Every chess piece
A chess set is composed of 32 pieces, 16 white, and 16 black. The side that gives a checkmate to the other will win the game, however, this is not always easy, and while you increase your game strength you will face stronger opponents who won’t allow you to checkmate them without before playing a long tough game. It’s in this instant of our chess career that we notice the scholar’s mate and other traps won’t work anymore, now it’s necessary to learn how to win a prolonged game, capturing some material and transferring the advantage into the endgame for example.
How can we do that? How can we win the game without giving an early checkmate? If the answer was easy then chess would not be so difficult. Nevertheless, let’s try to create a response from the first sentence of this post. Do you remember what is it? A chess set is composed of 32 pieces, 16 white, and 16 black. What would happen if you place your pieces on better squares than the opponent? Then, most likely the position would be better for you. Look at the next position:
If we compare each piece of both sides, which do you think has the best ones? By intuition, we can state that the white is better. However, if you do not see it that easy yet, try to compare the situation of every piece in the next diagram:
Do you see it now? It’s like the white ones have more mobility. This is how masters evaluate a position and it is the process you should think from now as well in your games.
We’ve been discussing how important is to place our pieces on the best squares but we do not know exactly how to do it yet. How do you know a square is better than another in a position? How do you know what is the best square for the knight? For the bishop? For the queen? What about pawns? It’s here where things start to get complicated a little. To answer those questions it is fundamental to look at every piece.
By the way, covering all the characterizes of all the pieces in a single post is impossible, so here I only want to summarize the content and in the next posts I will go deeper into each piece particularly
The king
The most important piece, without a king there is not a chess game. How can we place our king on a better square than the opponent’s one? There are a few “rules” that have been established through chess history that might help us. The first one is pretty known
1. Move your king to the center in the endgame
This statement appears in literally tons of books, posts, and magazines. It’s like all the chess players in the world know that they should move their kings to the center, but some people still do not do it well or do not know how important this is.
2. Stunning king maneuvers
In chess history, we have witnessed some incredible king maneuvers.
The queen
The piece with the highest value in a game, the queen may be as good as we use it, and what I want to mean is that it’s awful to see how this piece is used sometimes to protect a single pawn or placed in a poor position. I would like to give you some advice on using your queen
1. Do not use the queen to protect a piece, instead, use it to attack opponent’s pieces and create threats
As I said before, protecting another piece with your queen does not make sense, I am not saying that you should never use it to that, but in most cases, the queen works better on attacking operations.
2. Centralize the queen in the endgame
Maybe you have noticed that almost all the pieces (not applicable with the rooks) work better in the center, from there they can control more squares, this is crucial for the queen only in the endgames, not in the middle game because it might be attacked by others opponent´s pieces.
So keep your queen away from the center during the middle game and exploit its mobility in the endgame.
The rooks
This piece is sometimes overlooked during a game. In the endgame, we all know that we should use them, but in the middle game and during the opening, some people just forget them. Here are some tips to exploit the power of the rooks.
1. Castle or develop the rooks
Castling? But we do not leave behind the king some paragraphs before? Why castling? The answer is the next: without castling, we are playing without two rooks. This chess maneuver not only protects our king but also brings one rook to the play.
Sometimes it is not necessary to castle, but we should find a way to develop the rooks anyway.
2. Place the rook behind your pawns in the endgame
This is another rule that is shown in tons of books; the right place for the rook in an endgame is behind a pawn, supporting the advance of it, or attacking the opponent’s pawn
The bishops
Bishops can be as effective as we pay attention to them. I said something similar in another post that you can check here: https://www.chess.com/blog/GaboSalazar2001/how-to-use-the-bishops-to-attack
1. Open diagonals for your bishops
Yes, I am repeating this advice in this post as well but how should not I do it? This is the first thing you have to consider when creating better squares for your bishops.
2. Take advantage of the bishops in the endgame
In this stage, the game tends to be opened and there are many diagonals available it´s right here when you want to use your bishops
The knights
Being able to fly over the other pieces, knights have some fashion qualities that usually impress some people. Advice about how to use them have been created long ago, this does not mean you should not practice them.
1. A knight works better on the center of the board
2. A knight is a great blocking piece
Whenever you want to block an opponent’s pawn, consider doing it with the knight first of all
So far we’ve been discussing the properties of all the chess pieces, have we? Not so fast, don’t forget the soul of the game.
The pawns
Before saying anything about pawns, I think it’s important to know that this is a huge topic, some books have tried to cover all their aspects but it’s not enough. What I want to give you here is a little introduction with some advice, but for more information, you will have to wait for the next posts.
1. Think twice before moving a pawn
I have seen that one of the mistakes that beginners usually make is to move pawns deliberately and what they do not understand is that, even for GMs, pawns moves are not always easy to make.
2. Pawns become more important in the endgame
So important that you should consider sacrificing some pieces.
That was tons of information! I hope you can use all these piece of advice. I would be glad to see some of your games in the comments. Happy New Year!
I am Gabriel Salazar, a chess Fide Master, and coach. Available for private lessons. For more chess content check https://tres-reyes.com/en/
