Advanced Middle Game Ideas - Calculation Part IV

Yesterday, we examined a position where white and black had finished their openings and began moving into the middle game.

We focused on king safety, capitalizing on our opponent's mistakes, and finding forcing moves.

Today, our focus will be targeted on major piece safety, minor piece safety, and controlling the center.

Let's review the position.

Take your time to really collect your thought on the position and each principle before we continue.

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Ready? Let's begin!

Major Piece Safety

In this position, we could move the queen away from the pin and leave the knight "hanging."

The difference is that we would move the queen away from the defensive position to put the white king in check. We would have found that move in our earlier analysis steps regarding king safety and forcing moves.

White would have to respond by blocking the check with one of many pieces or moving the king to a different square. In either case, black would gain a tempo (which we'll discuss more in a future post), take the bishop attacking the knight, and ultimately remove the threat.

It wouldn't have to be a check to the king, though. It would just have to be a threat on a piece or position that threatens something more valuable than the knight and potentially the rook on the next move after white captures. 

As this isn't the case for this position, we'll move on to the next part.

Prepare yourself. There are more minor pieces than major pieces. 

As a result, this portion of the analysis is quite tedious but I've tried to make it as manageable as possible.

Minor Piece Safety

For your sanity and mine, I'm not going to have you read about every intricacy in this portion of the analysis.

You could and should go into each exhaustive detail for daily games, tournament games, and your analysis, but it's overkill for everyone to read.

Instead, check your analysis against the diagram above.

If you noted each of the squares above and considered the significant thoughts, great job!

There are many considerations, and this is a highly complex position. 

That's why, especially in the early stages of your chess development, you need to slow down because you will miss things if you don't.

However, I will say that the white bishop's attack of the knight pinning it to the black queen seems to be a common theme in this analysis.

That should tell us that this attack must be dealt with soon.

If we don't address it, that pin could become a thorn in our side as we'll see when we discuss piece activity (or inactivity).

Controlling the Center

I want to clear something up before we continue. When people say, "Control the center," they don't necessarily mean that any of your pieces occupy the center.

It just means that you want to have as many pieces or more controlling (or attacking) the board's central (especially 4) squares.

If you want to learn precisely why controlling these squares is so important, check out Nowhere to Run.

You can finish it in about 1-2 minutes, and if you still need to learn about the importance of controlling the center, it is a must-read before you can understand this part of the analysis.

Now that we have that cleared up, here's the final terrifying diagram of the post! 

I know what you're thinking. That's way too much information. You're not wrong, but at the same time, did you notice how many pieces are involved in controlling the center, or can do so soon? All but the kings and three pawns for each side.

Every other piece has the potential to actively fight in the center (not at once) in the next two or three moves.

Not only do pieces become more powerful when they get to the center without the threat of attack, but that's also where all of the action happens!

If we were to play the rest of this game, how many exchanges would revolve around the principle of controlling the center or removing control of the center?

For the next ten moves, probably nearly all of them.

It's where pieces from both sides have a chance to exchange blows most naturally, and eventually, one player comes out on top, or you get an even position and have to move into an endgame.

For the record, the pawn on b4 can move to attack c6, but it's silly because black's b pawn is protecting c6 anyway, so I didn't include it as an orange.

Great job getting through this post!

I know this was one of the denser ones so far. Fortunately, once we finish these ten principles in the next day or two, you can apply them to any and every move in the middlegame and raise your rating in no time flat!

And with some practice, eventually the process will become second nature and you'll do most of it on autopilot.

The final results are in, check out the final chapter in our middlegame analysis, Middlegame Positional Analysis, to see my suggestion and find out if the computer agrees with my analysis!

We'll start with the basics and work our way into more challenging material gradually.

Until next time, keep improving, keep learning, and most of all, enjoy every moment!

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Want to know how to tackle your goals, improve faster, and see the game in a completely different way?

I just put out a new article today that could help!

It's called How to Think Like a Champion - Improve Your Mental Game.

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