Thou shalt Castle quickly

No, this is not about Age of Empires.

To quote a cliché to begin with, Chess is a game of possibilities. When we all started out as Chess players (those of us who did), there were a few ‘No-No’ situations we had to be careful about. But as we went from one competition to another, we saw the same situations and techniques being employed by our opponents – to lethal effect. Here are two of those phenomena we would do better to avoid against highly rated players or masters, but can be surprisingly useful against, you know, normal players. By not considering them as options, we are essentially limiting our possibilities and that’s not good unless we are sure that it gives our opponents many more options.

Doubled Pawn:

Even when we are equally matched with our opponents with respect to pieces and the game situation, some onlookers (and the evil part of our mind) would consider our chances as weaker if we had a doubled pawn in any part of the board, including central columns. Well, even if that piece is an extra pawn for us, people usually discount it. Yes, it makes the back pawn weaker and supporting the pawns become a headache at times but here’s why I think it’s not always that bad (or could be an advantage) – The presence of Rooks.

Any rook that can take advantage of the subsequent open file or one move away from doing so is a point in favour of a doubled pawn. A Queen can be immensely helpful too, but I think there are better things for a Queen to do on the chess board than taking advantage of open files. If the open file attacks a king-oriented pawn, it’s even better. It could be intentionally used to bring in a discovered pin of sorts too, but intentionally going there is at best, questionable.

Oh yes, there is a corollary to this idea as well. If you’re near the end game or there are no rooks to take advantage of the open file, or if that file id heavily guarded by the opponent, the double pawn will not just be a headache. If your opponent is strong enough, he would immobilize them completely; he could also use them to limit your own progression. It’s better to get that doubled pawn into attack mode when the rooks look like they don’t have much life left in them – or when you take them into positions that would get them cancelled out.

A Late Castle:

Not castling quickly equates to Pure Evil in many beginners’ minds… and it’s a good belief to have when you are starting out. Castling does offer the king more safety and privacy than a locker in the Cayman Islands – Opposing bishops can’t go any side to threaten, our pawns could be kept closed (as against an inevitably open centre) and an additional power could be used to totally shut the place down – among a thousand other things. However, doing that, quickly or otherwise, is not always good. When the opponent expects you to castle and arranges a nice little attack on your king, many beginners fall right into their trap with the optimism of a wall street trader, thinking ‘Castling can’t be bad’. But then, let’s leave the gory consequences of that move out of our discussion. We all learn from it when we do it the first time.

Not Castling early (and keeping the options open) has the potential to unsettle an average opponent to a great extent. He does not know which side he has to take his bishops to – and usually tries to attack king side and prevent you from castling. Some people believe you wouldn’t castle and try to align their attack along the centre – only for you to coolly castle and upset their cart. Some others would take the bishop in one direction and attack the centre. Castling on the same side then would drive them nuts – you’ve just rendered that bishop useless against the king for the next few moves, at the very least. If your opponent starts focusing on attacking any flank, you can wait till he/she is all set and castle on the other side.

If he’d castled before that, you’d know which side to attack while he would have to realign his powers on the board. Ta da, you get a precious couple of moves more than your opponent. When opponents start aligning their pieces to attack either flanks (or if he has lost his bishops and queen already), it is even considered to be best not to castle. The King at the centre in the middle-to-end game transition is hugely helpful as well. It gives us the choice to run anywhere to protect or upgrade a pawn or attack one with the least number of moves, not to mention the flexibility of moving up without as many opposing pawns.

If you can do these things, your opponent can use them as well. So, we should not discount the possibility that an opponent’s double pawn would remain weak all the time…because Chess is like a box of chocolates. You never know what’s going to spring out of that open file.