The Essentials of the Game: How Position Is Built

Position, mobility, and the essential logic that ties the elements together. Chapter 3 of Znosko-Borovsky's The Middle Game in Chess, interactively reissued.

"The object of every game is mate; that marks the victory which crowns the game. When play begins, both sides are equal in strength, and it is necessary to reduce the game from absolute equality to absolute inequality before victory inclines to one side." — Znosko-Borovsky, 1922

We have met the three elements of chess — force, space, and time. The game itself is nothing more than the struggle to gain an advantage in one of them, and then to keep it. Every advantage in a game of chess, however subtle, is finally expressed in these terms.

Force. The side with more pieces, or with stronger pieces, has the advantage in force. This is the simplest measure and the first one a beginner learns to count.

Space. The side that controls the greater part of the board — or its strongest squares — has the advantage in space. Central pawns pushed to the fifth rank, files opened for one's own rooks, diagonals cleared for one's bishops: all are gains in space.

Time. Time is the hardest of the three to see. Broadly, the side that has developed more pieces, or the more important pieces for the position at hand, has gained in time. But in positions that are nearly level, we must measure it more exactly: count the number of moves each side has had to make to reach the present position, and the difference is the gain (or loss) in time.

Znosko-Borovsky illustrates the count on a middle-game position from Capablanca–Chajes. White has moved his pawns three times, his knights twice, his bishops three times, and castled — nine moves in all. Black has moved pawns four times, knights three, bishops twice, castled, and moved a rook — eleven moves. Black is therefore two moves to the good.

The Endgame Journal collects our writing on openings, tactics, endgames, and the habits that separate players who improve from players who plateau. Every article is written by people who teach chess, not by a content farm.

Essentials of the Game — Middle Game Ch. 3 | Endgame Society