middlegame

Information about middlegame

Middlegame position from the game Joseph Henry Blackburne - Siegbert Tarrasch, Breslau, 1889. Last move of White - 26.Qh6-g5, next move of Black - 26...Nb7-d6.


The middlegame in chess refers to the portion of the game that happens immediately after the opening (usually the first move after the procession of moves that make up a standard opening) and blends somewhat with the endgame, usually when queens are traded. During this time, players will attempt to strengthen their positions while weakening their opponent's, both by careful arrangement of the pieces for prepared attacks and defenses and by whittling away at their opponent's numbers. The middlegame usually involves a good deal of trading; studying how to trade successfully is important.

There are a number of elementary tactics that help with taking your opponent's pieces. Examples include forking, skewering, pinning, and discovered attacks, though there are more. Most of them involve attacking the opponent's king (or, inversely, by making it so that he/she cannot attack your king), which will, usually, gain an advantage.

In addition, there are strategies that are useful, which usually revolve around having pieces in spots that are well defended, attacking other squares that your opponent would like to move to and thus preventing him from doing so. On the other hand, it involves setting up your pieces so that they will be useful there later in the game, despite the fact that they may not be useful when you first put a piece there.

Good players will use good tactics that usually resolve with good trades, but also a strong position during the middlegame.

The last thing that happens in the middlegame is the setup for endgame. Since many endgames involve the promotion of a pawn, it is usually good to keep that in mind when making trades during the middlegame.

Chess computers are widely considered to be weakest (as compared to the other sections of the game) in the middlegame. During the opening the computer can rely on an extensive stored library of standard openings, and during the endgame the complexity is low enough that the computer can calculate the game very far ahead, and extend its reach using endgame tablebases. In contrast, during the middlegame, extensive heuristics are required, exactly what the human brain excels at.

See also

References

Further reading

  • The Middlegame (two volumes), by Max Euwe and H. Kramer
  • Chess Middlegames: Essential Knowledge, by Yuri Averbakh, 1996, Cadogan, ISBN 1-85744-125-7
  • The Middlegame in Chess, by Reuben Fine
Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841–1924), nicknamed "Black Death", dominated the British chess world during the latter part of the 19th century. He learned the game at the relatively late age of 18 but quickly became a strong player and went on to develop a professional chess
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Siegbert Tarrasch (March 5, 1862 – February 17, 1934) was one of the strongest chess players and the most influential chess teacher of the late 19th century and early 20th century. He was born in Breslau, when that city was part of Germany.
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Chess is a recreational and competitive game for two players. Sometimes called Western Chess or International Chess to distinguish it from its predecessors and other chess variants, the current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe in the second half of the 15th
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chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game (the opening moves). Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black.
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Endgame is the name of a 1997 story arc of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book published by published by Archie Comics. It officially encompasses issues 47 through 50, although Sonic VS Knuckles: Battle Royale directly leads up to the events.
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queen (♕ ♛) or archaically known as the minister is the most powerful piece in the game of chess. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of their first rank next to their king.
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Tactic could refer to:
  • Military tactics
  • Tactic (method)
  • Tactic (municipality)
  • Tactical bombing
  • Tactics (band)
  • Tactics (game)
  • Tactics (manga)

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fork is a tactic that uses one piece to attack two or more of the opponent's pieces at the same time, hoping to achieve material gain (by capturing one of the opponent's pieces) because the opponent can only counter one of the two (or more) threats.
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skewer (or thrust) is an attack upon two pieces in a line and is similar to a pin. In fact, a skewer is sometimes described as a "reverse pin"; the difference is that in a skewer, the more valuable piece is in front of the piece of lesser or equal value.
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pin is a situation brought on by an attacking piece in which a defending piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable defending piece on its other side to capture by the attacking piece.
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discovered attack is an attack revealed when one piece moves out of the way of another.[1] Discovered attacks can be extremely powerful, as the piece moved can make a threat independently of the piece it reveals.
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King (♔ ♚) is the most important piece. The object of the game is to capture the opponent's king. If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must move so as to remove the threat of capture.
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An outpost is a square in an open file which is protected by a pawn. Outposts are a favourable position from which to launch an attack, particularly using a knight. The reason an outpost is so strong is that it is immune to attack from major pieces (rooks and queens) because of the
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Promotion is a chess term describing the transformation of a pawn that reaches the eighth rank into the player's choice of a queen, knight, bishop, or rook of the same color. Promotions to king are also possible in some chess variants, such as suicide chess.
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pawn (♙♟) is the weakest and most numerous piece in the game of chess, representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen.
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Chess-playing computers are now available at a very low cost. There are many programs such as Crafty, Fruit and GNU Chess that can be downloaded from the Internet for free, and yet play a game that with the aid of virtually any modern personal computer, can defeat most master
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chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game (the opening moves). Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black.
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endgame tablebase is a computerized database of all chess positions within certain endgames. The tablebase reveals the game-theoretical value of each position (win, loss, or draw), and how many moves it will take to achieve that result with perfect play.
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Chess strategy is concerned with the evaluation of chess positions and with setting up goals and long-term tactics for future play. During the evaluation, a player must take into account the value of pieces on the board, pawn structure, king safety, positioning, and control of key
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tactic refers to a short sequence of moves which limits the opponent's options and which results in tangible gain. Tactics are usually contrasted to strategy, in which advantages take longer to be realized, and the opponent is less constrained in responding.
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In chess, the chess pieces are often assigned certain point values as a heuristic that help determine how valuable a piece is strategically. These values are useful to players, and are also used in computer chess to help the computer figure out what moves to make.
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pawn structure (sometimes known as the pawn skeleton) is the configuration of pawns on the chessboard. Pawns being the least mobile of the chess pieces, the pawn structure is relatively static, and largely determines the strategic nature of the position.
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Max Euwe

Full name Machgielis Euwe
Country  Netherlands
Born May 20, 1901
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Died November 26, 1981
Amsterdam, The Netherlands


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Yuri Lvovich Averbakh (born February 8, 1922, in Kaluga, Russia) is a Russian chess player and author. His father was German Jewish,[1] and his ancestors came from Germany and were named Auerbach, meaning "meadow brook." His mother was Russian.
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Reuben Fine (October 11 1914, New York City, – March 26 1993, New York City) was one of the best chess players in the world from the mid 1930s through the early 1940s, an International Grandmaster, as well as a chess author, psychologist, and psychology author.
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