Fundamentals: Opening principals

Hello, chess.com! It’s me, HitThePin, and here I am with a blog post after so, so long.

You are a chess player. And you’re probably a good one. If your rating is at least a mere 900, you can probably defeat any of your casual-playing friends easily. That’s good. And if you’re above 1200, you are in the 90th percentile of all players.

You’re a good player.  And one of the biggest things that good players do is follow opening principles. We’ve heard them repeated to us, over and over again. In fact, my friend Waredude made a great post about this topic here.

Control the center, develop quickly and efficiently, castle and connect your Rooks. You and I follow these seemingly iron rules, and so we usually survive to a middlegame.

But have you ever asked yourself, why? Why do I have to follow these rules? Or perhaps you notice that when you don’t follow the principles, you have a harder time. Maybe you’ve completely forgotten the principles and just follow them like they’re second nature.

Well, today I’ll show you why, and talk about each of the opening principles.

CONTROLLING THE CENTER

I’m sure that you’ve heard of this one, right? Two different schools of chess were created just so they could argue about what this rule really means. One of the first lessons chess.com gives you is control the center.

But why?  What makes d4, e4, d5, and e5 so special?  Why do we all covet these squares as eternal homes for our pieces?  The following diagrams should explain why.  Feast your eyes:

How many squares does the White Queen control?  It's an exercise in patience to count them: there's 27.  Ok, now look at this:

Now how many squares does the Queen claim dominance from?  Multiplying will make this calculation a lot easier: it controls 21.

Going down from twenty-seven squares to twenty-one is a 23% decrease.  That's over a fifth, that's huge.

Another example: behold the light-squared bishop.

It controls a lucky thirteen squares. Now compare it to its corner companion:

This time the Bishop only controls seven squares: that's almost half the squares that it controlled on its central perch.

For the biggest example, consider the most important square on the board, the King:

Strongly placed on the center of the board, it can reach eight different squares. You know what's coming next now: 

The cornered King can only reach a pitiful three squares.

From these examples, one can clearly see that a piece in the center is doing far more work than one stuck in the corner, on the sides, or even just a a little bit closer to the edge.

From this it is not that difficult to see why the center squares are so important - if your piece is controlling more squares than its opposite-colored brethren, it is doing more work. You are in affect material up!  It is not difficult to conclude that control of the center is very important.

DEVELOPMENT

What is development? Development is defined as: “More force in a specific area of the board,” by Jermey Silman.

The advantage of having a lead in development is quite simple: if your pieces are out and the opponet’s are stuck at home, your pieces are doing more, and once again you are in affect material up. This is why being White is such an advantage: obviously, that extra tempo gives you a lead in development, and you can often convert that into the initiative.

For instance, the common line of 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 sees White putting his first move to work: he is taking the initiative by attacking the Black pawn.

So far with the things you already know. But if you really want to see the epic proportions that a lead in development can take on, check this game out: 

CASTLE, CONNECT YOUR ROOKS

Castling is a very special move - the only move that allows you to move two pieces at once.  It does two special thing: it connects the Rooks, thereby completing your development (see the last section), and it brings your King to safety.

Now, like I said, you and I know this and follow these rules.  But what would happen to a person if, dare I say it, they left their King stranded unfortunately in the middle?

Say hello to this game between two beginners. (Credit where credit is due: this is from @Waredude 's post, and I have no idea where he got it from.)

To you beginners: next time you forget to castle and still win the game, play over this game and HAMMER the idea in your head that you still need to castle.

And to the rest of you: the next time that hardheaded beginner comes up to you and says that castling doesn't matter, show them this game.  Maybe they'll finally understand.

(And as a sublter point, also take this game as example that an attack still rage even without Queens.) 

As always, thanks for reading my blog! Since you’ve come this far and viewed it, why not leave a comment on it? Is this “fundamentals” idea good? If so, maybe I’ll do one on tactics or something. See you around!