top stop pins, mabye?
What's the purpose of moving your king to the corner after castling?
Sort:
to free f pawn from the pin by Bishop or to get rook to g file may be.
Most of the time time getting out of the diagonal f1-a6 freeing the f-pawn (e.g. f7-f4). Same thing counts for other diagonals as well, depending where your king is.
----------------------------------
In the Anaguma Castle, seen below, the benefit of moving your King to the corner is that it takes fewer pieces to protect the King. And the pieces are the "light" ones - the lance, the silver and the knight. In consequence, the heavier pieces may be used offensively.
It's usually to shore up the position. If there were a more important move to make, they'd make it. I don't think they use it to mark time, as having the king in a corner at the start of an endgame can be fatal. There are games where a player loses because of it.
It's comparable to castling before you open the center or creating luft (with h3 or g3) before getting into the meat of the middle game. They're avoiding a threat they know from experience is coming, but there are no direct signs of yet.
In the case of kingside castling, many times it's white recognizing the g1-a7 diagonal is loose (usually because the f pawn has moved) and are avoiding any future checks. Even with a dark square bishop on e3 this diagonal can be lose in terms of what going to happen in the next 20 moves. In the case of queenside castling, moving to b1 is more defensive, recognizing that the c file is subject to a lot of pressure and is not safe for the king.
Other times the g1-a7 diagonal may be unimportant even if the f pawn has moved -- or in the case of queenside castling there may be no attack down the c file. It's their vast experience/knowledge of these positions and sometimes just GM intuition that tells them when such a shoring up move is good.
Like I said I really don't think they often use it to mark time... when going into endgames GMs consider how quickly their king can come out as much as pawn structure and other considerations before allowing endgames to arise. And there are games you can see where a frivolous Ka1 or Kh1 move ends up losing the game when an opponent can force the endgame after all.
Orangehonda - would you mind explaining what you mean by "creating luft"? It's an expression I've seen a couple of times around here, but I'm not sure what it means.
EightEyes wrote:
Orangehonda - would you mind explaining what you mean by "creating luft"? It's an expression I've seen a couple of times around here, but I'm not sure what it means.
It's prophylaxis, avoiding any possible future backrank mate threats by creating an escape square for the king. In a way it's similar to the idea of over protection. If a piece is attacked 2 times, but you defend it 3 times, every one of those defenders is free to move away. If you only defend it twice, both defenders are tied to defense and can't (or shouldn't) move. When you create luft, you're giving your rooks the ability to leave the backrank when/if it's ever needed. If they're tied to the last rank's defense, then they can't truly defend advanced pieces or threaten any loose pieces, because moving away means allowing mate.
It's true a player could simply wait for when his rooks are needed to create luft -- but often in a sharp position you don't have the luxury of an extra move to spare. So after all the pieces are developed, but before the action really starts, players can take time to do this as prophylaxis... of course it's not always so simple, every unnecessary pawn move in front of your king potentially greatly weakens it's position and subjects it to attack. So don't go playing h3/g3 in every game either 
Oh, okay - I understand what you mean. Thanks very much for the explanation!
I tend to prefer not to disturb the pawns in front of the king until I have to, but I guess that does mean that at least one rook is tied to the back rank. Something to think about for future games, definitely. Thanks again!
Thanks orangehonda; helpful as always.
In a lot of GM games I've viewed, after castling a GM will move his king into the corner, and I'm not sure why. It doesn't seem like it really accomplishes anything, and I'm interested to know the theory behind it.