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 The Correct Moment For CastlingBeginners are often advised to castle as quickly as possible. This is a useful and sensible piece of advice in the majority of instances. Certainly, less experienced players offend against this general precept extremely often, postponing castling unnecessarily and as a result suddenly finding themselves in an awkward situation, by which time it is far too late to castle. The present writer^ once made a statistical survey of late castling using a number of simultaneous games and came to the conclusion that a common characteristic of so-called 'simultaneous massacres' (when the master wins all, or nearly all, of the games) was precisely the lateness of castling. Around the 12th move of one such simultaneous display the situation was as follows: the master had castled on 18 of the boards and not yet on 2, while his opponents had castled on 3 board but not on the rest. The result: 20-0 to the master - a real massacre! this is a typical example which indicates the disadvantages resulting from a delay in castling. In other simultaneous displays, where masters had a harder task and poorer results, the statistics on castling, taken around the 12th to 15th moves, on the whole showed small discrepancies. The general rule that one should castle as soon as possible is therefore quiet in order, though it must at once be emphasized that there are also many exceptions to it Every chess player of greater experience is well acquainted with those particular situations when it is correct to postpone castling or when it is altogether unnecessary. To make the matter clearer, I have set out some situations of this kind ad support them with examples: 1) Castling is postponed or not carried out at all, because some other action s is more useful. this might be quite simply the capture of an opponent's piece, the spoiling of his position, or , indeed, an attack. If such an attack is sufficiently strong and profitable, the attacker often never castles, because he is victorious first. This kind of situation needs no particular examples. 2) Castling is postponed, because for the time being it is still dangerous. It is better to prepare it by removing the danger first, e.g. by exchanging the opponent's threatening pieces or by some other maneuver. ^Vladmir Vukovic - 'The Art Of Attack In Chess' - Copyright 1998 |
