The more pieces on the board, the more chances to get advantage. If you trade all when the game is even, it's draw.
Moreover, there are good and bad pieces, often the exchange is better to one of the players, so second avoids it as long as he can
Why Don't Pros Immediately Take/Trade Pieces?
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Jun 19, 2014
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#3
More pieces = more complexity.
More complexity = more winning chances for the stronger player.
A lot of times when you take an opponents piece it brings his defending piece to a better square. E.g. if your rooks are attacking each other and he has a rook defending then it will bring his other rook into the game, so he controls the file and you no longer have a rook on the file.
So you're wasting moves to help out your opponent.
Exchanging leads to a loss of piece activity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmJcUI_wSy8
Higher rated players also dont mind trading a bad bishop for a good knight. Ofcourse the opponent also knows that the bishop is bad and the knight is good, so he will never make the trade. And because of that the trade can be easily offered.
In low rated games people dont recognize which piece is good/bad and just trade away.
Follow-up Questions:
1.) How do you avoid trades? These guys will often force trades.
2.) How do you move beyond superficial play/attacks? How does one develop complex plans and strategy beyond a basic obvious tactic or trade?
defenserulz wrote:
Follow-up Questions:
1.) How do you avoid trades? These guys will often force trades.
2.) How do you move beyond superficial play/attacks? How does one develop complex plans and strategy beyond a basic obvious tactic or trade?
1) You don't have to avoid trades in the opening. Just avoid trades that are bad for you. If they're constantly trading pieces and accelerating your development then you'll have a better position. Once your position is better it's time to look hard for tactical possibilities.
And if your pieces are much better in the middlegame, that's when you avoid trades. When you recognize their piece can't get active, then just move your piece somewhere else to avoid the trade. Ideally its new home will have as many of the following as possible: centralized, good mobility, protected or can't be chased away, attacks a weakness, defends a weakness, doesn't get in the way of your other pieces trying to find similar homes.
2) Learn about strategy and endgames. Videos, book, coach, whatever. In the beginning all you need are basics, so don't get a huge endgame tomb. Instead get something like Seriwan's Winning Chess Endgames (that series of books also has a strategy book).
When you know what endgames are good for you (and your opponent) and you can identify some strategic elements in the middlegame, then deducing when and what to trade becomes easier.
What most beginners might see as a fair trade can be actually very unballanced. They usually consider only the material value of pieces. In the position of the first diagram, for example, white can force the trade of the bishop for the knight, with Bxc6. However, doing so would mean they lose the bishop that was creating pressure on an open and very important diagonal.
Also the pawn structure of the white's kingside would be weakened if white is to trade the bishop, because the g2 pawn moved and there would be no bishop to defend the weakened light squares (f3 and h3). A third problem of this trade is that it allows black to move the b pawn in the recapture and intensify his fight for the center, or to move the d pawn and open a diagonal for his bishop with gain of tempo.
In this second diagram I show a tipical "bad bishop" position, in which black's bishop is blocked in the center by his own pawns. This bishop is bad and inactive, while white's knight is in an excellent outpost and can actually jump trough the blocked pawns. Notice also that, while the knight can eventualy attack the pawns, the bishop can't, because of colour limitation. White can trade the knight for the bishop here, but it seems better to keep the strong knight and let black strugle with their weak bishop.
I play in sub-1200 games online and have noticed that a very common motif seems to be people taking/trading pieces relatively earlier in games. This leaves the board sort of naked and pushes things into an endgame faster.
Conversely, when I watch videos of GM games, there is often a lot of piece manuevering before they start taking. Why don't they take earlier?
By take, I mean an even exchange where a piece is getting single coverage and no one is really up material. In my sub-1200 games (especially 900 and below), people just aim/line their pieces up for attack and then go at it. It's like a slaughter fest.
My bishop can take his knight that is covered by a single pawn? BAM! Done!...My knight can take his knight covered by the queen? ....Done! A pawn is open to take? Done!
I wonder if it's just a lack of imagination on players' parts? Perhaps they just look for the most obvious target to aim and fire at? Why don't the pros just start doing this sort of stuff? Again, this is assuming equal trades here.
[Note: I'm not saying all sub-1200 players do this sort of thing or even the majority necessarily. It's just that I seem (unless my memory is wrong or selective) to see this sort of thing happen a lot.]