Goals to achieve in the opening:
There are three goals to achieve:
A) - Developping your knights and bishops as fast as possible in a way where they can controls (or move if you prefer) into the center (e4, d4, e5, d5).
B) - Controling the center with your pawns.
C) - Castle with your king in order to place it on a secure area and also let your rooks switch easly toward the center. Sometimes, the secure area of the king is the initial area where the pawns' center is closed.
Pratical example :
Time in chess and open or closed position:
The time in chess is defined as the number of move you have to develop your pieces. You don't have to waste time in open pawn structure position. In open position it's one move, one piece developped.
The value of time in open position dependsof the position but we considere that three move more is approximatly equal to one pawn and it lintroduces the notion of gambit in the opening. A gambit is the fact to give up a pawn to accelerate our development compared to the one of our opponent. A gambit is good or not depending on the security of the king and the activity and number of your pieces developped.
What to do with a development lead ?
After the development of your pieces, you have to open the files for your rooks to attack the king.
The lead of development is more successful with the open file for the rooks. Let's go back to the first example.
Typical pawns' structure in common opening which determine the strategy of both side.
King side majority for whites. Chassing the Ne4 to use the majority. Open position.
Carlsbad pawns' structure. Semi-Closed postion. Pawn minority attack with b4-b5 or king side attack for whites with O-O-O.
Queen side majority for whites. Supporting and creating a passed pawn on the queen side. Semi-closed position.
Attack the pawn's base with c4-c5 for whites and then takes on d6 and attacks the weakness or enter on the c file on the 7th rank with the heavy pieces (rooks, queen) to attack on the queen side.
Blacks attacks the pawns' base with f7-f5 then f4-g5-h5-g4 to attack on the king side. Closed position.
Attacking the pawn's base on d4 for blacks. Whites attack on the king side thanks to the space advantage. Closed position.
Open position. Central isolated pawn for blacks. Whites should exchange the knight and bishop and then attack the isolated pawn with the heavy piece (rooks and queen).
Whites have to keep their center and one day or another push e5 on good conditions. Blacks have to destroy the whites' center and play on the queen side with their queen side majority if they can do it.
Bishop's pair for whites. Blacks have to close the position and put their pawns on dark squares to make their light square bishop a good bishop.
Central pawn majority for whites. Whites play in the center and on the king side. Blacks on the queen side and attack the central whites' pawns Open position.
Symetrical pawn structure. Whites have one more move to play. They have to be more active with their pieces to take an advantage.
Whites have a pawn majority in the center. They can attack on the king side or creates a passed pawn with d5.
Closed position. Blacks have to exchange the dark square bishop. Whites have to exchange the light square bishop. They have more space. The game can be played on the both side (queen or king side depending on the way the game continu).
To finish this blog, I have to say that an excellent opening player apply these basic rules I mentionned but it's not enough unfortunatly. An excellent opening player is also an excellent tactician and strategical player.
I may be forget some stuff, maybe some points are innacurate or wrong. If you think you can correct me on something I would be glad to see your point of view! If you have question on something I can try to answer in the comment.
