Trading Pieces | Chess Middlegames

Knowing when and why to trade pieces is one of the main strategic and positional aspects of chess.

Understanding whether or not a piece trade benefits you is crucial for initiating a plan of actually trading something. I believe (as in almost any part of chess) that pattern recognition will help you improve! That is why analyzing games and looking for weak or strong pieces and finding solutions for trading them off or amplifying their strength is what you should be doing in your training sessions.

To start off with, I would like to recommend a childish strategy I use during games (which I’ve picked up from the great Yasser Seirawan). Talk to your pieces! Ask them if they are good or bad, ask them if the square they’re on is the optimal square. It might seem redundant, but you’d be surprised how many opportunities to improve a piece or to trade a bad piece you miss simply because you don’t think analytically. Think about your pieces and the ideas will come to you.

Now, following through with your ideal idea and completing your plan to trade off a bad piece or not allow your opponent to trade one of his is difficult to do during a real game.

I have used several different examples to show you the most common “bad pieces” which should be traded. There are far more examples out there and you should think of them yourself, find them yourself and resolve them yourself.

Once again, take any number of random games, put them on move 20, and look for bad or strong pieces. Ask your self the following questions:

1. Why is this piece bad?
2. How is its counterpart? (if you’re considering a knight, then how is the opponent’s knight)
3. Would it be better somewhere else or should I trade it off?
4. What are the upsides and downsides of trading the piece; which squares or pieces are left unprotected, is my king less or more safe etc.?
5. How do I trade it off, and am I the only one who decides about the trade?
6. Can your opponent stop you and how?

#chess

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