Opening Principles These Opening Principles, taken as a whole, all talk about planning and coordination.

You aim to control the center, mobilize and then, with coordinated motion, you go for the thrust and win. 1) Open the game with a center pawn. 2) Develop your Knights before your Bishops. 3) Don't move your Queen too soon in the opening. 4) Castle early in order to protect your King. 5) Develop your Rooks to central or open files. 6) Look to develop an attack after you have fully mobilized your pieces. 7) Capture towards the center. Pawn Strategic concept of the PAWN STRUCTURE and using space - Pawn Skeleton - Pawn Chains White's f2, e3, and d4 pawns are linked together? Pawns that are linked together are called PAWN CHAINS. In this pawn chain, the base pawn is the f2-pawn. The base pawn is quite important, since it is the foundation upon which the entire pawn chain rests. - Pawn Islands The first group, the a2 and b2-pawns, forms its own pawn island. The second group, the d4, e3, f2, g2, h2-pawns, forms the second larger pawn island. This concept of different pawn islands is important. The more pawn islands a player has, the weaker his position becomes. "The strength or weakness of the pawn chain is determined by the base pawn. If it is strong, the pawn chain will remain powerful and intact. If weak, the entire chain is in danger of collapse." Remember that pawns and pawn islands require protection. As more pieces are exchanged, our ability to protect our pawns becomes less and less. Soon the player with more pawn islands will have more to worry about. - PASSED PAWN. The d5-pawn is a passed pawn because its path to promotion is not blocked by a Black pawn. Also, its march up the board cannot be stopped by a Black pawn. As chess great Aaron Nimzovitch said, 'A passed pawn is a criminal who should be put under lock and key.' Yes, but who will play guard? A piece. This means that the d5-pawn, a passed pawn, has grown in value. Once he was equal to other pawns, but now a piece will have to be assigned to watch him. A passed pawn would quickly promote itself if not watched by an opposing piece.

- BACKWARD PAWN (b5, c6, d6)pawn c6 - Backward pawns tend to be weak, because they need the protection of other pieces. That is, such pawns as backward pawns can't count upon the protection of other pawns. As a result, backward pawns are a liability for their owners!