My first hurdle as a budding chess player is getting a handle on some basic chess openings. This article is an ongoing analysis of one of the more common opening scenarios that I have seen in my games.
The opening refers to the first phase of the chess game, where each player attempts to get a better position than her opponent. There are an assortment of “guiding principles” that I have found regarding openings that people keep agreeing on, so I am assuming they are solid. A few of these principles are:
- Focus your development on getting your pieces to control those four key center squares (So, an opening move by putting a pawn or knight on the edge of the board is weaker than bringing a pawn to the center)
- Develop pawns before knights before bishops
- Don’t bring your queen out too soon
- You should not move your pieces more than once in the opening.
- Your pawns should not block further development of your pieces
Virtually all of the common chess opening positions have been named, cataloged and studied by chess players for the past 500 years, so it is not too difficult to find information on common move sequences, called lines, that can result from each position.
The opening scenario that we are going to look at today is one possible continuation of the “King’s Knight Opening” that I discussed in the last blog post. The King’s Knight Opening starts out like this:
As we learned last time, this is a very common scenario, the white player opening the game by moving his King’s pawn two spaces to square e4. This is good because it frees up his queen and bishop, and also gets himself situated right there in the center of the board, where he should be. The black player moves her pawn the same way, and receives the same benefits. The white player then moves his knight to square f3, attacking the Black player’s pawn, which is undefended. Black needs to come up with a good move to defend that pawn, because otherwise she will lose her claim in the center of the board.
We learned last time that black should definitely not move her f-pawn to f6, even though it looks like it could be a good way to support the pawn on e5. Doing so will probably lead to a world of hurt. Instead, most of the authors and players I’ve run into consider Black’s best move to be 2 .. Nc6, which is shorthand for saying moving her queen’s knight to square c6:
This way, black’s e-pawn is defended and her knight is developed. Furthermore, she has a strong hold on square d4, which places her in the dominant position, at least for now. This situation is so common that it should have its own name, but I don’t think it does.
From here, the white player has several possibilities, but I like castling early, so I usually develop my light-square bishop next. But where to put it? Moving it to e2 is safe, but it really doesn’t do much in terms of developing the bishop or taking control of the center, plus it blocks the queen on the right diagonal. Moving it to d3 is no good because it blocks the d-pawn, thereby shutting in the dark-square bishop and the queen. Moving it to square c4 is a great option, as it takes full control of d5 and allows for further development of pieces. More common, however, is moving the bishop all the way to b5. This is called the Spanish Game or the Ruy Lopez Opening.
I was surprised when I learned that 3. Bb5 was as common a move as it is, because it at first seemed counterintuitive considering the general opening guidelines. White does not control a center square with his bishop, and will likely have to move it again. But it does threaten the Knight that is protecting black’s valuable e-pawn, and provides a direct line of attack to the king should that knight have to move (for instance, to capture white’s knight if it captures black’s e-pawn.) Plus, if the white bishop takes the black knight, it can only be reclaimed with a pawn, which would block in black’s c-pawn.
Black has several possible responses to this scenario, and the choice she makes will determine the flow of the game. She could move her d-pawn to support her e-pawn (making it less desirable for white to capture the black knight) or she could attack white’s undefended e-pawn by moving her king’s knight to f6, or she could move her dark-square bishop to c5, staking a claim on that whole diagonal.
What happens most commonly, I find, is that black does not want that bishop to be there at all. So, she plays a simple move, a6, which forces the bishop to either act now or retreat. This is called the Morphy Defense.
From here, I usually play 4. Ba4, moving the bishop back to a4 to get out of the way of the pawn. This way, my bishop is still threatening the same pieces. In my experience, the black player usually responds by moving her b-pawn to b5, threatening my bishop yet again, and forcing it off of its threatening diagonal.
Black’s other options are:
(1) King’s knight to f6, threatening white’s undefended e-pawn
(2) Queen’s pawn to N6, supporting the e-pawn but momentarily pinning the knight
(3) Dark-square bishop to c5, taking control of a diagonal and threatening to trap white’s bishop
