Chess Middle Game Tips

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Fritz Gaspard, chess teacher at Chess in The Schools in New York City. Middle game tips: let's talk about strategy in the middle game after the opening is complete. How do we know when the chess opening is complete and the middle game begins? Basically, it's when both players have castled their kings and developed their minor pieces. The minor pieces are the knights and the bishops. When the rooks are ready to come to the center they can sort of communicate. As we can see there's a rook on D1, a rook on H1, there are no pieces in between those rooks. We can say basically that the opening is over for white. Black still has to remove the queen from the D8 square so that these two rooks can sort of communicate. The opening will be then over for black and the middle game begins. In this case, we have a very famous position. It's a Sicilian dragon. This is played all over the world many many many times by chess masters and grand masters. It's one of my favorite openings. You may notice that white has castled on this side of the board, the queen's side of the board, and black has castled on the short side or the king's side of the board. Each player is poised to attack the other's king. Whenever there is an attack on the wing in chess we are taught to counterattack on the center. In this case, when white attacks on this wing it will be difficult for black to counterattack in the center. So black must counterattack on the opposite wing. White will attack this king and black will somehow try to get to this king. Let's see how that might work. So white's trying to move into this position. If white moves the bishop to H6, the plan for white would be to maybe remove this defender of the king and push the pawn's forward to try to open the king and possibly checkmate the black king. Black must respond very quickly. In this case, bishop captures H6 is the known move, the queen on D2 will recapture. The queen is on H6, perilously close to the black king. And now black must do something about it otherwise black will be checkmated by white's pieces. This queen obviously needs help. It can't checkmate the king by itself. So black needs to counterattack on this wing. In this case it's well known that the best move for black is to capture this knight to sacrifice the rook which is more powerful than the knight to breach the black pawn, the white pawn structure around this king. So that the other pieces can stream in. So now it's black's turn to move and black moves the queen to A5. The other good move for black is to C7 which is attacking the pawn on C3. And now let's suppose that white tries to defend this pawn, maybe with the king. The king might go up to this square to defend the pawn. And black will now bring the rook to C8 and now we have a queen and a rook attacking the pawn on C3. This pawn needs protection. We can't place the rook on D3 because this knight will capture it. So maybe the queen will hustle back to try to defend this pawn. And now all of the sudden, it's white who must defend the king and the black king is safe for the moment. It's a perfect example of how to counterattack in chess. Let's see how this counterattack might continue if white does not defend perfectly. Let's suppose the queen moves to B6 setting a really neat little trap. And if white is unaware, for example, and starts attacking the black king by moving the black pawn from G2 to G4, we can actually win white's queen in two moves. Can you see it? The knight can move to C4, the knight is checking this king, the bishop cannot capture the knight because the queen would then be checking the king so this bishop is actually pinned. The knight is forking or attacking the king and the queen at the same time. The white king needs to move away. And now the knight will capture the queen on D2 and black is ahead and black should win this game. So the object lesson here is when you're under pressure and you're being attacked, look for a way to counterattack. If you cannot do it in the center, then you try to do it on the other wing so that your opponents attacking pieces have to come back to defend."