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1-THE KNIGHT Knights are better when they re in the center of the board. Knight can jump up to 8 squares. in this exemple the knight is very helpfull to attack , protect , fork ...A knight in the center is a strong piece When in the edge , Knight is a poor piece , he control less squares and it s easy to trap them. Try to find how you can trap the black Knight? Now lets learn what is a good square for the knight ....Knight need "OUTPOST". What is an outpost ? It s a square where the knight cannot be chase by a pawn Here f5 is an outpost (opponent doesn t have pawn on the e and g files) , this is where we should put our knight , the opponent will no be able to chase our knight easily . But d5 will be a poor option , opponent will just have to push c6 to chase the knight , and make us loosing a tempo. 2-The BISHOP Some Bishops are GOOD BISHOPS , some are BAD BISHOPS In this exemple our pawns are on black square so the black square bishop can t moove freely, but look how beautiful is our light square bishop he can moove wherever you want , he is controling more squares than the black square bishop. That s why the light square bishop is the GOOD BISHOP , and the black square one is the BAD BISHOP. In this position both players have bad bidhops . But even a bad bishop can be an ACTIVE BISHOP if it is ahead of the pawn . so the bishop of the black player could be usefull while the weird bishop of the white player is completely useless! So you should avoid to put pawns ahead of your bishops! 3-BISHOP VS KNIGHT Bishops don t like , close position , look how hard it s to move our bishop with all these pawns in the center . So when you have the bishop pair and your opponent have knights try to trade pawns to open the position for your bishops. they will thanks you by crushing your opponent A bishop pair can control 26 squares if the position is open without pawns , while 2 knights can control only 16 squares max 4-The ROOK The rook is an heavy piece , hard to moove at the begining of the game but really strong in the endgame. To shine rook need OPEN FILES or HALF-OPEN FILES Open file : file without pawn Half- open files : with pawn of only one color here the half open file and the open files will be good for our rook, they ll control more squares and be able to attack opponent side. You should always try to control open file Often , it will be a nice idea to double our rook on these files to increase the threat CONCLUSION: Centralize your knights and place them on outpost Don't hide your bishops behind pawns if you have bishop pair open the position if you are againtst bishop pair close the position put your rooks on open and half open files