Opening principles - material

Hi !

in last week's lesson, we focused on how to deal with space in the opening, mostly how to control the center and support it with the Knights.

Today, we are going to look at the material, how to use your pieces in the best possible way during the opening ?

 This lesson can be found in its interactive format in the Chess Trainer app for free.

 After controling the center, the next question arising in the opening is how to develop your pieces harmoniously. This is the topic of this post.
We will see which pieces should be developed and how they should be moved with a few examples. Let's go !
One of the most important primciples of the opening is to try to develop your pieces so that they threaten something or make it difficult for your opponent to develop.

Opening principles - Space

Many of you have downloaded Attacking lessons of Paul Morphy. If you have not yet done it, feel free to download it and share it with whoever you like.

Now I am starting a 3-lessons series about the generic principles of the opening that are Space, Time and Material.
This first post is about managing space in the opening, it is aimed at beginners to intermediate players looking for sound opening pieces of advice.

This lesson can be found in its interactive format in the Chess Trainer app for free.


Managing space correctly in the opening is a lot similar to managing the center correctly: getting a grip on the centre of the Chessboard is crucial.

Attacking like Paul Morphy

Dear readers, sometimes I feel like creating free lessons (that are subsets of real lessons featured in Chess Trainer) and sending them to my followers.
These particular lessons are not featured on the blog though, but to get them it is pretty simple.
Suscribe to themailing list here to be sure not to miss any free Chess Trainer lesson: http://eepurl.com/MqmI5

And I am also giving you the direct link to download my latest lesson, which deals with the attacking games of Paul Morphy: https://www.dropbox.com/s/so6765xuvwpadhc/Attacking%20like%20Paul%20Morphy.pdf

I hope you will enjoy this lesson.
Simon

Test your chess - a few puzzles (2)

You have tested your tactical abilities in the previous post.
Good news ! There are more puzzles !


Let's see if you can solve these few problems, taken from Chess Trainer.

Puzzle 1:
try to checkmate in only 2 moves...