@Thengel You said: "In which positions is it often useful to play a fianchetto? With which pawn structures? Why ?"
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In any position where it might be the best move, it should be played.
There should be concrete targets or objectives on the diagonals that the bishop can access.
Aiming the bishop at useless real-estate is a costly waste.
Maximize it's potential.
Looking at the colour of bishop that your opponent will have in the long term, is a great clue.
Fianchettos on white squares are often very effective if your opponent only has a black bishop on the board. Why? Because it will promise to influence the center, unimpeded, with long term pressure. An added bonus is that nature of the fianchetto makes that bishop difficult to harass by knights.
Making sure that that colour of bishop won't be needed somewhere else is important as well. If you notice a strong piece that's forward and can't be easily uprooted, it might be worthwhile to call an audible on that bishop and trade it for your opponent's stronger piece. Never be rigid and dogmatic in your thinking.
***NEVER do that.***
It's not always that we can use that bishop in the center. Redeploying it can be difficult; however, often this ends up being the result of closed positions, where spending tempo to adjust your bishop isn't as critical. That said, it can still be a nuisance.
(Be aware!! If you choose to deploy a fianchetto bishop, pay very close attention to YOUR OWN REASONS as to why you're making that move. No matter what the case...***ALWAYS do that.***
Before you try to force-fit what a master told you, or what you read in a book, or what you saw in a video, ALWAYS make sure that you're making your own moves for your own reasons. If you can include an understanding of something that you learned, great. But NEVER play someone else's move that you can't make sense of, thinking that it's "right".
It's "right" for them and for reasons that they understand.
It's "wrong" for you because you won't have a clue how to follow up.
This is not the case when you make sure that your compass is always primary.
By internalizing this rule as THE PRIMARY absolute, you will streamline your growth and learning.
Apologies for the tangent, but certain things can't go without saying.)
When you play a fianchetto, give it a fundamental objective/rationale (which ALL your moves should include, unless it's a tactical exchange/attack in order to realize a fundamental objective/rationale), and see how close you can get to realizing that objective/rationale.
If you're not able to use that bishop in a way that you had intended, why not?
If you can't use it for your primary fundamental objectives, is there something else that you could do with it?
What can you learn for next time?
What worked well?
What didn't work well?
All fianchetto bishops are not created equal!! You can't say "I lose 66% of the games where I fianchetto, and call it a day."
It just means that you're using it in inopportune times with inefficient effect.
Pawn structures mean everything!! There are very few "always'" in chess, and this isn't one of them...but it's close.
As a rule, you'll want to make sure that your bishop has good scope or promises to have good scope.
What I mean is, don't condemn your bishop to stare at the back of your own pawn's head for the whole game (bad bishop). This is generally a bad idea. If you can force a break and open those diagonals on your own terms, then that's a different story, but if you have the choice between keeping the center open or giving yourself a bad bishop, then you'll want to keep that center open.
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Remember:
A bishop is worth "3" points on move 1.
What you do with it will make it worth more, or less.
The same goes for the rest of your pieces...and your opponent's pieces.
This can't be overstated. It is the epitome of chess.
When you're done this post, read it again, and think about what this implies through your day.
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You said: "When is it bad to play a fianchetto?"
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It's bad to play a fianchetto when it's not to your advantage to do so.
Once you begin getting an idea about what makes bishops stronger instead of weaker, you'll be able to get a strong grip on when not to fianchetto.
Nobody over +2000 is playing fianchettos 'for the sake of it'.
We play them in order to improve our bishop, improve our central control, exert pressure, improve the colour complex, produce color complex objectives, and to develop a piece to a productive square.
Remember, anytime you fianchetto that pawn, you're opening up a diagonal to your rook, and/ you're fundamentally weakening your castle.
Can castling behind a fianchetto make good sense? Of course it can. I'm sure that idea has helped win many games.
That said, fianchetto castles are not necessarily a "stronger defense".
To the contrary. If that bishop is traded off while your opponent still has diagonal strikers on that colour (Q/B), then it's tough to see how you could save that game short of an immediate and irresistible attack. In that kind of a debacle, you may as well not have any pawns surrounding your king at all.
Anytime you fianchetto, you are giving your opponent one less move in order to make contact with your castle wall.
Sometimes this is a completely irrelevant fact.
Sometimes it's a game-breaker.
Additionally, when you fianchetto, it's now telegraphed where and how your opponent should attack.
Where a simple pawn move to the 3rd/6th ranks might have easily stymie an attack with a healthy castle wall, now that you've weakened it with the fianchetto, a/c f/h file pawn attacks will be slightly more effective for your opponent.
I've had games where we're racing attacks, and I've just allowed ...a4-a3 ...a3xb2, where I trade those 2 tempo and a pawn for an irresistible attack on his castle. So sometimes EVEN IF your opponent has control over the dark squares inside your castle, it's not necessarily deadly if he can't follow up. I don't want to bleed 101 different lessons into a single post, so I'll stop there.
Fianchettos can prove to be a game-winning way to develop a bishop.
Fianchettos can prove to be a very very very terrible idea.
To make matters more complex, it's often only 5-10-15-20 moves down the road where there is a variation that would either justify our choose to fianchetto, or prove our fianchetto to be a bad idea.
So once we define our reason/objectives/rationales for fianchettoing our bishop, we would then very deliberately guard against our opponents trying to force us a bad bishop by closing the pawn structure, or offering a simple trade with his less effective B or N in some cases, or even forcing a re-deployment of that bishop elsewhere.
We would very deliberately threaten discovered attacks in communication with pawn breaks, and force our opponent to play detour around these kinds of threats, and discombobulate their attack/defense in the process.
It's not always tactical threats that irritate and massage the position.
It's quite often the simple, seemingly-passive, presence of that sniper bishop on b2g2b7g7.
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It's just to say, "it depends on the situation."
It's just to say that, "It's up to you to PROVE that it's a good idea. It's up to your opponent to PROVE that it's a bad idea."
In other words, it's a massive mountain of EV-ER-Y-THING that surrounds the fianchetto, present and future, that needs to be considered, not the fianchetto itself.
You see? Chess.
Chess!
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Remember!!!
A bishop is worth "3" points on move 1.
What you do with it will make it worth more, or less.
The same goes for the rest of your pieces...and your opponent's pieces.
Remember!!!
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This is the second or third 0-0-0 game that I've noticed myself playing.
Coincidentally, I played it moments before reading this post.
Look at how I used that bishop:
ONE of the ideas...ONLY ONE...(I don't want you to get myopic on this one example because there are MANY MANY MANY MANY better examples of DIFFERENT ways of maximizing the scope of a sniper-bishop...
....but ONE of the ideas is that of the discovery attack.
Be it a pawn center where after a tactical combo the center is dissolved and that bishop springs to life...
...or be it that N on c6...
...or any kind of combination between the two...
...or something else that didn't happen in this particular game...
...that kind of theme is exactly what you really want to force on your opponent with this kind of setup.
It's AMAZING how fast x-rayed rooks on a1a8h1h8 can become severe liabilities with sniper bishops gawking at them on the long diagonal. It can go from "I'll worry about that x-ray attack later. There are still 4 pieces on that diagonal between his bishop and my rook, to "Oh crap my rook is being discovered and I can pretty much go ahead and resign this now."
Granted, it's been a while since any of my opponents have shown me the kind of cooperation like I had in this game, plus he had admitted to drinking beer on move 1...
...but without that POTENTIAL there, and me appreciating and realizing that potential...
...there could never have been a "lucky" combo available for me to play in the first place...
...much less one that I would have been in a position to find.
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Notice my pawns on d7-e6.
That's a LONG way for my bishop to go without the fianchetto.
So it can often just start out as a simple consideration to develop, exert influence, and save tempo, and create potential.
We often find similar motifs in the French as well.
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Other openings that include fianchettos are:
QGD
Grunfeld
English
Dutch
***HOWEVER*** I highly highly highly highly highly highly recommend that you take no more than a CURSORY study of these openings.
THEY are not the way to play chess and win more games.
YOU are the way to play chess and win more games.
These openings CAN NOT HELP YOU.
Only YOU can help you.
You will have to learn to argue good moves. That's the bottom line.
Until you touch 2000, opening theory has absolutely nothing to do with your next win/loss.
As long as your first 3 moves aren't completely stupid, you have every chance to win that game, regardless of what your opponent does/doesn't play.
Just make those first 3 moves for YOUR OWN reasons, and just continue to reason out what's best for your position as you go.
Chess theory can create a myopic paradigm. There is nothing worse for the growing chess mind.
Engine study can create a myopic paradigm. There is nothing worse for the growing chess mind.
Masters giving advice, or even being eavesdropped by the growing chess mind, can create a myopic paradigm.
All of these are anti-chess, anti-creativity, anti-imagination, anti-constructive, anti-intuitive.
There is no way to create a good chess move while thinking, "What would blablabla say about this position? I know that I'm supposed to do something but I can't remember what 'THEY' said about this, or how this line goes exactly."
You have got to turn all that off.
It's very very simple.
There is just you and your best argument as to why a piece should be on one square instead of another.
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Remember This!!!
A bishop is worth "3" points on move 1.
What you do with it will make it worth more, or less.
The same goes for the rest of your pieces...and your opponent's pieces.
Remember This!!!
