Difficulties Developing Bishops

I've noticed that overall I find my usage of bishops to be the clumsiest of all my pieces.  Specifically, I have massive brain cramps at times regarding how to develop them.  When the time comes to clear them off the back rank and give them new homes, I never know the best move.  Does anyone have any ideas or hints?  I know it's purely situational, but are there any general guidelines?

Hi jdilley,

There are general guidelines.  If you have only one Bishop try to keep it on the oppositve colour of square from your most dominant pawn chain.  Where you have two Bishops this isn't possible so try to move your 'bad Bishop' to a place where it is either free of the pawn chain or 'behind the scenes' strengthening the pawns in general.  Have you tried to fianchetto your Bishops before?

It's often good practise to try to trade your 'bad Bishop' for a minor piece of the opponent which is better poised to play than your 'bad Bishop'.  This gives you an advantage because you are removing a weakly positioned piece of yours by trading it off for a stronger positioned piece of the opponent.  In some cases strong players will even trade Rooks for Bishops or Knights for purely positional reasons as, believe it or not, sometimes enemy Bishops or Knights are actually causing more trouble than your Rooks are causing the enemy for purely positional reasons and it's a worthwhile trade.

Hope this helps!

Fianchetto'ing is quite good.  You should do it whenever possible, as long as your opponent doesn't have control of the diagonal (i.e. already fianchetto'ed on the same diagonal and you have no way to protect your bishop) before you.

This is ok.

Not this.

(Those are stripped-down, no-brainer examples, but I was just trying to show what could happen if you put the bishop on the diagonal too early.)

I used to have a problem appreciating my bishops as well.  All you need to do is see a couple of examples of good bishop play in order to start utilizing them better in your own games.

I wish I had an example of good bishop play.  I used to know some games that showed how effective the bishop pair could be.  I would recommend that you play over K + B + B vs. K endgame in order to get an idea of how strong they can be.  Once you see how to use them, that should give you a feel for how to develop them.