Chess Pieces King = Game (fighting value of 4 points). During the opening, the king is almost always best castled behind a pawn cover, where he continues to hide behind pawns through the middle game. Pawn exchanges in the center are normally avoided until your king has castled. In general, look defensively at pawn exchanges happening right in front of your king. If you realize you are in trouble during the opening and haven’t castled yet, you are more likely to survive by castling in the direction your pawns are pointing towards because more of your pieces can be brought into the defense of your king. If you castle and your opponent decides to keep his king in the center, look forward to exchanging pawns in the center. In the endgame, the king takes on an active fighting role, generally moving to the center with one or both sides attempting to promote a pawn. Your endgame begins when the enemy is reduced to an enemy queen with no rooks or one to two rooks with no queen; your endgame begins when your king can fight from the center without being checkmated. Queen = 9-10 points (grandmasters disagree about the queen’s average value). Don’t bring your queen to the middle early in the game. This gives your opponent a target he can threaten repeatedly through the opening to gain a lead in development, which normally means losing against good players. The queen helps deliver most middle game checkmates (bad players are lost when the queens are exchanged). Any two squares can be forked by the queen. To find queen forks, look at your vulnerable pieces and use triangle and square geometry to find all squares the queen can fork them from. Trading queens in the opening marks the only time you can keep the king in the center the entire game. Rook = 5 points. The rooks are generally passive until open files and semi open files are created. The opening is ideally concluded with the rooks connected along the back rank. Knowledge of pawn structures can allow players to position rooks on closed and semi open files in advance of them opening up. Middle game strategy is usually dominated by fighting over open files to place the rooks on, with the usual ideal of placing a rook on the second or seventh rank of the board, but sometimes threatening a first or eighth rank check. Rooks are usually strongest when they form a battery aiming into the enemy position. Rooks are terribly placed as defenders of weak pawns and they blockade enemy passed pawns worse than any other piece. It is usually more correct to sacrifice pawns for rook activity than to place a rook passively in defense of a pawn; you can win and draw using rooks in attacks and counterattacks, but often lose when you defend pawns with a rook directly. Exceptions to this involve playing for a pawn promotion in simple endgames, which should be studied thoroughly first.Bishop = 3 points (bishop pair = 6.5 points). During the middle game, bishops are usually superior to knights in open pawn formations, where bishop potential to attack more squares than a knight can be maximized. Bishops can participate in engagements from long range and don’t need to be centralized to be well placed. They are strongest when they control light and dark squares as a pair. In endgames with pawns on both sides of the board, bishops are usually superior to knights. Bishop movements are simpler to understand than a knight, so the bishop is often considered inferior to knights by new players. If the opponent isn’t careful, a bishop can blockade entire groups of enemy pawns by themselves by holding a diagonal in front of the enemy pawns. Knight = 3 points. During the middle game, knights are usually better than bishops in closed pawn formations, where knights are the only pieces that can hop over their own pawns to make attacks on enemy weak points, often with help from the queen. Knights on the rim are dim — unless there is a tactical justification for it, knights are terrible on the edge of the board. Knights depend heavily on pawns for protection, with outpost positions for the knight being ideal. Pawns are also the piece best suited to depriving knights of squares they have the potential to move along, increasing the advantage of a bishop over the knight further. You must know the geometry of potential knight attacks to play with and against knights well (ask sometime and I’ll show you on a board). Knights blockade an enemy passed pawn better than any other piece. Bishops are a close second. In the endgame, kings can blockade pawns well too. In endgames where pawns are on one side of the board only, knights are usually better than bishops. Pawn = 1 point. In the opening, pawns make just enough moves to allow the heavier pieces to bring pressure to the center. The pawn structure created should allow heavier pieces to play to their best advantage while minimizing the advantages opposing minor and heavy pieces can achieve. This should be done without creating unforced vulnerabilities for your own king. In the middle game, the direction your central pawns point to is the direction you will be funneled into playing. Isolated pawns, backward pawns and doubled pawns are usually targets that will draw an attack from decent players. In the endgame, a far advanced passed pawn is often worth more than a rook.