Chess Success: Planning After the Opening

Chapter One:
The smiting style

Chess is 99% tactics.
Richard Teichmann
Examine moves that smite! A good eye for smites is far more important than a knowledge of strategical principles.
Cecil Purdy
Many years ago I recall that Karpov and Korchnoi were asked to comment on the above quotation from Teichmann. Korchnoi more or less agreed, while Karpov replied ‘rubbish!’ (or maybe it was ‘nonsense!’ but you get the meaning). You can draw your own conclusions from this.
But no one can deny that it is essential for any serious player to train their tactical eye. The Viennese Grandmaster Richard Reti wrote two famous books on chess strategy in the 1920s, called New Ideas in Chess and Masters of the Chessboard. In these brilliant tomes Reti kept variations to a minimum and explained things in words wherever possible. And yet he was anxious to point out that:
Tactics are the foundation of positional play!
And rightly so. A player needs to proceed from the simple to the complex: if you haven’t mastered basic tactical devices such as forks and skewers there is no hope of ever playing a good strategic game.
By ‘smites’ Purdy means moves that attempt to land a combinative blow on the opponent. He is giving excellent advice in recommending a bold, forceful method of play to those keen to deepen their awareness of possibilities on the chess board: nothing can develop the imagination as much as experimenting with ideas.
For this reason the King’s Gambit with its scope for sharp attacks and sacrifices should be the opening of choice for a player seeking to learn the ropes of tactical chess.
‘Every chess master was once a beginner’
– Chernev
To begin at the beginning, let’s look at some youthful smiting:
Game 1
Two schoolboys in battle
1 e4 e5
2 01;f3 01;c6
3 01;c3
So far so good: sensible developing play by both players. But at this point theory seems to come to an end for Black.
3 … b6?
Black plans an attack on the white e4 pawn, but it is a luxury he can’t really afford. He should develop with 3 … f6 or 3 … c5.

4 d4
Not the best: 4 b5! would threaten 5 xc6 dxc6 6 xe5. Black cannot reply 4 … d6, his normal move in this type of position to bolster e5, as that would leave the knight on c6 hanging. Hence we see that 3 … b6 has not only squandered a tempo but also undermined the ability of the black pieces to hold onto the e5 pawn.
White’s 4 d4 move is typical of this variation – it is for example a standard response to 3 … f6. It also makes sense to break open the centre seeing that Black has wasted a move with 3 … b6. But it also shows a certain rigidity of thinking.
In forcing the exchange of pawns on d4, White is rather generously ridding Black of the pawn on e5 which it would have been hard for him to defend after the superior 4