Chess Strategies

“It’s not a move, not even the best move that you must seek, but a realizable plan.” Eugene Znosko-Borovsky on Chess Strategies


CHESS STRATEGIES YOU HAVE TO KNOW
Chess strategies refers to the knowledge you apply to devise a plan for the position. How often in your chess games do you reach the point where you feel: “Now I am not sure what I should do next”? The plan you finally decide on, will reflect your understanding of the nature of the position. Thus the first step in deciding on your chess strategy, is to evaluate the position and find a suitable plan based on your understanding of chess strategies. In turn, finding a suitable plan gives you the key to identify candidate moves. Without a good plan your candidate moves will be guesswork at best. You cannot effectively use your calculation and visualization skills without finding the logical candidate moves first. In essence, the concrete outcome of your strategy skill is to find good candidate moves.


CHESS STRATEGIES: KING SAFETY
An unsafe king is generally the greatest weakness a position can have. Typical elements that weakens the king’s safety:
1) Any weakness or absence of the pawn shield in front of the king
2) Fewer defenders than opposing attackers in the area near the king
3) Lack of centre control gives attacking pieces easier access towards the unsafe king
4) A king that delayed castling for too long (unless the centre is blocked)

Since the safety of the king is so important, it is one of the main principles of chess strategy during the opening stage of the game. The other important principles of chess strategy during the opening is effective development of the pieces and your share of control in the centre.


CHESS STRATEGIES: PAWN STRUCTURE QUALITY
The quality of the pawn structure can usually be judged by these factors:
1) How it supports and affects the mobility of the pieces
2) How dynamic it is (how easily it can change)
3) The presence of weaknesses like some isolated pawns
4) The squares which have been permanently weakened by pawn moves

If possible, weaknesses in the pawn structure should be fixed before they become permanent. Weaknesses in the pawn structure is only relevant if the opponent can attack them. Often you can have some form of compensation for a weakness in the pawn-structure which might well outweigh the disadvantages thereof.


CHESS STRATEGIES: PIECE QUALITY
Piece quality refers to the quality of the role that a piece plays in the position as well as how well it co-ordinates with the other pieces. Some determinants of the quality of the role the piece plays:

Mobility: The amount of squares available for the piece to move to gives an indication of its mobility. The more squares it can go to, the higher the quality of the piece will be.

Flexibility: How easily can it change its role? Pieces near the centre are usually more flexible than pieces on the flanks and therefore have a higher quality in this regard.

Stability: How easy is it for the opponent to exchange or remove a piece from its square? Pieces that can’t be easily removed have a higher stability value.

Importance of the task: Ideally a piece would perform both an attacking as well as defending role simultaneously. In some cases a piece would perform a very important defensive task, freeing other pieces for more aggressive roles.

Piece quality refers to how well a piece is performing compared to its potential, but piece quantity refers to the amount of pieces on the board. Having an material quantity advantage is the most important advantage you can achieve if the opponent does not have sufficient compensation for the material deficit. While it is often hard to obtain a material advantage against stronger players, achieving superiority in the quality of your piece placements can give you something to work with. Space advantage refers to one side controlling more squares of the board than the other side. Since this extra space will naturally increase the mobility and flexibility of your pieces THEN their quality will increase. It follows that the space advantage is one of the most important chess strategy advantages you should play for.

Initiative refers to the ability to continually make threats against the opposing position. This implies that the opponent has to respond to the threats and cannot find time to make the improvements he/she would like to make to their position. The initiative could be only a temporary advantage and the player with the initiative must play very accurately in order to make the most of it.

All the strategic principles are essentially aimed at helping you achieve superior activity. 


CHESS STRATEGIES: CENTRE CONTROL
The importance of the control of central squares lies predominantly in the fact that it enhances the quality of your pieces, enabling them to fulfill more diverse roles and increasing their mobility. This ultimately means that your position is more flexible when you control the centre and it will be easier to create or take advantage of weaknesses in the opponent’s position. The situation in the centre is often the greatest determinant of the chess strategies you should follow in a game. The typical strategies follow logically from your observation of the situation in the centre, for example:

Blocked centre: When the centre is blocked and cannot open easily, you have more time to organize your pieces. The play will occur on the flanks of the board. Your chess strategy would then be to optimize the placement of your pieces and prepare to occupy any file that may open up. In blocked positions, control of a open file is often a useful advantage.

Open centre: An open centre demands that your chess strategy is to have very active pieces. In a situation where the centre is open but your pieces are placed passively, you will lose quickly. Minor weaknesses are often not so important in open positions, since a well conducted attack would decide the outcome of the game before the weakness can be exploited by the opponent. Positions with an isolated centre pawn is one example where the player with the “weak” isolated pawn get compensation in the form of more open lines for his/her pieces. Most pawn sacrifices are also based on this same chess strategy principle.

Dynamic centre: This simply means the situation in the centre is not yet clarified. In this case, your chess strategy should firstly be to clarify the situation in the centre. Taking offensive actions on either of the flanks whilst the centre situation is not yet clarified is often a mistake. If you attack on one of the flanks before the centre situation is clarified, a well timed counterattack in the centre could well prove your pieces to be offside and unable to sufficiently defend the weaknesses you created in your own position.

Well now this post was a mouthful. However, even if you studied all of it you still need to learn how to apply this knowledge. The information on this post should become second nature to you.