10 Chess Tips To CRUSH Everyone

ladies and gentlemen chess is a complicated game that is no secret you know what else is no secret that i've been going to the gym new people i don't usually wear tank tops in my videos anyway a couple of months ago i asked you to submit questions that you could ask a chess master anything on your mind about the game that will help you improve like over 200 000 of you participated on this community post and you boosted the questions that you want to answer the most to the top and so ladies and gentlemen i firmly believe that this video will help everybody everybody from beginners to intermediate to even advanced players how to think about the game and improve their thought process time stamps are in the video player for every single question and in my opinion the last question question number 10 is just as important as question number one so if your attention span gives out come back to this video watch it a couple of times but you usually do that anyway right all right here we go question number one comes from aditya kashyap and he says how to make plans in the middle game this is a question that every single chess player is constantly asking me how do i make plans and aditya's question was so highly voted he has a second question in that blurb you're going to see it a little bit later so folks this is what i'm going to tell you about plans okay this is the way the first way to answer question number one and then we're gonna flow this into question number two how do you make a plan in chess your plans in the middle game which is the second phase of the game between the opening and the end game need to stem from your opening what does that mean well let's get into a few examples okay let's say you are playing the london system with white d4 d5 bishop f4 now if you don't have an opening that you play you gotta get the basics of the game down first because essentially what you're trying to do is learn middle game plans like you're trying to learn a really complicated technique in the kitchen that will take four hours but there's a 75 chance you'll burn toast right so you need to kind of fill in the gaps first so you should be able to explain to me or to anybody the plans in the various positions associated with the opening that you play and if you freestyle openings all the time it's going to be really hard to teach you this so for example in the london system you should be able to say the following when my opponent develops the light squad bishop out i know that that destabilizes the b7 pawn and so my plan is associated with bringing my queen out to target the weakness and playing on the queen side and i accomplished this plan with the move c4 if my opponent were to take i'm very happy with this i get two bishops in the center of the board and if my opponent denies this then i play knight to c3 and i do knight to c3 only after pawn to c4 because otherwise i would be blocked in and my queen wouldn't be able to get out and that is generally the way i play this now furthermore i know that in london the e5 square is very valuable so for example if the light sword bishop doesn't come out then i can go for the other plan which is something revolving around controlling the two center squares so i would like to plant my knight on e5 and that will oftentimes allow me to put some attack on the opponent's king over here sometimes i like to castle long you see that's what we're doing now this is just a london system so for example if we just go all the way back to the beginning let's say with the black pieces you play the sicilian dragon like well first of all the sicilian and then there's stuff associated you know you know that in the sicilian dragon defense that uh your counter play is associated with this bishop and so the plan of your opening would be to play this this maybe night on c6 sometimes queen side counter play that is the stuff that you need to bring to the table before you engage in a competitive fight now the second question of this video uh and i showed you two openings right let's just show you one more you know e4 uh black plays c6 the carl khan defense okay uh or let's let's just do a a a different one let's do uh the english opening for white okay let's say with black you play e5 the reverse sicilian defense here your plan could be to develop your pieces um or depending on how white sets up like for example if white plays g3 you know black will play knight c6 bishop g2 here here like we're just developing and now white already has plans white wants to play e3 knight e2 and d4 and and and this d5 square really is what white's opening revolves around what does black want black wants to create a little bit of counter play on the king side maybe the f pawn so that when short castle happens the rook is behind the pawn you get the point i'm droning on for minutes at a time but the way you start the game flows into that middle game and now we will speak specifically more generally i should say about the middle game so this second question belongs to janae i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly shelton uh the second question how to formulate a plan based on imbalances improving a positional chess will actually cover later a few people submitted a couple of questions at a time so what does that mean imbalance in a position imbalance exists in a couple of ways so first of all if we're talking about let's say a game where we play with the black pieces and the opponent decides to go for a queenside castle versus a kingside castle okay this is one of the degrees of imbalance and as you build more experience in the game of chess you will know about these imbalances and you will consciously pick them up the whole point of this video is to stimulate the thought process so this is one of the imbalances that i was going to talk about when there are opposite side castling uh you want to attack with pawns on the enemy so for example here let's say white doesn't play a move like h4 h5 and instead goes here then here black could play c6 and it's very common to springboard your pawns first we'll talk about attacking later why do i say pawns first and not something else well like if your queen goes to attack a full house that's not gonna that's not gonna work you need to attack with the pawns removing the defenders from their posts and then if the opponent gets a little bit scared and tries to prevent you you have backup and like let's just see how quickly this can go bad for example this is already very bad for white because rook2a1 is borderline checkmate so this has to come back that doesn't stop us we're still gonna come down here and knight is coming queen is coming queen a2 and see now now you know how to play a position in general terms of opposite side castling imbalance that is one of many imbalances then you have to learn how to play same side castling positions another imbalance like that we're about to jump into is uh like a knight versus bishop situation so let's take a look at that so the knight versus bishop uh debate it occurs in certain situations and you'll hear grand masters doing commentary or international masters doing commentary say things like oh they have the bishop pair it is better to have two bishops than a bishop and a knight in a lot of cases but the bishops like open space they are long-range pieces so um why would you ever give one away well for example this is a rue lopez right and here there's a variation known as the exchange variation now what i generally tell folks is that if you're gonna trade a bishop for a night as a beginner it doesn't matter as much it's really not a bad thing it's like three for three but but now what well you've damaged your opponent's structure right and since you've given away your light squared bishop what you need to do it now ideally is reinforce your light squares because if you put your pawns all on dark squares for the rest of the game let's just say like this why do you have a dark squared bishop and a bunch of dark squared pawns and we'll talk about pawn structure later and balancing the pawns together but you have to understand pawns build the position their defense of the position so if you're going to trade a light-squared bishop early you want to keep the position a little bit more closed given the fact that you've granted your opponent that bishop pair you don't want to open things up because they have a long range piece they like that and you want to regroup on the light square so for example something like this you see how many pawns we're putting on the light squares to counteract the existence of the enemy bishop right and it's not gonna have that much mobility um you might also give away a bishop for a night to create weaknesses and like in this position this is a weakness although it is well known that something like this could happen so when you give away a bishop for a night those are some of the things that you need to keep in mind uh an example that i can give you i'm gonna flip the board again i'm sorry this is a very fluid lesson but there's a variation of the carl khan defense which i talked about uh earlier actually this one with the two nights variation where black likes to put the bishop out on g4 and then if possible this is like one of my favorite things to do get a position like this and you see i've just given away the light squared bishop but look at my pawn structure in fact sometimes it can get to such a point i put all eight pawns it's like the eight pieces of exodia except it's not and my dark square bishop is very strong and this bishop doesn't really have a presence but you see if i start opening up the board and let's just let's just hypothetically like trade this like look look what happens to the board right the bishop comes alive my knight is all the way back here look how much space the bishops control that's a little bit just kind of a general understanding of how to play positions and you need to incorporate that that knowledge i just talked about from your opening so in your openings that you're playing when certain trades are occurring bishop for night that is how you formulate a plan the last thing that i want to say about creating plans in middle games and based on imbalances revolves around squares versus targets what do i mean by that well as you get positional skills which you will by the way we will discuss in this video you're going to learn kind of the difference now one thing that i pointed out earlier in the english opening see that that is a square that doesn't have a pawn supporting it and you have upon a knight and a bishop and a lot of your position can be improved as a transfer point through that square you say what about that square but see white still remains still has this option to fight for that square now granted if white does this that gets weaker so that is how we want you thinking about squares and the way your opponent can transfer in sometimes it looks scarier than it is if black plays knight before that's not a very good move um because we can control the square actually just by moving something there and now it's protected next we will kick out this knight and have a very nice position so that's like how you think about the squares in a position and pawns knights bishops coordinating on that square using it as a transfer point um this is an example of a fusion of the two it's squares but it's also targets that is a target it is an isolated pawn which is another concept that you fill in as you improve at the game um there is a very strong square in front like for example here you can use the tr that squares a transfer point to then improve your position hit the bishop develop fully get all your pieces in the game but this is a backwards pawn it's a pawn that has no neighbors and the squares in front of it are being controlled so you can line up your targets on this weakness slowly but surely and win it at the same time there's a there's just there are a lot of squares in the position that are very bad and that's why in this position uh white is doing very well whereas like the targets that white has are well protected and can't really be exposed so the middle game stems from your opening but once you arrive there you start thinking about the castling you start thinking about the peace dynamics i want you thinking about the knight versus the bishop the bad knight the bad bishop the active or passive nature of the pieces and the pawn specifically the pawn structure doubled pawns targets and square weaknesses and that is really a good starting point now let's move on to number three question number three comes from an individual named yusuf who also asked two questions and his second question is also very good the question is how to punish mistakes uh by your opponents now this is a pretty general question and here's how i'm gonna answer it i need you all to start thinking about mistakes in a different way because mistakes can happen in a in a one-move situation it's just a one-move blunder a loss of a piece uh your opponent gives it away and you don't see it like for example just the dumbest example i can possibly give you the four of checkmate right like that is how you would you'd punish if they didn't see it by doing it that's that's it but there's also the something not as dramatic and in all your games trust me you're missing these opportunities both of you are like whatever level you are it happens a little bit more infrequently at the 2000 level but if you're like 1100 trust me there are blunders all over the place now sometimes those blunders are one movers and they're crazy obvious but sometimes the computer will go oh well this is a big blunder because of a three move combo which you're incapable of seeing because you're not at that level yet so an example that i'll give you for example like again here in a scandinavian defense okay this is what we have the queen rotates out this way d4 both players are developing here it's really nothing special um black trades that is an inaccuracy that's not a mistake it's not good to give away the bishop there for reasons we've already discussed it's a very open board okay and now in this position white finishes development with bishop to g5 for some of you watching the move is obvious here for blank for others not so much some of you might be thinking okay is this bishop putting me under any pressure should i castle but i'm going to introduce some something to you called the checklist and every move your opponent makes a move you go what do they want okay then you go um you identify what they want whether it's scary or not can i create a check which is the most forcing move in chess no can i capture anything huh oh attacks the last one would be attack can i attack something and then you would decide and if it's none of those then you just play a solid move that improves your position so one movers are right there for you and the second kind of mistake is the one that i talked about which is like for example this is my training game some of you might even recognize the position from a video that i did recently in this position my opponent after i played rook c3 played bishop c8 looking to trade off my bishop that is a mistake if and only if and if and only if in this position i found take take take take and the move knight to e4 attacking both of these squares black responds by defending both and now i play g4 with the intention to play g5 and knight f6 and i am winning but do you understand that the fourth move of this sequence is the reason why that first move is a blunder right so there's differences to this now if you apply the checklist and stay very vigilant to your most forcing moves what's hanging and what's on pre that that is how you're going to punish mistakes but i don't want you thinking that when you're going to watch this video let's say you're missing 33 right now one in three of your opponent's blunders you're not gonna go 100 from here on out but i want you to stay more vigilant hold yourself accountable and go from missing 33 to missing 25 adding right one something like that so that is the way i want you to think about it and um let's go to question number four question number four we go back to janae who says how to improve at positional chess now this is a wonderful wonderful lesson what is positional chess that that's like the first place we have to start so positional chess revolves around the slow and strategic improvement of your position at the same time the suppression or oppression of your opponent's plans and resources oppression is bad in the world but it's good when it comes to oppressing your opponent's movements that's easier said than done we talked about a little bit earlier squares versus targets figuring out that dynamic how to negate uh your opponent trying to have a strong bishop or knight we're gonna try to use a couple of examples to really nail this point home and how to start thinking about it a bit better so squares right that for your opponent this this this now for white you've got five out of eight of your pawns on the light squares and you know if i want to get really drastic let's do something like this where i mean it's like 7-1 so if i were to ask you which bishop should you be happy you're trading of course you have to trade your light squad bishop right because you already have dark squared reinforcement so maybe bishop b2 and trading off that bishop because look at black structure black has seven seven out of eight bonds on light squares right just like you so this bishop could trading off that bishop actually could be very good potentially for you as well um it's actually funny both of you want to preserve your dark square bishops so you want to at least kill off the counterpart if you play this i'm sorry it's black's move but let's say in this position you had played bishop g5 h6 and then took on e7 uh your family should probably disown you uh because that is an awful positional decision now your opponent will jump into d4 and what follows after positional domination like a passive bishop i want you saying stuff like that this bishop is also passive but this bishop is worse because black hasn't moved any pawns yet white has committed the pawns forward and incorrectly so that would be an incorrect positional decision uh that's like the the kind of the best early example i can give you another example don't go off wandering into one move threats because positionally speaking what why is this here this is just gonna get booted and benefit your opponent positional chest is very difficult um i'll give you an example from the recent elo swap episode here black has shut down the center and the and has more space on the queen side but this is a fantastic move by the strong 2000 rated player and the knight is forced to go back and my partner in this game was a 15 1600 and played the move knight g7 this knight has no future whereas had it gone this way it could replace this knight or at least keep rotating and you'll notice you see how dark squared weaknesses that's the way i want you thinking about it which dark square piece is going to get in there and that's exactly what happened we went knight g7 here and here and not only that black ended up castling into this so who else can fight for the dark squares very quickly the queen right that is how you you'd punish mistakes and positional liabilities i had if we go back to my training game uh we can fast forward a little bit to the the middle game like right around here and if i were to ask you again what uh important square or open file open file you want to dominate right you notice black's position is very passive certain words that we're using here passive so a winning plan for white might be something like rook c1 attacking the queen and that square and what you would do is you would transfer your knight into c6 that is how you play positional chess for example f5 grossly weakens e6 and that's not easy to think about when you're an intermediate player you're like oh my attack queen right like that um and that is like three those are three examples of how you can begin to think about positional play in certain games you're going to have bad pieces like you're going to have very passive pieces we just talked about an example which piece you want to trade for which piece potentially and how that would affect the position but this is again a brief video where i'm trying to introduce you to the concept so that is a little bit about how you improve positional play for question number five we go back to aditya who had our first question he says how to attack properly if you know the opponent's king is weak i'm just gonna say uh you gotta know how the opponent's king is weak uh by you know looking at your future prospects uh but here's what i wanna say about this um i want you to think about attacking in chess a successful attack does three things okay number one it either it checkmates okay that's a successful attack number two it wins you material the attack is so strong that the only way to avoid it is to give away material right so there's some implications some happens over there some consequences as a result of your attack number three your attack was played correctly now there are many games that you're gonna go on and attack and the computer's gonna hate it it's gonna find all these defensive resources but if you conduct it in such a way that it's not a total disaster you should be happy with yourself there's no better feeling than winning a game of chess i mean like maybe there's some physical feelings but basically that's number one okay about attacks number two i want you to think about something that i like to call the inner row technique what does that mean if i were to give you several moves in a row in this position with white without taking anything how would you organize your pieces in a way to create an attack so you have the bishop right you might be thinking oh easy bishop back queen bishop battery there's a word for you sure but that's very easy to stop i'll play g6 you know a better way to get your pieces involved would be a move like knight to g5 if this move is possible because if it gets taken then this happens but then the board opens up and then in this position i want you to apply the inner row technique like how does white win this game in two moves queen h5 queen h7 so that's the way you need to visualize it right but you're going to have resistance like in this game like let's say g6 happens when you're like all right well i can't go queen h5 now however if i go here and get my queen to that square then my queen can get some help and then we might deliver a mate like right maybe i can transfer another piece but if you just go all in on the queen side okay you just completely disregard what black is doing over there you just you know go meanwhile blank is like knocking on the doorstep of your position here you know you got all this play over here and you just go queen age six you're like no matter what happens i'm gonna go for that well in the meantime counter play has been developed against your center and a move can be played like this okay and um if you take all of a sudden i'm coming in and i'm just in time so it's it's a lot of this is about realizing your opponent's resources now are all opponents going to do that no it always depends on your level the degree of counter play that you face this game is a great example we just looked at this game and here we literally found the only way not to get mated basically immediately we knew queen h4 was coming and so we took the bishop and now this is made so we had to prevent it with the only move which is queen takes pawn preventing queen h6 we hung around in in the territory long enough to create a defensive fortress for the queen coming in we gave a check to win some time and then we started clearing off the board and very slowly we did and there was no more attack but that's you know i'm a 2700 blitz rate of player i've been playing chess for two decades so it's not that simple so i want you to think about the intro technique um and find the target on which you want to go create that attack but i also want you to to do it in a uh in a responsible and smart way that is how you create attacks on chess and by the way many of them can stem also from openings like if you play the king's indian defense uh i'll play the traditional king's indian defense like this like attacks here uh are usually on the king but not always what does that mean well in the mainline king's indian defense with like this kind of a position uh what ends up happening is that black attacks over here like f5 and white attacks the queen side 99 of attacks at a low level are on the king and so you see you see what we're doing pawn storming right pawn storming that is another way to create an attack we talked about opposite side castling earlier if the kings are on opposite sides create an attack with your pawns go send the minions to break everybody down bring them together so you can propel them you see pawns propel other pawns it's a beautiful thing whereas if you just like absentmindedly throw a knight at your opponent well not like a physical night but like i'll give you an example okay uh if you just go here what's the threat and if you do the inner row technique where's this night going oh well levy said in a row so i can't get taken no you have to be safe and by the way even if i did say in a row that's hanging and and so is that okay so like you could do the inner row technique but you need to do it intelligently if you can't go forward with your pieces no attack exists so that is how you attack in chess and a little bit of you know review on opposite side castling okay another good rule of thumb one final rule of thumb plus two you should have two more attacking pieces than they have defenders if we go back to this game my training game um i uh we were analyzing something but watch what i did if we use the the in a row technique queen h6 knight g5 queen h7 that's what i did that i created an attack by activating three pieces and then it was very close to being game over my opponent was preventing me from transferring my rook you see so preventing me from transferring my rook over if my opponent had done something like a4 i would have gone here and then like brought my rook to h4 potentially in the future i had to take back and this this position is a very different story because now i have backup and this is very very bad um but that is how you attack properly in chess rule of plus two in a row technique this next one comes from an individual who's actually rated 1800 and they asked two questions that's why it's six and seven because they go together how do you punish opponents who play passively and how do you differentiate between gaining space and overextending these two questions go together extremely well um now first we're gonna look at actually legitimate openings that are passive what does passive mean what is space so space is the amount of squares that you can control or fight for on your opponent's side of the board okay in the beginning of the game both sides have no space nobody can fight for anything on the other side however in the position that i'm showing you see that black has kind of only pushed their pawns one rank and hasn't developed the pieces in a very traditional way white has three pawns right in the middle of the board so white has one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve potentially twelve squares they fight for black fights for one two three and four with the knight twelve four so white has more space black is more passive but this is a correct way of playing passively because even though you're playing passively you're not jeopardizing future progress what do i mean by that well black can very quickly strike in the center that might not be the best way to do it because white will wedge this pawn forward but like just to show you how one simple trade one bond trade now black has something in the center black is about to immediately finish development and be completely fine one pawn move is all it takes you have to play very accurately so the thing about the correct passive play you can basically freely improve your position what do i mean by that as long as your opponent continues to play passively like knight d7 you can freely improve your position when they actually start fighting you like a slingshot they're like oh they've been back you have to be super accurate and if you've played the wrong way and they have played the right way they will equalize the position with no problem somehow it's crazy how quickly how quickly you can have no advantage anymore white is losing here after seemingly winning a pawn in the center instant replay white took a pawn black took back white took whites up a pun can't take because this is guarded knight g4 attacks the bishop and the pawn so if you play something like bishop d4 i'm gonna take and now everything is active now count the space it's a totally different story you can pause here and try to count totally different story space doesn't tell you everything about the position right so how quickly it can all turn around so it's a mix of knowing your theory and what i mean by theory is not earlier i said baby stuff about the openings you legitimately need to know the right move to play at the right moment you memorize that stuff at the 1800 level as this individual asked if you're lower rated you're an intermediate player improve your position slowly and fight to break through on the square you control the most what do i mean by that e5 so if in a position like let's say this white wanted to break into black's position triumphantly which pawn would you push now some of you might say e5 because i attacked the knight yes but e5 also has the most support and the most support in the smallest form when pawns defend other things your opponent is less likely to trade away their pieces because they're trading them for pawns whereas if you go like f5 uh i'm not so sure about this because even though it has support is the queen really going to venture in against the full army see if you made it this far in the video that sounds familiar remember i said that early on i said the queen's not going to go fight the full house the queen needs backup all right it's like a star on a loner team it's not going to work you need help so you have to do it the right way certain so you break through on the right square um here's another great example this is a variation for black known as the hedgehog it is literally an anti-space variation and black's brakes in this position are breaks like d5 so often times what works is creating an attack on the king often times when you dominate the space and your opponent doesn't have a lot of ways to break through you can create a king side attack because you use your space advantage almost think of it like battleship if you if you've blown up a bunch of empty squares and you're kind of encroaching on the territory of the ship you start realizing that there's not much left to do you're going to attack the ship you're going to hit it so the same thing applies here but you need to do it the right way in the hedgehog if you're not careful and you play like just a random move at a certain point black will break out and that's what you need to think about in passive positions now for my lower rated players some passive positions are stupid so for example let's say you begin with the queen's pawn your opponent goes here you're like all right that's interesting i'm gonna develop and then go here or the classic one the two center pawns this is not good it's a little bit harder to break but it's not good like why are you blocking in your bishops they're so sad right but something that actually legitimately weakens the king you take the center as much as you can if they play some stupid stuff like i'm playing completely idiotic things improve your position freely and then if they just never ever ever fight for the center at a certain point break through or use everything else you've learned in this video all they want to castle levy taught me about opposite side counseling and then i'm gonna go create an attack i'm gonna pawn storm right if you just play on autopilot like you just short castle that's completely fine as well but you need to break through at some point and that's where it's gonna get trickier because i'd like to tell you every single time you should play like this but you can't it depends on the position like this is completely idiotic but if you play like one bad move and then your opponent kind of blocks things up and then you trade and then you make another bad trade well now you're losing a piece oops you got forked that's protected so chess is a hard game i said that at the beginning i'm saying it now but general rules apply improve your position freely look out for the breaks in the position at some point that can try to begin fighting back at you um and monitor where they're castling to see if you can go create an attack on them because the space advantage and attack is very much possible for question number eight let us welcome back yusuf who also asked us earlier how to create an attack properly on your opponent he asked us how do you play a closed position okay what is a closed position you see in front of you closed positions your best friends are pawns pawns pawns determine whether the position is closed or not pawns are defense of the position if both sides have eight pawns and they're kind of locked up it's gonna be a closed position the more pawns you trade the more the game opens up so both sides have four pawns how the hell are you gonna put up the wall of pawns right so pawn breaks and pawn breaks had very important moments like i just got to this position by beginning with a french defense advance variation c5 c3 c4 c4 is an awful move like black in all these lines keeps the tension on the center right so oftentimes this happens at intermediate level it's a lot rare to have completely pure closed positions as the level of the games goes on because the players are playing theoretical stuff and not just arbitrarily locking the position because look be honest with yourselves like my triple digit elo viewers at some point you're like ha ha i'm oh sorry not f3 but also that you're like haha i'm gonna lock the entire position because that's funny whereas the high rated players are like you know i've been studying this course for hours let me actually go put in a little bit more dedicated work but pawn breaks so for example here the best move for white is a little b3 don't just go lock everything a correct pawn trade goes a long way and even if you trade one pawn now you've opened up the rook you've opened up the bishop and you can advance with space use everything that you've learned in this video more space create an attack opposite side counseling right the rule of in a row for attacking all that good stuff it all kind of flows that's why i set up the video like this by the way can i just say if you're watching this from the video thank you so much you're incredible um pawn breaks closed position pawn breaks if you get a position that does resemble the one that looked like this pawn breaks still apply but which ones if you play a move like b3 it's not a bad move it just doesn't really pose a threat and you might be like i need to trade pawns levy told me to but after this the bishop just came alive so intensely like that bishop was stuck behind a wall you knocked the wall down and you had to pay for it like all the damages right like bishop didn't have to do anything because they're like oh i got a view nice so you need to trade the right way if you just keep belligerently going at it i'm not so sure it's the best thing in the world however if your opponent accidentally splits all their pawns now they're sitting ducks so now you can take the pawn which can lead to the capture of the pawn and the pawn and the pawn so everything falls apart so in this position the position's equal after one simple pawn capture it goes the evaluation goes to plus four and for those of you that know what that means that means four pawn advantage for white even though white is a pawn down yeah because the whole structure will now collapse so pawn breaks um in positions where like this is a a legitimate opening it's known as the exchange slot variation here there are seven pawns aside and everything that you've learned in this video continues to apply but here pawn breaks are probably not gonna work like the only pawn break for white that really works is e4 and it's not necessarily a bad move it could work but you are kind of weakening this pawn in the process maybe you like it maybe you don't doesn't lose tactically but what could happen in a position like this that just gets quite locked and pawn breaks don't really do anything um let's just let's just arbitrarily make the position something like this although i guess that would kind of weaken b5 okay let's not we're gonna do this on the fly remember all the positional stuff you learned in this video you gotta find ways to get the knights to those squares like maybe a knight reroute so what i mean by that is something like you know bishop b1 and maybe you're gonna put the knight on f4 and then on d3 and then on c5 and your knight will live on this square that's called an outpost square a piece on your opponent a square on your opponent's side of the board that you control and where your piece can sit and exert pressure or you'll put the knight right here so in closed positions backwards maneuvering maneuvering to certain squares working backwards to improve your position while no pawn breaks exist is another very good way to play and if you remember earlier about imbalances right now this is an incredible move because this bishop sucks so it doesn't matter you gave away your bishop because now you made weaknesses for your opponent going back in chest is okay especially if they are reacting to you because you're making your opponent do things that's generally a good thing that's kind of a little bit about how you play close positions question number nine is a little bit of a simple one and i'm actually going to answer it because i don't really need a chess board what is a good rating to start expanding your opening repertoire the key word is expanding that means and i don't know if this person was implying this that you already have certain openings so you should literally i'm not joking when i say this if you want to diligently study the game of chess um you you really should give every opening that you've learned a couple hundred games good games not bullet games on the toilet at work legitimately a couple of hundred games not all openings will suit you you might even buy a course like one of mine and go i can't win with this no one plays the stuff that i'm studying that's fine but the only way to build experience and get better at certain positions to then hit the checkboxes that i've shown you in this video plans uh trades pawn breaks attacking sequences from openings only will be learned through hundreds of games of practice and if that sounds too intimidating to you that's okay that's that's life we all make decisions about how much we want to study now if the question is when do you learn openings you can learn openings whenever you're going to hear a lot of different things from a lot of different people entitled players don't learn openings start with the end games if you want to learn openings go ahead that's the beautiful thing about the game of chess if you get the basics but you're kind of like ah i'm sort of making things up every single game so go learn an opening a simple one a setup based opening like the london system don't go study the night or sicilian so beginning opening study 5 600 maybe if you really want to just dabble a little bit just do dabbling 900 1 000 is around the level you're really going to start seeing it work and do not make the same mistakes and openings learn learn your opening go play some practice games and don't make the same mistakes 10 times what's the point of investing in an opening course or trying to learn an opening if you're going to make the same mistake in the opening 10 times make it three times then stop okay and then as you climb that ladder there's no arbitrary rating but 14 1500 you get chess you get it it's a hard game but you've gotten it all right so at that point you can start playing around with different openings but the only way you're really going to know if you know the opening or not is after hundreds of games of practice question number 10 was so giant it completely crossed the entire screen what do you do when an opponent plays a strange move especially in opening that you haven't prepared for like when you're using an opening line oh i told you aren't you glad you stuck around everybody loves this question so let's jump into it so here's the thing at the highest level of the game and advanced intermediate like 18 1900 if a person plays a move that is bad or no let's put it this way if a person plays a move that you've never seen before there's a chance you don't know it and there's a chance it's good that is how the grandmasters surprise each other below about 1500 if the opponent has played something that you have not studied or let's put it this way isn't featured in the book that you got it's probably bad the alternative is that it's good and you didn't study it but i'm just gonna say let's say you studied everything okay so what do i mean by that well let's say e4 okay very simple carl khan defense pawn to d4 and you play the advanced variation move three three that's it move three here there are two lines c5 and bishop f5 and by the way if you're confused you're like you have to memorize stuff yes that's yes but let's say your opponent plays f6 okay so after f6 black is almost lost no joke like i would beat 9 gm's out of 10 maybe magnus carlsen would would would save this position again like this is a terrible position for black terrible it's so bad okay why because the night now can't develop this is just not it's just oh it makes my skin crawl the king is weak everything's weak but if you take well now black is almost better i mean black is still fighting for equality but like you've just given away all your center space i mean it's like black is playing white black has much more development than you do right so when a bad move happens or a move that you haven't prepared for happens you need to think about and be able to explain in a setting the ideas behind your opening and you need to learn that you don't quickly snap off pieces need to evaluate all trades early on and try to improve your position in a coordinated way so if your opponent plays let's say asics just a random move not not a bad move doesn't weaken anything how does white continue all these moves are almost the same knight to f3 bishop to d3 bishop to e3 c4 knight c3 all those moves are the same however if at this point you decide to play queen to h5 i'm like what are you do what no that doesn't no so a move like f4 is good to take more space with pawns if you can take space and connect as many pawns together as possible i'll give you an example something like c3 like look at this but now which bishop do you want to trade the dark squared bishop you see this is the way i want you thinking about stuff so you have more space right that does look pretty good if you don't want to play like that get pieces out play normal play normal and don't just snap stuff if stuff is defended in your position and you have more space try to keep it together you have more space don't trade stuff right that's the way you got to think about but what if the opponent plays something offbeat and aggressive so london players get this sometimes like f6 f6 and then their opponent goes here and they're like oh my god my bishop is gonna get trapped no when they play aggressively understand that they are not playing like this would be in every opening scores for black if it worked it doesn't it's plus two stupid flank pawn stuff where they push all their pawns is obviously bad what's the thread okay uh-huh h3 or h4 and let's say they're like i don't know what to do i'm just going to go bishop f5 use everything you've learned in this video okay black has a little bit more space on the on this side of the board but a lot less development all right what do you know about your london the bishop has gone off so you can play a move like c4 right often times belligerent aggression on one side that doesn't make any sense can be met in the center and on the other side of the board don't go compromising your position with moves like this what is what is that and even that is okay because you're kind of dealing with a threat don't play your position to the tune of your opponent stay principled put pawns in front of knights right put pawns together into the center of the board i know i'm giving you more general stuff you'd love for me to be like well i always get attacked in this variation of my opening so analyze it with a computer not during the game after analyze it and learn it dissect that information absorb it like a sponge okay the next time i see this and this i'm gonna play it so and so i'll give you an example earlier today i was playing an english opening i had the black pieces this is how you learn openings okay it was e5 i played c4 e5 my opponent played the move uh g3 i played knight f6 bishop g2 and c6 the idea is to go d5 okay opponent played knight f3 attacking my pawn we all knew theory i know all this line here opponent went here um i played uh a5 here a4 i knew up until this point i knew a hundred percent of the games here went knight d2 i knew that but then my opponent played bishop e3 attacking my queen i was like i've never seen that move before and for good reason it's it's a terrible move but i didn't react correctly the best move here for black is the blitz game is just to block the attack and now the knight is still under fire and the pawn on b2 is lost this can't be taken cause my bishop guards it simple move but it was a blitz game so instead i gave like a random check i thought this was a creative move and then then my opponent went back and then we had a game but i ended up losing i didn't punish the opening mistake i went back and i looked and i was like oh my god i'm so stupid okay boom that's it i'm never gonna make the same mistake again but obviously it's not the same if you're 1100 there is a high chance you make the same mistake again so you have to if you're if you're gonna just play chess for fun just do it for fun but if you're trying to get better hold yourself accountable and that is how you will improve in the opening and all other phases of the game folks i know i said this earlier but if you made it this far i don't know how long this video is i'm currently recording one giant file we are 78 minutes into the recording obviously the video is gonna be shorter because there's a lot of interruptions um honestly i tried to put the the best answers that i could to these questions if they were helpful do let me know in the comments if there's ever any more questions addendum questions i'm happy to do this again i hope this video really does change your chess life and makes you think about the game better i cannot give you all the answers i'm trying to give you the tools and the instructions and occasionally you can call me if you're confused not during the games though so that's what that's the goal okay that's the goal of all this and the channel um and uh i appreciate you very much okay peace out i'll see you in the next video get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 1,962,923

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna

Id: fGFl4GjVvrA

Length: 46min 59sec (2819 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/peinsamacz]

Can we actually make this match happen? I wanna see if Hikaru can do this / if Levi is right :D

[u/ThatNerdInYourClass1]

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[u/Eradicatesprotactors]

This is amazing