Total control over squares or restricting an enemy piece to near-zero mobility without capturing it.
Why it matters
Dominating a piece means taking away every square it could go to, without capturing anything. The piece stays on the board and stops existing: it cannot move, cannot defend, and eventually cannot be saved.
It is the quiet version of a tactic. Nothing hangs, no check is given, and two moves later the opponent discovers that a whole piece has been removed from the game by a pawn move and a king move.
See it on a board
b3 leaves the bishop two squares and both of them lose it: b1 to the king at once, b3 itself to the king a move later. Two quiet moves and a piece is gone without a single tactic.
Checked: this line wins at least 3 pawns of material.
How to play it
- Find an enemy piece with few squares — a bishop on the edge or a knight on the rim.
- Take those squares with pawns first, because pawns cannot be driven away.
- Then attack the piece itself. With nowhere to go, it is simply lost.
At each level
The same idea, said the way it is taught at each age.
Rook · ages 6–9
Count the squares an enemy piece can go to. If the answer is one or none, look for a way to take that square with a pawn.
King · ages 10 and up
Dominance is worth looking for defensively too. A bishop that grabs a pawn in the corner is often only one pawn move from having no squares at all.
What goes wrong
- Attacking the piece before taking its escape squares, so it simply moves.
- Using a piece to cover a square when a pawn would have done it permanently.
Questions people ask
- How is dominance different from trapping a piece?
- They shade into each other. Trapping usually involves a threat the piece must answer; dominance is the slower version, where the squares disappear first and the threat comes later.