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diagonals

  1. Bishops often take the scenic route, weaving from side to side to reach their target. Their paths are the diagonals
  2. There are four key diagonals in the opening game of chess, at least in the classical open games:
    • Italian diagonal -- the one in the Italian Game leading to f7, a2-g8 (Schiffers-Harmonist)
    • Greek diagonal -- the one leading to h7, b1-h7, named for the 'Greek gift' sacrifice on that square, as illustrated by many examples from El Greco
    • long diagonal -- the longest diagonal, a1-h8 (and a8-h1) (Rohde-Bonin)

development

  1. Development is the opening task of getting your pieces off the back rank and into the game.
    • Develop your minor pieces first, towards the centre
    • Get your King out of the centre by castling early on
    • Hold back your Queen until or unless it can't be bothered by the enemy pieces. The Queen is the most powerful piece but therefore the most valuable, and she has to run away when attacked by a less valuable piece.
    • Try to move each piece only once until you have developed every piece (when your Rooks are connected)

co-ordination

  1. Co-ordination at its simplest is when pieces help each other -- as when your Bishop and Knight gang up on f7 (first example), or fail to help each other, when they are pointing in different directions (also the first example).
  2. When it works, you can feel the pieces 'flow' nicely on the board, having a supportive role for each other -- either attacking the same squares or making sure all the squares are covered by someone in the team. (Botvinnik-Robatsch)

colour complex

"Mecking does not understand the significance of weak and strong squares. I have played him three times. In 1969 he lost to me owing to the weakness of his light squares. A year later he presented me with all the dark squares and again suffered defeat. And in the San Antonio tournament of 1972, Grandmaster Mecking again let me have dark-square control, and with it - victory. What distinguishes Mecking is lively piece play, but he has no genuine grasp of the underlying nature of a position; this is what makes me have doubts about his future as a player." - Tigran PETROSIAN.

centre

"Chess is a terrible game. If you have no centre, your opponent has a freer position. If you do have a centre, then you really have something to worry about!" - Siegbert TARRASCH.
  1. On an empty board, every piece controls more squares from a central square than one on the side or in a corner. (Well, not the Rook.) (Spassky-Nikolaevsky)
  2. This is especially true for the short-stepping Knight, which will find it easier to join a fight anywhere on the board if it starts from the centre. (Georgadze-Kupreichik)

bind

  • A bind is a limit on what a player can do, because the opponent controls some important bit of the position. White's control of the d-file in Short-Timman left Black powerless.
  • The most famous bind in chess is that of Maroczy in the Sicilian Defence. Black's counterplay in the Sicilian often depends on White's backward c-pawn, and/or a pawn break with ...d5: White's c4 stops both ideas and limits Black to much more modest shuffling. (Euwe-Winter)

battery

  1. When two pieces queue up on a file or diagonal, they more than double their power.
  2. When two Rooks join forces on a file or rank, we call them doubled. (Nilsson-Boehm, Marshall-Capablanca)
  3. You can even triple major pieces on a file. (Alekhin-Nimzowitsch, Karpov-Kasparov)
  4. A Queen and a Bishop can combine to form a powerful battery on a diagonal. (Yusupov-Lobron)

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Bad Bishop

  1. A Bad Bishop is a Bishop hampered by its own pawns. If it's your only piece, or one of a few pieces remaining, it can lose you the game (Bernstein-Mieses)
  2. If your position overall is good, you can tolerate a poor Bishop in the mix. Several defences ask Black to put up with a bad Bishop (French Defence, Orthodox QGD) and they have lasted OK

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Back rank

The weakness of the last rank is notorious.
  1. The King can and should castle, but then it is behind a wall of pawns, unable to move forward, and vulnerable to a back rank mate. (Regis-Springall, Bernstein-Capablanca)
  2. Even if the King escapes, the enemy pieces can get behind the defences using the last rank. (Bartlett-Regis, Sunye Neto-Nunn)
  3. For fear of a back rank mate, many players automatically play h3/h6 to give air (luft) for the King

    activity

    "The most important feature of the chess position is the activity of the pieces. This is absolutely fundamental in all phases of the game (opening, middlegame and especially endgame). The primary constraint on a piece's activity is the Pawn structure." -- Michael STEAN
    1. Piece activity is more than enough to win a game. (Rubinstein-Schlechter)
    2. Having just one better piece can win you the game. (Euwe-Thomas, Tal-Lisitsyn)
    3. It can be worth giving up material to get more activity. (Karpov-Kasparov, Marshall-Capablanca)

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