21 Positional Chess Concepts

one of the most common questions that i get asked on my channel is how do you get better at positional chess on this video i'm going to give you the top 21 positional chess concepts that you need to understand these are things that i have gathered from over 30 years of playing chess and i'm putting them all together in one video just for you guys they're gonna start off with the basic positional principles and we're gonna get to some more intermediate and advanced ones as the video goes on there's gonna be timestamps in the description below so feel free to jump around if you need to although i highly recommend that you don't skip any of these because they are all extremely important let's jump right in the first positional concept is that you want to avoid bad bishops and chess a bad bishop is a bishop that's stuck behind your own pawn so in this position if i were to play the move d3 i've created what's called a bad bishop this bishop now has only one legal move doesn't have a lot of good options a much better idea would be to play bishop to c4 and then play d3 because now my bishop has lots of options and it's a good bishop not a bad bishop so avoid bad bishops the second positional concept is that isolated pawns can be very good targets an isolated pawn is a pawn that has no pawns on the adjacent file so this is an isolated pawn this is an isolated pawn this is an isolated pawn and these are called double isolated pawns they're very good targets because they can't be protected by another pawn this pawn is well defended by this one if this one gets attacked you can move it here and now it's defended by this one and you can see how they can really help each other isolated pawns cannot do that so they make very good targets the third principle is very similar but double isolated pawns like this when they're two pawns on the same file are even better targets because not only can this pawn for example not be defended it also can't even move because it's being blocked by its own pawn so they're even worse and that can be a very good strategy not just in an end game like this but even during the middle game if you see double isolated pawns or isolated pawns you can probably try to attack those and they're going to be very weak the next principle is that rooks should strive to control open files you see in this position white is controlling this e file black is controlling this d file the reason controlling open files is so good is because it gives your rook all sorts of options we can come down here on the seventh rank if we want we can come over here and try to come over here to attack maybe some of these pawns lots of options black can also do the same thing go to wherever they want to go so whoever controls the open file usually has the advantage this is particularly true in end games and this is what you want to be paying attention to with your rooks the next principle is that you should never trade one of your good bishops for your opponent's bad nights in this example this is a very strong bishop it's being kettled and it's controlling a lot of these important central squares it's also very nicely hidden behind the pawns and can't really be harassed if you were to trade that bishop for this night that would be a crucial mistake not only are you losing your very powerful bishop which was controlling so many squares you're taking it for black snipe which wasn't really doing a whole lot and additionally you've now have blacks annoying bishop that you really have no way to deal with because you've gotten rid of your bishop that was controlling that diagonal so don't trade a good bishop like this for a bad knight that's not really doing a lot the next principle is very similar but it's kind of the opposite of that never trade a good night for a bad bishop in this case our knight on d6 is extremely strong it is an outpost so it's defended by these pawns it can't be attacked by any of black's pawns because they've already been moved forward and if we were to trade this knight for this bishop that would be a terrible mistake our knight is doing so much and black's bishop is hardly doing anything so do not make a move like this or you're just handing the advantage back to your opponent always want to keep those really strong nights don't trade them off and while we're talking about trading the next principle is that you should always look to trade your bad pieces for your opponent's good pieces in this position black's knight on d4 is very strong it's well defended we can't harass it with our pawns because they've already been moved forward and it's controlling a lot of squares on our side of the board we also have this knight here though that's not really doing a whole lot it's on the back rank it's kind of not very good so if we could trade those two pieces off guess who that's going to benefit it's going to benefit us of course so if we move knight to c2 and then take the knight or even knight to f3 and then take the knight in a knight f3 we could get pinned so that's probably not the move i would play but knight c2 looks like a really good move traded off and we have successfully traded our bad night for black's good night that's the kind of opportunities that you want to look for throughout the game the next principle is you want to be careful moving your pawns forward why do we care about moving pawns forward because they cannot move backwards so if you ever played against somebody who when they start the game they just kind of throw their pawns forward and they just keep moving pawns forward and they just kind of keep pushing them forward they don't really care what they're doing every time you move a pawn forward you create some weaknesses so in this position these holes for example now the knight can just hop in there over here same thing knights can hop in bishops can hop in the queen can hop in and you are never going to be able to control those squares with a pawn because you've any pawn that could potentially control these squares you've already moved forward right see that and so you create weaknesses that you cannot fix when you move pawns forward in chess so be very careful moving pawns forward make sure you have a really good reason to do it all right the next principle is that rooks are very good on the seventh or the second rank so if you're playing as white the seventh rank is here if you're playing as black the second rank would be here and if you can get your rooks there it's very very very good for you most of the time so if i'm playing his whiteness position i'm gonna play rook to d7 i'm immediately attacking this pawn let's say black tries to defend the next thing that i'm probably going to do is play rogue here and my goal is to be to get both rooks here so we'll say black plays h6 i come down here and now look at how strong this is i'm attacking this pawn so these pieces are basically tied if they want to defend it i'm also attacking this pawn which is only defended once if black let's say moves it well then i'm taking this i still have the pressure here i have the option to go here to go here i can basically do whatever i want because i've got my rooks in such a good position on the seventh rank so always look out for that and again if you're black look to get them on the second rank all right the next positional idea is that sometimes one pawn can actually stop two of your opponent's pawns so in this position white has an extra pawn here we got four against three but on the other side black has two against one and so if it's my move as white i'm going to play the move a5 and the reason this is such a good move is because i'm stopping this pawn from moving and i'm also stopping this bomb from moving because if it tries to move here i'm just going to take it and if it tries to move here i'm also going to take it with on pissant and go get a queen so this one little pawn is stopping both of these pawns from moving that's really good because if i did something else like random king move now black can play b5 takes takes and guess what i have to bring my king over to stop this pawn i have to otherwise it's just gonna get a queen but when i do that what do you think black's king is gonna do probably come here forward push these pawns and start taking my pawns over here and i'm probably going to lose the game so crucial to remember that sometimes you can just use one of your pawns and stop two of your opponent's pawns taking advantage of the fact that on passant is a move that you can you can play so keep that in mind all right the next principle is that you want to blockade backward pawns and then prepare to attack them so this is an example of the bishop b5 sicilian this is fairly common where black plays the move e5 to kind of chase away the queen but by playing e5 they create what's called a backward pawn as a reminder a backward pawn is when the pawns on the side of it have already moved forward far enough that they can no longer help support that pawn okay so this pawn is gone and then this pawn is advanced to where this guy basically has no help so whenever you have a backward pawn usually the first step is to blockade it so we already have it somewhat blockaded with a queen and a pawn but you know a couple other options would be play knight c3 and then knight to d5 to put the knight in there as a blockader you could also play the move c4 first and really solidify it as a target and once you've done that then your goal can shift to okay now we've blockaded it it's not going to go anywhere it's not going to move and get away now we can start figuring out how to attack it so you know uh bringing the rook over is probably how i would start um you know you could follow up with maybe b3 and then bring the bishop over here to line up on it you could even at some point consider maneuvering a knight around so if i can maybe get my knight on f5 at some point in the future even this and get three pieces lined up and eventually you're probably gonna have enough pieces that you can win the pawn and it's it's a relatively easy way to win a pawn if you just take your time be patient blockade it and then attack it all right the next idea and this is super important especially at endgames but try to create protected past pawns whenever you can so in this position it's our move we could just trade this pawn off takes takes and then we have pretty even position here you know we gotta the kings are probably gonna try to come up and who knows what's gonna happen but a better option for us is to play the move a5 and what we have done is created this little guy over here which is called a protected pass pawn so it's a pass pawn because there's no opponent's pawns that can stop it from becoming a queen and it's protected because it's got a pawn over here that's protecting it really really good because now black's king is forced to come this way and by the way the king actually can't catch it because you can make this little box here and the king is not going to be able to enter the box but let's just say you know we'll waste a move here we'll give black an extra move now the king can stop it but even so the king is basically stuck guarding this pawn and our king can run over here and do whatever we like probably just gobble up all these pawns and if black ever tries to come over here and and you know stop us well then we're like okay i'll go get a queen so protected past pawns extremely good especially at the end of the game now it is important that it's protected because if it's not protected and you try to do that well then you know your opponent's probably just going to run the king over and take your pawn and then you have to deal with a pawn or something so it's important that it's protected but that's really really important okay the next idea you want to keep in mind is that you can trade off a fianchetto bishop by creating your own battery say what nelson what does that even mean so here's an example of the perk defense and this is where black usually will fee and kettle their bishop on g7 over here and this can be a very annoying bishop if you've ever played against an opening like this or against like the king's indian defense this bishop once he gets active later in the game can basically win the game for for your opponent right if you make a mistake or if they do some clever things that bishop is just so annoying so a very easy thing you can do is create a battery with your queen and bishop so you put your bishop on e3 you put your queen on d2 and you've created this battery and then all you have to do is bring the bishop down here and take their bishop and you just trade off the bishop and you don't have to worry about that anymore and if they try to go back here usually the rook is there you take the rook so that's not really an option if they take you you take them it's pretty straightforward and once that's gone you no longer have to worry about that also their king is usually over there and now they have weaknesses along those dark squares because that bishop is gone so this is a really simple and easy thing to do to get rid of that annoying bishop so keep that in mind alright the next idea is that sometimes you can bait your opponent into moving pawns forward which then creates weaknesses in their position a really good example of this is the opening called the alakins defense so white plays e4 and we can play the move knight f6 so we're attacking this pawn we're kind of baiting them to move forward and then we can hop over to d5 and now a lot of players will play like c4 and then we can hop back to b6 we're kind of baiting them again to say come on go ahead you know push it if you want and then we can go back to d5 and yes white got a bunch of moves for free all right white got four moves there and all we did was kind of hop our knight around but white also created some weaknesses remember what i talked about earlier in the video when you move pawns forward there's no going back so these pawns can never control this square now right they've moved past it which means this for the rest of the game this is going to be an outpost for our knight where we can just sit there if we want um and so there's a trade-off i mean obviously white has a little more space than we do but the weaknesses are are real and we can take advantage of if we know what we're doing so this is just one example this can come up in a lot of different ways but look for ways to bait your opponent to moving their pawns forward and then take advantage of the weaknesses that are left behind after those pawns move all right the next principle is that a good knight on an outpost a lot of times can be worth a rook so as you know knights are three points and rooks are five points but if you get your knight in the right spot at the right time sometimes it's actually as good if not better than a rook and here's a good example this knight is extremely powerful look how it's blocking off both of black's rooks it's also controlling the square that the rook might like to go to to control this file it's putting pressure on two different pawns and it's just sitting there defended by this pawn and black's kind of like what what am i going to do right what can i even black and hardly move any pieces because that that one night there so if you can ever get your knight on an outpost and this is an outpost because there's no pawns that can attack it okay so the way you would you would figure this out is first you want to look at the board and see okay where could there be a potential outpost so for example the square g5 is not an outpost because this after the knight moves this pawn could move forward and attack your knight let's say so that would not uh would not work this square not really an outpost because this pawn could move forward now in this case it can't but um you have to be careful with that one here would be a good place for your knight right because there's no pawns that could control it and then obviously on d6 where it's at right now is a great outpost but if you find squares like that when you're playing a game see if you can maneuver your knights around um to get them there and so you know in this case black could actually play knight to d5 which is a good move for black because that's an outpost for black there's no pawns uh no white pawns that can attack it so that's what you want to be looking out for so because of the principle that we just talked about how good a knight is the next principle is that sometimes it's actually better for you to sacrifice a rook to get rid of that knight so in this case black let's say white moves the king over black could sacrifice for that night get a knight in a pawn and a lot of times that's actually a smart thing to do if the knight is going to be that strong right because if you know there's nothing black could do black couldn't even move any pieces at least this way you have a knight in a pawn which okay it's not as good as a rogue but now you can do stuff now you can move your pieces around you can hop your knight in maybe you can try to win this pawn your rook has the ability to come down and do some things from a practical standpoint okay from a practical standpoint a lot of times it's better to just go ahead and sacrifice a rook if you can get a night in a pawn rather than let that knight just sit there and prevent you from doing anything so keep that in mind even if you lose a little bit of material practically speaking it's usually worth it alright the next principle is that generally speaking you want most of your pawns to be on the opposite color of your bishops now obviously that depends on the situation but a good example of this is when you feed cattle your bishop that's exactly what you're doing you're putting your pawns on the opposite color of your bishop and this is really good because then the bishop can still be completely effective because the pawns aren't going to block it but it also kind of acts as some shelter and it protects the bishop from knights that want to attack it so you know knights could only attack this bishop on one of these three squares and they're all covered by your pawns and so by putting your pawns on the opposite color of your bishops it just works out nicely so look for ways to do that fee and keto is just one example there are other situations as well but keep that in mind now the next principle is a little bit different from the last one we just talked about how normally you want your palms to be on the opposite color of your bishops but sometimes especially at the end of the game if you only have one bishop and a couple of random pawns one thing that i like to do and works out very nice is actually putting it on the same color as your pawn right in front of the pawn and so the pawn defends the bishop the bishop defends the pawn and this can be a good way to kind of keep your bishops protected at all times at the same time you can kind of defend some of your pawns as well so this is just a good thing to keep in mind especially at the end of the game or if you're trying to a lot of times you can block off files where rooks might be trying to get in with the bishop or something with the pawn defending it that's just a good thing to keep in mind alright the next principle has to do with something that's called weak color complex it's a it's a phrase that gets thrown around but it's very simple all it means is that there are weaknesses on a certain color of of the board so for example this is a very silly example that i created just to prove the point here but when you fianchetto your bishop okay like here and black would do it here and that bishop gets traded off somehow we looked at an example earlier how you can do that you now have a weakness on those particular color squares so for example white has some serious weaknesses along these white squares because of where the pawns are placed there's no bishop to fill in those gaps and black has an immediate checkmate threat because the bishop is controlling here the knight can come in that's just checkmate black has the exact same problem the bishop that would normally be sitting there and kind of controlling some of these squares is gone and we can see white has this battery and if it's white's turn it's just checkmate immediately because of the weaknesses along those squares so when you're playing your games if you ever notice a bunch of pawns on the same color like in this example you want to be trying to look out for ways to take advantage of the weak squares and a lot of times you have to do some maneuvering to make this happen right this example just everything is perfectly placed usually you have to maneuver your pieces around but once you can get them set up in something like this it can be very very strong and open up a lot of really nice tactics for you so be aware of weaknesses on a particular color square all right the next principle when i first kind of figured it out from playing was kind of life-changing for me so pay attention to this one and i'm going to show you a practical example here from an opening that that i've played before so i like to play the bishop b5 sicilian and there's a particular line g6 castles where you play c3 you're trying to set up d4 and black plays e5 to try to stop you okay and you can do this one little it's kind of like a gambit because you're giving away a pawn here but you play d4 anyway you let black capture it and then you play the move bishop to f4 now here is the principle that this move um kind of illustrates this is what you're going to go for after black plays something normal like knight g7 you're going to play the move bishop to d6 okay this is what you want to remember the principle is this if you can blockade your opponent's pawns to hinder their development it's usually really really really good from a positional standpoint okay so so here's a position where there's no immediate tactical advantage for white white has no tactics that are just going to win the game or anything like that but what white does have is a positional advantage in the fact that black really wants to develop this bishop black would like to play this pawn forward maybe to d5 and then get this bishop out and and kind of continue playing normal chess but they can't do that because this bishop is just sitting there being really annoying right stopping the pawn which is stopping the bishop which is stopping the rook now black maybe could try to come around this this way and develop the bishop but it's not that easy if black tries to castle there's this annoying pin on the night it's just really really annoying having that bishop sitting there blockading a pawn so keep that in mind whenever you have an opportunity sometimes it's a bishop sometimes it's a night um to blockade a pawn it's ju it's usually really really good okay so just keep that in mind and and look for opportunities now sometimes it's even better like for example let's just let's just make a bad move for black here like knight h6 just to illustrate the concept now when we play bishop d6 it's even better because now we're actually preventing black from castling remember you can't castle through check so sometimes this this happens as well and like i said it's even better so just keep an eye out for those there's lots of opportunities where this happens particularly if you can blockade a d or an e pawn before the opponent gets a chance to move it it's usually really bad because the bishop ends up getting stuck back there right so keep that in mind all right now the last positional idea that i'm going to give you guys is what's called the minority attack i'm going to actually show you an example of this out of the queen's gambit it's extremely common so queen's gambit that's not the queen's campaign uh queen's gambit is d4 d5 c4 and then when you have queen's gambit declined uh the pawn structure that arises a very often is something like this okay where you capture black recaptures with the pawn and black has these four pawns here and you just have two pawns over here uh you know on the queen side and then the game you know might go something like this okay minority attack happens in a case like this where you decide you're going to push these two pawns forward and try to create a weakness in black's camp and the way it works is like this if let's just say hypothetically you had unlimited time you would go here you'd go here you would go here and then you would trade blackwood recapture and now you have a backward pawn okay so i'm gonna just make it real easy um on myself here i'm not going to do anything for black except just make some random moves let's i don't know we'll move yeah we'll say h6 we take and then we trade okay so what we have done is traded this pawn for this pawn and now this if you remember is a backward pawn and now we can pile up on it probably remember blockade the backward pawn first bring our rook over uh i don't know what black's gonna do line up on it and eventually try to win that pawn probably the knight can come in and we're just gonna try to take that pawn okay and we created that backward pawn by pushing our b-pawn up and capturing now i wasn't making the best moves for black obviously sometimes black can make our life a little more difficult like when we play b4 they might play a6 to try to stop us but then we can play a4 and we're still threatening to do kind of the same thing and the point is that even if we have to you know sacrifice a pawn over here to mess up um black's pawn structure it's usually worth it because now we have a bunch of targets okay so that's what a minority attack is you take those two pawns you push them forward and you try to create some sort of weakness that you can take advantage of all right so keep that in mind especially if you're a queen's gambit player that's the most common situation that this is actually going to be useful to you all right one final bonus tip if you want to become better at positional chess hit the thumbs up on this video and you'll instantly remember everything that you just watched okay maybe that's not entirely true but it does let youtube know that this is a good video they should show it to more people and it really helps me out a lot so if you did learn something i would really appreciate it as always thanks for watching stay sharp play smart and take [Music] you

Channel: Chess Vibes

Views: 1,177,747

Keywords: tactics, strategy, positional chess, positional chess tips, positional strategies, chess positional ideas, chess concepts, positional principles in chess, chess principles, chess ideas, chess tips, strategic chess ideas, chess strategy, chess positions, positional thinking in chess, positional chess plans, positional concepts, positional secrets, chess vibes positional, chess tactics vs positional, positional vs tactical chess

Id: BYtXMJjqfvw

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021