Castling early?

I've heard this often, but cannot seem to rationalize it.  I'm by no means an experienced player, but it seems to me that castling early only serves to corner your king, providing no escape from an attack, especially early on, when your opponent still has a chance to develop his pieces toward an attack on the castled side, or sacrifice pieces to open up the castled side, making an attack imminent. 

It just seems to me that a king in the center has a better escape...be it king side or queen side, while a king on either corner of the board is left with only one side to run to. 

Shed some light, chess.com.

No, never castle.  It will just trap your king in the corner.

Or he could rip open your centre and commit regicide.

Funny you say that, because in every game I've castled early in...I've lost early.  And almost every game I didn't castle at all...I've fared rather well.  I think I'll have to take that advice, depending on whether anyone can justify the "castle early" rule.

Vanilla, wouldn't you prefer a ripped open center, with a queen or king side to escape to, rather than a ripped open castled side?

Q_of_K;

In spite of your experiences to the contrary, the idea of castling is to get the Rooks cooperating instead of split apart by the King. You should find it easier to defend the King that way. (Especially considering that a good attack is a way of defending.) Besides, the castled King is not really in the corner. A castled King can "run to" the left or right, just like an un-castled King can (and after castling, one of those squares must be empty!).

@OP: In some openings, castling early is fine. The earliest possible move one may castle is move 4, and some openings allow that to happen efficaciously.

In other situations, castling should wait. An opening may allow for flexibility of castling, meaning that all of the minor pieces and the Queen develop. Sometimes, one should wait until one's opponent commits to an attack or flank, and then castle to the other side, to safety. These situations may call for hesitation, only castling at just the right time. If you are in a situation that allows you to castle to either side at any moment, you hold your opponent in suspense and keep him guessing, which is to your advantage.

However, many players, inexperienced and otherwise, have been punished and their positions have been rent to shreds due to postponing castling for too long. I have fallen victim to this in many games. Too many times have I lamented, "If only I had castled sooner!"

Castling may sometimes be postponed in positions with locked Pawn structures, because the enemy pieces cannot lunge for your King so quickly. However, in an open position, castling is a top priority.

Avoid castling into the strength of your opponent. If your opponent has developed a Kingside Pawn storm, then you probably should not castle Kingside.

I castle Kingside as early as possible most of the time since I'm a Noob and dont know otherwise. 

However, when the pawn structure in the middle is "locked up" then castling becomes less of a priority since the enemy pieces cannot easily attack through the center.

Castling makes it harder to get your king to the otheir side man.

Castling early isn't a priority. You do want to castle before having your king exposed becomes troublesome.

(I had a longer better post, but it was eaten.) 

You think you've discovered a secret decades of masters haven't? Your opponents just don't know how to take advantage of an uncastled king.

To rip open the king side requires a lot more pawn moves than to rip open the centre.

Actually, it seems like her opponents know how to take advantage of a castled king. Maybe they studied just those tactics, but usually they would also know how to take advantage of an uncastled king just as well.

Queen_of_Knight wrote:

I've heard this often, but cannot seem to rationalize it.  I'm by no means an experienced player, but it seems to me that castling early only serves to corner your king, providing no escape from an attack, especially early on, when your opponent still has a chance to develop his pieces toward an attack on the castled side, or sacrifice pieces to open up the castled side, making an attack imminent. 

It just seems to me that a king in the center has a better escape...be it king side or queen side, while a king on either corner of the board is left with only one side to run to. 

Shed some light, chess.com.

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Here are some rules to guide yourself by when castling early.

1. Look at first at the situation in the center (d4,d5,e4,e5).

A. If the center is open and fluid then go ahead and castle. If your opponent decides to launch a flank attack against your castles K, then the best to thwart, stop the flank attack is to

Counterattack in the center. Counterattacking in the center is the surest to make a flank attack fail.

B. If the pawn and pieces situation in the center is blocked up, do not castle right away. Wait until you have managed to unblock the center into an open fluid center. Only then is it safe to castle.

What on Earth would make you think that?  Did you even read my post, or are you just spewing ridiculousness for no apparent reason?

"Actually, it seems like her opponents know how to take advantage of a castled king".

Thanks, Sunshiny.

Maybe my reply was a bit antagonistic. But the point is that in openings people move the centre pawns, and they often get traded. If your king is in the centre then there are open lines and files to attack him. If the king is in the castled position he's shielded from these checks by pawns, which cannot easily be removed from his protection. Any pawn attack is going to take a lot of moves to set up. Left in the centre one pawn trade may open a file where a rook can bear down on his position.

The sentence in bold doesn't contradict what I said, it's a non sequitur.

castle me if you can 

Can't. You're no king. 

Keeping the King uncastled too long is like giving your opponent a map with X marks the spot consistently leaving your King uncastled game after game is just asking for trouble other players will figure your a stubborn mark who won't secure the King and you don't care about safety they'll attack it from the start for some easy points. 

When in doubt castle!!!

It's really the same idea as development, and not having many pieces on unprotected squares.  When the action begins, you often find there's no time to put your house in order.  When lines open, whoever has better placed pieces gets the better of it.  In simple terms this makes tactics appear for your opponent.

From a logical side, requiring no chess playing experience, notice that while in the center, all the opponent's pieces can reach that area in 1 or 2 moves.  If your king is in the corner, half of your opponent's forces have to travel around the center of the board, which makes it much harder to bring more than a few attackers.

Also while you're not castled, it's much harder to make use of your rooks.