Chess Opening Strategies and How To Set Your Self Up To Win
by:
Roger Marler
Many comments have been made about the objectives of the opening play and perhaps the best
advice weve heard is the one about being able to get to the middle game with a
playable position.
This ideally means that you have your king safeguarded, your pieces
have decent mobility and scope, you also have sound pawn structures, and you have
opportunities to create real threats to decisively win material or even cause a checkmate.
Most chess instructional books will list the following as important opening concepts to
achieve the above:-
- Controlling the Centre
- Develop your pieces
- Safeguarding your king, ideal defence, maintaining the integrity of the castled king
- Hinder your opponents attempts to do any/all of the above
The player who can get the job done quicker will usually be rewarded with a superior
middle game position. Tempi is therefore a very critical factor in the opening. Every move
counts towards securing key positions, getting another piece orchestrated into the attack
and/or keeping the king out of harms way. Many less skilled players tend to overlook
the importance of this. So avoid making futile moves in the opening or attacking too early
without sufficient attacking pieces or insufficient backup.
TEMPI is basically how to get there faster.
Some openings are deceptively passive and quiet favouring a slow strategical
battle and gradually building up tactical opportunities which explodes later into the
middle game. Some others are aggressive and explosive very early in the game abounding in
tactical opportunities for both with lots of threats and counter threats. And, yet others
get very quickly into the middle and the end game usually with a race for pawn promotions
determining the eventual winner.
Find an opening that suits your style of play and let it well. Gambits and hypermodern
openings are usually favoured by strong tactical players as they often present many
exciting tactical opportunities. Always remember, different openings to suit different
style of play.
This article was posted on October 30, 2005