How do we create a plan in an actual game? This calls for the ability to recognize the existing characteristics of a position.
The best way to formulate a plan is to start your thinking around creating an Imbalance in a position. An imbalance in chess denotes any difference in the two respective positions. To think that the purpose of chess is solely to checkmate the opposing king is much too simplistic.
The real purpose of chess is to create an imbalance and try to build a situation in which it is favorable for you.
An understanding of this statement shows that an imbalance is not necessarily an advantage. It is simply a difference. It is the player’s responsibility to turn that difference into an advantage.
The seven different imbalances
1. Superior Minor Piece: The interplay between Bishops and Knights.
2. Pawn Structure: A broad subject that encompasses doubled pawns, isolated pawns, etc.
3. Space: The annexation of territory on a chessboard.
4. Material: Owning pieces of greater value than the opponent’s.
5. Control of a Key File or Square: Files and diagonals act as pathways for your pieces, while squares act as homes.
6. Lead in Development: More force in a specific area of the board.
7. Initiative: Dictating the tempo of a game.
Recognizing these imbalances and understanding their relationship to planning should be the main focus of your thinking in a game to making plans.
If you are to use these different imbalances properly we must be able to break down our thinking in a way that allows us to dissect any particular position. Here are the stages that enable us to accomplish this:
1. Figure out the positive and negative imbalances for both sides of the board, the Kingside and the Queenside.
2. Figure out the side of the board you wish to play on where a favorable imbalance or the possibility of creating a favorable imbalance exists, the Kingside or the Queenside.
3. Don’t calculate! Instead, try to think up various advantageous positions that you would most likely try to achieve.
4. Once you find several positions narrow them down to the ones that you would most like to achieve and that it is possible to reach it. Finding the easiest next easiest and so on. You should have only two or three such positions now.
5. Only now do you look at the moves you wish to calculate, called candidate moves. The candidate moves are all the moves that lead to creating an imbalance and then to our desired most advantageous position.
6. Do this with each desired position that you have narrowed down to see which one would be the easiest and quickest to achieve this imbalance.
7. Remember we are trying to achieve an imbalance not necessarily a positional advantage.
Now go back and look again at The seven different imbalances You need to memorize all seven of them to the point where you can write them down from memory. You will never be able to use this imbalance concept if you don’t do this.
Doing this is called Structured Thinking and it takes practice. Nobody is going to find this easy at first, it simiply is going to take you a lot of practice. But the time you spend in this practice will pay off in big dividends if you keep at it.
This is why this material is placed in Cat 4. This is not simple basic material to read to lay a platform down for other material, this IS the other material to study. This is not material that one can simply read and understand. These concepts are new to most players and require a lot of practice to master. They require one to get rid of old thinking habits and replace them with an entirely new way of thinking about how one plays chess.
The discipline and work you put into this thinking may achieve a huge jump in the success of your games from now on. That is how powerfull this new concept is. There are very few chess players that know about this concept and fewer still that acutally use it. Probably only at the master level and beyond do you find players using this concept with any regularity.
Imbalances in The Opening
Most books will tell you that the purpose of the opening is to develop your pieces. However, it turns out that this is just a small part of the picture.
The true purpose of the opening is to create an imbalance and develop your army in such a way that your pieces, working together, can take advantage of them.
With this idea in mind, we can meditate upon the maxim:
No development is better than a bad development.
Allowing your self to fall behind in development in the opening is all right as long as you are conforming to the strategic designs of the position.
This is the whole point of successful opening play, don't just develop mindlessly, create some long-term imbalance that you can build around and nurture for the rest of the game.
Imbalances in the Endgame
Most endgame imbalances should be cultivated nurtured and used in much the same way as they are in the middlegame. For example if the position is closed a Knight, just as in the middlegame, is usually superior to a Bishop.
When pawns are only on one side of the board, the Knight is superior to the Bishop. This is because the Bishop's long-range powers are useless, while the Knight's ability to go to any colored square is of great importance and nothing is safe from him.
It is clear that most imbalances have the same effect in the endgame as they do in the middlegame. However, some endgame situations do change the nature of rules that are taken for granted in the middlegame. Two of these rules are:
1. In the middlegame it is well known that you should keep our King safely hidden behind its pawns. In the endgame the king turns into a fighting piece and must be brought into the center of the board as quickly as possible.
2. In the middlegame you usually want to place your pawns on the same color as the enemy Bishop since then it will be blocked and its activity will be curtailed.
3. In the endgame you will want to place your pawn on the opposite color from the enemy Bishop so that your pawns will be safe from the Bishop.
Creating Imbalances That Last to the Endgame
Soviet players study openings by learning both the typical middlegame and the typical endgame positions that arise from it.
As an example, in the Exchange variation of the Ruy Lopez giving up two Bishops to weaken Black's pawn structure gives White an advantage. Giving up the two Bishops opens up a d file. With White's superior pawn structure, he now has a healthy Kingside pawn majority vs. Black's useless queenside clump.
Creating doubled pawns for black and taking off all the pieces, leaving just the kings and pawns you can see that White would win because he can always create a passed pawn on the Kingside while Black is unable to do so on the opposite wing.
This means that White should play this opening with the understanding that every exchange leads him closer to getting a passed pawn that he soon will promote to a queen.
Usually an imbalance you create in the opening does not lead to any specific endgame advantage. However, if you give your newly created imbalance the attention it deserves, it can and often is an important element in the middlegame and a decisive factor if an endgame is reached.
Your continued studies in creating imbalances may be one of the most important factors in whether at this time your game progresses upwards or not.
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