How you can stop sucking at KOTH

Please read my previous blog post, which covers a common KOTH mistake if you haven't already. It's quite useful in this context.
Read it? Amazing!

Great, what do I do now?

You already learned from this aforementioned post that moving your king up early in the opening with inadequate support is a critical mistake in KOTH. Now confident, you hop on a KOTH game. However, as your clock runs down, you're now faced with tons of different questions that I happened to leave up to your interpretation (not because I hate you guys, but because I was extremely tired).

"Why should I even bother playing this variant in the first place?"
"How should I play my openings and develop my pieces?"
"Exactly how do I formulate a plan to dominate central control?"
"When should I move my king toward the center?"
"Where can I get more KOTH experience?"

I'll answer these questions, along with others you may have regarding King of the Hill, in this somewhat long KOTH guide.

Why you should invest at least a bit of your time in KOTH

I personally recommend King of the Hill for 3 main reasons.

An "engine-proof" variant

The first of these three reasons is that King of the Hill doesn't give either side a significant advantage held by memorized engine moves, a flaw of many other variants. Notably, Atomic gives White players a significant first-move advantage, which practically kills the fun of the game.

On the other hand, KOTH gives White players a much lower advantage of around +0.5 to +0.7, depending on the engine. This makes the variant inherently better than many others because, just like in standard chess, it requires thinking and planning rather than memorizing a specific move order that wins every time.

Sharpening your chess skillset

King of the Hill is also worth at least some of your time because it indirectly improves your normal game. More specifically, it allows you to sharpen your problem-solving and strategizing. When playing KOTH, you'll often be tasked with finding maneuvers, deciding whether to go for a standard mate or a King of the Hill victory, and setting up a long-term plan for king centralization. These all require critical thinking and problem-solving, which are crucial in normal chess.

Easy to pick up

Another reason why I was personally drawn to King of the Hill is that it didn't take a long time to understand and pick up the game. King of the Hill has many similarities to standard chess, such as the same piece layout, a similar opening scene (I'll get to that soon), and more, while staying different enough with its alternative win condition to maintain its identity as a variant. This makes picking up King of the Hill as a variant a lot less of a burden on your schedule, especially if you're often busy like me.

Alright, let's now get to the real tips on King of the Hill improvement.

A crash course on the King of the Hill opening

A question I find pretty common among less experienced King of the Hill players I know is how they should open their games up. The most important thing I have to say regarding the opening is that, just like in standard chess, there's no one perfect way to play it. However, it's still extremely important to come in with a game plan when you enter a King of the Hill game.

Playing with White

My general advice for your White KOTH repertoire is play the opening you know best. Traditional first moves like e4, d4, Nf3, and c4 all retain a small advantage for White while directly fighting for the central squares. This saves you TONS of time of possibly useless preparation and optimization. I would personally avoid playing first moves, such as g3 or b3, that give Black an easy central push like ...d5 or ...e5, partially surrendering central control.

As a d4 player, here is the main way I usually play the opening.

Note that I typically play Catalan setups with ...g3 in standard chess but usually avoid them in King of the Hill in favor of this more center-oriented approach. This applies to other openings, too—you might have to slightly adjust the way you play your openings in King of the Hill.

Playing with Black

Playing with the Black pieces is not as straightforward as playing with White. You might have to learn openings you don't normally play to better adapt your game plan for King of the Hill (achieving direct central control).

For example, as some of you might know, I personally love playing the Sicilian against e4. However, it gives White too much central power, as their central e-pawn is not well contested, and a d4 push for even more space is easy to achieve for White. Therefore, I've dropped it completely in favor of the Scandinavian, which I strongly recommend against e4 in KOTH.

I don't have a specific recommendation against d4, as I play a lot of different things here. However, here's one interesting approach I recently discovered.

Navigating the middlegame

You managed to achieve a decent position after surviving the opening. Now what? The middlegame is the waviest and windiest part of the King of the Hill ocean. Just like in normal chess, you'll have to be able to spot maneuvers, form a long-term plan, find tactics, improve your pieces, and more broad topics that various other blog posts and studies cover. These skills don't differ from standard chess. Here is the most important KOTH-specific middlegame concept you need to be able to grasp to improve your game.

Formulating a plan for central king movement

The most consistently prevalent goal you need to know how to achieve in post-opening KOTH situations is planning your king's run towards the center. You'll often need to be able to visualize in advance how your king can march towards the center. This often requires great tactical vision, as you need to be able to execute blocks, sacrifices, deflections, and many more tactics. I won't bother going into detail about all of them for the sake of my time and not making this post too overwhelmingly long.

The following are some real-game examples of the process of forming a king centralization plan. Try to solve them yourself for practice or just have a look.

Please let me know if you'd like a study or blog post with more positions like these!

When to charge forward with your king

I think I covered this briefly in my previous blog post on KOTH, but it's a topic important enough to warrant further analysis.

After having formed the centralization plan, you're now left with the question of when you should start moving your king towards the center. There are three questions you should ask yourself to determine whether it's the right time to move your king.

1. Do I have a long-term or short-term plan for centralizing my king?
2. Is it safe to bring my king out?
3. Do I have solid control over the center?

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If the answer to at least one of these questions is no, then it's usually best to wait or castle (emphasis on usually). I personally recommend castling in positions where your king is unsafe and has no clear central pathway, as it's important to remember that normal mates still exist in the variant.

Here are a few practice positions for you to decide whether to move centrally, castle, or wait.

Again, if you want more positions like these, please ask me for them!

The best way to practice KOTH

Now that you've learned these skills, you'll need to find someone to play against to improve your game.

The main way to practice in King of the Hill is by playing in arenas. You can play in the normal Lichess KOTH arenas, which regularly feature experienced (2000+) players and tend to fill up with around 50 players. You can also optionally join the Lichess KOTH Club for club-exclusive tournaments.

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Hope you found this post helpful, and thanks for reading!