Hmm... control of the centre is one of the best bits of advice a novice chess player will hear. Obviously once you get good enough then you can bend the rules a little, but I would highly recommend controlling the centre. Rooks are worth five material points, bishops are worth three. Bishops are good throughout the game and rooks should start to come into play during the middle game. You really don't want to expose your rooks in the opening when they have little room for manoeuvre. Rooks really thrive in the endgame when there are less pieces on the board. I would never recommended a4 or h4 as openings for anyone. Maybe as a novelty once in a blue moon. Who on earth was this strong player? He must have been messing you around surely.
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Maybe you can stop his advances with a5 and h5 and THEN try and control the center
pymQ wrote:
I recently met a good chess player who opens a4 or h4. Then it's R to a3 offering it up to (my) bishop. I proceed with control of center assumption. I won a game; he won a game. He then went on to claim that control of center notion is a mistake. Also, he claimed that rooks are no more valuable than bishops as rooks are end-game pieces. Who else is confident with this opening?
I look at it like this: with 1.a4 e5 2.Ra3 Bxa3 3.bxa3 not only have I won the exchange and placed a pawn in the center but I've also created a serious weakness with doubled isolated pawns on the a-file. And since I've captured with my f8-bishop I've moved a piece off the bank rankd and so am one move closer to castling. Lastly, it's my turn so I get to develop a piece first so I might play 3...Nf6 and I'm ready to castle.
@Fiveofswords
Well you aren't a GM. And it seems to me that the two most popular first moves amongst GM's are still 1.e4 and 1.d4. And I'm sorry but a rook is better than a bishop. Exchanging a rook for a bishop only works as a purpose for something else. Sacrificing your rook in the second move is plain dumb.
Thx for your comments. After reading them i have come to the conclusion that, yes, he was trying to mess with my chess head. Chess club members sometimes get off on that, amusing themselves by misleading newcomers.
Fiveofswords wrote:
unless you are a gm you will never know if an exchange sac is sound enough.
But most of us will know if it isn't sound enough.
Well, I paid about $30 for this chess set I have. So, I would figure, if you take away say, $10 for the board, that leaves $20 divided by 32 pieces which makes them about 62 cents a piece.
I think you can find more valuable pieces though.
Eccentricity in chess players is not a rare thing. Especially those spending several hours a day on the chess park.
A recent GM game:
FirebrandX wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
A recent GM game:
I'm play 1.b3 as my main repertoire, and I face 1...a5 quite often. In this case, it has a perticular idea in mind to disrupt white's structure, hoping to open the a-file and drop a rook on a2 at some point should white neglect it. Obviously Richard tried to avoid that, but with bad luck as a result.
It does not, however, equate to just mindlessly playing the side pawns and rooks out. That's bad chess without a clear plan.
I agree.
GM Pendyala Harikrishna offered terrific annotations to this game in his article, "The New Romantics," Chess Informant 124.
I recently met a good chess player who opens a4 or h4. Then it's R to a3 offering it up to (my) bishop. I proceed with control of center assumption. I won a game; he won a game. He then went on to claim that control of center notion is a mistake. Also, he claimed that rooks are no more valuable than bishops as rooks are end-game pieces. Who else is confident with this opening?