The Value of Space In 3 Check: Part 1
What is a space advantage? A space advantage occurs when one player has more room for their pieces to maneuver. A player with a space advantage will have greater control over the position with their pawns and pieces than their opponent. Here is an extreme example from a real game:
In the diagram above, White's pawns and pieces are aggressively placed while all of Black's pieces are useless on the back rank. White is controlling the whole board with their space advantage. The player who controls more squares has more room for their pieces to maneuver, giving them more options. When your pieces have more options then you increase your chances of creating threats. Notice how by pushing their pawn to e5 White was able to maneuver their Knight to e4 to threaten a free check on d6. Having more space not only increases the possibilities of your own pieces, but it also decreases the possibilities of your opponent's pieces. This is very valuable because if your opponent's pieces can't get into your position then they won't be able to create threats. That's why you should play aggressively with your pawns in the center whenever it's safe to do so.
Now I will show some example games. This first game shows how quickly a game can end even when the losing side made seemingly normal moves.
Here is another game where my opponent saw the Bxh7+ idea and tried to prevent it:
In both of these games I pushed my e-pawn to e5 (gaining space) which forced my opponent's Knight to move away from defending the Kingside. This left their King vulnerable to attack.
Here are 2 games showing how you can take advantage of Black's Knight being forced away from f6 with an early Qg4.
In both of these games I played Qg4 as soon as Black's Knight was forced away from f6. This provoked Black to make weakening pawn moves on the Kingside. I later took advantage of these weaknesses by sacrificing on g6.
Thanks for reading! Any feedback would be appreciated. In Part 2 I will share more advanced examples of obtaining and exploiting a space advantage.
