Castling really is very important. It is not just an endless mantra or a triviality. Casting connects the rooks but more significantly, it gets the king out of the center, the most active part of the board. If one side is able to ply the center open, the centralized king is in great danger of attack.
Why Castle?
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How else can you get to move two pieces at one time?
If you don't castle, your king is wide open for forks, pins, discovered attacks, etc. Putting your king in a corner is in general not good, but it is better to have it behind a row of pawns than in the center.
Castling is for wusses. Where you should be developing your king early with a move like 2. Ke2, castling makes it hard to ghet to the otheir side, man.
Never regret asking questions. Even if it is a stupid question. Stupid questions generally are the most urgent ones to ask.
The importance of connecting your rooks should not be underestimated. If your rooks are not connected you will have tons of problems contesting open files. Your rooks will be forced to stay much more passive than your opponents rooks in most cases. That results in a signifigant loss of firepower.
When your king is in the centre it is way easier to attack. Not only do the centre files have a much higher chance of opening up due to the large benefits of moving your centre forward resulting in that being done in every game except the worst of patzers, but it is much easier to focus all your pieces on the centre than on an edge.
Nov 5, 2012
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#7
to be honest this is not a stupid question sometimes the king is safer in the centre but this is usually when the centre is locked and you have weak squares on both the king and queenside that make castling undesirable but whether you castle or not connecting your rooks is still important and you would have to bump your king up to connect them
I think this is a fantastic question and very well worth thinking about. In my limited and humble experience, castling is less often about avoiding outright checkmate, and more often about reducing your opponent's tactical options for getting an advantage (often in material). Check is a very powerful tactical tool, and it's a lot harder to lay check on a castled king.
Nov 5, 2012
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#9
Castling can be a great resource if used properly. Delaying castling also can be helpful in some positions. On the other hand it may be better to castle early. Like everything else in chess castling is a matter of judgement.
ivandh wrote:
Castling is for wusses. Where you should be developing your king early with a move like 2. Ke2, castling makes it hard to ghet to the otheir side, man.
+1m
youe going to hear "checkmate" alot !
Hard to disagree with so many sage voices. So I will.
In games where my opponent does not castle I nearly always win. The one and only exception is when there has been wholesale early piece exchanges including the queens.
I never lose because I haven't castled because, contrary to the sage advice, I stick to the simple opening principles which I have been taught and give early castling a very high priority. If move twelve looms and I am not yet castled my sense of unease becomes increasingly unbearable.
Why do I say this when much better players are saying the reverse? Well it is because they are much better players. They know the openings far better than I. They can weigh much more precisely the competing advantages of alternative moves. They are more confident that no combination can expose their uncastled king fatally. (Of course then they play Tal or Colle and discover how wrong they were, but that is another matter.)
Anyway lacking all this I find that sticking strictly to the basic opening principles - including early castling - works very well indeed for me. When I reach 2,500 strength (so that is around the year 2,500 AD) I will review this policy decision.
Nov 6, 2012
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#13
There's no such thing as a stupid question although yours might be an exception - Just kidding!
Castling gets the King to safety (usually) and helps to get the "castled" Rook developed on a central file, and/or helps to connect the Rooks. However, there are cases when castling is not warranted for instance if the Queens have been traded off you can often skip castling which tends to "tuck the king away" in an undesirable endgame position, esp for any activity on the other wing.
It's interesting to note that Dr Lasker did not advocate castling ASAP in his famous "4 Rules for the Opening" (from "Common Sense In Chess")
- Do not move any pawns in the opening of a game but the King and Queen pawns.
- Do not move any piece twice in the opening, but put it at once on the right square.
- Bring out your knights before developing your bishops, especially the Queen's Bishop.
- Do not pin the adverse King Knight (ie. by Bg5) before your opponent has castled.
Castle if you will or if you must, but not because you can PILLSBURY
PS: If you only pay attn to one comment here I'd pay attn to Estragon's (below)
MrBoB1 wrote:
This is probably a stupid question that I'll regret asking later, but seriously, why do people castle? Don't get me wrong, I've castled in nearly every game since learning about the move, but I'm starting to really think about it now. Sure it connects the rooks, but is the king really any safer after castling than he was before? Castling is essentially cornering your king and surrounding him with 3 or 4 measley pawns, a rook and at times, when it is able to be spared, a bishop. This makes it difficult for the king to escape threats and sometimes even helps the enemy achieve the ultimate goal, checkmate. So what do users at Chess.com think? Enlighten me with the knowledge and reasoning behind the 0-0ing and 0-0-0ing that is currently slipping my mind, I ask you once more, Why Castle?
If both opponents are following opening principles then most of the hand to hand fighting for control of the center is taking place in the center. You don't want your Monarch (K) anywhere near that.
If niether opponent is following opening principles then is only one guidepost that I know of. If the center is blocked by pawns and/or pieces then it is not a good idea to castle. Flank attacks against your castled position have their best chance of succeeding when the center is blocked. However, if the center is open and fluid then it is safe to castle. Flank attacks are best thwarted stopped by counterattacking in the center. In other words, when the center is open and flluid flank attacks are in almost all cases doomed to failure.
I am sure that it goes without saying that when the center is blocked there are no open files or diagonals leading to your K in the center.
Castling is important, but it is a move that needs to be balanced against other needs of the position. If you can delay castling and use that time to gain some real advantage on the board, then you'll often find yourself in a stronger position than if you don't. But, if you misjudge the position you can find your king trapped in the center and then the game will usually be over very quickly. It is almost always better to err on castling earlier than not.
This is a game I just played last week in an OTB tournament. It's not a perfect game, but I went on to win a very nice game, and one of the reasons I was able to win is that I was able to find useful moves pretty much every move that wasn't merely castling. I didn't castle until it furthered my attack:
Kingpatzer wrote:
Castling is important, but it is a move that needs to be balanced against other needs of the position. If you can delay castling and use that time to gain some real advantage on the board, then you'll often find yourself in a stronger position than if you don't. But, if you misjudge the position you can find your king trapped in the center and then the game will usually be over very quickly. It is almost always better to err on castling earlier than not.
This is a game I just played last week in an OTB tournament. It's not a perfect game, but I went on to win a very nice game, and one of the reasons I was able to win is that I was able to find useful moves pretty much every move that wasn't merely castling. I didn't castle until it furthered my attack:
I acknowledge the sheer niceness of Castle Timing in that World.
Castling is one of the most important strategies in the opening so we have to study it closely.
In addition to bringing safety to the king, castling normally improves the activity of the rook. Although a rook in the corner could in theory control as many squares as a rook on any other square, in reality a rook tends to get more active (in the opening) as it gets close to the 'e' and 'd' files. One of the main reasons for this is that in the opening we tend to advance central squares, increasing the chance of exchanges and therefore opening the files, which will benefit the activity of the rooks.
In addition to castling, preventing our opponent from castling is another important idea:
White to play
In the following position, White has the very strong move c5! which not only attacks the knight on b6 but it prepares Nd6+ preventing Black from castling. Playing Nd6+ straight away would be less strong as Black would take the knight with Bxd6.
After the move c5, White (who is former world champion Mikhail Tal) won the game in a few moves with a crushing atack.
If you would like to know more about castling, feel free to check my video
about it: https://youtu.be/uMR8OGSo_SE
Most of the time castling is a good move. As a rule that is. Exceptional players though make exceptional moves. They won't slavishly follow move rules if analysis and creative thought determine otherwise.
This is probably a stupid question that I'll regret asking later, but seriously, why do people castle? Don't get me wrong, I've castled in nearly every game since learning about the move, but I'm starting to really think about it now. Sure it connects the rooks, but is the king really any safer after castling than he was before? Castling is essentially cornering your king and surrounding him with 3 or 4 measley pawns, a rook and at times, when it is able to be spared, a bishop. This makes it difficult for the king to escape threats and sometimes even helps the enemy achieve the ultimate goal, checkmate. So what do users at Chess.com think? Enlighten me with the knowledge and reasoning behind the 0-0ing and 0-0-0ing that is currently slipping my mind, I ask you once more, Why Castle?