Evaluating Positions
- Prodigy Strats
- 17 hours ago
- 1 min read
Hey Friends!
Today we're going to kick your chess training up a notch. This video is nearly 15 minutes long but I encourage you watch it all the way through. Evaluating positions is critical to your growth as a chess player and a valuable skill for players at ANY level, including grandmasters! Sit back. Relax. Lock in and let's watch the video! Enjoy!
To summarize, the four steps I recommend when evaluating any position are:
Count the material (Remember pawns are 1, knights are 3, bishops are 3, rooks are 5, queens are 9)
Check king safety (Who has the safer king? Whose king is more vulnerable?)
Check piece activity (Who has the more useful pieces? Note that just because a piece is more active, it isn't necessarily more useful)
Check space and pawn structure (Consider how many squares you are controlling versus your opponent, doubled pawns, isolated pawns, etc.)
Note that if you are playing a classical time control chess game, you should be doing all these steps every single move as it helps a lot with choosing what move to play. As you are selecting what move to play, you should think as many moves deep as you can with the goal of improving your position. In rapid and faster time controls, you should still do this as much as possible, particularly in positions you think are critical.
That's all for today! See y'all next time! Sarang out.
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