Opened... Now what?

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Ant_87

Nov 18, 2018

I know a few openings. Nothing to fancy to have it all memorized by name but once I’m “open” I end falling to my face either playing too safe or too aggressive. Where do you find your balance? (I realize it’s not a one-size-fits-all kinda solution)

stiggling

Nov 18, 2018

The basic formula is to move knights and bishops off the back rank, make your king safe, and then play pawn breaks to open lines for your pieces to infiltrate.

"pieces" in chess lingo are non-pawns and non-kings i.e. knights bishops rooks queens.

"lines" in chess lingo just means files, ranks, diagonals.

"infiltration" in chess lingo means placing a piece on your opponent's side of the board.

Players typically choose an area of the board to seek play on. Kingside, center or queenside. That's where you'll typically work to play the pawn break. Ideally you seek play in the area where your have a space and/or development advantage. For example if you have 2 knights and 2 bishops on the kingside, and your opponent has just 1 knight and 1 bishop, then you might seek play there.

As for infiltration, the most usual justification of infiltration is your pieces come into contact with slow moving targets i.e. pawns and kings. So you win pawns or play for checkmate. The easiest example of this is rooks on the 7th rank which threaten many of your opponent's pawns and sometimes help in checkmating.

stiggling

Nov 18, 2018

Randomly selecting 2 of your games, I see a player was ahead a whole piece early in the game.

In the beginning chess is more about not losing material for no reason. The better you are at that, the more strategy becomes relevant.

So first you have to form good habits, for example after your opponent moves figure out what the threat is, and when you have a candidate move you like, imagine it as if it's made, and see if your opponent can immediately punish it by playing a capture, check or threatening an undefended piece.

Everyone does these things sometimes, but your goal is to do it in 100% of your moves in 100% of your games. Forming these habits typically takes a year or two. If you play chess many hours a day, every day, then it can happen much faster.

Ant_87

Nov 18, 2018

Stiggling thankyou. This helps.

kindaspongey

Nov 18, 2018

Scottrf

Nov 18, 2018

For me the main thing (unless there are any tactics) is on a very simple level: 'How can I make my pieces better/my opponents pieces worse?' This could be simply moving a piece, but is often pawn moves which give you more space or open up certain diagonals/ranks. So it helps to have some understanding of the basic pawn structures.

For example against e4 openings black often wants to play d5 to attack the white centre/gain space. Often if he can he's done well out of the opening.

Attacking ideas/good positions for pieces are also based around this.

If you look at the Boleslavsky hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure You can see that white has an outpost (e5) that can't be attacked by a white pawn. A good spot for a knight.

In the same way the pawns tell you when you may want to exchange your minor pieces (e.g. swapping dark squared bishops if your opponent has advanced pawns around the king to leave the dark squares undefended).

As well as good spots for pieces the pawns often tell you where you should be attacking. Which will often be the base of the pawn structure.

If you look at the 'd5 chain' formation in the previous link you can see that white can easily advance his queenside pawns for space and playing for c5 will attack the base of the pawn formation and allow pressure/activity.