Weak Squares

Does anyone know of any good training material (online or book) that focuses on weak squares? I would prefer a book that has questions or puzzles at the end of each chapter. 

Thanks in advance

That sounds interesting, unfortunately I don't know of anything like that. A strategy (or even endgame) book would have good examples, but I don't know of any material that solely focuses on weak squares.

The basic idea though is a square that one player can't easily influence, but the other player can. Since pawns can chase out all the other pieces, generally a weak square is one that can't be defended by a pawn. Generally the way you exploit them is as infiltration points to attack surrounding squares.

For example in the diagram below, black is practically winning already. The c2, c4, and e4 squares are all weak squares, and make for good infiltration points for black's pieces. Getting a rook to c2, and/or knight to e4, c4 are all strong ideas for black.

On c2 a rook would pressure everything on white's 2nd rank. On c4 a knight would pressure the e3 and a3 pawns.

If I spot a weak square, I would assume that I center my plans around it, but how can I get a winning advantage out of it?

Yeah... that's what makes chess so hard... you don't necessarily center your plans around it. You'd only do that if the weak squares are useful.

Really I think the most straightforward way I can explain it is you use them as infiltration points to attack weak pawns (or the king). A knight on c4 in the above diagram attacks e3 and a3, and we know those pawns are weak because no friendly pawn can protect them.

Same for Rc2. It attacks g2 and menaces h2 and the white king.

Of course single pieces by themselves don't win pawns (or the game) but after you have something like a knight on c4 or rook on c2, you move your other pieces to help pressure those pawns (and/or the enemy king).

I remember when I was new, and I asked a higher rated player for help. He said see the weak pawn there? Attack it, that should be your plan. I responded that if I knew how to do that I wouldn't be rated so low!

Really, his words made no sense.

If that's where you are right now, just ignore weak squares, and work on tactics. When your games stop being won and lost on giving away material, suddenly strategic ideas start to make a lot more sense... because you'll actually see them happening in your own games. You'll have personal experience where you seemingly did nothing wrong, but somehow your opponent's pieces are better, and they're making obvious attacking moves, pressuring your pawns for example, but you simply don't ever have enough defenders. That's when it starts to make more sense.

Although having said that, if you're really interested, then buy a book on strategy and read it. I think Pachman's Modern Chess Strategy is great. Whether you should do that or focus on tactics I'm not sure.

Anyway, the list @imbacon has often posted has a lot of useful tips

Opening Principles:

1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5

2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key

3. Castle

4. Connect your rooks

Tactics...tactics...tactics...

Pre Move Checklist:

1. Make sure all your pieces are safe.

2. Look for forcing move: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) this will force you look at, and see the entire board.

3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board.

4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece.

5. After each move by your opponent, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"

Also you can play against the engine...

Click the button in the bottom left corner of the diagram I posted. It will open a new window with a chess engine running. You play white, and whatever the engine wants to play you make those moves for black, and see how black might win that position.

For example, I tried to play against the engine. White's position is completely horrible, there are no good moves.