Top 10 chess principles that every player should know

There are tons of chess principles out there, but today I've taken 10 of the most important chess principles that everyone should know and can use to win more games. Some of them you might already know, but some you might not, so let's begin!

1. Know when to trade bishops and knights

Bishops thrive in open positions where as knights are better in closed positions. Know what is a good and bad bishop. Bishops that are locked inside the pawn chain or have no specific targets are said to bad bishops. The light-squared bishop on c8 in the French defense is a bad bishop. Why? Because most often the pawn on e6 hinders the development of the bishop to a useful diagonal.

So if you have a bad bishop, try trading it. If you have a good bishop, never trade it. Also trading bishops just doesn’t end there. You have to look your pawns’ color complex with your bishop’s. It is almost always good to trade a bishop for the knight in closed positions, because in closed positions the bishops stare at a pawn chain whereas the knights can hop around, it can be bothersome.

Incase of open positions, the bishops are clearly better than the knights. Bishops have a greater range of motion compared to knights. In open positions, bishops control a lot of squares. They simply dominate the knights in open positions, so it is wise to trade off a knight for a bishop in open positions.

Take the Danish gambit for an example:

2. Identify weak squares and exploit them 

A square which cannot be controlled by opponent’s pawns are known as weak squares. Identifying those squares is simple, check if a square can be controlled by any of the opponent’s pawns. If they can’t, then it’s said to be a weak square.

3. Know the relative value of the pieces 

This point is very important when it comes to attacking. When you are attacking, it is important to eliminate the defending pieces. In those situations, the value of those pieces tend to be higher than one of your attacking pieces. This isn’t necessarily true every time, but can be applicable sometimes.

4. Rook Belong on open or semi open files

Rooks are very similar to bishops. Bishops move in diagonal and rooks move vertically and horizontally. So if a rook is locked behind pawns, it’s more or less waste. I think it pretty straight forward to understand this. In open files, rooks can cover a lot of squares. They can switch roles between defensive and attacking.

5. Knights are the best blockaders

Y'all know that bishops and knights have the least value next to pawns. So, only knights and bishops can act as good blockaders compared to other pieces like rooks and queen as they can get kicked very easily. And if you didn’t know what a blockader is, a blockader is a piece which stops / prevents the movement of pawns. The problem with bishops is that they can only move in diagonals and in the same colors. So if a bishop is challenged by the same colored bishop, then it has to be traded off. But knights on the other hand have better mobility as a defender compared to bishops which is why they are considered to be the best blockaders.

6. Opposite colored bishop are drawish 

This is fairly simple and straight forward. In an opposite colored bishop ending, all you have to do is to put all your pawns in the same color as your bishop and defend them. Your opponent can never attack the pawns if it’s defended by the bishops.

But, this is not the case every time as there can be cases where the bishop is stuck in an awkward position and is unable to defend it’s pawns. Even if you are down a pawn or two, there are cases where it’s defendable, but not every time.

7. Two pawns on the sixth rank will always beat a rook 

Usually in endgames, if two connected pawns manage to reach the sixth rank, then it can beat a rook.  Also, this is only applicable if the king is too far from the pawns. If the king can assist the rook, then it is not possible. Also, it doesn’t matter whose turn it is, if they manage to make to the sixth rank, they can’t be stopped by a rook.  

8. Try to trade the fianchettoed bishop    

 This is very important because, most often black tries to conserve the bishop somehow as it acts as a good defender and a good attacking piece. The best way to trade it off is to launch a queen-bishop battery and challenge the bishop before the rook moves. Once that bishop is eliminated, all you have to do is to coordinate your queen and rook on the corner file.

Let’s take sicilian dragon for example, white should trade his dark-squared bishop with black’s bishop, place his queen along the c1-h6 diagonal and chug his h-pawn to free the h-file for the rook. Black most often tries to keep his bishop alive with Re8 and Bh8.

9. Wrong coloured bishop resulted in a draw

If you have a corner pawn and a bishop which is opposite to the color of the square of promotion, you are not gonna win if the opponent’s king makes it to the corner. It’s because you cannot force the king out of the corner without checking it. This will come very handy if your opponent is up multiple pawns in a bishop ending. Note that this is applicable only for corner pawns. If it were any other pawn, then you can get your opponent into zugzwang with a waiting move.

10. Deal an attack with a counter attack 

Have you ever encountered a KID game in your life. I mean “King’s Indian Defense”. Incase you are not familiar with this, it is an opening response of black for 1.d4. Black tries to attack the kingside and white tries to attack the queenside in the meanwhile. When you attack on one side, you compromise the safety of the other sides and try to finish off the game before your opponent starts to counter-attack on the other side. I’m not telling you to completely abandon the side you are getting attacked. You are supposed to defend it sometimes. What I’m telling you is to prepare your arsenal to attack on the other side once you have defended successfully. That is exactly what happens in the KID. Either black crashes through in the kingside or white wins enough material on the queenside. Also, it’s ok to get greedy sometimes.

That’s all there is for today guys. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please join my club or subscribe to my YouTube channel you have know idea how much that helps me and see you in the next blog, thank you.

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