Castling Queenside
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I agree. In fact, there are certain situations where it’s best not to castle, like if there are several pieces and a strong pawn structure in front of your king. The Stonewall setup can be a good example of this. When I decide where to castle, because I almost always delay it, I look at my pieces and my opponent’s pieces and look at where they are.
Oh I didn’t see the other page
I was responding to JGambit.
I just started playing chess after not playing for 5 years or more. Even though I learned the game 30 years ago, I never took it serously until now. I consider myself an intermediate player even though people say my rating indicates beginner level. As far as castling goes, ever since I learned the game, for some reason I was tought to always castle king. Lately, I always try to castle queenside in 90% of my games because it seem having two rooks on the oppossing King makes for a better, aggressive attack. Yet when I review the games of the GMs, they seem to castle Kingside the majority of the time. Is casting queenside in almost every game I play a mistake and hurting my chances to improve in chess? I know, many of you will find this a rather stupid question, but for some reason, the double rooks attcking the king seem logical to me. Thanks
You will learn as you progress in chess is that the pawn structure dictates whether you will castle Kingside or Queenside. As you probably already know the pawn structure is the terrain (hills, valleys and mountains) of the battlefield on the chessboard. If you insist on castling Queenside when the terrain(pawn structure) indicates that the correct strategy is to castle Kingside or not castle you will play yourself into a bad game. It is rather like playing a strategy/plan to go thru a mountain on the terrain of the battlefield. It is doomed to failure.
What's are rules of thumb for "hills" determining castle side? I suppose the side offering the most over generally is preferable, but what else? Thanks.