Long or short?

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
When you aren't castling short.

That argument has some merit.
I think the reasons are a mixture of tactics and positional thinking.
One thing, if you cackle long you leave the poor end pawn all by
its lonesome, and might get its little butt taken.
Also it can give an attacking point, even if the pawn is up a square.
Been on the receiving end of those kind of attacks a bit.
So cackling long is somewhat less secure because the end pawn
is for a while unprotected. The nice thing about going long is it
leaves the rook on a nice line, sometimes totally open, maybe with
a check. Don't get that in short castling.

Originally posted by sonhouse
That argument has some merit.
I think the reasons are a mixture of tactics and positional thinking.
One thing, if you cackle long you leave the poor end pawn all by
its lonesome, and might get its little butt taken.
Also it can give an attacking point, even if the pawn is up a square.
Been on the receiving end of those kind of attacks a bit.
So cackli ...[text shortened]... on a nice line, sometimes totally open, maybe with
a check. Don't get that in short castling.

But sometimes you shouldn't castle.

Originally posted by marinakatomb
I often castle on the opposite side to my opponent so i can attack with pawns. This method is good as any exchanges open up lines for your rooks to participate in the attack. 🙂

Of course you are inviting him to do the same thing, but it makes for entertaining games.

One thing a lot of players seem to think is that 'castling long is weaker than castling short'. It's not true. Many times you play 0-0 and then Re1(or e8), placing it on an open file. Castling long often puts a Rook on an open d-file, but people forget to make the consolidating move Kb1(or b8), taking the tempo as a gift. They then complain about the weakness of castling long.

Originally posted by lausey
Because in battle, your enemy would be able to climb over the walls. That is if they get past the moat.

Seriously though, it would depend on the position. If the king side pawns have already advanced and over exposed, then it wouldn't be a good idea to castle short. There are a lot of factors really.

i have only castled long 3 times my whole chess career (dont post on tthose last 3 words), and this is why you castle short. castling long takes 1-2 more moves depending on how ambunctious you are towards doing it. I prefer it, but usually dont have the time for it. i prefer it because it gets one more pawn above your king, the one above i think its the queen. Two of the times i done it was only because the opponent played the perfect moves to get my pieces to the right spots. The 3rd time was a beautiful game of chess where i managed to get my queen where i needed him, castled long, moved my queen which they couldnt stop, and check mate. so it depends on the position entirely.
-trallphaz