From Newsgroup: rec.games.chess.misc
Praetor Mandrake wrote:
Here's a tip I saw in one of the chess books (paraphrased):
"There is a lot of positioning at the beginning so don't be afraid to
move your bishops around a bit to wrangle the right space."
These bishop moves may seem minor at the beginning but a well placed
bishop is a great feat.-a Maybe you need to castle or have the bishop 4 squares to the left etc.
Minor piece play is an aspect of the game where even grandmasters have substantial room for improvement (well, some of them).
Many a game has been won by the player with the better minor piece, even
when the major pieces are still on the board. Fischer commented in one
of his games that his unchallengable knight on the fifth rank by itself
gave him a won game. In the Taimanov collection I reviewed a few months
ago there is a whole section on games he won principally because his
bishop on b2 came to dominate that long diagonal.
But one of the main weaknesses of my game when I was 1500 lay in my
making too many moves with minor pieces and my queen, not paying enough attention to the rooks. Nimzowitch's illustration of how to handle rooks
in "My System" greatly improved my game.
William Hyde
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