5 Most ANNOYING Chess Openings

ladies and gentlemen we can all agree on one thing about chess there are certain openings we absolutely hate to see on the board when you're a total beginner it might be that enemy queen coming out and you're always on alert looking at what it can take are you gonna hang a checkmate in the first five moves although i do have a video on how to counter that then as you move up the ranks into intermediate and advanced these damn youtubers anytime they make a variation you see it 100 million times the stafford the london you name it it gets played but in this video i would like to share with you the advanced title player perspective and give you five openings that i absolutely hate seeing when my opponents play them on the board the point of this video is actually to give you some interesting ideas to add to your own repertoire and show you generally my approach to these openings how to study the main lines the sidelines and then just choosing what you want to play to make yourself comfortable when that actually arises on the board in front of you but before we get into that i want to tell you about something nice shirt right you like it i changed into it because it's the color of the ocean and today october 29th at 4 p.m eastern time a bunch of creators are coming together to promote team seas the idea of this initiative is to raise 30 million dollars because for every dollar we raise we're going to get a pound of trash out of the oceans of the world mr beast reached out personally to me to take part in this initiative and to hundreds of other creators and we can all come together here on youtube to make positive change i'm going to be donating ten thousand dollars uh to this cause and i've put a link in the description for you to take part as well because while big corporations uh and privileged individuals destroy the world one day at a time it's a lot harder to come together on an individual level to make noticeable change and that's what this is all about so i hope you uh take part i want this community to be a part of this let's get into the video opening number one is not a shocker the opening that i really really don't like to play against is the london system now that might be surprising that might be intriguing the london system uh is unique because it can be just played by white uh and really black doesn't have much uh like way out of it right so the reason i don't like this at a high level is because against d4 i'm a knight f6 and e6 kind of player against knight c3 i will go for a nimso indian defense against knight f3 i will play d5 or i will play b6 and go for a queen's indian that is my repertoire now the reason i don't play with the d5 move order is because this is a queen's gambit declined and while knight f3 allows me to play knight f6 um in this move order i don't really have an option because i'm not going to play the exchange variation of the queen's gambit declined i don't play the queen's gambit declined and you would only enter this if you had the three knights queen's gambit declined this move would just take us back to regularly normal territory the reason i don't play d5 e6 is because while it's a little bit less committal and to be completely honest with you if you know that your opponent is going to play knight c3 you're going to play bishop to b4 which is the nimso but the thing is if i don't know they're going to go for london i would rat maybe go d5 but they can play a london on this move but they can also play a london on knight f3 and the reason why the london is so tricky is because the best way to play against it is to play c5 at some point so if they play bishop f4 right away um i might play e6 and then play c5 this setup without moving the pawn to d5 also gives black certain benefits namely the fact that if white just kind of plays normally uh there's always going to be queen coming to b6 so before you even spend the move on d5 you can put your queen on b6 and there's actually some variations here where um black can even put a knight on d5 like sometimes there i i mean i'm just gonna give like a totally like you know just this is a very feeble move by white uh but there's lines where this knight can can move to the d5 square and attack this bishop um the other thing that the knight does is it oftentimes counteracts the knight on b5 from going to c7 so there's very tricky lines like c5 knight f3 and something like knight a3 um with something like this and then you would play knight d5 attacking the bishop and covering this this is actually a variation although i believe this variation in this particular move order is good for white and can be very dangerous for black so that is one way to fight against the london the other way which is just the classical ways just to at some point play d5 it does not matter whether there is a knight on f3 or not but here's the problem with the london um this is the optimal setup by white delaying the move c3 and instead going knight d2 because otherwise there is this move queen queen b6 and in many situations and and you can even get this without e6 so you can get it like this for example this is an even stronger version uh with the queen coming to b6 but the thing is no one's going to let you do that they're all going to go knight d2 at the high level so when they play the meta setup which is knight d2 it's so hard to do something with black to actually create something meaningful uh what i used to play is i would play a quick cd4 ed4 knight h5 going for the bishop i would try these early knight h5 systems against the london um just to create a little of imbalance to make my opponent a little uncomfortable and you know you can even push your f pawn forward and then you can even push your jeep on a little bit and it's just kind of like a little dragon tail here just an interesting setup with this kind of weird lizard-like thing and then you don't know which of the pawns will go forward you have a lot of flexibility of your structure you don't know you know what you're going to commit you can kind of move the pieces behind the pawns and then jump forward but the truth is that you know people got there people got to this variation which wesley so played they started playing the optimal way which is going back to e3 and here if black overextends with a move like f5 looking for f4 g3 bishop b5 knight to e5 and actually white got there and now white just knows how to play this position very well uh in fact there's some pretty ridiculous setups where like the knight can even route to e5 and then jump back to d3 and like maybe not this particular move order but something like this and then like something like this like i've had some gm's do this against me just the most ridiculous thing in the world um so that's one way to create imbalance but if you just play solidly you play like takes takes like bishop f5 like i had a game like this recently um it's so hard to create winning chances because white can play aggressively bishop b5 there's just so many options that white has but even if white does nothing as white kind of did in that game that i just played in the spice cup like white just plays you know like solidly i mean it's borderline impossible to create winning chances from this position because there's no obvious pawn breaks and white controls the position effortlessly with no risks involved and you know if if you even play one overly aggressive pawn move trying to play a4 now you've created some super weaknesses on your queen side which only one of the players can exploit so you know the other thing about the london is that well this is not like the worst thing in the world but there's all these knight c3 things you know there's like the jobava london with like d5 knight c3 to try to go knight b5 i mean i'm not saying it's like winning i'm just saying it's a pain to play against because the thing is when you play black you spend all this time preparing main lines and nimso and catalan and by the way catalan will be in this video but the london there's no refutation to it like you can play a line that makes you comfortable but you're never gonna have like a crazy dynamic imbalance like it's a long hard fought game and you try to find some intricacies so for a while you know like d4 knight f6 like knight f3 i'll go d5 or e6 um i like to do this to now avoid bishop f4 completely uh in the past when i was maybe playing queens indians that don't involve d5 against this i would go c5 but again even then it's like e3 you play all your main stuff and then white plays like knight a3 i mean it's just a super tricky variation and you can go wrong so quickly um and it yeah it's just it's just not easy at all you know um knight a3 is a super super tricky move so there's a lot of these different ideas how to combat black's optimal setups now probably i mean i'm just i'm playing like knight f3 d5 bishop f4 i'll go here and um against this i will just figure something out literally that's like my repertoire i mean i i might take on d4 and play bishop f5 um i might play e6 and then in this position play bishop e7 knight h5 instead of taking uh i might go for a setup with an early b6 like an early b6 and then don't put a knight on c6 very quickly something like uh like this like c5 this is a very decent setup queen c7 knight d7 b6 bishop b7 not a knight on c6 a lot of gm's play like that as well but man london is annoying all right let's go to the next one okay the second one we're gonna stick to the black pieces and then the next uh three we're going to look uh with uh with white um there is one more system in d4 that just grinds my gears uh it's the catalan and the catalan only arises after knight f6 c4 e6 knight f3 d5 g3 like now officially i believe it's a catalan um the point is that black has now played into the queen's gambit declined um and white has played knight f3 g3 this is not a catalan uh if there's a knight on c3 actually i mean it's a catalan esque position but in general the way the catalan works is d4 c4 knight f3 g3 against knight f6 e65 now i'm simply uh calling it this catalan system because it might be easier to remember this setup for you guys it's not like if a grand master watches this this is like slightly inaccurate uh you if you play the catalan setup against a king's indian defense that's not called a catalan that's called a fianchetto king's indian uh variation so it's it's not a catalan um but uh the catalan is right here this can arise from different move orders like for example i will have some players who play knight f3 i will play e6 they'll play g3 and by the way sometimes if they delay c4 i'll play b5 like for example i'll do this this b5 like just not to allow them to play the mainline catalan i mean it's this is a big risk this is not some sort of win for uh for black i'll play like this and then they'll play a4 and we have a very imbalanced game all the same um but the reason i i i struggle to find a working variation against the catalan is because it's such a pain in the ass like the main line is to just decline it like you know like bishop e7 bishop g2 castles castles and then and only then you will take if you don't take if you don't take the catalan the open catalan because the whole point is this bishop um you play like c6 uh whatever i mean you can play c6 b6 bishop b7 like i don't like to play these positions i don't understand them at all i don't understand how to just sit there like this the entire game so in my opinion the critical test of the catalan is to at some point take this pawn and often times white will play queen c2 or queen a4 sometimes black will play a6 to play like this for example queen c2 a6 and then rather than getting hit with queen c4 b5 tempo white will play a4 this is like very standard catalan stuff and then black will walk their bishop manually to this diagonal and oftentimes there's sometimes black will even put the bishop on d5 to kick the queen out of the middle to fight for the e4 square into the e4 square and counteract the bishop but there is so much theory there and i i don't really like those positions so actually what i do is um i combine two systems there's a system where you give a check and rather than trading you actually come back to one of these two squares um the point is that now this bishop you argue is slightly offside and then you figure out what to do i've also seen variations where players will do this setup and then play like knight to e4 so they will play like uh let's say queen c2 knight e4 knight c3 f5 they will play this like a stonewall dodge defense so they will play in the knight to e4 and play a 5. now computer doesn't like it it thinks that structurally this is a bit of a problem for black but it can uh it can really throw off a catalan opponent who's ready to open their bishop and suffocate you to death like how is that bishop ever getting opened there is literally a piece on every square on that diagonal i mean that bishop will never see the light of day but it's still slightly worse for black so i've tried that line um but uh i i i take and then i play bishop b4 check this is kind of my this was my repertoire for some time the best move here is bishop d2 knight d2 doesn't make any sense because you just go here now you keep your pawn you never need to worry about losing your rook because um you can even play like this move in some variations maybe not exactly in this move order but for example take take it's a very common thing to lose this rook but gain two pawns in the night and then black just has a great time here um but this is what i play and then here there's like this move a5 which defends the bishop and looks to get these pawns here there is also c5 and i mean black is just like this is just one of the lines that i that i like to play there's also that stonewall line but in all these lines like let's just get to a position like one from the main lines i mean the annoying thing is that the second that white moves this bishop is just active i mean there is no easy solution to the catalan you either play super solidly and memorize 25 moves of theory as well as all the little branches or you play something slightly subpar um the catalan is extremely annoying i mean you can avoid it by playing king's indian defenses but i'm simply saying if you want to add a super menacing repertoire to a piece of an opening to your repertoire yeah the catalan is it's up there and it's it's it's really tough to deal with and you have to decide if you want to play it open or closed you have to decide whether you want to play it like a stone wall no easy solutions here really there are none or you can avoid it at all costs you know d4 knight f6 c4 and just don't allow them to play a catalan i mean you can play like a queens indian bogo indian but if they play this and you try to play queens indian it's not gonna work so you've already screwed up and now you have to play something else so yeah catalan all right next one now this part of the video i actually could have recorded with white or with black because the rui lopez or the spanish is something that i will simply never understand maybe i will be studying it like on a on a resort somewhere when i'm like 55 years old and never want to think about chess again seriously i'll just read about it but the rule lopez is e4 e5 and i'm putting myself as the player with the white pieces because uh rue lopez and just in general e45 is why i would never play e4 with white and why i uh would not play uh e5 with black against e4 so rue lopez is this knight f3 knight c6 bishop b5 now if you're playing with white you make the conscious effort to play it if you play with black this is why this is interesting if you play e45 that's not the only thing you have to know you have to know the scotch you have to know ponziani you have to know italian you have to know four knights you have to know um vienna king's gambit all the other silly gambits the bishops opening the wayward queen attack trying to check i mean i'm just kidding but the rulopas now we're looking at it from white's perspective so there are so many spanishes the main line nowadays at the highest level is often the berlin defense to immediately attack this pawn on e4 and the berlin endgame is white just castling away letting it get taken there is d4 knight d6 take take here knight f5 and this end game this end game has been studied to the death there have been thousands of games played at the grand master level incredibly fascinating variation uh if you like watching paint dry um but it it's it's really like a meta battleground now here's the thing there is the anti-berlin which is just d3 middle finger to your berlin but then there's all sorts of lines where you know white takes this knight to damage the structure and then has to figure out how to set up their own pieces like where their knight goes where the bishop goes black will rotate this knight back around to the middle i mean it's incredibly complicated battleground but there is also a6 which is called morphe defense then white needs to decide whether they're playing the exchange variation voluntarily with no knight committed to f6 exchange variation is just simply quality um but uh there is obviously the main line then in the main line there is knight f6 castles i mean bishop b7 rookie one like defending this there's all lines where black can take on e4 play b5 d5 black can play bishop e7 and play in a closed way like this you know with pawn to d6 or or black can play martial attack which is when they play d5 right away and that results in them sacrificing the e5 pawn and launching these bishops at the opponent that's the way that that marshall played this variation um so there's the anti-marshals there there's uh the setups where white plays knight c3 a3 to cover the d5 square i mean it's just so endless there's all the closed there's all the closed variations as well where black moves the knight to b8 that's the briar i don't know if it's here yeah this is breyer undeveloping your knight routing it to b7 bishop b7 d7 pawn on c5 um knight on a5 bishop c2 and c5 i one of these is called the chi goren i mean it's just so so so many of them and you can study all the intricacies from moves seven to twenty it's just an encyclopedia of chess history and knowledge it's actually probably a fascinating journey that i will never touch with a ten-foot pole and once you're done studying that you gotta study all the crap got to study all the crap so and by crap i mean like for example um there is like this which which is called kosio defense which is when you play uh knight e7 to defend this there is this which is uh just trying to play king like style of almost king's indian g6 um there is uh well there's bird this is the bird defense but no one really plays that seriously there's the yanish or the schliemann i love this one f5 counter gambit for black um there's like the steinitz variation with d6 bishop d7 just super solid i mean it's a little bit of a sideline but super solid stuff and it just goes on and on and on i mean i can make like a three hour video about the spanish so i would not touch the spanish and i always recommend low rated players to not touch the spanish i say play italian because at least you have like a weak pawn to target and you might get into a like a fried liver when you take on f7 or you might get into more dynamic systems where at least you have like a noticeable target which is a pawn near a king and it just lets you be more fluid or play the scotch with d4 or play the ponziani or play the vienna save yourself all the time in the world the vienna is an entirely separate ball game so i hate the rue lopez i will never understand it ever in my life let's move to the last two okay for these next two we are actually in my main repertoire so if any of my future opponents for some reason have watched this video play some of these openings against me i absolutely cannot stand the bank of gambit d oh sorry d4 knight f6 c4 c5 so you already notice not e6 not g6 but c5 a very committal move white plays the main line which is d5 and now here black has some choices black can go for various benonis which is e6 uh attacking this uh black can delay e6 by playing d6 g6 to g7 castles and then only and then committing pawns in the center or black can play b5 attacking the flank pawn of whites with yet a further kind of pawn over there on the flank and if white takes this pawn the center is slightly destabilized and often times black will then play a6 uh and if you take this pawn this pawn will be recaptured and here the main line for many years was bishop takes a6 white plays knight c3 black fiance with bishop g7 then waiting to do something in the center about this pawn and here white has a lot of ways of setting up but personally i like what's up the main line is known as the king walk variation when you take the center black takes you and now you've lost the right to castle but you're not really too bummed about that because you can walk your king to g2 and this is a real thing like this is this is like a real opening and here there's many ways for white to play but a4 is considered the main line and if you look at any opening database just.com leeches they all say a4 is the way to go and now plans and variations kind of split here black can play in many ways with the queen the rook but the general rule of thumb is black gets both rooks on the a and b files and uses those open lines to counter attack the incoming white queen side assault now why do i hate the banco well i don't play a lot of the banko over the board because people nowadays are going for more solid lines online i lose to this opening like 75 percent of the time because i'm playing it in blitz games and in blitz you can set everything up optimally like rook a threes is a nice move i like to go for to get out of this to stabilize the pawn the knight and not have any like tactical nonsense i'll play all the right moves you know i'll play queen c2 um i'll play like a knight maybe two to c4 i'll play my rook to e1 but once we're out of theory it's such a delicate like position sometimes and black is coming in with a knight to c4 a pawn to c4 and a knight to c5 a queen on b4 or a rook on b4 to target the e4 pawn this knight moves and now the bishop is open like there's so many lines and in blitz it is a nightmare to deal with because tactics are flying all over the place so if we go all the way back to even this position you say why do you allow the banko at all play knight f3 well yes that is an option but knight f3 is not a serious try for an advantage like cd4 is perfectly good for black like black can play e6 bishop before and now this is an entire separate repertoire i have to study um but yeah it is a valid way to avoid the banco but the truth is the banker was better for for white so i need to my goal is to find a line that i always feel comfortable in and what i what i've done to combat the benko is i tried various lines where you don't take the second bond so for example i would play b6 i would just do this and you know black needs to delay taking with the queen this is not very accurate because white takes over the center very quickly um black can play e6 d6 so i was trying b6 for a while i was trying e3 for a while e3 is a very interesting move you're gonna win your pawn back guaranteed um and the setup that you oftentimes will go for is one where you have like uh knight c3 a4 e4 so for example g6 knight c3 bishop g7 e4 to try to play e5 and a4 a setup like this a crown of pawns and your knight and you just push black back you don't give them the typical benko play on the a and b files position is very complicated but engine does think that white is slightly better but there is also queen c2 which is a very fun line the idea of queen c2 being that if they take your c4 pawn well now you take the center and you actually you haven't opened their a file at all so you you you try to find something that you like that doesn't give the bengal player everything because even though you are up upon in the mainline bangkok gambit the position is just a it's a migraine position so queen c2 is a nice way to play against the bank of you don't need to avoid the banco because the truth is if you play d5 they might play e6 and then if they play the bononi it's it's tolerable you know there's many good lines against the bononi early bishop f4 and h3 lines um personally what i've been trying lately because i've been playing the four pawns attack in the king's indian defense i can go for a similar thing here this is a four four-pawn storm variation except one got traded you see that so it's kind of like in memory of the c pawn you play like this actually uh that is the c pawn never mind in memory of the d-pawn the d-pawn was the one that got taken the c pawn became the one uh but there's many many good lines i mean you can play knight f3 bishop four is very tricky uh this is a very good setup against the bononi but the banco is an issue and you know what the worst part about the banco is watch let's say you play a king's indian defense okay you're playing your king's indian you're doing your thing you play a four pawns attack that's what i've been playing recently c5 d5 b5 do you see where this is going this is kind of a benko so now if you take with the knight you lose this pawn so you take uh oh now we're in typical banco territory i lose so many games like this in blitz i had a game yesterday i was like plus five plus five but there was so much craziness i blundered something i ended up blundering and i lost the game i almost wanted to throw my ipad out the window but it's a new ipad so i'm gonna keep it i mean like it's just it's so tense you could be winning but then you can blunder everything in one move so venka was a pain let's go to the last one this last opening is unbelievably annoying and i have tried many many things against it and now i'm back to square one and that opening is the semislav defense now a semi-slav is like a uh one that wears adidas up top uh but doesn't have any pants uh and might or might not drive a ladder so it's like an and only squats half of the week it's a semi-sloth on a serious note the slav defense against the queen's gambit is c6 and black does not play e6 plays bishop f5 dc4 whatever g6 a6 but the second the triangle is made and the knight on f6 this is the starting position of the semi-slav defense now here the main lines are very classical bishop to g5 and mehran which is e3 which is actually according to justin.com called the main line so the miran is e3 knight d7 and this is just wickedly complicated uh anand kramnik i mean so many players i believe probably even kasparov played main lines with bishop coming out getting taken b5 coming in with the tempo and then like the bishop coming back black playing a6 to support b5 and then playing c5 b4 bishop b7 queen c7 bishop b4 and if you ever look at the database black wins more than white like black wins 54 from this position i mean obviously it's littered with like other games like 2000s and 2100s but i'm never i'm never playing the mirror on main line so what i've done uh is i will play like a mirror on sideline bishop e2 so if this is taken it's not with tempo so i can play a4 prevent b5 it's equal but it's an idea uh i might play knight d7 and play like b3 and play bishop b2 queen c2 bishop e2 castles but here's the thing you cannot run from the semi-slav defense you see at least against the slav the slav defense you can maybe like play a slight move order change so you can play like knight c3 knight f6 e3 just slightly different than but but it's still here i mean it's still here you can delay this you can delay this but okay it's like the same i mean right but again you can maybe play exchange sloth which is just annoying for black because it's symmetry and you know black doesn't have all the fun um but when an opponent starts with knight f6 and this you you're not gonna avoid it because if you play knight c3 they might actually play a nimso which is even better than a semi-slav and if you play knight f3 well then they're going to play d5 i mean good luck and then yes you can play the catalan but now you need to play the catalan with white so you need to study all of the catalan with the semi-slav don't know about that so there is the miran i have also tried these duboff lines where dubof just says yo stupid take my pawn just take it it's fine i don't need it i don't need to defend my pawn i'll play bishop g2 i'll play 95 i'm going to win my pawn back slowly but surely the problem is i have played so many lines and so many games where black just defends this pawn and uh and i i like get you know gambit over here and i get some position that looks like this where i have six pawns black has seven pawns i mean that's a full pawn down and now i need to not play like an idiot i need to like actually play energetically coordinate my piece as well manage my pawn down position but black's lack of space and i don't know how to do it i just learned how to do it i can watch salem saleh one of the strongest players in the world he's from the uae he beat hans niemann in a game at the sharjah masters in a g3 semislav but i don't know how to do it i don't know how like it doesn't work the same so then i played the other main line which is bishop g5 and yes they can still take on c4 but now you get the full center now here there is a line of theory that legitimately goes 50 moves long i'm not kidding five zero you're interested after this go watch it's b5 e5 h6 bishop h4 with this pin g5 takes takes takes knight d7 and then to defend f6 now you can either take or play g3 but position is unbelievable theory has pushed this to like 50th move engines on both sides i'm like i'm not i'm not doing that we're not no we're not playing that so in this position what i've done is i sometimes don't even play e5 uh i'll play uh i'll play something else like in some of these lines uh dc4 uh maybe e3 maybe a4 e4 b5 i've also played um i've played this move here bishop g3 i won't take on g5 so i've played this this knight d2 but you know i gotta study 50 moves of theory so i've tried everything against the semi-sloth and i i still don't have a solution man i still don't have a solution so hopefully this video gave you some interesting ideas to incorporate into your repertoire with the white and the black pieces i tried to give you many options against even the most annoying variations just to show you the way you can play you can be annoyed but you can still get a good position and you can still win the game you're not always going to be happy when you're sitting at the chessboard in fact when are you actually going to be happy when you're sitting at the chessboard we're all in this depressing journey together but it's going to be all right but you know what there is a solution to saving the oceans at least this is a step in the right direction and i was excited to participate in team c's and um yeah i really enjoyed making this video i thought of this concept and i wanted to share it with all of you and if there's anything else you want me to cover in the future let me know in the comments below peace out go check out team c's and get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 408,055

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

Id: pw1RV4eJYI8

Length: 32min 36sec (1956 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021