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How to advance in chess

If you've read all the tutorials so far, then you are familiar with the rules of chess. So, you can setup the chess board and start moving the pieces. But, as you'll see, this game is not all about just moving the pieces around the board and capturing enemy pieces.

I've talked in the previous lessons about the three parts of the game: the opening, the middle game and the end game. I've said that what makes these parts different is the number of pieces and their positions. Because the number of pieces reduces during the game, the objectives of the game also changes.

In the opening each player concentrates on developing his position as faster and as harmoniously as possible while trying to stop his opponent developing his position.

In the middle game much of the action revolves around trying to control the center of the chess board, trying to exploit any weakness in the opponent's position and of course around protecting your own position.

The end game is characterized by a small number of pieces on the board. Because of the small number of pieces the result of the end game is sometimes more predictable than that of the middle game. In this part of the game sometimes even the smallest advantage could be exploited into helping you win the game.

In order to play chess at a more advanced level you will have to learn a little bit about the theory of the game. This way you will learn how to identify the main objectives of the game, you will be able to correctly evaluate the position of the pieces and their values. By understanding this you will know how and where to attack your opponent or how to defend your own positions.

A very important thing you need to know when playing a game is how to evaluate the distribution of forces on the chess board. That means that you have to understand who has a better situation : you or your opponent, so you can then know what to do next.

You already know that some pieces are more valuable than others and that their values depends on the number of pieces on the board and on their position. Because of this, their values will vary along the three parts of the game. I'll be talking about this in the next article.

There are a few criteria which you have to take under consideration when estimating the status of the game. Some of the most important are:

You can determine the mobility of the pieces on the board by looking at their freedom of movement and at the pawn's structure. You can read more about how you can evaluate and play the game in the following articles.