This question has a twist.  Is it always better to keep your opponent from castling?

Background :

In games where I had the opportunity, I forced my opponent to move his king rather than allow them to castle.  I believe that there may be factors or rules to help guide you on this decision, but I am unaware of them.  Also, some mates work better with a castled king others don’t depending on what pieces you have to work with.

What do you think?

what?

The norm of aiming to prevent your opponent from castling is based on the fact that with the king in the center there is more potential to attack him during the mid game. However, there are always situations where it would be better to allow the king to castle or in a way force them to castle to ur desired side of the board to trap him. So just like everything else in chess you have to take this with a grain of salt.

ok yea thats a better one. now deadmanchess's point/question is more clear. its not always best to castle

feyterman wrote: ok yea thats a better one. now deadmanchess's point/question is more clear. its not always best to castle

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What ???

Don1 wrote: here's a better diagram 

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Don1, what were you trying to convey with the new diagram?

One fact also to always remember - is your opponent can castle in the first

3 moves of the game, and its a form of opening.  So there is no possible way

to stop the opponent from castling - the only way i see to stop him from castling

is to give him some bait and make him start a partial attack, then he wont be

castling.

It takes four moves to castle. In general it is always better to castle early, but of course it depends on the opening moves and the situation on the board doesn't it.

DeadMansChess wrote: Don1 wrote: here's a better diagram 

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Don1, what were you trying to convey with the new diagram?

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just that my position was a castled position while yours wasn't.

as for your questions it all depends on the position: central pawn formation & material(perhaps to sac. & expose the King to a mating attack)

wormrose wrote: "Castle if you must, or if you want to, but not because you can!" --- Hans Berliner
"Protect your king! ..While at the same time preventing opponent castle! A piece sacrafice is worth this!" --- Morphy's 5th rule of engagement. 
Maybe Morphy could afford to lose a piece but not me. I doubt you would find many modern players recommending this. Castling is usually a good move during the opening phase but I have played games under heavy attack, trying to find a chance to castle, and when I finally got the opportunity I looked around and found I was better off to keep my King centralized. So there isn't any absolute rule. It's like giving check to your opponent's King - there's no reason to do it unless it improves your position.

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Thanks for the comment.  Also, I didn't know Morphy had rules of engagement, thanks for that!  I'm with you on losing the piece, and those were both very helpful quotes!

Castling has been called intuition in practice. 

It's hard to tell which is better, I find that it's usually best to treat castling like any other move... if at some particular time you feel the best move in the position is to castle... do it.

Others tell you to castle as soon as possible and that can work too. 

There's also some openings where it's better not to castle. For instance, in the stereotypical French pawn structure (white pawns on d4 and e5, black pawns on d5 and e6), the center pawns are locked, so attacks up the center are prevented. White's best attacking chances are on the king side. So generally, black is better off not castling king side in most French lines that reach this pawn structure.

There are plenty of openings where one side gives up castling rights and its ok.  It depends on compensating factors.  It seems a good idea to me in general to stop your oppo castling if you can do so without too much waste of time.  The move Qg4 early in the opening for white can do this by forcing Kf8 by black in a couple of openings I can think of, but the positions are considered equal or +/=

I castle early in the game only when I'm black and play KID, otherwise I almost always develop all my pieces (with the exceptions of the two rooks of course) and only then I decide to castle and depending of how the game goes I castle long, or short, or not castle at all.

I almost always castle...  king-side.  It saves me having to worry about attacks on king-side pawns, and it makes it easier to attack via queenside.  On top of that, it feels like it's two moves in one, allowing a rook to support a possible advancing pawn and at the same time, having that king back-up the rook.  Queen-side castling is too cumbersome for me to defend with.  Not castling at all is...well... I just can't focus without my king being protected on all or most sides.

When you look at the Asian chess varients (Shogi, Chinese Chess), it becomes apparent that castling serves a purpose that goes beyond just protecting the king.  It also serves as a way to get your rooks into the center of the board, because rooks are very hard to advance without moving the rook's pawn, which leave your corners much more vulnerable than they would normally be.  In Shogi, for example, many games begin with a stage that is called "castling", but which really takes multiple moves, since there is no single castling move in Shogi.  But the fact that many Japanese Shogi grand masters take the time to "castle", shows you how important the defensive position really is.  We are lucky that Chess gives us such a powerful move as the Castle, and I would surmise that Castling is a much better thing to do than not to do it.  Although there are positions (like the diagrams above) that exploit the location of the king after-castle, those situations are best avoided by insuring a flight square some time after the castle.  At the time of most castling opportunities, especially in the early game, there is little to suggest that you wouldn't be gaining better position by it.

So in response to the original question, preventing your opponent from castling is likely to be a benefit.

DeadMansChess wrote:

Also, some mates work better with a castled king others don’t depending on what pieces you have to work with.

What do you think?

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Bad example. Getting caught in the mating net of which you speak has nothing to do with the initial castled position. (BTW, if a person does not castle, then he potentially leaves himself open to other mating nets that could be much stronger.) The key is to keep an eye on your opponent's position and anticipate any attacks on your King. In the example from earlier in the thread, it's already a mate-in-1, and this is hardly an argument against castling when Black could have made other (stronger) moves between castling and the impending checkmate.

Castling isn't always good. As a begginer you should always try to castle but there are situations where your king gets better protection in the middle than on the sides. For example if your opponent made soem opening blunder and you're taking advantage of it by trying to cramp his game up you might actually want to launch a attack on both queen and king side (for example maybe you start attacking on the kingside and then want to pawn rush the queenside) and then the king is usually better in the middle.