Here is a plan that both players strive for from the very beginning. At least, they do if they are experienced players. So how can you wrest the center away from someone who is trying as hard as you are for its control?

The simple answer is to focus all your resources on controlling those essential squares. While planning to win material, while planning an attack on the king, while planning to bring all your pieces into the game, while keeping a sharp eye out for tactical opportunities, don't forget to focus all your moves on the center.

There is more than one way to go about controlling the center. In fact, there are essentially two ways to go about such control: You can strive for the classical pawn center or you can try for the hypermodern center.

The Classical Pawn Center

This approach boils down to “put your pawns in the center and keep them there.” At the end of the nineteenth century, the chess giant and first world champion Wilhelm Steinitz promoted this kind of a center, and at the turn of the twentieth century, the famous chess teacher and author Siegbert Tarrasch codified the idea. Tarrasch went so far as to suggest that without a strong pawn center your game will likely collapse.

The idea is simple enough. Since pawns are the least powerful of the chess family, place them side by side in the center and you deny any central squares to your opponent's pieces.

A great example of fighting for central control with pawns is the following opening variation:

1. e4 c6 2. d3 d5 3. Nd2 e5 4. Ngf3.

Black has more pawns in the center than White does, but White has more pieces in play. White also threatens to win the e5-pawn.

4…. Nd7 5. d4.

Position after 5. d4.

White once again threatens to win the e5-pawn, and he still has more pieces in play. And notice that both sides have filled up the entire center with pawns.

The Hypermodern Center

This is an idea that had always been known, but wasn't often used early in the game. It is really a counterattacking idea. The so-called hypermoderns decided that a big, fat pawn center can make a great target for an attack by the pieces. So they came up with ways to avoid putting pawns in the center. Instead, they set up their positions to attack their opponent's pawns, which were obligingly always there in the center.

Hypermodern was a slightly derogatory term when it was first used, after World War I. It was put on chess players and theoreticians who decided that the old classical ways were suspect. There was quite a debate about whether or not the hypermoderns were right. Their ideas became accepted as an alternative method of fighting for the center.