Stages of the game
In the game of chess is usually considered three stages:
The opening , which comprises the first play, where the pieces come out of their original boxes.
The middle game , when the two sides still have many pieces and pawns, and they come into intense conflict.
The end , where there are few pieces and pawns.
Each stage of the game requires the player tactical and strategic approaches are totally different. This greatly increases the complexity of the game. You could say that chess is a lot of games in one: for example the opening play well and end requires entirely different skill and is not uncommon to find very strong players in one phase and considerably weaker in another. These considerations are detailed more precisely in Section phases of the game of chess .
chess tactics and strategy
Normally a chess game is won either by checkmate or because the other hand you know you will inevitably get checkmate, and therefore abandoned.
However, winning a game are often not involved in attempting to mate the enemy king. Among players strong enough in many cases with little considerations invaluable for an amateur to be sure of victory. Winning positions are considered those in which it can be shown that one side wins with perfect play. Many of these positions are far from dull.A simple example would be: if we remove the lady (or other part) of one of the players before the game, is confident that with perfect play the side that has the extra piece is winning position. Bringing the game to checkmate, however, may require dozens of plays.
Therefore, we conclude that the goal of a player long before checkmate is to achieve a winning position. This can be achieved in many ways. The most common may be grouped into a few classes, characterized by the type of advantage that has the strong side:
Material gain without compensation (by far the most common).
Get a direct attack against the king.
Achieving substantial positional advantages as the destruction of the coordination of pawns or pieces enemies, weakening the position of the opponent's king, leaving the opponent with very limited mobility parts, etc. These advantages must be converted later in either of the above advantages.
Among novice players, the benefits arise spontaneously by serious errors, such as placing a chessman in a box where it can be captured, or bring the king to a position easily attacked. But among more advanced players, the benefits can only be achieved in a much more subtle. The procedures have been developed to gain advantage have been grouped into two broad types: procedures tactical and strategic procedures.
Therefore, every advanced player knows is not enough to know the basics of the game (board, chess pieces and rules), it is necessary to understand and correctly apply the tactics and chess strategies.
Relative value of parts
In a game of chess, the pieces tend to have a value depending on a given situation. First, the pieces have a static value set by its mobility, ie the number of squares you can move without taking into account the presence of other pieces on the board. The mobility of the parts is generally higher the closer you are to the center of the board, and less if they are on the edges or corners. For example, a horse in a corner can move up two squares and an edge may go to three or five, while the maximum mobility is eight squares, while away from the edges of the board.
Already in the game, the pieces have a dynamic value according to the situation in a particular position: the presence of their own pieces and contrary, the cells controlled by the opponent's pieces, the lines controlled or occupied, and the possibility of carrying out strategic plans or positional. For example, a bishop is often more important than a horse, except in positions where there is still the same side pawns for the bishop to occupy the boxes it controls, limiting their mobility, for which the horse, power jump pawns up, is higher in these cases.
The material value of the pieces is a guide for evaluating a position, the horse and the bishop often called minor pieces for its limited scope on the board (a bishop can only go to the squared bias and the other to the diagonals of squares black, while the horse has to go to a different color box whenever you move.) The tower and the lady known as major pieces by his superior mobility on the horse and the bishop. The king has an absolute value: if you lose your king, you lose the game, although with respect to mobility is assigned an intermediate value between the horse and the bishop.
The most common way to determine the material value of the parts is taking the value of the pawn as a unit. Thus, the value of the parts is expressed as pawns, the knight and bishop are worth 3 pawns, the tower 5 and the lady 9. This is true, for example, that two towers are better than one lady, or to sacrifice a horse for three pawns is an acceptable change from the point of view of material.