Moving the Bishop before the Knight?

Hey everyone,

I have just started learning about openiings and I bought the book on openings by Yasser Seriwan for beginners and in there you learn about the Ruy Lopez opening. One question though: I was watching on Youtube Bobby Fischer discuss a game with Morpy and someone else and he critiqed a move by black, which looked like the Ruy Lopez but just on blacks side, saying that you should never move your bishop UNTIL you have moved both knights. Was his critiqe only premised on the fact that black was doing this?  because if my memory serves me correctly, on whites side, for the Ruy, you only move Nf3, and then the finally you get to the Bishop.

Thank you all for your help I really appreciate it.

This is the link by the way to the Fishcer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuEUYpuDC3k

General advice like "knights before bishops" or "a knight on the rim is grim" are mere generalities, what Reuben Fine calls "counselling guidelines." Chess is full of exceptions. For example, the Modern Defense develops the bishop right away, at least in a fianchetto.

1. e4 g6
2. d4 Bg7

----------

(p. 4)
   It will sometimes be observed
that the ideas which are said to be
at the basis of certain openings are
either avoided or entirely absent
in practice. That is because ideas
are not dictatorial laws but coun-
selling guides. Strategy, the body
of ideas, holds only as a frame-
work. Tactics, the individual vari-
ations, is what goes into this frame-
work, which is why the result often
varies so widely from the original
conception. Frequently a line
which carries out the basic idea
and is therefore strategically
sound must be rejected because
there is a tactical refutation: it just
won't work. Proper timing comes
in here. Further, in most openings
there are several ideas for each
side, not all of which may be
realized in a single game.

Fine, Reuben. 1989. The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, Algebraic Edition. New York: Random House, Inc.

He's just saying it's a good rule for beginners... also it looks like there are some weird jump cuts in the video around that point. "This is a weak move already... you shouldn't move your Bishops before you bring out your Knights, you know?... These were very good rules for beginning players." It's possible he was qualifying those statements but it didn't make the final edit.

Pay more attention to his analysis where he shows why the move is bad in that position.

In the Ruy we know why the move is good. You might not really want to give up the Bishop just to hurt Black's pawn structure (unless maybe you are Bobby Fischer,) but the whole thing puts pressure on e5; it has a threat. The position in the video is not the same at all.

I like this series of videos, the first couple of which explore this kind of Bishop pin in many positions depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_zWJHYWWJs  Usually showing that it's not a very good idea.

  Thank you all for your help. Yes, you are all right: I remember once letting someone eat my knight up because I did not want to move one piece twice in the opening!

Tmkroll, the video I linked to is an edited version, in the ''real'' version, someone is transalting everything Bobby is saying and it kind of gets in the way, so someone edited it out. I will also look at the link thank you.

Sqod, thank you for that qoute, I will take it to heart.

That makes sense (about the edits.) I should also say Speaking of the Spanish Game (watching the first video I just posted), but white does play h3 to stop the Bishop pin in that line because White wants to make c3 d4 work, so White can't have the Knight pinned. Sometimes the pin is a threat. If Fischer was looking at that kind of position he might have said " normally you shouldn't move your Bishops before Knight, you know?...but here..."

I never took notice of "Knights before Bishops" at any point in my learning.  Simply the aim of developing my pieces to active square was enough to go with as a beginner.  Unless you play the Four Knights game there really aren't that many openings I can thini of where both sides move both Knights before both Bishops.

Playing a Bishop out to pin a Knight to King or Queen, indirectly putting pressure on a central pawn is a very common theme.

Some beginner guidelines I think are very useful so long as you always know they are guidelines not struct rules, but that one I don't see as useful at all.

When you are a beginner playing against other beginners your opponent isn't going to be good enough to punish what at worst would be a minor error, by the time you are playing opponents who do know how to punish mistakes you have likely developed your own chess knowledge to the point where such guidelines are irrelevant and you can make your own decisions what to move when and where.

After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 White only has ONE positional advantage: the possibility of building a strong centre with c3,d4 or c3,d3,d4. Black can't do like this, because his c-pawn is blocked. That's one of the reasons, why the Ruy Lopez is so popular.

There a 2 points behind developing the knights before the bishops:

- It's unclear on which square the bishops belong, in an early stage of the game. The knights in general don't have this problem.

- The bishop and the pair of bishops have more value, so you don't want to lose time with that piece / or exchange it, if it's attacked for example by a knight.