Chess Tips : Developing your primary pieces

One of the more obvious and more overlooked strategies in chess is developing your primary pieces. Some players will get distracted with their opening sequence and find themselves getting into what I call pawn battles. Having a solid pawn structure is important and can have a dramatic effect on the game play. However, if all you do is work on your pawn structure and do not develop your knights, bishops, rooks, and queen, then you are giving your opponent a tremendous advantage.

To use an oversimplified example, imagine that a player has moved all of his or her pawns forward at least two spaces, but has not moved any of his or her back row pieces. This is an easy opponent to pick apart. With a sacrifice of a few or your pieces and development of your primary pieces you ill easily win the game. Of course this is an extreme example but it is intended to show you what can happen if you focus too much on pawn structure and not enough on your primary pieces getting developed.

The more you develop your primary pieces, the greater chance of success you will have at winning the chess game. A rook sitting on your back row that is trapped by your pawn and knight serves little to no use for you in the game. The same goes for a knight that cannot move from its original spot because of your pawn structure. Having these powerful pieces and not using them is a beginner mistake that is made rather frequently. A general rule is to try to move every piece that you have once before moving any piece twice. This may be hard to accomplish, but the idea behind it is a solid one that will help you land victories.