Chess Book Reviews

The art of planning in Chess - by Neil McDonald,

London 2007. 284 p.p. £15.99

This is a book that explains the difference between tactical analysis and planning.

McDonald explains the difference ... Tactics will tell you that you can put your knight on splendid square while planning is about deciding whether it is going to be any use on that square. You might decide "great the knight will help support the other pieces queen the passed pawn." - That's planning, rather than just putting a piece on a great square and admiring it!

We get outstanding top games from Kasparov et al from the last 6 years with every single move annotated. The emphasis is on planning.

The computer age has given us some rather automatic dry books with rather less words per page (WWP) in them than in days gone by. This is a well written book by a modern Grandmaster with plenty of WPP!

The author tries to guess what goes through their minds when they were making decisions in the games. And throughout the book he continually asks 3 questions to assess the health of the position.

1. Is the King safe?

2. Are there any weakness in pawn structure?

3. Are the pieces coordinated

His main aim is to feed your imagination with good plans and ideas so that they become second nature. "In time you will have enough internal models in your unconscious mind to handle a wide variety of situations."

The computer age has given us some rather automatic dry books with rather less words per page (WWP) in them than in days gone by. This is a well written book by a modern Grandmaster with plenty of WPP!