Author: DJCA

(Fine) 8. Play to get control of the centre.

(Lasker) 3. Bring out your knights before developing your bishops, especially the Queen’s Bishop.

Don’t play a move with a one-move threat that can be easily stopped.

One key idea: the passed pawn. 1. Endgames, and some middlegames, are all about creating and advancing a passed pawn. Either the pawn queens, or your opponent gets so tied up in knots trying to stop it that they lose something else.

* Open files are precious. If there is one around, with Rooks on the board, you must seek to control or challenge it. Particularly in open positions, control of files is paramount.

* Your plan must be based on the actual features of the position. Work out what each side should be up to. You can’t attack the King just because you want to. Play where you have some advantage. Silman talks about the ‘pawn-pointing’ rule: you have more space to attack where the Pawn-chains point. This is also true for blocked positions, like the French where opening a file with …c7-c5 will not leave you with a backward Pawn as does …f7-f6.

6. If you are just one pawn ahead, in 99 cases out of 100 the game is drawn if there are pawns on only one side of the board.

* PAWNS: You will have to move some to get your pieces out, and you can try to dominate the centre with pawns on e4 and d4 ( perhaps with c4 and/or f4). But the pawns in front of your castled King form a solid wall on f2/g2/h2, and those on a2/b2/c2 are probably OK where they are too. So, oddly, pawns are often well-placed where they are at the start of the game. “Every pawn move loosens the position”, says Tarrasch: if you move the pawn on g2 to g3, you immediately get holes at f3 and h3. Moving a pawn from f2 to f3 not only takes away the best square for your Knight, which is a good defender of the pawn on h2, but also opens up a check to your King from c5. When the endgame appears, one side or the other will have to win material to win – by queening a Pawn, or at least threatening to. Then Pawns can be moved more freely, to block opposing Pawns, to create and support extra or passed Pawns of their own side, and to keep out the opponent’s pieces – including their King.

10. Do not place pawns on the colour of your bishop.

(Fine) 3. Black’s problem is to secure equality.