Originally posted by Panzer22
Where could I find definitions for the following terms:
Queen's Gambit
King's Gambit
"Developping" a piece
I hear them used a lot in chess games, but I never knoiw what they mean. Any help?
The thing about 'developing' that is important to remember is this:
Most of the major pieces, with the exception of the rooks, get
stronger in the center of the board.
Therefore when you develop a piece you are putting it on a square
that gets it closer to the center. In general terms, the more
squares a piece covers, can go to or attack at the same time,
the stronger the piece becomes.
Take the Knight.
Put it in the corner of the board.
It can only go to 2 squares from that position.
Now put it in any of the 16 center squares.
It can now cover 8 squares.
That makes the same piece four times stronger in the center than
the corner which is why the four corner squares are occupied in the
opening by rooks. Rooks are the exception.
They don't much give a shite where they are located, they can
cover the same number of squares just as well in the corner as in
the center but its one of the last ones you develop, you try to get
your knights and bishops and a few center pawns attacking into the
center as quickly as possible, THEN get the rooks in position, which
usually means they are still on the back rank because they cover just
as much territory there as anywhere else, and the queen the last to
come on to the playing field and get involved. Little guys first (knights
and bishops and center pawns) rooks next, which with castling
does double duty by getting the king the hell out of the way in the
relative safety of the back side left or right and the rooks starting to
get in play, castling does that in one move.
Then get the queen into action but not before.
Its like on a battlefield of 15th century england, the cavlary, knights
an archers come out, THEN the king somewhere behind them because
if you lose the king, you lose the game. Or the Queen in the case
of chess, lose that and its mostly over.
Kings gambit and queens gambit are about the pawns to the left of
the queen or to the right of the king being at least potentially
sacrificed in order to distract the other side and get what is called
"tempo" out of the sacrifice. Tempo is where you get a lead in
development of your minor or major pieces usually because the
opponent brings out a strong piece, say a rook, and it gets attacked
by something smaller, say a pawn or a knight, this gives the attacker
basically a free move because the knight attacking the rook usually
gets closer to the center and is hopefully protected which makes
that side have a better position to further its attack or make its
position generally stronger and the other side is forced to move back
its big piece, rook or queen say, and a lot of times thats all it takes
to get a real attack going that can win the game. So the Kings and
queens gambit is the start of something like that to get faster
development, get more pieces in play quicker than the other guy.
The next step is to recognize tactical patterns that can USE those
pieces but thats another and much longer story.
If you look at someones profile you can find all the games they
played, take a look at mine if you wish, go to sonhouse
profile then my public games and just take any one at random
and play it over. You will quickly see what is going on in development
and such and I happen to play the kings gambit a bit so you should
be able to find a few of those tucked in there also. Not that I am
such a master but being in the middle of the ladder strength-wise,
looking at my games won't be so much of a mystery as looking
at the top ten, the attacks and responses are pretty obvious,
especially in my early games where I was playing a lot of beginners
and winning most of my games. I found out the hard way there
are strong players here too!
04 Dec '05 14:40
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