Lesson 10

Strategic Elements: Material

“Material” refers to the pieces on the board. Some pieces are more powerful and useful than others, and are therefore considered to be more valuable. If you’ll recall from our lessons on tactics, the pieces are assigned numbers to reflect their relative value: pawns are worth 1 point, Knights 3, Bishops 3, Rooks 5, and Queens 9. (The King isn’t usually assigned a number – the game ends if the King is “captured” (that is, checkmated), so his value is infinite.) 

One has a material advantage if the sum total of one’s pieces is greater than the sum total of one’s opponent's pieces. To put it another way, if you have more and / or more valuable pieces than your opponent, you’re “ahead,” materially speaking.  For example, if you capture your opponent’s Rook and only lose a Knight in the process, then you have a material advantage of 2 points. If you exchange a Bishop for a Knight, then material is still even. If you lose your Queen in return for only a Rook, then you’re behind by 4 points.

A material advantage can be useful in lots of different circumstances. For example, if you have more material than your opponent, you may be able to make more threats than they can deal with at once. This might include threatening to capture your opponent’s pieces, or even an attack against your opponent’s King (as a matter of fact, if you have more pieces available for attack than your opponent has for defense, your attack has a good chance of succeeding).

A material advantage is also very useful in the endgame. Remember those "Basic Mates" we learned way back in our tutorial on Basic Endgame Strategy? They all involved a material advantage for the winner (King & Rook v. King, King & Queen v. King, etc.). Also, having more and / or better pieces can make it easier to promote a pawn, since you’ll have more pieces available to shepherd the pawn through to the promotion square than your opponent will have pieces to stop it. Then once you promote the pawn (often to a Queen), you’ll have an even greater material advantage.

So how do you get a material advantage? Here are a few ways:

1) Capture your opponent’s unprotected pieces. Beginners often “hang” their pieces; that is, they move them to a square where they aren’t defended and can be captured for free. (The fancy term for this is “leaving your pieces en prise.”) They usually do this by mistake, of course – they simply overlook the fact that their piece can be captured. Each time your opponent moves, take a moment to look and see if you can capture it without any repercussions. If so, grab it! Just make sure it’s really a “hanged” piece and not a sacrifice with a dash of poison!

2) Protect your own pieces so they don’t get captured. This is just the inverse of the point above. Make sure your pieces are always adequately defended, and make sure you don’t “hang” them!

3) Make favorable exchanges. If you can force an exchange of pieces that nets you material, then (all things being equal) go for it! For example, if you can trade your Bishop for your opponent’s Rook, then you’ve just won two points worth of material, and assuming your opponent can’t do something worse to you in return (like checkmate your King), you’ll have an advantage.

4) Avoid unfavorable exchanges. This is just the inverse of the point above. Don’t let your opponent trade less valuable pieces for your valuable ones unless you can do something worse in return (like checkmate the enemy King).

5) Look for tactical opportunities. We discussed tactics a while back, and (if you’ll recall) they often lead to a material advantage. Before each move, look and see if there are any tactical opportunities. Learning to recognize them is a matter of tactical training, but that’s for later. As a beginner, just review the section on Basic Tactics once in a while, and try to notice when those sorts of tactical opportunities arise.