Owning the Entire Board

Hello! Today we will be learning how best exploit a space advantage. After following opening principles, there is a good chance that you will have been able to advance your central pawns farther forward than your opponent. However, many players do not know how to improve their position.

To give your opponent the least amount of counter-chances, it is best to:

1. Decrease your opponent's piece activity,

2. Increase your space advantage, and

3. Try to "open a second front".

When you have a long-term advantage over your opponent, your main goal is to eliminate the opponent's counterplay. The best way to do this is to constrict the opponent's pieces so he does not have dynamic opportunities. To do this, it often helps to increase your space advantage, using your pawns to force the opponent to retreat his pieces. Doing this successfully often gives a nearly winning position.

However, success typically does not come where most of the gains have been made, since the opponent brings his pieces towards the defence. The key to breaking through is opening up the other side of the board, using your space advantage to transfer your pieces more quickly than your opponent to this new part of the board. The following game illustrates these ideas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This game was quite fun to play because my opponent had almost no counter-chances, but it was based on several key elements. First, I had a very solid central space advantage. Playing gxf3 instead of letting my opponent free his position by trading off his knight made this advantage more noticable. Also, I was able to gain even more space by advancing my h-pawn all the way to h6, giving me a huge advantage on that side of the board and driving my opponent's bishop back to its original square.

Because I had a strong advantage on the kingside and center, I was able to open up a second front on the queenside with b4. I followed through by responding to c4 with a4 and was able to get the win by simply advancing my passed pawn. By getting so much space and using all parts of the board, I was able to win a seemingly easy game. You can also win games like this. Just try to advance your pawns as far as you can and then break through, possibly on another part of the board.

Good Luck Dominating,

David Adelberg