The Basics of Planning

 There are few things more frustrating in chess than not knowing what to do.  Take this position:

We're Black and we have a nice position: White's played a non-critical line, we have the two Bishops, equal space and no real weaknesses... but what do we do next?  Maybe ...Bg4?  But after White plays h3, we either exchange, losing the Two Bishop advantage, or retreat and likely end up on g6, where we stare at White's pawn wall.

That's not great.  Maybe ...Be6?  Okay, definitely a better spot for that Bishop, but now our Rook is blocked and our Bd6 is stuck defending e5 like a pawn.  That's not ideal, either.

Hmm, maybe we can ask a different question: which side of the board should we plan on?  We have more space on the Queenside, so maybe we keep pushing those pawns.  That looks decent.  The Kingside might also be an option: ...Nh4 and ...Bc5 create pressure, and maybe ...Bg4 now provokes some weaknesses.  That also looks tempting... but should I be doing any of these while most of my pieces are undeveloped?

This thought process goes round and round.  It's easy to get bogged down and never get anywhere.  We have an abundance of options that all look equally plausible.  Sometime we don't even recognize the options and we draw complete blanks. We stare at the board and nothing comes up.  We have no plan.

I would like to offer a solution, or at least a partial one.  When in doubt, focus on the most essential things.  These might not be "perfect" but are very rarely wrong.  From there, we can slowly add in more complex concepts.  Treat this as a basic introduction to planning.

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills

 

My last few posts have discussed "chess skills" or the component parts that make up your chess ability.  I really like this idea, and over the weeks I've been thinking about it more and more.  I now think that I was way too conservative, and there are lots of different chess skills, much more than I first wrote about.

An example will help.  I'm a young lawyer (I know, I know...).  Honestly, I'm just starting out and learning the tools of the trade.  Many of these are obvious and taught in law school: forming arguments, statutory interpretation and oral advocacy all jump out.  I would call these a lawyer's "hard skills", the stuff you absolutely need to do your job.  When we think of what lawyers do, though, it's actually missing quite a lot: interpersonal skills, networking, delegation, time management, all of these matter.

I could have all the hard skills in the world, but if I don't develop these soft skills, I'm a pretty bad lawyer.  Of course, no one likes lawyers, so let's bring it back to chess.  When we seek to improve, we tend to focus on the obvious "hard" skills, but I bet our "soft" skills play a surprisingly big role as well.  Let's take a look.

How To Study Miniature Games

In Part I, I listed all the reasons you should study miniature games.  Today, for Part II, I explain how to do it.  Specifically, I describe the process I've developed. I started doing this as a kid and then tweaked it as I got older.  No one taught me this; I just figured it made a lot of sense, and the results were excellent.

A fair warning: this process takes work.  It's not hard to get started, but the process has no hand-holding: it's you, a chess board and a lot of thought.  If you do it, though, I guarantee you will get results.

And if it seems intimidating, then check out my new free course on miniature games.  I walk through 12 of my games and describe the thought process, the common mistakes, the thematic maneuvers ... basically, everything worth extracting.  I tried to make it as fun as possible, and with any luck, you will finish it and be itching to go analyze games yourself.

It's also free.  Free is good.  Check it out, but in the meantime, let's dive in.

Why I Love Miniature Games

A miniature game is one that ends in under 25 moves, generally because of a decisive attack or combination.  These are excellent training tools, for a number of reasons:

1. Efficient: It is possible to review several entire games in a small period of time.
2. Capitalization: One side punishes the other's mistakes.  We thus learn to recognize common mistakes and how to take advantage.
3. Thematic: The same types of mistakes occur again and again, generally from the same root causes.  This makes it easier to learn and absorb.
4. Applicable: You can apply the lessons in your own games quickly.  Contrast endgames, where you might not play an endgame you have studied for a long time.
5. Fun: Seeing someone get blasted off the board always brings a smile to my face.

This the start of a two-part series.  Today, I want to dive deep into these reasons and convince you why a portion of your study time should include miniature games.  In the follow-up, I describe exactly how to do this. If you can't wait until then, feel free to click on this mystery link.  It may or may not take you to a free video series on miniature games by a certain chess blogger.

Spoiler Alert: I have created a new video series on miniature games.

My Thinking System

When you play a game of chess, how do you decide on your move?  I mean that literally: how do you do it?  What goes on in your brain?  For a long time, I couldn't answer this.  When I was 1800, my process was as follows:

1.     Stare at the board.
2.     Have a move pop into my head.
3.     Calculate to see if it works.  If so, play it.
4.     If not, go back to step 1.

Essentially, I played chess randomly.  If my intuition suggested good moves, I did well; when it didn't, I played terrible.  There was no middleground.  Worse, the random nature made my results random.  I could play the game of my life and follow it up by dropping my Queen on move 9.  Needless to say, I plateaued at 1800, and I attribute the main culprit being this complete lack of structured thinking.

I eventually discovered GM Smirnov, and his advice basically boils down to cultivating an efficient thinking algorithm.  This has done wonders for me: I surged past 1800, approaching 2200 in both long-form correspondence and short-form blitz.  More importantly, it opened my eyes and helped me appreciate the beauty and logic of chess.  Adding structure has made chess much more enjoyable.

This post describes my current thinking system.  I've written about it before on various forums, but I can dive into detail here, so let's do it.