At the beginning of a Chess game, you can either play moves you think are logical - or use pre established opening moves.
Regardless of whether you learn these openings, there are certain principles you can apply at the beginning of the game for when your memory runs out.
Central Control
Controlling central space is crucial in Chess.
Think of control as a tree branch, if you control the center, your control
branches out to the sides too!
Typically, you'll first want to control the center with your pawns, followed by your other pieces.
We want to slowly encroach on our opponents space, taking control of the center before they do!
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Activity is very similar to central control, but pertains to ambiguous parts of the board.
We want to aim for superior piece activity in our games. Meaning our pieces control more squares than our opponents.
Not only are central squares important to control, but squares deep in enemy territory too, especially around the opponents king.
Great piece activity is the key to winning games.
Activity
Avoid Repeats
We've touched on piece activity and controlling the center, but there's one thing you want to look out for.
When we're developing our pieces, we want all of them to be developed as quickly as possible.
With this being said, we typically don't want to move the same piece twice out of the opening. Usually, we need both knights and bishops developed first before we can consider moving a piece twice.
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The Queen
The queen is the most powerful piece on the board, but it can't win the battle on its own.
We should not develop the queen too early, and certainly not before our bishops and knights.
Our queen becomes more of a target than an asset if we don't give her the backup she needs.
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King Safety
King safety is absolutely essential to any Chess position.
We talked about castling in a previous chapter, and generally speaking its always a good idea to castle your king to safety if you have the opportunity to.
Of course, early into the game its hard for us to be attacked, but the more pieces our opponent develops, the more danger our king is in.
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Development
Development is the process of bringing all of your pieces out to active positions.
A "fully developed" position involves both bishops and knights being activated, as well as the king being castled.
Pawns play a big role in this too, we want to make sure our own pawns don't hinder the development of our pieces. Not to mention pawns can be powerful positional pieces too.
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