Caro-Kann Defense | Fantasy Variation ⎸Chess Openings | IM Alex Astaneh

so hi guys it's alex here with another video in our karokan series our karakan repertoire and uh this time around i'm gonna show the fantasy variation and how to play against it so let's put it on the board the moves are e4 c6 d4 and d5 no surprises until now and here well white has to deal with the threat of capturing the pawn on e4 and the fantasy variation involves the move pawn to f3 the idea makes a lot of sense if now black captures white is prepared to recapture with the pawn on e4 and have a very strong center in addition here white would have the f3 square where he could develop his knight very quickly his bishop could come to c4 he could castle on the king's side and believe me there are some really nasty sacrificial ideas around f7 i've actually played many times in online i like to play in fast games of chess i like to capture because it leads to crazy positions but i have lost more games quickly in this variation than i can count so when it comes to serious tournament games i do not recommend to capture an e4 it's really a little bit too adventurous and instead the move that we're going to recommend is the move e6 which takes the game a little bit into french defense waters when we can see that it would be as if white had started with e4 black had played e6 white had continued with d4 black had played d5 a french defense which is a perfectly good opening and then we include the moves f3 and c6 the argument is that this leads to a very decent variation of the french defense because the move c6 for us is a little bit more useful than the move f3 for white in in this french defense structure in the center but it's something that we need to be aware of because otherwise as a karo khan player if you're not used to this you might get a little bit frustrated by the difficulty or in fact how impossible it is that this bishop is developed to the typical squares of either f5 in most variations or g4 as we see in the caro can exchange variation so this is the first thing to note we will play e6 and here white typically plays knight c3 supporting his center and now we have to figure out how to develop if we were to play the move knight f6 then after the move e5 knight d7 and f4 we would be in um one of the sort of serious lines of the french defense we don't really want to be uh let's say move order tricked into playing a hardcore main line of the french defense so instead i'm not recommending the move knight to f6 but instead black will develop his bishop to b4 pinning this knight on c3 and asking the question of white of exactly how he's going to continue his development which is not such an easy question to answer because for example if white were to continue with the move bishop d3 he may have to watch how for pawn takes e4 pawn takes e4 and the loss of the pawn on d4 he also may have to watch out for a quick c5 where the pawn on d4 is under some pressure and it would be easy for white to go wrong with a move like knight e2 defending the pawn on d4 and now black playing c4 after which this bishop on d3 is uh well it has simply no moves so we can see some of the dangers that await an unprepared white player against this line which is i think relatively simple for black to play pawn to e6 and then when white plays his usual move we pin the knight with bishop b4 now the most popular two moves here our main line is to move bishop to f4 which is a part of um white's idea key idea in this position which is to quickly develop his queen side so he starts with bishop f4 then he puts his queen to d3 to go for a very fast queenside castle this is what we're going to examine as our main line but first of all i just want to talk about the move knight e2 this is a very reasonable move defending d4 defending c3 and um well we should know how to play against it the move that i like is knight e7 again not knight f6 which can be played but the knight on f6 sometimes feels a little bit more vulnerable to attack so knight e7 instead and now after the move a3 we don't really want to capture this knight on c3 because if we capture then white would play knight takes c3 and we have given up the bishop pair this is a very strong bishop because you can see the light squared pawns we really would prefer if we could transfer this bishop here let's say and then we would have a very good position but we gave up our good bishop the one that has a lot of potential along especially this h2b8 diagonal and so we don't really want to do this and we also gave up um the bishop for this knight when this knight actually stands in the way of the white bishop and these two knights are sort of competing for squares we consider we call these knights as competing for squares so after the move a3 black instead would play the response bishop a5 keeping his bishop bishop would come to e3 knight would come to d7 and black on the next move would simply play castle he would um have a perfectly good game usually white would go knight g3 castle and black at some point or another in these positions can try and break in the center with either c5 or in some situations e5 because again with these two pawns in the core center versus black's one pawn in the core center white does have a little bit more space so it's very typical to break much like we've seen in many caro can variations before so let's see after after bishop b4 instead let's take a look now at the main choice which is here the move bishop to f4 so after bishop to f4 black plays the knight to e7 and white puts its queen on d3 the plan that we've already identified where white wants to castle quickly now the question is what do you do with the one problem piece that black has here compared to other lines in the carol can remember a lot of what the caro can is about is about it's it's about moving this bishop and developing it out of the pawn chain in this case the bishop stays on c8 so the idea that black has is he's going to play and he's going to develop it along this diagonal specifically he's going to put his bishop on a6 and that's why for now he kept the knight on b8 so the bishop a6 is coming very very soon now white usually continues with knight e2 because if he continues with queen side castling then black can play bishop a6 and after white moves his queen black can actually capture the bishop and he's once again solved this problem of the bishop it's a little bit similar to in those lines uh of say the caro can advance if white allows um the exchange of these bishops the big problem for black is solved right because of the way in which his pawns in the center are set up so therefore this is not very popular way for white to play and so white usually puts his knight on e2 to prevent this we still put our bishop on a6 because this is a very good diagonal queen is on e3 and already i think that the black position is very good here because the black knight will not have any real difficulties in getting into the game either via d7 or via c6 and all the other pieces are in the game so white's white's advantage if it even exists is very minimal already let's see how the game can continue castle now white castles queen side and so on the one hand white wants to perhaps attack the black king but on the other for now the major asset that white has is a little bit of a superior situation in the center so black should strike at the center as quickly as possible to move c5 here now white typically kicks this bishop out if he does not do so black will just continue with knight to c6 get good development and actually he's quicker in my opinion at attacking the white king than white is at attacking the black king because white spawns are still on h2 and g2 whereas black's queen side pawns have advanced already quite a bit so therefore after the move c5 a3 and black captures on c3 and now the question becomes how to recapture as white typically white recaptures with the queen let's take a look at what happens if white captures with the knight after knight takes c3 black will exchange these bishops rook takes f1 and now an important move to be aware of um basically in this position we can see that the pawn on c5 is under fire and so black might be tempted to defend passively with a move like knight d7 not that this is such a bad move but black has a nicer idea here he can use tactics to ignore the attack on the pawn on c5 by playing the move knight bc6 now if white takes the pawn if he doesn't do this he's kind of in trouble because he has to go passive with a move like knight e2 so white should take the pawn but black now has the idea of d4 threatening to capture the queen white moves the queen he cannot take the knight because white will take his queen but he can recover the pawn on c5 in fact i actually had a game that went exactly like this i will say that the main move here is knight to a4 and after knight a4 black goes knight to g6 bishop to g3 and rook to c8 and basically if white grabs this pawn on c5 black is going to have a lot of very strong attacking possibilities so um the black position is actually perfectly good here with chances for both sides on the one hand you could say that white star square bishop is nicer than black having knights only on the other you could argue that black has a faster attack you could still more further argue that this knight on a4 is a good piece in the sense that it's striking at c5 you could also argue it's not such a good piece in the sense that it's on the side of the board and if white decides he doesn't want to capture the pawn he cannot capture it immediately by the way because if knight takes c5 queen g5 check would be a problem so if white fails to ever capture the pawn the knight may actually feel quite out of the game so it's a very tricky position there's a lot of different factors to consider but overall um i would say that chances are at least at least equal for black here and it's a perfectly good position and and well one that you can research further if you would like to play it in fact i will just show you that in my own game my opponent didn't play quite like this and instead in this position he played the move queen to c4 striking at this undefended pawn on c5 i played queen to a5 and now a nice maneuver to be aware of after knight a4 the pawn is under fire but black here has to move knight to c8 and the idea is that if white captures the pawn then black is capturing the knight and if on the other hand white captures the pawn with his knight then after the move knight to b6 the white queen cannot go anywhere without losing the defense of the knight on c5 and then black can capture tonight with his queen so let's continue this game a little bit just to give an idea of how dangerous the position can get for white already black is a little bit better here white continued with move king to b1 i played e5 and white brought the bishop back to c1 i played rook to b8 taking advantage of the semi-open file and here white wanted to create some kind of threats against the strong black center and still he has the problem that he cannot capture on c5 with the knight because of knight to b6 or with the queen because the knight on a4 falls in this variation we can see quite clearly that the knight on a4 is a little bit misplaced so my opponent played f4 to strike at the center in this way and generate some counter play on the king side however after this move came knight to d6 queen takes c5 who's now played because the idea is that after queen takes a4 now the knight on d6 is falling but here black has an extremely strong move and has a winning position after knight to b5 well white captured this knight on c6 and now black played rook f2c8 and we can see all of the black pieces are attacking the white position the white queen has to move and also the knight on a4 is about to fall so from a black perspective it's not a big deal to be down a piece for now additionally black at the right moment will be able to capture the pawn on a3 because white will not be able to capture back due to the the fact that the b pawn is pinned this position is already lost the game ended with the moves queen d7 rook c7 queen d5 and now finally knight takes a3 check the king went to a2 if the king goes to a1 then the capture on c2 comes with czech the king went to a2 and now black captured the piece back well if we look at this position white is no longer of a piece and all of the black pieces are attacking the white king the c2 pawn is also attacked many times so white has no good defense in the game white actually captured the knight short on time but after the move queen takes c2 check white resigned as on the next move it's checkmate if bishop to b2 uh black will simply capture it with checkmate and if the king drops back to a1 then either rook to b1 check mate or queen to b1 is chugging so this was a game played in the uh i played it in the irish championships and the white player was an international master an experienced international master so we can see how even very high level chess players can actually quickly go wrong in this variation it's quite a dangerous variation from a white perspective as well so we should be quite happy if we get these moves on the board let's go back to the position before white captured the bishop on c3 so let's put that on the board now okay so now we have just taken a look at the move knight takes c3 here and now we're going to take a look at our main line which is queen takes c3 instead well after queen takes c3 black should go in a little bit of a different direction than in the last time because here to move knight to c6 wouldn't make much sense first of all the white queen is no longer on e3 with the knight on c3 so after d takes c5 here there was this possibility of d4 but in our main line we don't have this possibility additionally after pawn takes c5 we see that the d4 square is especially protected anyway so we don't have even the advance available to us so therefore after queen c3 we shouldn't be playing knight to c6 instead we should support the pawn on c5 with knight to d7 now here white has a variety of options available to him he could play for example to move bishop to d6 to try and frustrate black by pinning the knight to the rook and also put some pressure on c5 but here we can continue quite normally with moves such as either rook to c8 or we're up to e8 on pinning ourselves and we don't need to be too concerned about the loss of a pawn here on c5 because of the fact that um [Music] well if white were to win a pawn he would have to open up a lot of lines against his queen and his king so this is going to lead to positions with chances for both sides so um this is bishop to d6 another possibility instead of bishop d6 would be to move king to b1 here and after king b1 i quite like the move bishop to b7 just striking at the pawn on e4 and asking white what exactly he's going to do for example he might play knight to g3 to support on e4 but then all of a sudden the d4 point would be um more vulnerable if white on the other hand closes down the position in the center with e5 black can always capture on d4 and have more play easy play on the queen side so this is the position in the case of king b1 and the our main line is going to be the move bishop to g3 here after bishop to g3 black should likely continue with the move rook to c8 and here after rook c8 white here may play king to b1 stepping out uh stepping his king out of what may become a semi-open file now black can play another useful move rook to e8 it's not the only move in the position but i quite like this move just in case white at any point wants to crack open the center or black may wish to crack open the center durakani 8 is a little bit more well placed also there are no longer going to be any pins with bishop to d6 and the f8 square in some situations might be used by the black knight after rookie 8 white would now drop the queen back in order to having first moved his king away now get out of the line of fire of the rook and here we're going to close our coverage with one key idea in these positions which is that well we already saw in some situations you might want to drop the bishop back in other situations of course leaving the bishop here it's a pretty good diagonal but another possibility that i really quite like and that has been seen quite a lot in games is to capture this knight on e2 and this might seem to not make much sense why would black wish to eliminate a pretty good bishop and give white the bishop pair but the idea behind this move is to now follow up with c4 again showing the same principle that in general we don't want to keep a light squared bishop on the board if we're going to lock the position down along the light squares because this bishop won't have much activity so we first exchange the bishop and only then we play c4 as black and i really like uh black's chances in this position because although white might might have the bishop pair and have a good situation in the center this gives him chances black on the other hand has these pawns that he can roll up the board he can at some point consider the move pawn to c3 either gambiting a pawn or he can first try to support that move and try to storm up the board and well the truth is that uh i think black's play is easier to handle here because his plan is very very clear he's going to launch an attack on the queen side whereas white's plan might have to be to play on the king's side since the center is relatively closed but his play on the king's side should be a bit slower than black's play on the queen side so if i once again if i had to take a position here in the tour in a tournament game i would rather be playing uh black and this line that i'm recommending that i have recommended in this video on the fantasy variation is uh one of the lines that is most respected by carol khan specialists and uh is played at the very very highest levels with very good results for black so i hope your results are equally good and that you've liked this video and i hope to see you in another video soon you

Channel: Chessfactor

Views: 38,430

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, chess education, chess tutorial, chess channel, best chess channel, chess learning, best chess openings, caro-kann for beginners, fantasy variation, fantasy variation caro-kann

Id: ssLCThsdWcw

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021