How to Position Your Pieces in a Chess Game

Video Transcript

"Now I'd like to show you some good positions to put your different pieces on when you have the opportunity to do so, and it's realistic to do it. A desirable square; generally, for the knight is near the center of the board, and bishops three is regarded as a very powerful square, both the queen's bishop three, and also the king's bishop three square. Good control of the center from there; very good squares for the knight. Now the bishops, the best position really to have bishops on is the long diagonal position. That is to say the longest diagonals in on the board, as you can see. With the black and the white bishop there, they really are controlling a lot of the board, and this is a very good position to be on; this knights two position. Now the rooks function best on open files, and in the earlier part of the game there usually aren't many open files. So it's usually not a good idea to bring your rook into play too soon, apart possibly from castling, which really you can never do too soon, but other than that, trying when you do bring rooks out to get them onto the open files. That is to say, a file on which there is no other piece. They are much more effective that way, and also if you can get up to the opponents seventh rank, which would be there, that is a very effective position for the rook. The queen as I mentioned earlier, probably better not brought out too early in the game. One possible place, which you can develop your queen too early on, which I found reasonably effective, is the queen’s bishop two square there. That can be quite a good situation there, and it can combine; it can start to combine with other pieces, which of course you want to do subsequently. And finally the king, we already spoke about, just keep it out of the way for most part of the game, until the end game anyway; just keep it safe."