How to Win at Chess – Part 5: Boost the Power of Your Pieces

The easy part of chess is math – simple math: more is better. When your pieces threaten more squares they become better.

In general, when you move a piece so that it attacks twice as many squares as it did before, it becomes twice as good. Maneuver it to attack even more squares and its power continues to grow.

Consider the knight. When the game starts it attacks or defends three spaces.
But after a single move toward the center of the board, suddenly it commands eight!More than twice as many squares under control makes the knight more than twice as powerful in the center than on the edge. Picture for yourself why “a knight on the rim is grim” or how pitiful the poor horse becomes when pushed to a corner.

This easy math is just one demonstration of why bringing a bigger army helps you win at chess.

Every piece benefits from commanding more squares. Boost your bishops’ capacity by giving them open diagonals. Turn your rooks into powerhouses by positioning them on open files and ranks. Use this math to understand one reason why pawns on the edge (which threaten one square each) are less powerful than all other pawns (which threaten two).

The math is not hard, nor is the principle: Boost the power of your pieces by arranging them to control more squares. 

Previous in the series – Part 4: Make Checkmate.

Next in the series – Part 6: Find Strong Candidate Moves.

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