When do you know the opening has ended? The simple answer is that you know it’s over when you’ve achieved the goal of the opening. Your goal in the opening has two parts: To get most of your pieces and some of your pawns off their starting squares and onto better squares, and to get your king into safety. There are five basic
principles to keep in mind for the opening while you achieve that goal.
Diagram 1: The square in bold outlines the center of the board; the X’s show the four most important center squares.
The Center’s Where All the Action Is
Okay, so you want to bring your pawns and pieces into play. That makes sense, but where should you put them? The answer is simple: You want to put them on squares where they control the center of the board. Diagram 1 shows the center.
Why control the center? Basically, there are two reasons. First, when you control the center, you can switch your pieces from one part of the board to any other in the most efficient way possible, because the easiest way to move from side to side is to go through the middle. Second, controlling the center gives you more control over the sides of the board. So it comes down to flexibility and raw power, both of which are increased by controlling the center.
Keep in mind that occupying the center is not always the same thing as controlling it, because a piece or pawn does not control the square it’s sitting on. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put pieces or pawns in the center! It just means that when you do, you have to make sure that those pieces or pawns are adequately supported by other pieces or pawns.
Center Pawns First
If you should control the center, which pieces and pawns should you bring out first to do it? Different considerations apply to pieces and pawns, so I’ll talk about them separately.
Blunders
Don’t exchange a center pawn for a noncenter pawn without good reason!
For the pawns, the rule of thumb is to use the e-pawn and the d-pawn first, and maybe the c-pawn. Don’t push the f-pawn without good reason; and be very careful about moving the other pawns. The reasons to push the e-pawn and the d-pawn are that they are the center pawns and have a bigger influence on the battle for the center, and pushing them lets the bishops and queen get into the game. The reasons to push the c-pawn are that it can have some effect on the center (although less than the center pawns), and pushing it also opens a diagonal for the queen to use. (Even if the queen does not use it right away, it may be useful later in the game.)
Patrick’s Pointers
Take another look at the Anand-Kasparov game in Chapter 8: Because Anand’s pawn was on f3, Kasparov’s queen on b6 was able to prevent him from castling, which made Black’s attack against the white king possible. This is a perfect example of the problems that result from pushing the f-pawn too soon!
What about the other pawns? Well, there are times when it can be good to push the f-pawn, but there are also times when it’s bad to do so, because pushing this pawn exposes the king. (Pushing the c-pawn could be useful because it opens a diagonal for the queen; but with the f-pawn, the king can’t use the open diagonal nearly as much as the opponent can use it to attack it.) An experienced player will often know when it’s good to push this pawn, and when it’s bad; but even an experienced player can come
to regret pushing his f-pawn too early in the opening. The bottom line: Always think twice about pushing the f-pawn in the opening, and don’t do so unless you are sure your king will not be exposed because of it.
What about the other four pawns? There are times when you want to push them; in particular, later in the chapter I’ll mention what is called the “fianchetto,” which can be quite good, and requires you to push either your g-pawn or your b-pawn. But in general, the pawns on either side of the board shouldn’t be pushed until you have finished the opening, and certainly not without a very good reason.
Minor Pieces Before Major Pieces
The rule of thumb for developing pieces is to develop the less powerful pieces first, and the more powerful pieces later. Develop the knights and the bishops first (some people even stress that you should develop the knights before the bishops), then the rooks, and then the queen.
Some beginning players think they should bring the queen out right away. I understand the thought: Since the queen is so powerful, why not use it right away to attack? But often, this is a wrong idea. You’re not going to be able to attack anything before you get the rest of your army into action, so you’ll just waste time. And even worse, the queen will be exposed to attack by your opponent’s pieces. Your opponent will be able to gain time to develop more of his pieces, because he’ll be able to develop a piece and attack the queen at the same time, forcing you to move the queen out of the way, giving him a chance to develop more pieces while you keep moving your queen.
Of course, any rule has its exceptions, and there are openings grandmasters play where the queen plays a role early in the opening. But these cases are rare, and they have been carefully thought through in advance. You will learn the exceptions to the rules as you learn more about chess: For now, keep the queen home in the opening!
Chess Talk
When you move a piece for the first time, we say that you develop it.
For some reason, though, you don’t “develop” the pawns, only the pieces. And no one talks about “developing” the king, because in the opening, the king shouldn’t be developed, it should be put away in a safe place!
Time Is of the Essence
I said that one reason you should not bring the queen out too early in the opening is that your opponent will “gain time” to develop his pieces by attacking your queen.
Actually, time is always important in chess, especially in the opening.
Think of it this way. Suppose you and I are playing a game. Suppose that in my first few moves, I move each center pawn once, each knight once, each bishop once, and castle, while in your first few moves, you move one center pawn, and take two moves to develop each piece. Obviously, I’m going to be able to have more pieces and
pawns playing a role in the game earlier on, and that’s going to give me an advantage in any early skirmishes we might have. Not to put too fine a point on it, you’ve wasted time in the opening.
You should always use your pieces efficiently, and this is especially true in the opening. Now, of course, there will be times when you just have to move the same piece twice or even more in the opening (for example, if you have to recapture a piece). But as much as possible, you should develop each piece to a good square, and then turn your attention to developing the other pieces.
Castle Early!
Castling is a wonderful move. It does two things: It hustles the king out of the center of the board and to one of the wings, where it will be out of the way of the other pieces;
and it makes it easier to develop the rooks.
Maybe it’s not obvious why castling helps develop the rooks. If you are following my advice, you’ll be pushing the e-pawn, the d-pawn, and maybe the c-pawn in the
opening. Now if the rooks are going to get into the game, they’re going to need open files, and the open files will be those whose pawns have been pushed forward, or maybe exchanged (the e-pawn, the d-pawn, and/or the c-pawn). So you need to get the rooks to those files, and castling helps do that.
Chess Talk
An open file is a file that has no pieces or pawns obstructing the rook’s control along it; it can also be a file whose pawns or pieces are far advanced, so that even though the file is not completely open, the rook still controls a lot of squares along it.