In this lesson we talk about why we castle, the origins of the castling move, situations in which we don’t want to castle at all, and opposite-side castling.
It turns out that the strategy for opposite side castling isn’t as simple as counting who made more moves towards the pawn storm plan and seeing if you win the race.
Here’s the clip of Magnus analyzing one of our model games recommended by a viewer:
0:00 History of castling
3:30 Nowhere is safe but castling helps
4:25 1st model game, Fischer – Chalker 1964: tactics overshadows strategic ideas like castling
16:10 2nd model game, Spassky – Ljubojevic: castling is not always strategically best either
23:37 3rd model game, Coach Robert – NN 2017: opposite side castling blunder! Attack on the flank, closed center
34:59 4th model game, Carlsen – Li Chao: one side has greater attacking chances after castling
1:20:20 Summary remarks and viewer questions: opposite castling is not just a race to attack first