Where to aim

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When all my pieces are active as can be but there are no weaknesses to aim at I often ask my self "now what?". What should be the goal of all my manoeuvres, moving of worst pieces, pawnmoves and piece activity? In order to find out I have been counting covered squares, attacked pieces, manoeuvring squares, amount of pieces on the covered diagonal etc.. I read articles about piece activity and mobility. I compared the outcomes of my countings in problempositions with the final solution.

Slowly it dawned upon me that everything boils down to two principles which are two sides of the same coin. There are two aims to strive for:

• Disrupt the hostile communication lines of the enemy pieces and deprive them from possibilities.
• Do the opposite for your own pieces. Ask yourself which piece or pawn is standing in my way?

If no targets have cristallized yet, the battle is about possibilities. He who has the most possibilities has the biggest chances to come up with something that the enemy can't parry. Once formulated it is almost too simple for words.

The next thing to think about is about time, tempo's and initiative.