8 Chess Concepts Every Chess Player Should Know - Chess Principles, Ideas, Strategies and Tips

so just five months ago i posted the top 35 chess principles video which has now gotten over 32 000 views for a small channel like mine that's pretty crazy so today we're gonna be doing kind of like a part two i've picked out eight more super important principles or concepts that you should be aware of and we're going to look at them right now so concept number one is helpful in king pond games so e4 e5 and the concept is if c3 then d5 so if your opponent plays the move c3 you should consider the move d5 why is this let's look at a simple example of the scandinavian defense one of the drawbacks of this opening is that after captures captures white can play the move knight to c3 and they gain a tempo on your queen you have to move your queen and then white basically got a free developing move by playing the knight to c3 which by the way is a very good square for the knight but if we go back to this example here where white plays the move c3 if you play d5 now after captures captures there's no knight that can go to c3 and chase away your queen so that's one of the main reasons behind why if your opponent plays the move c3 you should play d5 so that's the basic idea now let's look at some openings where this is very practical the danish gambit you capture white plays the move c3 now you could accept the game but it's super risky and white gets all sorts of compensation and you have to really watch out that you don't get checkmated so probably a better idea is as soon as white plays c3 what's the move we play that's right we play d5 and this is one of the strongest responses to the danish gambit because now if white captures you can simply take back with the queen and guess what white's not going to be harassing your queen because the pawn's in the way let's see one more example the ponziani e4 e5 knight f3 knight c6 and the move c3 is known as the ponziani and guess what one of black's best responses is d5 captures and captures so to recap in e4 e5 openings if white plays the move c3 you should immediately consider playing d5 so concept number two is that when you're playing against gambits you should consider the move d5 what do i mean by that well we just looked at the danish gambit and one of the best moves for black is d5 another example is the king's gambit and the the move d5 in this position is known as the fog beer counter gambit which is again one of black's better responses to the king's gambit one more example which is very similar is the vienna gambit where dwight plays knight c3 then f4 and what do you think one of the best moves for black is you got it d5 so if you're black and your opponent plays some sort of gambit involving f4 make sure you consider d5 right away it's usually a pretty good idea so we just looked at king pawn openings now we're going to talk a little bit about queen pawn opening so concept number three is that in queen pawn openings usually you don't want to block the c pawn so for example knight c3 knight c6 both players have now blocked their c pawns from moving forward the first reason that you don't want to block your c pawn is this is usually a very good way to break open the center and attack white's central strong point same thing for white c4 is a good move to break open the center and attack black's central strong point and by blocking it you now can no longer do that or at least not easily and the second reason is by blocking this pawn you're not giving your queen the ability to come out to these squares if we go back instead of knight c6 suppose black plays c5 and now you notice black's queen has lots of really good options c7 can put pressure on this file and control this diagonal b6 can attack the b2 pawn and also put more pressure on d4 and even a5 is good you can create a pin put the king in check and also control squares along this rank at some points as well so by taking away those options for your queen you could be putting yourself at a disadvantage this is why the queen's gambit is such a popular and very good opening for white because it immediately attacks the center and also lets white's queen out so that it has all these different options that we just talked about concept number four is useful in the end game and it basically says that the distance from a1 to a8 is the same distance as a1 to h8 so another way to think about it is that if my king wants to walk through this square one way to do it would be one two three four five six moves straight ahead and i land on that square another way to do it would be one two three four five six or even another way one two three four five six or i could even do something like one two three four five six you get the idea it takes six moves regardless of how i want to go about getting to that square now why is that important i want you to consider this position white has this pawn going this way all he has to do is come over here take this pawn and then get a queen and he will win the game but let's see what happens if he tries to do that king here king here king here king here king here king here king here king here takes the pawn but then black plays the move king to c7 and guess what white's king is now stuck on this a file the only thing he could do is move here black goes there they can keep going back and forth and eventually if white tries to push the pawn it's now a stalemate white can't move tie game so it's just a draw all right now i want you to consider the fact that it takes white one two three four moves to get there going like that or one two three four moves going like this now let's see how that difference affects the outcome of the game so white goes here black goes here white goes here and now black's king has to make a tough decision since it can't go up here he has to either go this way or this way if he goes here well then white goes here same path that we talked about black goes here here here here and look at the difference black's king is one square a little bit further away now when he tries to get there white simply goes there escorts the pawn down and wins the game see by making this path instead of this path white essentially cut off black's king and got the victory this is also known as the crooked path so instead of walking in a straight line somewhere you would walk in a crooked path like this this is super useful in end games where your king can sometimes accomplish two things at the same time simply by changing up the path that the king takes concept number five is that you are guaranteed to win more chess games if you hit the thumbs up button on this video wait no no sorry okay the real concept number five is that you want to be the first player to control a diagonal or a file what do i mean let's just say white is going to play the move g3 because they would like to bring the bishop here to control this diagonal let's say black plays b6 because they would also like to bring their bishop and control this diagonal what do you think is going to happen in this game well white's going to play bishop g2 and if black plays bishop b7 guess what thanks a lot game over white wins because as soon as white gets control of the diagonal black can no longer simply put a piece there black either now has to defend the bishop first or block it off somehow maybe with the knight and then put the bishop but it becomes much more difficult to put a piece on that diagonal when there was nothing on the diagonal it was very simple for white to simply play bishop to g2 so the important takeaway is be the first player to control a diagonal or also a file so here's a very simple example where we have the exact same position except white has a very big advantage because white gains control of the file first and now black can never even play there because white simply captures the rook so be the first player to gain control of a file and you will have a pretty big advantage now this is the exact same position except i have added an extra rook for both players now it's a little bit different because even though white gets the file first black can still play there because they have the rook defending it so in this case the important thing to take away here is that you don't want to be the first player to make a trade for example if white were to capture this rook even though it's a simple trade it's actually a very bad move because now black has control of the file and white can't do anything about it so whenever you find yourself in a situation where there's tension between rooks usually it's always the wrong decision to trade first you want to wait do something else let your opponent trade into you because then you gain control of the file so concept number six is that a free b or g pawn might be a poisoned pawn so let me explain that at the start of the game b and g pawns are defended by bishops so you can't take them or the bishop would just take you back but as the game goes on sometimes those bishops move away and then the pawn becomes undefended so here's an example where white has played queen to b3 to attack the undefended pawn but if black plays knight c6 and white decides to take the free pawn they're actually going to lose the game because knight takes d4 and white has no way to stop this threat there's nothing that white can do about this white's in big trouble and all white got out of the deal was one measly pawn so in this case it was a poisoned pawn think the snow white and the apple you don't want to take it you don't want to eat it it's just not worth it now in this example the reason it was bad is because white was allowing knight takes d4 with another threat sometimes the position looks more like this and if you take it the dangerous thing is that the rook can come and attack your queen and even if you get two pawns out of it depending on what the rook is attacking it could be bad for you so you want to watch out taking those pawns now that being said sometimes you can get away with taking those pawns for example if black plays the move e6 well now it's okay for white to take this because not only is he getting the pawn they're also threatening the rook now black has to deal with that maybe do this to defend it so sometimes you can get away with it but keep in mind it could be poisoned and you always want to check for that i'll show you one more example where there's a poisoned g pawn so this comes out of the french defense and this is one of the main lines black captures plays 97 and white plays queen to g4 attacking the pawn on g7 and then black just ignores it white captures and this is actually called the poison pawn variation of the french defense so they even named it after the fact that it's a poison pawn and the reason is even though it's a pawn black plays rook g8 white actually gets two pawns black's position after just a few moves is extremely aggressive and white has to be very very careful white is kind of in a tough situation because they don't want to castle this way it's pretty wide open they don't really want to castle this way because there's two open files that black's gonna castle and then the rooks are gonna come over and it's kind of like okay what's white gonna do so the question is was it worth it to take those pawns it's debatable i mean this is a playable line lots of people play this but it's very dynamic it's very tricky and it's not just two free pawns they are poison pawns and black does get a lot of compensation for it so watch out when you take those b and g pawns they could be poisoned concept number seven is that you want to be flexible when you play chess what do i mean by flexible a lot of people play chess with plans that they think they're going to do no matter what like i'm gonna do this every game and it doesn't matter what my opponent does that's not how chess works you need to be able to react to what your opponent is doing that is a huge part of chess so let me give you an example e4 e5 knight f3 and let's just say i am a cuckoo piano player who likes to play bishop to c4 after this so i'm expecting knight c6 and then i'm going to play the move bishop to c4 let's say black plays f6 i know a lot of players that would say yeah doesn't really affect my plan i'm going to play bishop c4 and by the way bishop c4 is totally fine move there's nothing wrong with it but there is an opportunity here for white to take advantage of a little tactical trick white can actually capture the pawn on e5 and if black recaptures because of the weakness here white can play queen h5 check and after g6 captures and you got a fork and you're winning the rook in the corner it's a cool little tactic but if white was not flexible and paying attention to something that was weird that black played they probably would have missed it just played bishops before and went on about the normal moves that they always play so be flexible be on the lookout for weird moves or weaknesses that your opponent might create and look for ways to take advantage of those right concept number eight is super useful when you castle kingside and it's actually a little saying that you may have heard but it goes something like this with a knight on f8 there's no mate and you might say what in the world does that mean so let me show you an example first of all before i explain what exactly that means let me just kind of explain one thing about castling kingside so here's a game where black decides to castle kingside now when you castle kingside the most common square that is going to be attacked by your opponent is h7 it's just the way that the pieces line up it's very easy for a bishop to attack it it's very easy for a knight to come in and attack it and if there's ever an open h file the rook's going to attack it the queen can attack it different ways it's just the most common square that's attacked that's just how it is and the funny thing is the knight on f6 actually does a very good job of defending it but the issue with this knight on f6 is that it can very easily be attacked as in this example white can just take it with his bishop if they want or sometimes the knight can come here and trade off that or this pawn can go forward and attack it it's very vulnerable to white's pieces so for example this game white play sorry black plays knight c6 white plays here and white now has created a checkmate threat on h7 and if black doesn't see it and plays a terrible blunder bishop to b7 white simply captures the knight on f6 and after black recaptures it's game over checkmate on h7 now going back to the phrase or the concept that we're talking about with the knight on f8 there's no mate well where's f8 on the chessboard it's right here where this rook's at so let's go back a few moves and we're going to say we're going to pretend that black actually was aware of this concept if you will and instead of playing knight to c6 black decided to play knight b to d7 and after white did the same idea bishop c2 black played to move rook to e8 white played queen to d3 setting up the same checkmate and black plays the move knight to f8 now the knight if you'll notice is defending on h7 so if white tries the same idea guess what black just takes it and says thank you very much and i'm up a queen so now you can see where that saying comes from with a knight on a f8 there's no mate and the really cool thing about this knight on f8 is if you're playing with the white pieces and your goal is to get rid of the knight so that you can check mate how are you gonna do that yeah there's really no way like this bishop's not getting over there anytime soon the knight there's no way the knight can get there there's no pieces that can get anywhere close to this knight on f8 so black is fine black is totally fine defended from this super super easy way to defend your king from checkmate threats on h7 and you can also hop the knight two to uh g6 if you ever need to block off this and also blocks off the diagonal becomes a little bit more aggressive you can control some other squares super easy maneuver to do it's as easy as bringing your knight up bring your rook over and then your knight comes back just a two move maneuver and keep in mind we just looked at black but white can do the same thing with a knight on f1 so here's an example where white decides to bring the rook over play knight to d2 and then maneuver the knight to f1 where you have the same really strong defensive idea and you don't have to worry about this h2 checkmate anymore so the last thing i want you guys to remember is to stay sharp play smart and take care

Channel: Chess Vibes

Views: 308,193

Keywords: chess principle, chess principles, chess strategy, chess strategies, chess tricks, chess tips, chess help, chess lessons, chess ideas, chess improvement, how to win at chess, how to improve at chess, how to learn chess, basic chess concepts, chess concepts, basic chess strategy, basic chess principles, basic chess ideas, basic chess rules, basic chess tips, basic chess tactics, chess manuevers, chess for dummies, chess master lessons

Id: aRy8A3-1A9I

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021