There are many different answers. Some might say king safety, others sound pawn structure. While those are important, they’re not the biggest asset you have.
So what is it?
Your pieces.
Without your pieces, in chess, you’re doomed. If you’re down material, your opponent most likely has a sound edge; even players just starting out know that. Without your pieces, you don’t have a hope of winning; forget all the other balances of the game, nothing even compares to your pieces.
So to win a chess game, in most cases, you need to get your pieces off the back rank and into the game, or else you can’t possibly do well.
In chess, that’s called development; getting your pieces into the game. While most people know what it is and why it’s important, not everyone knows how to actually get their pieces active.
So in the coming days, even weeks, my main aim is going to be to teach you the importance of developing and how to do it.
Watch the video or read the text; the same information, your preference.
In chess, I see a lot of beginners making the same mistake.
To them, it doesn’t look like a mistake because it seems like they’re actually winning games because of it. What am I talking about?
Scholar’s mate, as known as the four-move mate, in which the player brings their queen and bishop out in an attempt to checkmate their opponent on f7.
People play this because they think their opponent will be foolish enough to not defend against the attack and just lose the game.
At the beginner level, many games can be won with this strategy. However, I don’t recommend it.
First, while this may work to some level as a begineer, when you get better, your opponent’s will get stronger, so this tactic won’t work.
Second, even though some people will fall for it, if you know scholar’s mate and they don’t even see checkmate is being threatened, you will easily beat them without having to use scholar’s mate, so you can win anyways.
And my real argument against using it is that it will cost you some games in the long run. a lot of people who you play will know how to defend against it, and you will have brought out your queen. That is not good, because the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, so if they block scholar’s mate and get a lead in development, their pieces will be able to defend everything so your queen won’t be doing anything and then they can use their lesser pieces to attack it, and your queen will have to run all over the board and they’ll have an overwhelming position.
I’ll talk more in the future about the dangers of bringing your queen out early.
So I think if you just play the game, not only will you still easily be able to defeat weaker opponent’s if you fall for scholar’s mate, you’ll have a better chance of beating stronger players, because if they stop your try for scholar;s mate, the game’s pretty much over.
(Mailing list: Coming soon)