Join the Chess Confidence Community for free group classes, tournaments & courses! https://www.chessconfidence.com/free-chess-classes " We want the rooks together whether they're connected or doubled up. So usually after the opening, after we move our two center pawns, knights, bishops and we castle, the next thing we do is make sure the rooks can see each other and get that piece out of the way. We move the queen up so the rooks can see each other and now they're connected on the same rank. Another way to make the rooks stronger is by doubling them up like this. So they're protected so if they go up there, they attack the king and his protectors. That would be checkmate. That's one way to make it stronger and we only double up on open files. So these are two ways you can have your rooks either like the white side where they're doubled up or like the black side where they're connected on the same rank on open files. But look what can happen if you double up. It's especially good for attacks. So if they move their bishop, you can take their rook, takes, take, take, take. They have to block. We take the knight and our checkmate. Doubling up is great for attacks. So we want to connect the rooks so they can see each other, the black rooks and the white rooks. So we get the pieces out of the way. The bishop needs to go, the queen needs to go, they can see each other and our queen needs to go. The rooks can see each other. They're connected now. Because look what can happen when they're not connected. Black takes a free pawn but now takes, take, take and now it's checkmate again. The king has nowhere to go and it's being attacked. So be careful. What should black do instead? Instead of moving their bishop, they should move their knight out so the rooks can now see each other. So that never happens again. We want the rooks either connected on the same rank or doubled up on the same file so they can see each other so they're always protected by the other rook."