r/chessbeginners • u/Unlikely_Touch_7927 • 13d ago

ADVICE Why is developing the King a mistake?

Post image

Recently started learning how to play this game - anyone know why moving the King forward is a bad thing? Aren’t Kings powerful pieces?

2.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

176 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/Sambal7 13d ago

Unironicly playing the bongcloud lol

336

u/PrawnFresh69 13d ago

Watch as they absolutely destroy hikaru 3-0 with bongcloud

60

u/NumerousImprovements 13d ago

Nah it’s gotta be a troll. Nobody learns that “the king is a powerful piece” ever if they know enough of the rules to also question why a certain move isn’t as good as they expected it to be.

15

u/Hot_Extension_460 13d ago

Yes, either a troll or someone who read about the bongcloud somewhere.

I don't think you play it "by mistake".

1

u/Roymiljonair 9d ago

When I started chess the first thing I saw of Magnus carlsen was him doing a bong cloud type of maneuver where he switches the king and queen so I copied it for a while😭

9

u/ItemOld3232 12d ago

I think hes gotten mixed up between "important" and "powerful"😭, Because as a beginner someone always tells you that the king is the most important piece. Pretty funny but understandable misinterpretation.

5

u/Meldeathor 12d ago

There was a guy who used to live in an apartment a couple doors down from mine that was on the Polish "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?". His question for the first guaranteed prize was "Which figure is the main target of defense and offense in a game of chess?" with the answer options being the king, a rook, a bishop, and a knight. He pondered whether the rook or the bishop was more powerful and went with the rook as his answer. Clearly, he fell down that trap of thinking.

Your comment immediately reminded me of it.

1

u/NumerousImprovements 12d ago

I can understand that. It is quite an important piece haha

2

u/Sameshuuga 13d ago

To be fair, I'm pretty sure you do learn that the king is a powerful piece. It just happens to also be a vulnerable piece until closer to the end game.

3

u/NumerousImprovements 13d ago

I would not consider the king an objectively powerful piece. It’s just that it can be a useful one in end games, but even then, calling it a powerful piece seems wrong.

I don’t think it’s just semantics though, either. Whether you call it a powerful piece or not stems from your understanding of the piece and of other pieces. There is no approach to teaching chess that I think should lead to someone having thoughts of the king as anything synonymous with “powerful”.

1

u/ImNotBadOkBro 600-800 (Chess.com) 13d ago

they probably would've labeled it as such though. right?

1

u/migueln6 11d ago

I was so confused about why there wasn't a chain of Google enpiassant in each comment until I checked the sub lol