Well, the fight for the center squares may be transposable to standard chess, but I feel that in this game knights and bishops are often exchanged early, while you tend to keep them to control late middlegame in standard chess.
Also in many games of KOTH your king stays in the middle, and even when castling its only a temporary defensive measure. It is not so advisable to proceed like this, and let your king so exposed in standard chess.
This king exposure is compensated by sacrifices of sometimes heavy pieces just to remove a pawn that might block access to the goal cases, or just as a wall against long range action enemy pieces. Because your king in just 1 or 2 steps away from promised land, you can afford to sacrifice 1 or 2 or 3 pieces in a row to clear the path.
In standard chess, these kind of sacrifices would only arise in mate or back rank threats situations and generally in the corners or the edges of the board, while in KOTH they arise in the center.
On the other hand, sacrifices in the center in standard chess are more related to a positional advantage with always the idea of getting back material in the long term. So in my opinion both games have quite different global strategies regarding sacrifices and king exposure.
Hello guys, I've been enjoying king of the hill lately and played quite a lot. I wonder is it also good practise for standard chess? What do you guys think. I believe this mode trained my mid-game tactics quite a lot.