Planning a Strategy in Chess

Abstract

Planning plays a major role in chess. The range of planning may be short, medium, or long. Short-term planning is dominated by tactics; medium-range planning is usually identified with positional play, and long-term planning is assumed to require human interpretation for the recognition of strategic patterns. In this note we investigate the differences among the three types of planning. We have tested three programs (CRAFTY, M-CHESS 6, and M-CHESS 7) on a set of 24 positions. M-CHESS 7 scores faultlessly for tactics and positional play, and 73 percent for strategy. If the hardware and software are further improved, the computer analysis will become sovereign in long-term planning too.