OPENING STRATEGIES

“Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame.”

Lajos Portisch

In the opening, there are three basic goals: control the center, develop your
pieces, and castle early. Comparing these to the types of advantages, controlling
the center gives you space, which enhances piece activity.
Developing your pieces is piece activity. Castling relates to king safety and piece
activity (rook). You always want to try to win material and maintain a good pawn
structure in all phases of the game.

Keep all of these goals in balance with one another. For example, if you spend too
much time trying to control the center and developing, but neglect to castle, you
could end up with your king dangerously placed in the center.
Splitting the board in half, both players have four ranks on their side of the board at
the start of the game.
The two most popular moves made by chess masters when playing White are 1.e4
and 1.d4. Both of these moves not only open a diagonal for a bishop but also stake
a claim to the center.
If your opponent responds with a move that allows the other center pawn to
advance two squares, it is usually a good idea to move it forward and control the
center with both pawns. If your opponent doesn’t fight for the center, then take it.

After taking the center, you should then quickly develop your minor pieces to
support your center pawns and castle to safeguard your king.
Develop your pieces quickly and efficiently; you want to coordinate your pieces so
that they don’t block each other on the way out and can flow easily into the game.
Start with your bishops and knights. The minor pieces are the main fighters in the
opening. Knights tend to be a little more valuable than bishops in the opening
because they can develop without moving a pawn. When developing your bishops,
try to develop them outside your pawn chains so they are not blocked in by your
pawns.

A general rule is you don’t want to develop your queen early in the opening. The
danger in her coming out early is she can either get trapped if you aren’t paying
attention or chased around by your opponent’s bishops and knights, losing tempi.
The main exception to this rule is when your opponent hasn’t developed properly
and gives you attacking chances against his king. If you have the initiative and are
attacking, your opponent will have to defend his king and not have time to chase
your queen around.
Castling is the only time where you can move two pieces in one turn. The main
purpose behind castling is to get the king out of the center. Here are a couple of
situations where you may choose not to castle: if the queens are traded quickly and
your king can live safely in the center or if the center is blocked by pawns and it is
safer for your king to hide behind them.
It is easy to forget that castling also develops the rook. Rooks like to be on open
files or files with the potential to open up later.
There are many books written on the various openings showing how masters have
used these basic principles to begin the game. Chess opening theory constantly
changes as grandmasters develop new ideas.
Until you reach the higher rating levels, keep your opening study to a minimum. It
is more important that you become proficient at picking up clues and learn to
develop a solid plan.
Opening study can easily become memorization and lower rated players usually
don’t play the same lines as grandmasters – the examples given in books – so you
won’t see these lines often and will probably forget them quickly.
You can learn a little bit about the openings and the common traps in them, but
don’t get lost in opening study and neglect more important topics.

OPENING PRINCIPLES

1. Control the center

2. Develop your pieces quickly and efficiently
3. Castle early
4. Don’t develop your queen too early
5. Don’t move the same piece twice
6. Make as few pawn moves as possible in the opening
7. Clear the back rank and connect your Rooks
 MIDDLEGAME STRATEGIES
The middlegame is the most complicated part of the chess game with a variety of
possible strategic themes, depending on the opening system played.

Fighting for the center is as critical in the middlegame as it was in the opening.

Good and Bad Pieces

Minor Pieces
Minor pieces are an imbalance unto themselves; knowing how to use them
properly gives you a huge advantage over the competition.

The Bishop
Bishops are long-range pieces and love wide-open positions that are free of central
pawns.

If a player gets the two Bishops versus a Bishop and Knight or Two Knights, he
usually wants to retain them because, working together, the Bishops control
squares of both colors. If your opponent has two Bishops, trade one of them off
and leave yourself with a more manageable Knight vs Bishop or Bishop versus
Bishop scenario.

There are three basic types of Bishops:

1. Good – a bishop is considered good when its central pawns are not on its
color and thus are not obstructing its activity.
2. Bad – A Bishop is considered bad when its central pawns are on its color
and thus block it.
3. Active – An active Bishop can either be good or bad; it’s called active
simply because it serves an active function.
White’s Bishop is good, Black’s is bad. | Two “bad” bishops, but White’s is very active.
 If you are unfortunate enough to possess a bad (and inactive) Bishop, you are
usually well advised to do one of three things:
- Make it good by moving the central pawns off the color of your Bishop.
- Get your Bishop outside the pawn chain.
- Trade the offending piece off for an enemy Bishop or Knight.

White to play will trade off his | Bring White’s Bishop back to life.

horrible Bishop by 1.Ba4.

The Knight
Knights are the only pieces that have the ability to jump over other pieces. This
makes them very effective in closed positions. A wall of pawns will completely
shut a Bishop down, but a knight will just jump over the wall and continue its way.

Knights need advanced support points if they are going to compete successfully
with Bishops.

A support point (i.e., an advanced square that can’t be controlled by an enemy

pawn) on the sixth rank is ideal, while a Knight on the fifth is usually better than a
Bishop.

The knight dominates the game from it’s sixth rank support point.

White’s Knight will dominate the game after Nd3-f2-e4 where it eyes the d6-pawn,
blocks Black’s passed e-pawn, helps White’s kingside majority advance, and also
envisions possiblities like Ne4-g5-e6.
Knights are the best blockaders of passed pawns. A knight can stop an enemy
passer in its tracks and still remain active due to its ability to jump over other units.

White’s Bishop is blocking Black’s passed pawn but it has virtually no activity or
scope. On the other hand, Black’s Knight is not only blocking White’s passed
pawn, it is also attacking the enemy pawns on e4 and c4.

Rooks
If you want your Rook(s) to be effective, they need an open file. Without an open
file, a Bishop or Knight might easily outperform the Rook, leaving it sitting
passively behind its pawns.

A file is a very valuable commodity because it's the road that your Rook travels on
in order to penetrate into the enemy position.
That's why such files are often fought over, with both sides trying hard to make it
their own.

A Rook on the 8th rank can lead to all sorts of fun. However, control of the 7th
rank is particularly prized because it not only annoys the enemy King, but also
targets all the enemy pawns that have yet to venture forward.