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Middlegame Strategy - Piece Placement & Activity - Intermediate Series Pt.3

Middlegame Strategy - Piece Placement & Activity - Intermediate Series Pt.3

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Dragondom1
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It was only yesterday that I made return to blogging. Though, it is never good to start a blog with such a dry and self-centred introduction, I have to say the following is too wild to be the first intro.

I apologize for the previous blog's mishap ( L honestly) where I misclicked into publishing an incomplete blog. Anyways, we will review pawn structures later & let's get on to Piece Activity.

Piece Activity is very key to winning in chess. However, I have seen intermediates struggle even after getting piece activity. The thing about this is that most of the time, they do not understand where to strike and play. In hindsight, what I wish to say is most of them play by the book and without purpose.

When you play by the book, it is your subconscious mind playing , not your conscious mind. Let us look at some tips that every intermediate must know about piece activity.

1) Create Play on the Dominant Side of the Board

What I mean, here is simple. Attack the squares where your pieces are facing. Let us look at an example position in the Neo Arkhangelsk, Ruy Lopez.

The ideas are very simple here. We intend to attack on the kingside, and are going to transfer the knight to g6, but Qd7 is necessary, to fire bolster our Queen's view into the kingside.

2) Activity Precedes Material.

Activity >> Material is a golden rule. Always look to activate your pieces, even at the cost of 1 pawn. The last game was an example but we will look at another.

3) Fight for the Centre With Your Pieces

Quick Development with Fast Paced Pressure on the Center Leads To A Win! Let us look at another Two Knights:

4 ) - Always Try To Trade Off Your Bad Pieces for Opponent's Good Pieces. 
Try to limit the opponent's good pieces with good moves. An instructional attacking middlegame would be Carlsen-Hao in the Tata Steel few years back where Carlsen crushed Hao's 1.c6 with brilliant kingside play, where he exchanged the powerful caro-kann bishop for his knight.

I hope you guys enjoyed this blog, where we mixed knowledge of openings with middlegames. What do you think? Do you have any points to add? Also, did I miss anything in my analysis of the above 3 lines? Feel free to mention them!