[960 Opening Theory] The Chess960 battle for tempo and initiative

Hi there

Chess960 is cool because you get starting positions where there are concentrated clusters of small tactics that emerge dynamically as a result of the starting position itself. These micro battles rapidly shift the two central themes of the Chess960 opening between the two players:

1. Which player has the development tempo? White naturally has one tempo at the start of the game because he has the move. Development tempo is a discussion of how many moves it takes to complete development relative to your opponent. If you have two moves to go to complete development while your opponent has three, you are up a development tempo.
2. But which player has the initiative? It is a debatable point whether white has the initiative at move one or not. White has a tempo, but initiative is a discussion about whether tempo can be sacrificed for the sake of undeniable positional or material gain.

Here is a great example that illustrates the point very well. Please feel free to comment or to post your own examples:

SP045: (Knights together stay together?!)

A beautiful example no? It is not the main line from the game however, just a variation to illustrate the point. Be sure to scroll through the comment window to see all the text. Keep a tally on a piece of paper yourself to double check me on how much tempi white has relative to black, and who has the initiative at each move. A simple two column tally like that tells you a lot about how the opening is progressing. If you learn to do this in your mind during the game, you will gain more confidence about how to proceed during the 960 opening phase that has so many side alley ways that sometimes have to be traveled delaying development.

Cheers, Enjoy

Thank you for the clear explaination of how to keep track of ones progress in a 960 game. Very good article! I certainly learned something. I may decide to play a 960 games on here to work on my chess principles. You made a good point in bringing that up. Analyzing the games afterward will really help to see where I am weak in ideas.

Thank you for taking your free time to educate us new players.

Thanks Tpb, after four years you have reminded me to include these articles in my main blog on Chess960 because they are fairly useful.

http://chess960jungle.blogspot.com.au/

Happy to help. I went to the Chess960 jungle. It's amazing how the minor pieces have special names depending upon there location on the chess board.  I will learn more about what the site knows. There is very little literature on 960 in book form.