Chess strategy

Chess is a highly strategic game. Chess experts tend to divide the study of chess strategy into two different categories: strategy and tactics, and into three distinct phases: the opening, middle game, and endgame. Tactics might be described as short-term strategy; it involves studying maneuvers, such as combinations, and how those maneuvers might lead to a gain in material or improvements in a player's strategic position. The word strategy in chess refers to the study of long-term improvements to a player's position, such as control of the center of the board, protection of the king, pawn structure, placement of the pieces, and other considerations.

Material

In the game of chess, some pieces are considered more valuable than others. As a result, much of strategy in chess centers around trying to gain an advantage in "material". This is accomplished by having more pieces, or more valuable pieces on the board. In the study of chess, the pieces are assigned a point value:

Pawns are worth 1 point Bishops and Knights are worth 3 points Rooks are worth 5 points The Queen is worth 9 points.

Much of the study of tactics revolved around the value of material; a player will not trade off a queen for two bishops, even though they would have more pieces on the board, because the pieces left would have less value.

The point values are also relative; for example, in endgames with pawns on only one side of the board, knights are often preferred to bishops, because a bishop can only operate on squares of their color, while in endgames with pawns on both sides, a bishop is often preferred, because they can move more quickly to both sides of the board. Having 2 bishops is also generally considered better than having a knight and a bishop or 2 knights, because the bishops can work together by attacking both colors of squares.