as i begin to create an attack a tactical plan on
the side where i would like to attack my opponent attacks my bishop and i strike back immediately
equal or exceeding danger i'm able to avoid the attack on my bishop by threatening the queen and
i'm happy if he takes me because it just opens up the side of the board a few more moves went by and
one instructive moment i have here for you let's continue this plan by the way bringing the rook
knight f3 attacking the knight pushing pawns very instructive moment right here notice
how my opponent also goes for a tactical plan not a slow strategic plan but a tactical plan
well if you want to attack on one side of the board is it better to close the center or open it
usually it's better to close the center why because if the center is closed it's a lot
harder for the opponent to transfer pieces from one side of the board to the other
to either defend themselves or counter attack you so that's why i played this move c4 my opponent
moved back and i continued my attack and my pawns take away very valuable squares from his pieces
and he's not able to move his knight anywhere ultimately his pieces are stuck
okay that is a tactical plan a plan that involves immediate change or transformation in the position
and hopefully will benefit you a positional plan strategic plan is a little bit slower so
i'm going to pop into this position and rotate it once again i was playing with the black pieces
here obviously there's a lot of pieces on the board here nobody is going to have a checkmating
attack right away so what do you know about a position where uh well there's a bishop on g2
and all the pawns are on dark squares if you know something great if you don't know anything now
you're gonna learn something queen d7 what does this move do well i'm teaming up with my bishop
and my next move is going to be something with bishop to h3 what i'd like to accomplish is to
trade off my opponent's light squared bishop because that would weaken their king that's
not a tactical plan it is more of a strategic one something a little bit more slow something like a
peace trade that benefits your position or changes the position in some way is a more strategic plan
playing with your pawns another strategic plan let's watch how this game develops
my opponent trades and i don't take with the bishop i took with the rook because my
plan was to then transfer the rooks to the side and create pressure on the king fusing
strategy and tactics so we're kind of doing a little bit of both because we are attacking
knight e4 and of course i do not take that would be a strategic mistake because i am
trying to trade off his bishop so that i can get my queen in he played h4 and now we see
something we saw in the game that we just looked at bringing a piece to the party i don't need to
rush with this move i can bring a rook which is not playing now this rook is activated
knight d5 and rather than allowing this trade to occur i move my bishop back all part of a long
term strategic plan to bring pieces to the king side get rid of the g2 bishop and create an attack
queen d2 and now we see the plan taking place and in this position i combined a tactical shot
with strategy i got rid of the knight because the knight was defending this important square you
might say well levy you just move this bishop out of the way it's a big difference that knight was
on the king side this knight is standing pretty in the center but it's not threatening to move
here and it's certainly not defending the king now i play rook g6 using the queen's new positioning
against the queen and opening up a line on the g file my opponent moves the queen
and now which of my pieces is not quite taking part in the attack on the king side
correct the knight and when i get rid of this bishop that is going to be a fantastic square to
land on because i will be doing a lot of damage and in the next few moves i did exactly that
i took moved out of the way and brought my queen and after knight e3 queen f3 check my
opponent resigned because of a few things number one if king g1 there is 92 check with devastating
effect and number two if king h2 you are simply getting mated right i'm just gonna take so this
game was a little bit more positional we went for a certain peace trade to then allow us to attack
our opponent and do some damage using an attack this next one is gonna combine two approaches
so i had this position with the white pieces and you see that his last move puts two attacks on
this pawn so obviously i did something with this pawn right not quite i sacrificed it
so this is a bit more of a tactical plan than the one that we just saw because things are
getting captured so what happens is after a few more moves i sacrificed the pawn okay but let's
back that up real quick when i didn't recapture i anticipated that he would take me and i would take
back and what would happen i would open up my rook which is good strategically i would have an open c
file which is good once again strategically and my bishop on this diagonal is very strong and so when
my opponent played the next few moves i traded off the dark squared bishop and that allowed me
to put my knight in the center it allowed me to put my knight in the center and the light
squared bishop was open there was pressure on this pawn which forced this trait to happen and now
everything that i wanted for the cost of one pawn is coming true so it's a mix of a tactical idea
and a positional idea last example we use strategy to get an attack now we're using strategy for
pressure on the position pressure on the pieces difficult for black to move we're not attacking
the king and so what happened in the game was my opponent played a few moves i brought once
again another rook coming to the party taking part in the in in the game and this move removed the
rook from the defense of a very important pawn and here i made a pawn trade e4 and that's a good move
because again i'm combining tactics and strategy it's a tactical move it causes a reaction from my
opponent and then if he chose to ignore me which he did tactics happen two pieces queen a3 and yes
that allows a fork but i get two pieces for the rook and i went on to win this game against the
very highly rated player actually now he's a grand master so tactics and strategy sometimes
you can sacrifice a pawn if it means that you get compensation in the form of active pieces
which is a strategic idea one last thing that i would like to show you is the following game
um i was playing with the black pieces here against the grand master and we had a very strange
opening and so here what he did in a very close position was route his pieces and use pawn play
to get an advantage first thing that he did because he can't make any forward progress
with the knight is go knight e2 which brings the knight over to this side of the board
i played b5 thinking that i was going to take some space and he immediately struck with a pawn c4
and started to focus on the queen side i tried to play rugby 8 setting up a tactic with captures and
this he sidestepped my tactical trick and after h5 which i played to have squares for my bishop
and also avoid this move a transformation occurred on the queen side and my pawns in
the center simply collapsed because of all the pressure that he put on them with these moves
and i went on to lose very convincingly but a move like 92 in a closed position is so advanced
to then use a pawn break and a reroute to pressure the center that is a very advanced strategic idea
and that is why i wanted to end with it because this in this example no one really got attacked
and in the last example no one was getting attacked it's all about positional pressure
all right that was slightly longer than 10 minutes but hopefully it gave you a lens into how to make
a plan i have linked something in the description below which might help you it's a long written
guide that i found on how you can think about plans and chess also before you go there is a
discord link we have an amazing community here in gotham chess over 2200 people talking about
games playing each other discussing publications and then so on and so forth two videos are going
to appear to my left if you like the video well you know what to do i'll see you in the next one