Initiative
The advantage of being able to create threats that force the opponent to respond, dictating the game's direction.
A player with the initiative makes moves the opponent must react to, rather than reacting themselves — even without a material advantage, holding the initiative is often a decisive positional asset.
Etymology
Initiative is a French borrowing of 1775 meaning “power of initiating”; the idiom “to take the initiative” is attested by 1815, and its home register is military and political. Chess adopted that sense wholesale: the earliest chess use found in this research is Steinitz's annotation in The Modern Chess Instructor (New York, 1889): “Black obtains the initiative of an attack against the fixed KP.” Capablanca then promoted it to a named strategic element, heading two chapters of Chess Fundamentals (1921) “The Initiative” and “Relinquishing the Initiative.” Modern reference treatments tie it to time: Larry Evans's four elements of chess are pawn structure, force, space, and time, with a time advantage equated to having the initiative.
First documented: 1889 — Steinitz, The Modern Chess Instructor (New York, 1889)
Translations
Translations for this term haven't been added yet.