Having a space advantage gives your pieces more room to maneuver and restricts your opponent’s pieces at the same time.
If you imagine the chess board being divided into two parts horizontally, then each side has four ranks. White controls his and black his ranks, at the start of the game that is. Whenever a player manages to push his pawns passed the fourth rank, and into enemy territory, it is said that he has a space advantage.
A space advantage doesn’t win chess games. It is merely a tool to make your pieces more effective! Whoever holds more space, has more room to maneuver, more squares available for his pieces and an easier time in creating strategic plans. Conversely, the player with less space will struggle to do the same.
A space advantage is best emphasized by using minor pieces. Knights and bishops are flexible, versatile, and can make use of the extra space much easier than the clumsy rooks, or the too valuable queen which is often vulnerable in enemy position.
If you grab space in your opponent’s camp, more often than not that will lead to the control of weak squares in his position. If you have a pawn on e5, then you are controlling d6 and f6 with a pawn! This means that your opponent can’t use those squares but you can. Getting a piece, ideally a knight into one of those will generally mean that you have a strategically won game.
A logical conclusion is, then, that the side with more space will want to keep minor pieces on the board, and the defending player will do wisely to try and exchange them. If there are no pieces to prove the advantage with, it doesn’t exist!
As with any positional or strategic advantage in chess, with a space advantage too the best plan is to try and create a second weakness. The principle of two weaknesses is that you overwork your opponent, making him defend in multiple spots, thus firstly preventing him from creating his own plans and making it more likely for him to make a mistake. A common plan is then to try and extend your structure on multiple sides of the board or take up any open files or diagonals. If you have space in the center which restricts your opponent and you both share the a file (as in Karpov vs Unzicker), play for the a file! Don’t expect one advantage to be enough. Try to grab more space, thus amplifying the strength of your pieces, and soon enough your opponent is going to be too restricted to survive!
If you would like to support the channel and my quest to chess improvement, you can donate here: www.paypal.me/HangingPawns
Any support is greatly appreciated! Thank you!
#chess
Негізгі бет Space Advantage | Chess Middlegames
Пікірлер: 77