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In chess openings, the fianchetto is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one square forward. In Italian, fianchetto is pronounced with a hard k sound as in "cat", but many English-speaking chess players seem to pronounce this word with a ch sound as in "church".
The fianchetto is less common than other positions of the bishop. The reasons are that it weakens the pawn structure, especially in case the king castles on the side of the fianchetto; it wastes a tempo in pushing the knight pawn; and it usually means giving up control of the center. On the other hand, it places the bishop on the long diagonal, which can be very useful in some openings. It is employed much more often by Black than by White, since the advantage of the first move usually dictates a strategy of trying to gain a space advantage.
The fianchetto is a staple of most "modern" openings, whose philosophy is to relinquish control of the center in the hope of later undermining the opponent's overextended pawn structure. It also regularly occurs in the so-called "Indian" defences, since fianchettoing was the standard practice in chess as it was played in ancient India, presumably because the bishop was of limited mobility.
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