CAUTION! Don't block in your piece development and be stuck in the middle game!

#queenspawnopening #EnglundGambit 

One of the general opening principles is to "develop your pieces" from their starting position.  A consequence of this in operation is that one needs to be careful of blocking in their own pieces, for instance, with misplaced pawns.  This could potentially occur with pawns blocking the diagonals for your bishops, or the pawns occupying the development squares of the knights.

A further tactical idea then is that it is sometimes possible to block or box in your opponent's pieces and if achieved, you can gain an important advantage in the middle game.

This happened in this game where I played with the Black pieces.  I played the Englund Gambit against my opponent's Queen's Pawn Opening and it is accepted (1. d4 e5 2. dxe5).  We trade our knights, and then our queens, and then our second pair of knights.  Although Stockfish thinks that we're very equal after this trade on move 12 giving only the slimmest of advantage to Black [-0.20], I thought that I was quite a bit better.

As can be seen, both of my opponent's bishops were stuck, I had substantially more space, and had the option to castle to either side, developing my rooks into the centre.

This advantage in relative tempo and development became obvious in the subsequent few moves with me being able to launch an attack and infiltrate with my rook while White was still trying to develop.  On move 17 and 18, White underestimates the threat to their back rank and blunders an unavoidable checkmate.  Seeing the inevitable, my opponent resigns. GG!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/60484819207