On Castling?

Originally posted by Willzzz
Do we have figures for when white castles queenside and then wins?

I generally got the impression it was a risky move.

One thing that castling queenside often does is put your queen and your rook on the same file. This will be later in the game than a traditional king side castle. I think of queen side castling as an attacking move. You can imagine that as white if you can get the king side rook to D3 you'll have a very strong battery. That can feel really nice or look very scary depending on which side of the board you are on.

Hi Paul.

I did consider 0-0 without getting mated and not caslting without
getting mated but was running into loose grey areas.

For instance I have not included games where White or Black resigned one
move from being mated in any of the fields.

I stuck with what I had because the games ended in a mate and the
discusion was about King safety (or the lack of it).

You could run an example yourself using master games but you will
find very few mates.
You could run a program to find all the White 0-0 that won in master games
but it would not give you a figure as to why they won or lost. Just a win.

Did they win because they won a piece or a couple of pawns?

So stayed I with mates and not non-mates becuase with a mate I know
the King was checkmated. I know how the game ended.

Then split it into 0-0, 0-0-0 and no casltes.

The whole excercise probably proves nothing except that in the 1400 DB
players do not resign when getting beat but play on till they are mated.

Hi GP,

Is it possible to find out how many players in the 1400 DB played O-O, O-O-O, and no castling? Then one could find the actual percentages of how effective each move was at that level.

I went ahead and looked at my last 100 games, and found that I had played O-O in 66, O-O-O in 26, and had not castled in 18. My opponents played O-O in 76, O-O-O in 9, and no castling in 15.

I'd be interested in other peoples' figures on that subject.