Caro-Kann Defense | Advance Variation | Ideas, Plans & Strategies ⎸Chess Openings | Astaneh Chess

so hello guys it's alex here for chess factor and today we're going to be dealing with one of the most important variations in the CARICOM which is the advanced variation let's put that on the board removes re4 c6 we have our caro-kann d4 and have to remove d5 white simply plays pawn push to e5 and grabs a little bit more space in the center this is very reasonable logical way to play and many players consider this to be the toughest test of the caro-kann however I think that if black knows what he's doing then he certainly has more than one path to equality a very trendy move that black has been playing quite a lot in recent years and even chess books have come out recommending this move is to move pawn to c5 black spends an extra tempo moving the pawn to c5 and it reminds one of a little bit of a French advance where in fact the pawn in the French advance would be here and then we would have this exact decision the benefit of having the pawn on e7 is that black still tries to develop his bishop along light squares at the drawback of course to having not played this move is that black has spent two Tempe pushing the pawn from first to c6 and then to c5 and also once he develops his bishop the bishop can actually get a little bit harassed at times finally the fact that the porn isn't Tony six means that the pawn on c5 is not defended so many lines involved white capturing this point on on c5 and trying to make it a little bit challenging for black to recover his pawn in good terms nevertheless if you're for some reason not satisfied with the positions that arise after them we're gonna be recommending which is the absolute main line which is Fischer to have five then by all means feel free to investigate this move c5 or perhaps you want to become a more complete character and player and you can play both so now let's take a look at Bishop f5 so after Bishop f5 there's really a lot of choice that white has we can't examine absolutely all of the moves but we're gonna show as our main line the move Knight f3 and this is the main line and usually Knight f3 is followed by Bishop to e2 and a quick Castle which is known as the short variation against the can this is considered perhaps the best way to play from this position out but White has many different ways to try and challenge black I'm just going to show a couple of those ways the first move that I can show is the move pawn to h4 now this move we need to be a little bit careful that we don't respond automatically with pawn move to e6 why I say respond automatically is because a lot of the time as black against many moves such as for example Knight f3 we will be continuing with the movie 6 such as against Knight d2 we will continue also with movie 6 against Knight c3 also be 6 therefore if again stage 4 were used to playing e6 we could find ourselves in trouble very quickly the reason is because now white would have the move pawn to g4 the bishop can go either to e4 or to g6 if it goes to e4 now white will play at 3 and after g6 white we play h5 and we can see that the bishop is caught so this is one of the dangers to watch out for when you are playing the Carroll can which is on the one hand when compared to let's say French defense it's great news for us that we're able to get the bishop out of the pawn chain because the bishop becomes more active but it is to an extent a double-edged sword because the bishop on f5 is also more vulnerable to being targeted so this move h4 you really have to keep in mind that ecigs is not a good idea so how to respond to the move h4 well black has two main responses either push the h1 to h6 or push the pawn to h5 in the case of 86 the point is that if now Y plays g4 black can drop his bishop back to h7 if he wishes or can even drop his Bishop back to d7 personally I quite like Bishop to d7 although both moves are playable the thing that worries me a little bit about to move Bishop h7 is that white then has a sacrifice of a pawn with the movie 6 and after black captures the pawn mm blacks development is going to be a little bit compromised white is gonna have good control of the e5 square so it's gonna be hard to advance the pawns and his blacks King safety is going to be a little bit weak as well and the light squares in general around the King you can play like this if you wish but personally it's not my style so I like to recommend the move Bishop to d7 white can continue in a variety of different ways if white plays a move like Knight to c3 black will typically play pawn to e6 and aim for a quick c5 break if white decides to grab some more space on the King side again black will respond in typical fashion with the move pawn to c5 and try and break at the center you might be a little bit worried that white has grabbed all this space on the Kings side but it's not such a big deal I mean it's again at the alleged sword on the one hand why does cramp the black pieces a little bit on the Kings side but on the other hand White's options to Castle kingside are restricted and he also creates some potential weaknesses in his structure which black can aim to undermine later on let's go back now to the position in the original position after the move Bishop to f5 and here another move that we can quickly look at it's just this move Knight to d2 we won't spend much time on this move because after the movie 6 the idea of Knight to d2 is to quickly drive the Knight to b3 and control for c5 pushes however we're gonna leave it at this because in our main line we will see that white begins with the move Knight f3 we will play 6 white then plays Bishop e2 castles and quickly brings the knight to b3 since we're not gonna recommend any line that plays c5 very quickly this move order doesn't affect us it doesn't affect our repertoire so basically you will be playing the same thing against 92 then against Bishop to e2 99% of the time so you can take a look at the PGN for a little bit more detail on that transposition but for now this move should not worry us too much this Knight is here so the final two moves that I'd like to talk about are the second most popular option which is Knight to c3 and the move Bishop to d3 the move Knight to c3 again reserves a similar idea of advancing the pawns on the Kings side which you cannot do if you've already played the mainline move of 9 f3 once you play Knight f3 you cannot advance in this case the jeep on which we already saw in this idea with h4 and mg 4 because here the Queen no longer covers g4 so the move Knight c3 is a useful move that prepares to push the g2 pawn after black place his default a6 move so 93 6 now white plays g4 Bishop goes back to g6 and here the idea is that white plays Knight G to 82 and will drive the Knight to f4 and actually if you were to give white a bunch of time what he would do is very very irritating and you could lost very quickly let's imagine that you were to play some silly move like pawn to a6 white will put his knight on f4 and then and after even once the night is on f4 there are already some difficulties in the sense that White's threat is to push the pawn to h4 so if let's say we again play a move that is not best in this position white can push h4 and his threat becomes to push h5 and chopper bishop and the problem is that with the knight on f4 if black plays to move h6 now white can capture this bishop and after pawn takes knight black's pawn structure has been shattered so this is a trick that we want to avoid so let's take a look at the position again this time we won't play you know a useless or unproductive moves like a six or ninety-seven and instead let's see what happens after Knight to c3 after Knight c3 we will respond with a six now g4 Bishop to g6 Knight e - and here in this position we can immediately break into the break at the center which is a very standard way of playing in general in chess which is when you know that one side has a flank attack planned very often counter attacking in the center is the most effective strategy so c5 now once white plays h4 the threat is to push h5 and here black himself can play the move h5 White's idea now is to play Knight f4 which targets this Bishop and targets this pawn it seems as though black is in trouble because if you move the bishop you can lose the pawn and if you keep the bishop here white threatens to capture it and ruin black structure and create many weaknesses for black along the like squares but in fact black is okay with this because he has a lot of counter play in this enter and the points have pushed a little bit too much on the kingside so white may be vulnerable on both center and King side so what lack does is he plays the bishop back to h7 and gambits this pawn white should take the point otherwise his strategy does not make much sense and a black continues his central play with Knight to c6 the pressure becomes too much here so white captures the pawn and banks on the fact that if black captures on c5 the pawn on g7 is undefended but once again black plays dynamically and captures the pawn on c5 anyway now it's a little bit too dangerous for white to capture the pawn immediately so white typically plays Bishop b5 so that this Knight cannot play and cannot quickly capture on e5 black plays Queen to c7 putting pressure on e5 and supporting the knight white captures on c6 Queen takes c6 I'm just gonna show quickly the main line in this variation so that you get a little bit of a feel for it and of course investigated a little bit further in your own time the move here is Queen f3 and black continues to play very dynamically a lot of people think seem to think that the Carroll Khan is a boring opening but hopefully by the end of this course I will have persuaded you if if you held that opinion I will have persuaded you that the caro-kann is anything but boring opening here queenside castling white place to move Knight takes g7 and now black brings the knight to e7 and well in this position we have some further notes in the in the PGN but in this position White's main move is Bishop to g5 the last thing that I wanted to show is why can't white grab another pawn well the point is that if white grabs this pawn here on f7 he's threatening to take on e6 an exchange the Queen's which would be a big achievement for white since White's King stands in the center of the board and blacks is already Castle but against this move black has to move Bishop to g8 attacking the Queen and more importantly defending on e6 and after Queen f3 black plays Knight to g6 and here we can take stock of the position and we can see that black has four points while white actually has seven points so really it's a big material advantage in White's favor and yet because of the huge development lead since white has spent so much time moving his Queen around moving his Knight around remember this night went from e2 to have four to h5 to g7 and pushing pawns because of all of this White's position is actually very underdeveloped very vulnerable the knight on g7 is a little bit out of the game and so if anything here white is the one that's struggling in spite of being so many pawns up and objectively speaking this position is a very very dangerous for white so this is just to give you a bit of a feel of how to respond dynamically to this move Knight to c3 the major takeaway is be prepared to sacrifice this H pawn and fight for central control as soon as possible so having taken a look at this we will now return to our original position where we will show one final variation Bishop to d3 before going on to our main line which is a short variation okay so here white sometimes at the club level the only reason why I'm including this move Bishop to d3 is because it's very popular at the club level and I believe that it's even i'ts either the second or the third most popular move at the club level so to move you might encounter quite a bit but objectively speaking it's not a very good move and that's why you don't see it so much at the master level the point about this move is that black versus in a French defense let's say black is happy that he's developed this Bishop he's able to get it out of the board before closing the pawn chain in the center so what I mean by this is all his pawns in the center are on light squares and if he had this bishop here the bishop scope would be greatly impacted by being inside of the pawn chain once the bishop steps out of the pawn chain white generally should try to exploit this by either harassing it with these g4 h4 lines or Knight c3 like we've just taken a look or in some situations like in a short variation sometimes the knight will come to h4 in her asset in this way and white can also of course just play for a space advantage here with this pawn on e5 and so when you have a space advantage usually you want to keep more pieces on the board because your opponent feels a little bit more cramped when you play this move Bishop to d3 you are both allowing black to exchange pieces and removing any potential problems that black has with this piece being harassed as in these lines with g4 and h4 so it's really not a very strategically threatening move because of this so if you do face this move at the club level just exchange the bishops play the move pawn to e6 develop normally and you should get quite a good game of course you will continue to play as is typical in the Quran aiming for this c5 break to challenge the white center okay so with all of that said let's now take a look at nine f3 so Knight f3 here now we will develop normally with a6 and Bishop to e2 here black has three major options to move Knight to d7 the move Knight to e7 or the move pawn to c5 and all of the moves are perfectly good and maybe at the higher levels to avoid being too predictable Karel can players will just play one move one day and another move another day so feel free to learn them all if you wish but in this video I'm going to be recommending ninety seven which is not just the main line but I think it's a little bit more solid my concern with the move pawn to c5 is that after for example Bishop to e3 there's immediate pressure on the pawn and after C takes d4 which is the correct move for Black Knight takes d4 our Bishop is already on their attack and here we would have to know exactly how to react for example the move Knight to e7 is the correct move and it more or less equalizes for black but it would be very easy to go wrong and play move like Bishop to g6 and after this we're already much much worse for example Bishop g6 Castle 97 white can play c4 and if we try to continue our development with knight c6 here white can go Queen a4 and it's surprisingly difficult you can play around with this position you know independently if you wish to get a better idea but for now I will say that it's extremely difficult to complete development in a good way here for black there's a lot of pressure on c6 it's pinned there's a lot of pressure on d5 there are issues with how to develop this Bishop and White King is already castled while ours is in the center of the board so we have to be very careful with how we handle these positions and that's why I'm not recommending this choice although it's a perfectly let's go back so um to move 97 by the way can be played but one of the things about this about this early sortie of the knight to e7 is that sometimes why complain night h4 and start to harass this Bishop will actually see this on the next move after our main move which is Knight to d7 here white castles and here rather than 97 which would take us back to these kind of 97 lines where White has this annoying knight h4 move winning our Bishop and instead of this what I'm recommending is the move pawn to h6 now if we later put our knight on e7 and white plays Knight h4 we can always drop the bishop back to h7 and the knight on h4 seems a little bit silly after h6 white now plays Knight BD 2 we mentioned this move 92 earlier when we were talking about the many different possibilities for white and we mentioned how it would take us back it would transpose into the same positions that we're going to be playing here in our main line because this Knight now is headed towards b3 from where it will control the c5 square and also as opposed to the knight on c3 the knight from B 3 enables white to push this phone to grab a little bit more space on the Queen side and center in the future so this is a very typical and choice of square for white and it's our mainline 92 now we will continue developing with 97 well we can't go to f6 because of white space advantage in the center we want to try and complete our development on the Kings side so 97 makes sense also our bishop for now it's struggling to find a good square Bishop to b4 is not a very effective square it could easily be kicked away while if we put our Bishop on e7 then we'll have this problem of what to do with our Knight this is why black develops the knight first now white continues with his plan with Knight b3 and here we have 2 this once again how exactly we want to complete our continue our development this is probably the greatest difficulty that the black player faces against the advanced variation white because he has a little bit more space can create more problems for for his opponent I mean White's the ease of development is greater than blacks and so black has to be a little bit creative sometimes for example black will develop the night by a c8 other times black will push the pawn on c5 perhaps even gambling the pawn and then bring that knight to c6 other times black will drop the bishop to g6 or even to h7 and place the knight either on f5 or on g6 and many of these lines have married and and can again be be played interchangeably however I'm gonna recommend a little bit of a aggressive choice here but it's been a move that's played it's been played many many times including by some of the world's best and this move is pawn to g5 it might seem a bit crazy but black actually intends to Castle queenside so he doesn't mind aggressively pushing his pawns forward the possibility is down the line of pushing the pawn on g4 at the right moment could destabilize white since this Knight is guarding the central points of d4 d5 so it could aid black to put more pressure in the center and also now if black does place a piece either a knight on g6 or a bishop on g6 there is less possibility for harassment for example with the bishop on g6 white cannot play Knight h4 since the point is covering this square finally in some of these positions white actually wants to move this Knight and start storming the King side so let's imagine we have a situation like this white might try to move the knight storm the King side and break here on f5 in this position after g5 these possibilities are somewhat reduced so the move is quite an interesting move and I think just a good move so if you're an aggressive player then hopefully you like this recommendation if not you have a wide selection to choose from so at this point white has two possibilities after blacks g5 move they may move this Knight to e one which we can actually understand very very soon but basically one of the key ideas is that white wants to push at f4 and try and and generate some plate on the kingside here it's a little bit weakened from black with an easier target here on g5 however before this we can also consider to move pawn to a4 the idea of this move is as well it's very logical move because basically after the move g5 black signals to white that he's probably going to Castle queenside so white says well if you're gonna have some Queen side I will just start making progress on the Queen side pushing some points and sort of preempt the fact that you're going to Castle queenside so here I like to recommend the move Bishop to g7 and toy with White's assumptions and in fact Castle kingside instead arguing that this point on g5 is really not such a big deal that you've pushed it this far your king is still going to be quite safe because you're gonna have a lot of minor pieces around your King and white is not if you look at the position concretely white does not have anything that's too scary so after this for example white could now try to move 91 but at this point it's a little bit late and black can actually play c5 and we can see the value of placing the bishop on g7 there's a lot of pressure here in the center of the board and with the pawn for black on g5 it's it's a little bit more difficult to support the center for example here white can play the move pawn to f4 trying to support the center but now black has a strong move pawn to c4 hitting the night the Knight has no good Square except d2 but that cuts off the bishop and now black can use the fact that his pawn is on g5 capturing on f4 and a bit awkward for white that he cannot capture back with the bishop so this position is actually very good for black another nice thing about having played the move c4 is not just cramping this knife but also this night on e1 as we will see in the mainline often maneuvers to d3 but here the d3 Square has been controlled by blacks so we see some very interesting play on let's say both sides of the centre right black place on c5 he also plays here to crack it f4 and overall he puts a lot of pressure on on White's attempts at holding his Center his advantage Center together we see the consequences here okay let's go back okay so the main option here for white instead is Knight to e1 there are a couple more lines in the a4 possibilities you can check that check them out in the PGN but for now let's take a look at 91 after 91 white threatens to push the pawn to f4 relatively quickly and here the move Bishop to g7 would not work quite so well for for black since now white pushes on f4 and well it's a little bit more pressure a little bit quicker pressure here because in the previous line with a4 white had sort of played this move that was not very useful in the context of the fight for the center and the fight for and this situation here on the Kings side so black had an extra move to improve his position to create more problems in the in the center and so he was able to fight better here he's not quite able to fight as well so I don't recommend this move Bishop to g7 instead against 91 what I would recommend is the move Queen to c7 which is a much more useful move here striking at e5 and also preparing some possibilities of CFI and also anticipating queenside castle it makes sense the black now will prioritize queenside castling when white has very quickly signaled his attentions intentions to go on the offensive on the kingside after the move Queen c7 white now can indeed play at four but the main move is night b3 if f4 I really like the move pawn to c5 again we see the same type of idea and in play which is to strike at the center here the Queen hits me five and supports e5 so after the move c5 black obtains counter play in time against the center and he gets quite a good position even though the situation here on the King side may at times necessitate the black sacrifice a pawn it will not be such a big deal for example if we were to exchange these pawns and white starts to grab the pawn on g5 we can see the plaque is going to have a lot of open files on the King side and after pawn takes d4 we can see that the white center is very much at risk this Knight on you want for now is not very well placed and as I say black will be able to Castle queenside and will arguably have the safer King so overall the positions here are very much playable and I think quite good for black let's go back therefore in this position after the move Queen c7 white decides that rather than rush to move f4 usually the white player decides he wants to stop the move c5 so he plays the move Knight to d3 in order to gain control over the c5 square now after this move we can finally play the move Knight to g6 it's worth mentioning that one of a go if we had played the move Knight to g6 figuring well now if he plays at four we have better control over that square we would actually get into trouble very fast white to play g4 and we would realize we've cut the escape route for our bishop the bishop only has the e4 square and again this typical idea are developed LightSquared bishop gets hunted by white so this is a little trap to be quite careful of to watch out for so instead after Queen c7 were back into the mainline Queen c7 and Knight to d3 and here now black can play knight g6 the point is that if white now plays g4 black can simply capture the knight on d3 and his position is very good because although he's had to give up the bishop we can see that white has a nasty weakness here on f4 and the move g4 is not something that white wants to do with his King here on the King side and black getting ready to castle on the opposite side therefore in this position after Knight g6 by the way I will mention that some of the world's top players play the main line here pawn to b6 and the idea is to push the pawn to c5 and break in the center this leads to some very forcing variations and I was very tempted to recommend this move as the main choice but in the end I've just added it to the PGN for those of you who want an alternative to my recommendation I'm recommending Knight to g6 as I consider this move to be a little bit more flexible and a little bit easier with the move pawn to b6 here the play gets really quite crazy quite messy with F for ideas and c5 ideas and there's a lot of tension on the board a lot of possibilities and well it's very Theory heavy and it's not everybody's cup of tea so instead here black plays to move Knight to g6 white can continue to develop I think Bishop e3 makes a lot of sense and now we see blacks idea is to just Castle queenside the main move for white is very funny move its Knight to e1 going back now you might be thinking why would you go to e1 to then go to the 3/2 then go back to you one well the idea is that now white renews his threat of g4 which we already saw a few moves ago so you have to watch out for this possibility now black simply drops the night bag and white plays another move that shouldn't be unexpected for us just advancing the points on the queenside here I like to improve my placement of the King King to be 8 and have to Ponte 5 I don't like allowing to move a 6 which would softened up our structure and soften up the light squares so instead I prefer to play in the pawn move to a 6 and put a stop to these ideas white now can bring back his knight now that this g4 idea didn't work and once the knight is back once again we can bring our knight back because if g4 we can always capture so this is a key takeaway to keep in mind this is where our analysis dobbs there's of course a very rich middle game on the board many different possibilities but what I will say about this is that basically we have an aggressive position where both sides are Castle and the opposite edge of the board and both sides have their Trump's White has more space on the Queen side and has a few pieces pointing towards the Queen side black on the other hand has more space on the Kings side and has a few pieces pointing towards the king side white has a bit more space in the center but black can consider breaking with moves like f6 or maybe down the line and move like pawn to c5 so he has plenty of ways to counter White's space advantage overall objectively speaking the position is about equal and offers chances for both sides so I think in general when we can find a way to obtain an equal position with chances for both sides from the black side we should be quite happy it's on white usually to prove that he has an edge and here I don't think that he has any real edge I think anything can happen so hopefully you enjoyed this coverage of the advance variation it's one of the more challenging variations to deal with there are many possibilities for white at many different turns but and even if you don't recall everything or every line that covered hopefully you have an idea of some new motifs and themes and the typical points and traps to avoid so I've been Alex for chess fact I hope you've enjoyed this video and I'll see in the next one you

Channel: Chessfactor

Views: 93,269

Keywords: caro-kann defense, caro-kann defence, caro kann, caro kann theory, chess theory caro kann, best opening for black, opening against e4, how to play the caro kann, chess, chess openings, chess opening theory, play the caro-kann, chessfactor, chess opening for black, chess factor, caro kann defense, caro-kann advance variation, advance variation, caro-kann defense short variation, Tal Variation, Van der Wiel Attack, short variation, advanced variation

Id: kRmwIRYnm8A

Length: 35min 1sec (2101 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 07 2019