Chess 101: Castling

Castling in chess is one of the most important moves of the entire game. Although it is primarily a defensive move, it has been used as an attacking move on thousands of occasions. The chess notation for castling is 0-0 (castle kingside) or 0-0-0 (castle queenside). Alexander Alekhine is noted for telling people to castle early, castle often! This is sound advice from a strong grandmaster and world champion.

While castling is normally done very early in the game, sometimes it is delayed for any of several reasons. One reason could be that queens were traded off early in the chess game, negating the need to castle immediately due to the fact that no quick checkmates linger in the air. In fact, some of these games require no castling at all, but this is usually more for the advanced chess player who knows endgames well. For our purposes we will assume you are to castle as early as possible.

Castling was originally known as the "king's leap", before the queen could move more than one square at a time. After the queen became the deadly piece she is today (somewhere around 1600 A.D.), it was called "castling", and denoted as a single move. Sometimes castling kingside is known as castling short, while castling queenside is called castling long. Let's take a look at why castling is important, and how it can help our game.

First of all, castling gets the king OUT of the center, where he is much more vulnerable to attacks from enemy pieces. Have you ever played a game where your king lost its right to castle and got stuck in the middle? That was probably not very fun, was it? It can be pure torture to defend for twenty moves in a game that could have been equal, had your king just gotten safe earlier.

A second reason to castle is that after your bishops and knights are developed and moving around the board, it is a convenient way to connect your rooks so that they can move to the center files or open files. Rooks working together are generally much more powerful than rooks working by themselves. This is why you will find the grandmasters castling as early as possible in most cases; they too have had their king stuck in the middle and spent ridiculous amounts of energy either defending the stranded king, or manually castling it which can take an amazing amount of moves.

If there is an open f or d file, castling can even become an attacking move! I have seen several games in which Alexander Alekhine sacrificed his bishop on f7, for instance, to draw the enemy king out. He would then castle with check (0-0+), further limiting the king's movements on the chessboard! Some of these lines are common with the king's gambit and other openings where the f pawn is shoved into the center early.

In short, castling can be the single most important move of the game, and should be done as early as possible in most cases. Just be careful that you aren't castling into a checkmate via the classic bishop sacrifice typically seen in structures such as the French Defense. It can be quite embarrassing to finally castle your king, only to be checkmated in a few more moves. Have fun, and remember, king safety is job one!