Basic Ideas of the Opening
The opening is the first phase of the game, and if oftentimes considered the most important since it can set the stage for your victory or your defeat. There are a couple simple rules that you can follow that can allow you to ensure that you begin your game with a solid structure and mobility for all of your pieces. The goal of the opening is simple: develop your pieces, protect your king, and connect your rooks. Once you have accomplished all of these, you know that you have completed a good opening for your game.
Rule 1: Try to Control the Center
One of the most common ways to try to control the center is by moving your d or e pawn to d4 or e4 if you are playing white or d5 or d6 if you are playing black. You could try to play the 4 knight opening, which also gives control of the center, but however your bishops remain trapped behind pawns. This opening could also make you lose the game if you do not know how to play it correctly, but this can be said of any opening. These moves allow to you take control of the center, pictured below with the green circles, while also allowing you to move your bishops.
Rule 2: Develop all your Minor Pieces
By developing all your minor pieces, you can now launch attacks against your opponents and cover more area that you can control. The minor pieces are your knights and bishops. Bishops move in a diagonal line, and knight move 3 squares above, below, right or left, and then 1 square perpendicular to the first direction. You can try to gain control of the center, trade minor pieces, or even try to checkmate the king, but that is highly unlikely at this stage of the game. In the picture shown below, all the squares with a green circle in them are squares that white controls or is attacking. This helps to demonstrate how effective developing your minor pieces can be because of the amount of space that white can move to and attack.
In addition, try not to move your minor pieces too much, because then you can end up wasting moves, or “tempo“, which can cause you to go on the defensive and allow your opponent to more easily take free pieces. While doing this, also try to attack other minor pieces with your minor pieces so that they waste moves trying to defend their piece.
Rule 3: Try to Castle Early
Castling is a move that protects your King and moves it out of the center where it can be easily attacked. This move is a very useful move, but it has several limitations. For example, if you move your King at all, then you can no longer castle. If there is a piece whose line of attack is in the path of castling, like shown in Image 1,, then you cannot castle.
Sometimes, you don’t want to castle because it exposes your king, like in Image 2 shown below, but that is usually a very rare situation.
In the image shown below, the White King is in the corner with his rook, however there is a direct file to the king and the corner is very open, allowing the bishop to enter and attack very easily. If you look at the center of White’s position where the King would be if he did not castle, you see that there is a lot of protection with the minor pieces and the pawns. If you look at Black’s King, he is safe behind a wall of pawns, his knight, his bishop, and the rook. This is the type of area you want to castle to. There are two types of castling, Queen side castling and King side castling. The Queen side castling involves castling on the side where the Queen is, so to either b1 or c1, while the King side castling means the king castles to g1.
Rule 4: Don’t move the Queen or Pawns Too Early
In the opening phase, try not to move the Queen or the pawns that guard your king. Since there are a lot of minor pieces out on the board, the chances that you lose your Queen if you it move out too early are great. If you lose your Queen early, the chance that your opponents win increase significantly and will also allow them to take other pieces due to their very large range. In addition, your opponent could sacrifice some of their minor pieces to open the pawns on the king side where he has castled or will castle, and then bring in other pieces to endanger the king.
Author: Shiven Sasipalli
