When to Trade
If you can trade, should you? Why or why not? There are many different answers to those two questions.
Rules For Trading
Trade when you have a material advantage. If you have more pieces, try to trade as much as possible.
Trade when you are defending. If your opponent has pieces near your king, trade them off to keep your king safe.
Trade to get a positional advantage. If a trade gets one of your pieces to a better square, do it.
Trade to damage your opponent's pawn structure. If a trade makes your opponent's pawns doubled or opens up the opponent's king, do it.
Trade your opponent's important pieces.
The opposite is also true.
Don't trade if you have fewer pieces.
Don't trade when you are attacking.
Don't trade if it puts your opponent's piece in a better position.
Don't trade if it weakens your pawn structure.
Don't trade off your important pieces.
Let's look at some examples:
When to Trade
In this position, White should trade.
White has an extra minor piece, so trading is a good thing in this case.
If it was Black's move, Black should not trade and should try to block the bishop by pushing the c-pawn.
In this position, White should not trade.
White is attacking the black king with the queen, the h4 knight, and the rook.
If White trades queens, then White wouldn't have a queen to attack with.
If it was Black's turn, Black should trade queens.
In this position, White should play Bg5 and trade off Black's dark-square bishop.
In this position, the white knight wants to go to d6, where it can get close to the black king.
But, the bishop on e7 can capture the knight, so White should try to remove it.
In this position, White should trade.
When the bishop captures, Black's g-pawn has to capture back.
When it does, it's easier to attack the black king now that there isn't a g-pawn anymore!
If it was Black's turn, Black should protect the knight with Qe7.
In this position, White should trade.
The black knight on c4 is very powerful. It restricts White's pieces.
So, White can trade it off to free up the position.
