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Focus on Half of the Board!

Focus on Half of the Board!

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SiddharthYenamandra
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This title is with ill intention! I'm just kidding. But looking at the title of this post, one would think that I am trying to give you all terrible advice. Focus on only half the board? Look what happened to former world champion Vishwanathan Anand when he only focused on the kingside and ignored the queenside.

Don't think this only applies to the kingside! In the below game, Wesley underestimated Nakamura's kingside attack and got brutally checkmated.

So what did I mean by half the board? I was talking about color complexes! The chessboard is made up of 64 squares, 32 are light and 32 are dark. By clamping down on one color and fully dominating on that color, you are guaranteed to slowly squeeze your opponent's position and win! 

Look at how Magnus Carlsen completely dominated the dark squares. From the opening he established a clamp on the dark squares and since black didn't have a dark squared bishop, they couldn't fight back!

Let's look at one more example. In this game, Nakamura dominates on the dark squares after playing the London System. He then slowly and patiently restricts Giri's pieces before finally winning material. 

Finally, let's conclude with a extreme example from one of my games, where I completely locked down on the dark squares, and in the end, infiltrated and delivered a ladder checkmate.

* Note: Though all the examples were only on the dark squares, you can also dominate on the light squares