Square Control

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Square Control,
refers to which and how many pieces attack or defend a particular square, independently from its occupancy state. Squares diagonally controlled by a pawn are usually taboo for opponent pieces, but the stop and possible pawn push target square is not controlled by the pawn itself, and could be blocked. If the square under investigation is occupied, the question arises whether the piece is hanging (if controlled exclusively by the opponent side) or en prise, which is topic of SEE and quiescence search.

In Evaluation

Square control is considered in evaluating piece mobility and connectivity, controls of squares around the king are matter of king safety evaluation, and center control might be considered as evaluation term in the opening or middlegame. Control of stop and telestop squares of passers is another evaluation topic. Some programs calculate a square control balance as difference of the sums of reciprocal piece values of both sides, and further aggregate the controls over all squares, possibly already considering center, king areas and passed pawn front spans by a weight matrix.

See also

• Attack and Defend Maps
• Attacks
• Center Control
• Color Weakness
• Connectivity
• Control of Stop and Telestop
• En prise
• Guard Heuristic
• Hanging Piece
• Mobility
• Piece-Square Tables
• Quiescence Search
• Square Attacked By
• Square Control in King Safety
• Square Control in SOMA
• Static Exchange Evaluation
• Strategic Test Suite

Publications

• Chrilly Donninger (2006). Plättchen zählen. pdf (German) » Mobility

Forum Posts

• Binders by Lyudmil Tsvetkov, CCC, February 04, 2015 » Pawn Structure
• Empty! by Lyudmil Tsvetkov, CCC, February 14, 2015
• Pawn defence by Lyudmil Tsvetkov, CCC, February 18, 2015
• Identifying weak squares by Jon12345, CCC, July 08, 2021

External Links

• Control of the center | Chess strategy from Wikipedia
• RKeTZ - Ground Control, Lokal Harmonie, Duisburg Ruhrort, April 2016, YouTube Video

Jan Klare, Luc Ex, Michael Vatcher, Achim Zepezauer

References

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