35 Vital Chess Principles | Opening, Middlegame, and Endgame Principles - Chess Strategy and Ideas

hey guys in this video you're going to learn the top 35 most important chess principles a chess principle is just like a guideline or a rule that generally speaking you should follow and you're going to get into better positions so you've probably heard control the center of the board that is an example of a chess principle it's true most of the time sometimes you will need to control some other squares on the board but usually the center is most important what you might not know is that there are actually hundreds of different chess principles so

in this video i've narrowed down the top 35 that i think are the most important and i'm going to share those with you right now all right principle number one no surprise here is control the center of the board usually the player who controls the center of the board has a better chance to win the game than somebody who is making a lot of moves on the side of the board principle number two is develop your pieces quickly developing your pieces just means moving your knights and bishops off of the back rank so knight here

right here and then getting your bishops out in this position white is going to have much better chances to win the game because he has developed his pieces while black has not and just made a bunch of pawn moves principle number three knights before bishops usually when developing you want to develop your knights first and then follow it up with your bishops principle number four don't move the same piece twice in the opening if you're moving the same piece multiple times in the opening it means you're not developing your other pieces and you're gonna fall

behind in development and probably get into a worse position principle number five is don't bring out your queen too early although the queen is a powerful piece if you bring it out too early it just ends up getting harassed by your opponent's pieces and you waste a lot of time as an example if i play e4 d6 and i bring my queen out immediately after knight f6 i have to move my queen maybe i'll move it over to a5 after knight c6 i have to move my queen again and all of a sudden i'm falling

behind in development so don't bring out your queen too early principle number six is castle before move ten if you look at this example it's possible to castle in as little as four moves and usually after you castle your king is safe behind a wall of pawns better than being in the center of the board principle number seven is connect your rooks so after you've developed your pieces and you've castled you can simply move your queen up and now your rooks are connected this is beneficial because your rooks protect each other they can help each

other and they also have easy access to go to whatever file you need them to which is going to be most beneficial for you principle number eight is that rooks should go on open or half open files in the position on the board right now the e file is an open file because there are no pawns on it so a move like rook to e1 would make a lot of sense because it's putting my rook on the open file a half open file is a file that only has one color pawn on it so for

example the d file is a half open file because it only has a black pawn and no white pawn so this would also be a smart move because i'm putting this rook on a half open file black's work on f8 is already on a half open file because there's only one color pawn on it principle number nine knights on the rim are grim you can see in this position how black's knight is very effective covering a lot of important squares in the center and my knight on the side is not doing as much it only

covers a few squares so keeping your knights towards the center of the board is better than putting them on the side principle number 10 try to avoid doubled pawns in this position if black captures my knight and i recapture with this pawn i have created a set of doubled pawns doubled pawns are when one pawn is on the same file as another pawn this is usually a disadvantage because this guy's blocked by this guy so he can't move and also they can't help each other and defend each other if they needed to it's very easy

for me to move this pawn up and it's defended by this one or to move this one up and it's defended by this one you can't do that with doubled pawns so usually you want to try to avoid those principle number 11 is try to avoid isolated pawns isolated pawns are pawns that have no pawns on the adjacent files so this a pawn is an isolated pawn because there's no pawns of the same color on the file right next to it and these doubled pawns on c2 and c3 happen to be double isolated pawns because

again there are no white pawns on either side of them so isolated pawns and double isolated pawns are particularly weak and they can't help each other like connected pawns can principle number 12 try to avoid backward pawns in this position if black plays pawn to c4 he's created a backward pawn on d5 a backward pawn means that all of the pawns on the adjacent files have been pushed in front of that pawn and can therefore no longer help protect it when this pawn was back here on c6 it was protecting it so it wasn't a

backward pawn because of the way it's been pushed forward now this is a backward pawn and it's a very easy target for white to pile up on because it can't be defended by another pawn principle number 13 is don't trade a bishop for a knight without a good reason so even though they are both worth three points generally speaking bishops tend to be slightly better than knights so i see a lot of players will bring bishops out trade them off for a night and it usually isn't worth it now in this case you do create

double pawns but you also give black a half open file and you lose the bishop so generally speaking you don't want to make that trade unless you have a little bit better of a reason to do it principle number 14 avoid moving pawns in front of your castle king so in this position we've already castled on the king side it would be a mistake to play a move like g3 because now i've created these weaknesses because the pawn no longer controls those squares you can see how easily black can come in and infiltrate it and

put a lot of pressure on your king so don't move pawns in front of your castled king principle 15 is don't open the center if your king is still in the center in this position black could consider playing d5 but it wouldn't be a good idea because after white trades he's started to open up the center and his king could come under pressure from white's rook because he hasn't castled yet so it would be better for black to castle first and then consider a move like d5 which is going to start trading and opening up

the center on the board principle number 16 is that two minor pieces are generally better than a rook and a pawn minor pieces are knights and bishops obviously these are the rooks so in this position if i were to capture with my knight black captures i capture he captures i just lost a knight in a bishop which is six points i gained a rook in a pawn which is also six points but that it puts me at a disadvantage because the knight and the bishop are better than the rook in the pawn generally speaking so

don't make a trade like that unless you have a very specific reason to do so principle number 17 is similar but three minor pieces generally is better than a queen even though they both add up to nine points usually the three pieces will greatly outperform the queen principle number 18 is that rooks are very strong on the seventh rank so since i'm white the seventh rank is here for black the seventh rank is actually the second rank which would be here but in this position i have the ability to play rook e7 which is a

very strong move by placing my rook on the seventh rank you can see i have lots of good targets and white is in a very good position because of the ability to get the rook on the seventh rank principle number 19 is that doubled rooks on an open file are very strong in this position white already has control of the open file with one rook but he has the ability to put two rooks now controlling that open file and it prevents black from gaining control of that file as well so two rooks on an open

file is very strong principle number 20 bishops are better in open positions knights are better in closed positions the position on the board you can see black's bishops are doing a lot controlling a lot of squares because the position is open and they're not blocked by very many pieces in this position the bishops are going to probably outperform the knights on the other hand in a position like this where lots of pawns are kind of blocked off and it's relatively closed you can see how black's bishops aren't really doing a lot they're they're running into

pawns that are in the way and the knights can very easily hop around and get to wherever you need them to get to so in this case the knights are going to do better as opposed to the other position where it was more open the bishops would be better principle number 21 the best way to deal with an attack on the flank is to counter attack in the center in this position white's castled if black starts to launch a flank attack on the side the best thing that white could do would be to strike back

in the center and try to open up the center and take advantage of the fact that black's king is still in the center so to deal with a flank attack a counter attack in the center principle number 22 when you have an option to capture a piece with two different pawns generally you want to capture towards the center of the board in this position if black captures this bishop on b3 white now has the option to capture with two different pawns so as the rule goes generally speaking you want to capture towards the center so

you should take this way we also get the added benefit in this position that we create a half open file for the rook principle number 23 is that in an end game the king is a valuable piece that must be used to help you win the game in this position it would be a mistake for white to leave his king sit over here and not try to use the king to help attack these pawns or these pawns same thing for black he would need to use his king to try to get involved and do something

to help out principle number 24 rooks should go behind past pawns the position on the board black has a pass pawn on this g-file a really good move for him would be to put his rook behind his past pawn so they can support it as he pushes it and tries to eventually get a queen if black didn't know that and played a move like rook here to defend his pawn that way it's not going to be as good and now white also has the ability to put the rook behind the pass pawn which creates pressure

and at any point if the pawn tries to move forward the rook is still going to be attacking it really making it hard for that pawn to move forward so rook should go behind past pawns principle number 25 is that two connected past pawns on the sixth rank will always be to rook in this position it's white's turn and by playing this pawn forward he now has achieved two connected and past pawns on the sixth rank and if this rook tries to stop them he's not going to be able to do it for example if

the rook goes here to try to get this pawn white can simply move this one forward and if the root captures white's going to get a queen we go back if black tries to play here to try to get one of the two pawns again white simply pushes the pawn forward and after black captures he gets a queen and you can see that if i move just one pawn back now black does have the ability to stop the pawns by moving his rook here if white tries to move this one forward it's going to get

captured if he tries to move this one forward it's going to get captured and he doesn't have enough time black's able to catch it and then capture the queen so going back both of the connected pass pawns have to already be on the sixth rank and then the rook cannot stop them principle number 26 is to attack the base of a pawn chain in this position white has this very long pawn chain and you can see how all of these pawns are defended by the other pawns in the pawn chain except for the base that's

the only pawn that's not going to be defended by another pawn so if you're able to attack the base of the pawn chain that's what you should do now this probably isn't the greatest example because it's going to be very hard for black to figure out a way to attack that pawn right now but generally speaking attack the base of a pawn chain principle 27 is that knights are usually one of the best blockaders of pawns so in this position black has a past pawn that he's trying to push forward and white would like to

blockade it to keep it from moving a good option would be to blockade it with the knight the reason this is good is because knights can still function very well because they can jump over pieces they can still put pressure on the normal squares that they would be able to put pressure on at the same time they're blockading the pawn from moving principle number 28 is if your position is cramped you should try to trade pieces to open it up and give you more options so in this position black's position is very cramped this bishop

is stuck this bishop is stuck he doesn't have a lot of options for his pieces so one thing that he should consider doing is trading pieces in this example he can capture here if white captures he can capture here if white captures he can capture here and by trading off all those pieces now he's able to move this knight somewhere and then this bishop can go somewhere it's a much better position for black having traded off all those pieces than if we go back to this position where he could hardly move so in a cramped

position try to trade pieces principle number 30 is that when you're ahead material you want to trade pieces but not trade pawns in this position white is ahead a rook for a knight it's called being up the exchange he has a two point advantage so he would want to trade the queen and rook for the queen and rook but not trade the pawns that's because after you trade these pieces the rook is going to be very strong he's going to be able to capture some of these pawns most likely and then he can get a

queen if he trades off all the pawns so there's no pawns left then the rook in the knight it's going to be very hard to win that position so you want to leave pawns on the board in your head material and trade off the other pieces principle number 31 very similar is the opposite of that when you're losing or you're down material you want to trade off all the pawns if you can but don't trade the pieces and that's going to increase your chances of getting a draw so in this position if white captures this

pawn and black recaptures he could take this pawn with his queen but that's not good for white because he's essentially going to be trading pawns he wants to keep as many pawns on the board as possible so a better move might be queen to d3 trying to trade the pieces and not trade the pawns i hope that made sense if you have to rewatch that part again feel free to do so that's an important one it's really good to know principle number 32 is that opposite colored bishop games are dangerous in the middle game and

drawish in the end game what do i mean by that in this position both players have an opposite color bishop that means white's bishop is on a dark square and black's bishop is on a white square so they're opposite colored bishops and since this is still in what i would say the middle game it's very dangerous and and white has to be very careful and you can see after this move bishop check king g1 after queen g4 the queen's coming into f3 and then there's gonna be a battery white's gonna get checkmated so the only

thing he could do is sacrifice his rook for the bishop to stay alive and that just shows how it's very dangerous when you're playing in a game with opposite colored bishops you have to watch out for attacks on your king and the reason it's dangerous is really because your bishop can do nothing to prevent the other person's bishop so in this case there are weaknesses along these white squares and this bishop can do nothing about it if it was a knight you could position it to help defend or if you had the same color bishop

if you had a bishop on the white squares you could even trade it off for that bishop but because they're opposite colored bishops you can't do that very dangerous now the flip side of that principle is that in the end game the games become very drawish you can see in this position both players have opposite colored bishops and because of that the bishop can't really do anything about any of these pawns and likewise black's bishop can't do anything about white's pawn so the pawns are just going to end up sitting there the kings will probably

just have to move back and forth and nobody's going to be able to win this game so keep that in mind opposite colored bishops are drawish in the end game but very dangerous in the middle game principle number 33 is what's called don't play hope chess now if you've never heard of this hope chess is where you play chess and you hope that your opponent does something or you hope that your opponent doesn't see something or i hope he moves there if you're playing chess like that you're probably not going to do very well you

always want to consider the fact that your opponent might do the very best move an example of hope chess would be i'm going to play here i'm going to bring my bishop out i'm going to bring my queen out and i'm going to hope that he doesn't see the checkmate i'm going to hope that he doesn't know about the scholars mate and i'm going to win four moves i'm going to hope he falls for my trick that's not good because if he knows what he's doing he plays g6 stops your queen you come back to

try it again because you hope he doesn't see it he's gonna play knight f6 you might play queen b3 again i hope he doesn't see it he's going to play queen e7 and now all of a sudden you're in a bad position you just wasted a bunch of moves with your queen because you are playing hope chess so try not to do that principle 34 is when you see a good move stop and look for a better move in this position on the board black just played here which is really a bad move and so

the move that might jump out to a lot of people is oh that's a free rook that's a really good move it's good for white but if you take a second and look for a better move you might notice that knight to d6 is actually a beautiful smother checkmate so when you see a good move take a second and look for a better move and principle number 35 is that a really good chess player knows the right time to ignore chess principles all these principles are really good most of the time but there's always going

to be situations where they don't apply and where it makes the most sense to go against what the principal would say and that's what determines a really good chess player from somebody who's still learning so just know that everything that i told you is a good general rule of thumb but be on the lookout for special situations where they may not apply and that will come with practice as you get better and better you'll pick up on when it's okay to break the rules if you will i know that was a lot of information really

fast so i went ahead and put together this spreadsheet which lists out all of the 35 principles that we just talked about i'm going to throw this up on the screen and just leave it for a little bit if you want to print screen pause the video and print screen and print this out so you can use it for reference feel free to do so i know for some people who are just starting out this might seem a little bit overwhelming but don't worry it took me years and years to learn all of these so

you've got time the best way to tackle it is just one principle at a time practice it in your games until it starts to become a habit then move on the list to the next one and keep doing that until you feel like you've gotten a good grasp of these principles if you guys learned something and got some value out of this video it really helps me out a lot if you would hit that thumbs up button i really appreciate it but as always make sure you stay sharp play smart and take care [Music] you