Castling Early and Often!
Submitted by
on Tue, 10/09/2007 at 2:43pm.
Time an time again when being told about opening priciples and listening to annotated games and lessons from strong and very strong players, this idea of castling early and the theme of king safety is promulgated.
However i was watching an old annotated game from josh waitzkin earlier, and he made a couple of interesting points regarding the early castle. It was in a game where he delayed castling for two or three moves longer than one would have expected from the position, reasoning that; firstly, if the centre is closed and the game doesnt look like opening up anytime soon, then he felt he was wasting a developing move by castling before he felt it was needed. And secondly, at an early stage he was committing his king to one side of the board, allowing his oponent to develop and put early pressure on his position(i.e kings position) from the opening and early middlegame.
anyone more educated than me have any thoughts on this?