Find the Right Plan with Anatoly Karpov [Paperback]

I have always been a big fan of Karpov's books. I own all three of his games collections books (Olms 2008, Batsford 1996, even RHM 1978) and all four books in the Openings in Action series. To say that this book is not in the league of those other brilliant books does not go far enough. This book isn't just un-brilliant, it's downright bad. The analysis isn't just uninspired, but almost nonexistent. The comments are quite mundane and totally uninstructive. This is the type of drivel I expect from Schiller, not Karpov. This book will not teach you to find the right plan, or anything at all about chess really.

I assume that the problem is that Matsukevich rather than Karpov wrote it with Karpov only lending his name to the cover. I will be very suspicious before buying another Karpov book in the future.

I'm renaming this book to: "Find the right reader." The criticisms in other reviews are correct: 1. There are Russian translation nits that make some of the language idiosyncratic, but this is not a huge problem. (cd...ed means c takes d, then e takes d-- there are no cxd's etc. as is true in other older and Russian notation convention). 2. For a book titled about planning, it is really not about that-- but what it IS about is even more important. 3. Much of the analysis is not "deep" in the sense of many branching alternatives seen in computerized analysis, and even some missed mates in 5, etc.

That said, this is a brilliant book! You could purchase 20 other books, and not have the "bring you up to date" wisdom of this volume in terms of TODAY'S thinking on strategy, especially (and surprisingly), the strategy most IT programmers use to create chess engines. If you read the book with ONLY the lens of "WHY is HIARCS looking at those particular lines and positions, at this particular moment?" you will see the subtle brilliance of this book.

The dings that the analysis isn't deep enough are actually an advantage for the right reader. On the flip side, although Matsukevich misses many other possible lines, he does a masterful job of illustrating the main point of the book, and Karpov's brilliance: IMMEDIATE RECOGNITION AND EXPLOITATION OF SUBTLE POSITIONAL WEAKNESSES. From this perspective, the brilliance of the book begins on page 122, where he introduces "The most important law of chess" -- which the translator states as restricting the mobility of your opponent's pieces, but when correctly translated, would emphasize and bold the immediate recognition statement instead. If you got out of chess, and now are getting back into it, and suddenly find there are about 200 books all claiming to bring you back up to speed on what's been going on in the last 10 years-- THIS IS YOUR BOOK! The pages before page 122 can be knocked by high level players, but if you're even a strong club player, the history of changes in the chain from Greco to Philidor to Morphy/Steinitz and arguably then supercharged by Fischer/Karpov/Kasparov (unfortunately they leave Fischer largely out of this, and much of Kasparov as well), you'll find the "lead up" in the first chapters a GREAT overview of the evolution from romance and drama with brilliant combinations to today's tempo/ timing/ small advantages/ no mistakes/ subtle weakness exploitation play necessitated by machines that do not make ANY big mistakes.

WHY, for example, are control of the center, open lines, positional evaluation (which is actually pawn structure evaluation), opening libraries, and unusual black strategies (the Najdorf/Scheveningen/Sicilian for example) so important to today's engine designers? Answer: the modern era is about VERY FEW or NO, or VERY TEMPORARY mistakes-- mostly in tempo, by the opponent, NOT big gaffes as in the romantic period. The clock is King-- and opening libraries and many other modern features are all about the clock, and more subtly, tempo. Thus, the "7" analytic strategies given on page 21 (Material relationship between forces/direct threats/king safety/open lines/pawn structure via weak/strong squares/center and space and positional development) are overgeneralized compared to the "real" 7 principles given on page 123-- mobility restrictions (subtle, quick, temporary, and needing immediate exploitation): 1. occupied with the defense of a piece or important square; 2. tied down 3. simultaneous threats 4. moving it destroys a plan or connection 5. can't move to a square 6. is blocked by your own or opponent piece or 7. path (of action) blocked by other pieces.

A great positional "companion" for this recent book is the classic Test Your Positional Play: How You Should Think In Chess, unfortunately quite hard to find now. That classic gives many Queen's pawn opening examples, which all tend to be more positional by definition, and really does teach "thinking and planning", including some outstanding self rating exercises in pattern recognition.

From the respect your opponent/small advantage perspective, this book IS all about Karpov's style, regardless of how much he contributed to it. The book's weaknesses are many, but more than made up for by the broad brush, big picture "bring you up to date" value of the theme, which is about respecting your opponent's skill. If you could only bring one book back in time to the pre-Steinitz/ Italian/ Romantic era, or pre Morphy 1862 era, THIS book would be a MUST to understand the amazing shift that happens when you start to assume that your opponent WON'T make ANY of those double question mark moves, and very few (and brief/temporary) single question marks. Ignoring Morphy's double exclamation points and brilliant tactics, the authors rightfully point out the subtle positional planning that was the foundation for those shockers, and in fact, note that it often took the modern computer era to figure out what Morphy was actually doing positionally (because the brilliant tactics seemed, back then, accidental or opportunistic). Sure, you can argue that you could take a big book of openings, or a compendium of Kasparov's or Karpov's games instead-- but that's only if you have the broader context given here of the major assumption of modern grandmaster play-- that your opponent will NOT make major mistakes, and that winning is about small advantages in position, beating the clock and your opponent's subtle weaknesses with tempo, and very quickly seizing rapidly disappearing TEMPORARY positional weaknesses. (Granted, positional strategy and pawn structure are much more about the middle game-- this book also needs to be seen as primarily a middle game exploration). If you're just getting back into chess after a furlough-- this one is a MUST read to bring you up to speed, with many delightful Karpov gems as icing.

Note: Apologies if you disagree with my premise that today's top players (and computers!) make far fewer major blunders than in historical games. I'm not trying to insult the past giants, just point out that what has most markedly changed in the past 60 years isn't opening theory, planning, strategy or tactics, it's the fact that far fewer major blunders are made today, due to the advent of the "playing style" of computers-- which simply do not make the type of blunders seen in the past. Dozens of excellent chess books, including Kasparov's huge historical analysis series, attempt to compare the two. Since my major premise in this review is that this book would be good as an updater and historical refresher-- making your game much sharper with small structural advantages and making few or no major blunders ala Karpov-- I'd like to support that contention with one of the greatest "chess improver" books of all time-- John Nunn's John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book, which in our humble opinion is one of the best chess books you can buy in ANY category. See page 66 of that book. It's an eye opener about modern vs. historical blunders! In addition, it isn't a simple puzzle book in the sense of a pastime in a waiting room (try Kakuro for that), but a serious learning tool. Sadly, it's the only one in this genre Nunn has attempted, but is a masterpiece, especially if you're in the 1900+ area trying to break through 2200 consistently.

Anatoly Karpov is one of the greatest strategic chess players of all time, and has authored some good books, so a Karpov book titled "Find the Right Plan" sounded very promising. Unfortunately, this book is a big disappointment.

The positional concepts covered by this book are very basic and are covered by many better books. My main criticisms of this book include: 1) lack of any unifying approach to the topic; 2) poor translation, apparently by someone who is not a chess player (example: after white plays Bg3 on page 16, the commentary is "Reflects only one of the possible knight manouevres." Huh???; 3) limited number of Karpov's own games (there are twice as many of Alekhine's games or Capablanca's games than there are of Karpov's; 4) few games from the last ten years; 5) pehaps most importantly, no insights or analysis not available in any number of introductory/intermediate level chess books by lesser writers.

I had to include this quote from the book as well, just for its silliness: "Twelve is a good number, sanctified by tradition (there's a reason why there are twelve months in a year)." Huh?? This is used as a justification for including games that lasted 12 moves or less. Of course, these miniatures can hardly illustrate strategic concepts.

I suspect Karpov had very little to do with this book other than lending his name.

Avoid.