Any piece placed in these four
squares is a strong piece. Instead of
telling you, let me show you.
The Knight is really a circle not just
the letter L. The X's represent
where the knight can travel to. A
total of eight squares.
If the knight was only on square
(A5) then it would only have half of
a circle and half of its power. A
total of four squares. So what would
you rather have...a half circle... or a whole
circle? That's right...a whole circle. Where
do you get the whole circle?...In the
center of the board!
Many books teach that the center is very important and that you should strive to own this portion of the chess board. Owning the center, in and of itself, is not good enough. You have to do something with it ! Once you have control of it, you will probably ask yourself questions like What do I do next? Well, this page will try to give you an answer that is in relation to what the whole game is about ...checkmating the king.
In olden days, when kings were safe inside their castle walls, many new inventions were created for the enemy to get at the king. An effective tool was the battering ram. People would cut down a tree, march down to the castle and smash it up against the doors, hoping to make a hole in it so the troops can rush through to catch the king.
In the above diagram, the bishop and queen represent one of these old style battering rams. The idea here is to move the queen to the (h7) square, which breaks a hole in the wall and checkmates the king. If you pay close attention to the chess board squares, you will notice that the bishop and queen travel through one of the four squares in the center of the board (d4,e4,d5,e5).
Since the enemy will not give up easily, they will be forced to push a pawn in the wall forward to stop checkmate.
Now the king's position is starting
to weaken. By moving your pieces
around a bit, you can take full
advantage of the hole you created.
The queen moves to (f6) and will
checkmate the king on (g7) or (h8).
Copyright © Manus Patrick Fealy 1994-2002
I truly want you to become a better player. Let me know what you really think about this web page. If it has helped improve your game, or entertained you, I would like to hear about it.