Learn How to Use and Understand - The King
Kings, the only un-capturable piece, also considered useless by some, but I'm here to prove it Isn't!
What is A "King"?: Each team gets one king, the king can move one square in any direction as long as there are no other pieces in the way. You can't capture the king no matter what. In order to win in chess you have to "checkmate" the opponent's king, you can also deliver "checks" in order to lead to checkmate, develop pieces, to fork, or to just mess with them. As many of you know, the king is the only piece that can castle.
How Can Kings Be Useful?: Kings are underrated for a number of reasons, but to keep this blog short, I'll only be going over 3 of the major ways that a king can actually win you games! First, kings are really useful for blocking your opponent's pawns from promoting. You can use it to assist in checkmates, for example, you could push it into the corner and use a stronger piece such as a queen or rook to checkmate. Kings can also help for stalemate when you're at a disadvantage, they can even block other pieces and protect them at the same time. Kings are especially useful in endgames, to push the pawns, assist in checkmates, or even just to be in the game to help! The are plenty more ways that the kings can help in chess, if you are interested in part two, as always, let me know!
Disadvantages Of the King: Kings, as with every other piece, have disadvantages too. They can block your other pieces from developing, be forked, pinned, skewered, and block pawns from developing. At some unlucky points, in a game, you have to sacrifice an important piece in order to prevent checkmate or loss of an insane amount of pieces.
While writing this I realized that kings are better than we all thought, I was doing some research of my past games and how much the king participated throughout the game surprised me! Blogs may be delayed to 2-3 weeks due to school and personal issues, i'm sorry for the inconvenience. Have fun playing chess and remember, every loss is a win if you think about it! I tried to make a catchphrase lol.
