When is a slight Queen move appropriate?
Often times when I run analysis in engine or play regular games, there are slight moves of the queen when it doesn't seem she is in danger. I understand it's to create threat, but maybe I just don't get the basics of chess attacking. I need help identifying when slight moves are beneficial. Another idea in that category is king moves. I'm a very offensive player, but yet I get my ass kicked because I can't aim when I strike, I just move my pieces in on safe squares and hope it does damage.. This part just stumps me and I feel as though I have no creativity in the department of attacking. Any advice is appreciated, thank you.
Posted Aug 24, 2011, 3:55 AM UTC
06
If "slight" just means moving the piece a small distance, then I don't think these moves are as "slight" as you think. Move a Queen one square in any direction and count the number of squares it attacks that it didn't attack before. That's how "slight" it is. And for the same reason it's hard to generalize about them; if all you tell me is "He moved his Queen one square, why did he do that?" there are surely a thousand different possible answers. Do you have any specific examples?
As far as attacking play, you're right to say it's largely about threats. But threats for their own sake are no use. For instance, many beginners like to put you in check any time they can, and sometimes that's no good.
There are a few reasons why you'd want to play a threat (and this list is probably incomplete).
If none of these are true, you might want to hold off on playing your threat. Then what? At least you should keep it in mind and see if you can find a way to get more mileage out of it later.
You could also find a move that aims to make one of the above statements true. (For instance, take point #1: you could do something that undermines his ability to meet the threat. Points 2 and 3 are doable; can you imagine an example? Point 4, gaining time, might be wasted if you spend an extra move to do nothing but set this "opportunity" up.) Any move that does this is itself a threat: you're threatening to play your original threat, which you have turned from a harmless nuisance into a serious blow!
Now you must apply the same criteria to see if this new threat is worthwhile. But if it fails the test...hell, what's to stop you from going down another level?! As a bonus, by this point you're planning so deeply that your opponent legitimately might not realize the point of your moves. He might be trapped.
Typically, what happens with these threats within threats is that you wind up using big threats for smaller gains. Your opponent isn't going to allow checkmate but he could lose a Bishop preventing it; or perhaps you both foresee that disaster but you force him to double his Pawns to avoid it. That's how it goes, but that's also why it's important that when you see a good move, you look for a better one. Otherwise it's easy to turn a big advantage into a small one.
King moves, outside the endgame, are almost always defensive in some sense. Usually these have to do with some tactical possibilities. If your King was previously vulnerable to check, there's some danger that your opponent could for instance set up a fork. Now you have to make sure you don't leave any pieces undefended in the wrong place, make sure he can't bump off the defenders and leave you in that situation, make sure there aren't any threats he can make which can't be met without violating these conditions. It's just a big hassle. Sometimes the King move is just the easiest way to keep your life simple. It can even function as a threat, if these tactics were preventing you from doing something nasty.
Of course, grandmasters and chess engines have much better tactical vision than you do, so these moves often look puzzling. Personally, I regard it as a sign of great positional judgement to be able to gauge accurately when this sort of move is wise.