Basic Principles
- Control the centre squares.
- Develop your pieces: Knights before Bishops because the Knights move slower than the Bishops, so they need a “head start”.
- Castle to protect your King.
- Don’t bring your Queen out to early: Your Queen might get chased around (wasting moves for you) and possibly captured.
- Connect your Rooks.
- Don’t move the same piece twice in a row.
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Chess Tactics
In order to get better in solving chess problems, you need to practice doing them.
Here’s a site that offers lots and lots of chess problems:
http://chesstempo.com/
- The more problems that you solve, the harder they will get; which helps make your stronger chess-wise.
- If you get a problem wrong, make sure that you click through the solution to understand it and to learn from it.
- You will need to create an username and password.
- After logging on, under the tab “Training”, select Chess Tactics.
Have fun!
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Knowing what the value of each piece is worth helps when a player is trying to decide whether to exchange pieces, e.g., a Knight for a pawn, or a Rook for a Queen, or a Bishop for a Knight.
- If you can exchange a piece for one with a higher value, in general, it’s a good move.
- One BIG exception would be that you make sure that what looks like a “good exchange” for you, doesn’t lead to a checkmate of your King!
What are the pieces worth:
- King = 0 or infiniti (if you lose your King, you lose the game!)
- Queen = 9 points or 9 pawns
- Rook = 5 points or 5 pawns
- Bishop = 3 points (some think even 3.5 pts) or 3 or 3.5 pawns
- Knight = 3 points or 3 pawns (slightly less than a Bishop)
- Pawn = 1 point
Exchange Decisions:
- No don’t trade your Knight for just 1 pawn => 3 pts vs. 1 pt.
- Yes, trade your Rook for your opponent’s Queen => 5 pts vs. 9 pts.
- Maybe/maybe not trade your Bishop for your opponent’s Knight => 3.5 pts. vs. 3 pts.