Instructive Games I: Opening Principles

Hi! I will post from time to time on topics I find useful to develop your chess skills. And the best way I know is by studying games of the greatest players of all time. I will choose well-known games vastly analyzed in the chess literature, so I don't plan to add much in this respect. My only interest is to higlight one or two concepts that will be our main takeaway from that game. 

I would like to start this "Instructive Games" series with a classic game of Paul Morphy, the American Champion in the XIXth century and considered the world`s greatest player of his time.

The reason I like this game is its simplicity and illustration of Opening Principles.

Let's remind the 3 Opening Principles: centre control, development of the pieces, and king's safety. When playing the opening we should constantly check whether we can get an advantage in any of them, or avoid falling in disadvantage. Another important factor in the opening -and in the whole game - is material balance of course.

In this game we will see that while the centre was controlled by both opponents similarly with pawns in e4 and e5 respectively, Morphy quickly developed his pieces and his opponent didn´t. Then due to his avantage in development, he took the initiative an wouldn´t let the opponent put their king to safety - he created threads with his active pieces so castling was not possible for the opponent, and their king remained in the centre.