Chess Success: Planning After the Opening

by Neil McDonald

It’s a fact that you can win some chess games just by playing one solid-looking move after another. But at the higher levels of competition, it’s not enough to play move by move: you need a plan. Chess Success is about making that plan. It shows, with fascinating examples taken from actual grandmaster games, why the solid-looking move—the “natural” move—can often be a subtle blunder. Learn to make a better move by first looking at the pawn structure of the game and understand how it’s “warped” by the positions of the pieces. Apart from this powerful new way of looking at chess strategy, the games with their unexpected twists are tremendously entertaining to replay. 

Genres: Chess

267 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2008

Reviews

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book in McDonald's series that began with Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking: From the First Move to the Last and was followed by The Art of Planning in Chess: Move by Move. I played through all the games and paid mild attention to the variations given, mostly trying to visualize them to the end and make sure I agreed with the assessment. The lines are not very long, or they are pretty forced, so this makes for a good exercise. After reading the book: Move First, Think Later: Sense and Nonsense in Improving Your Chess, I have become very suspicious of the "explanations" behind moves. And now that I've started Hendriks's new book: On the Origin of Good Moves: A Skeptic's Guide at Getting Better at Chess, I'm wary of the analysis. Every time I put a line into an engine, it turns out that the "critical mistake/moment" is usually not where the author says. Rather than worry about the accuracy of the analysis, I try to absorb the game's moves and use the analysis lines as visualization practice. Since I've made this change, my enjoyment of chess books has increased tremendously. I'm not sure it has improved my play, but it makes all these chess books seem more worth it.

[TjeerdFokkens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice work that gives guidance to forming a plan according to the pawn structure. Some fascinating examples from master play are discussed. McDonald sometimes explicitly says which move not to play, which can be very illuminating at times. Many modern games are discussed in an understandable way, which is very nicely done. Sometimes the analysis does not go very deep.