Chess Fundamentals #2: Coordination

hey guys this is John and welcome to part 2 in my series on fundamental chess concepts in part 1 we discussed undefended pieces and strategies to increase your sense of danger and now we'll be moving on to piece coordination so let's say you're going along in your chest development you feel good that you're reducing the frequency of your blunders you're not giving away cons and pieces left and right that is a good step but that alone will not win you games many times even though last time I mentioned that it can get you very far one important step following that once you've eliminated these basic blenders is to start thinking about your entire army and the way that your pieces and pawns interact with one another so in this video we're going to use the same format aka I'm going to be playing some players on chess calm in the rating range that I'm lecturing to here I'd say the beginning and improving player rating range and I'm going to be focused very much on my piece coordination and making the most of my forces so making sure I don't have pieces that are clearly bad making sure that I'm not shooting myself in the foot as far as the development of one of my key pieces down the road and also I'll be building from the last video and really watching the undefended pieces for both me and my opponent okay and I've chose a rating range similar to what I was doing last time so I'm going to look for a player in the 500 to 1,400 range and I'm going to do a 10-minute with a two-second bonus game and let's see who we get this is all done live the way I record these videos I pretty much just go straight through and it seems like people really like this format so we'll see who we get this is a player okay so we have an 1155 and again in these videos just don't take anything I do totally at face value because I may be playing in a style that's slightly different from what is probably optimal but I'm going to be playing in a straightforward style and one in which I think will highlight these themes that we're trying to learn so he's playing the King's gambit accepted at this might have fit well under the undefended pieces lecture that we did last time I'm going to play a just a solid move here Bishop c5 this does not take his pawn on f4 but I like this move because he gets my Bishop out and if ever I want to play pawn to d6 later to defend this ePHI pawn I won't be blocking in my bishop on f8 okay so this Bishop c5 move it's an active move but it's geared towards avoiding trapping the bishop on that square should I ever want to defend upon which I am going to do now and by the way him taking on e5 on the previous move would have been a blunder in view of Queen h4 check which we'll look at after the game so now I'm going to play d6 already I like my coordination in regards to this dark square Bishop I think it's got a good diagonal to operate on and it's not inhibited by any of my pawns still he is unable to win upon but because if he takes on e5 I take back my D pawn he takes with this night I would have Queen to h4 check with a fork okay so he plays Bishop c4 likewise this is a good move because he wants to play pawn to d3 in order to have more center influence open this dark square bishop maybe have it defend f4 but he doesn't want that Bishop blocked in on f1 so that's a real common thing I see in games of beginners and improving players is that they trap in their bishops unnecessarily so I like that he did that I don't want to take this pawn because he can play pawn d4 and attack my bishop with tempo so I'm just going to play a simple move I'm going to play knight c6 develop and also defend this pawn I hope in this video we'll get to talk about the relationship between the knight and the C pawn and also sometimes the knight and the F pawn on the other side of the board here but the knight in the C pawn have a special relationship I would say in general in e4 openings for both black and white it's not as important that this pawn hasn't moved should the knight be developed a c6 or for white it's not as important that the c2 pond be moved if the Knights going to develop c3 but in d-pod openings that becomes more important for reasons that I'll get into later so Knight to c6 and let's see what he does we're both decently coordinated right now really the the mantra of coordination is not getting too focused on one particular piece or a single operation especially early in the game because that's a clear a clear Avenue to having a lopsided position and one in which like you're completing development on one side of the board but completely neglecting your forces on the other side of the board you don't want that you want to be giving ample play to all your pieces rather than just a few okay so let's move a3 when it comes to coordination if you're having trouble developing and coordinating your pieces especially early on take a look and see if you're making too many pawn moves I'm not trying to criticize this guy's a3 move too closely because it is a semi useful move it does give him use of the b4 square but on people who routinely have development problems and kind of have this problem of focusing on a single operation they move a lot of pawns in the opening and I'm gonna play Knight f6 here just developing a piece with tempo on his pawn on e4 attacking it and to be quite frank I think players under about 1200 especially on chess comm but just 12 hundreds in general they make way too many pawn moves in the opening and for you guys if you're in that rating range I would adopt the motto that you only want to move pawns if it facilitates your piece development okay so only moving pawns if it facilitates your piece development and once you have your pieces out your big guns coordinated then you can start focusing on making more pawn moves so I like what he did here he went back to Knight c3 good developing move defending his pawn on e4 so here I'm going to consider two main moves I'm either going to castle or I'm going to play Bishop g4 I like both moves castling certainly is not a bad idea get my King to safety early on I like Bishop g4 because I am wondering how he's going to respond to the pen but let's let's castle first let's leave our Bishop in reserve although I think Bishop g4 was just as good if I were him I would play pawn to d3 now that's a pawn move that's acceptable for him to make because it does open up his bishop he prefers to play b4 not a terrible move as far as pawn Musco because it does come with tempo however if I were giving this guy advice I'd say you know maybe maybe cut it out a little bit now and start trying to complete your development okay so Knight d5 this is a good example of getting too focused on a single piece so he's already made two moves with this Knight in a pretty short time frame too like he played Knight c3 just a couple moves ago and already he's bringing in d5 I think he's getting a little too focused on my bishop on b6 I think he wants to win that piece I think the reason he wants to do it is because he wants to prepare cast like short but he knows that he can't do it when my bishop has such a gorgeous diagonal leading all the way to the g1 square now think about our first video in this series on fundamental chess concept so undefended pieces by virtue of him playing 95 has he left anything undefended and yes he has probably I wouldn't have been asking that question if he hadn't but I'm gonna play Knight takes e4 cuz that's a free pawn that he gave me my knight is undefended on this square so I had a good look around and made sure he couldn't take advantage of that in any way but I think it is a free pawn now here I can capture in two ways C takes or a takes I'm going to take with the a pawn capturing towards the center I like the fact that it opens my a file as well he took my pawn in the middle now which way to take back I like both captures I think I kind of like Knight takes a bit better and even though I'm moving my knight for a second time it's for a good cause I feel my development is slightly ahead of his at the moment mainly because I've castled and for that reason I don't mind exchanging one of his developed pieces so all these exchanges he's making like now he's gotten both of his Knights exchanged that kind of highlights the fact that he's behind a development here and actually if he's not careful in this next move I will have some nice tactics available and if you want to think ahead think about what you would do with White Castle in this position that's a logical move he may be considering that very move right now and he does play it so I'll give you guys a few seconds think about this but how should I respond to castling okay if you had in mind an undefended piece concept and you were thinking about the first video I bet you focused in on that bishop on c4 that's a loose piece right here we know this diagonals weak and - that's been something that's been going on the entire game so the move that I have here is Queen d4 check which is a nice triple fork a check on his King an attack on his bishop and an attack on his rook on a1 and I would say that this was set up because of our superior development and also because of his looseness in the position more so the looseness that he suffers here not not having a great defense on this diagonal that is one danger of the King's gambit f4 and move - so here I have a pleasant choice I can take his bishop where's rook um I think I'll probably take the rook and be greedy if Queen takes bishop he might have pawn to d3 although even there I think I I would come out ahead but let's take let's take the rook just checking to make sure that I don't run into any problems on f7 cuz that would be a vulnerable square I could also think about Knight F to check but Knight have to check he can sacrifice his work for the night and that limits the amount of material that I win so let's go ahead and just chop that guy I think white was in a little too much of a hurry to castle in this one I think they were focused on castling short and that led to the deterioration of their position very quickly they maybe should have played d3 and and try to get this Bishop out perhaps d2 so my next move a move that would really help me coordinate would be to move this light square bishop so if I get a chance I'm going to play Bishop to e6 and offer a trade bishop for Bishop that would result in a weakening of my pawn structure I might have to end up with two double isolated pawns in the middle on e6 and E 5 but given that I'm a work ahead now I am more than willing to make that concession if it means reducing his attacking potential okay so queen h5 aggressive move he is putting three attackers on the f7 square his queen his bishop in his rook they're all trained on f7 and I only have two defenders at the moment my king in my rook so I want to respond to that there's a few good options I see one is Knight to d6 that would be a good move because it attacks the bishop on c4 and also defends f7 at the same time but I really like this Bishop e6 move in the context of coordination which is what we're focusing on in this video I like that because it blacks his bishop it develops my last remaining piece and it connects my works together I'll feel much more happy I'll feel much happier when these rooks are coordinated connected protecting each other and also when I have my last piece out into the game so that's what I'll do and again 96 was not a bad move I just think this one's even better if I were him I would avoid an exchange many of you will know this but if you're behind you're down into position the worst thing you can do is continue exchanging blindly and allow your opponent to just get into a war of attrition you have to preserve your remaining attacking forces if you want a chance to get back in the game most of the time so if I were him I would play Bishop to d3 and he does good move so if I move my knight I may be opening up an attack on h7 square I could play Knight f6 which would attack his queen and also defend h7 but I'm a little fearful of rook takes f6 so I don't want to go down that route even though I could take this bishop with check I think his rook would return to f1 so you know what I'm going to play here I'm just going to play out five just defend my knight this does expose my King a little bit and it unde offends my bishop on e6 so I need to be aware of that but I don't see anything devastating he can do and reply so I like f5 blocking the diagonal and I feel my position is well coordinated meanwhile he has trouble getting this Bishop out there's no safe Square for that piece to go to and he's down at rook so it's it's very tough for him now I mean he is just losing but even when you're in a difficult or losing position like this if you're white if you're really wanting to practice your game there's there's ways you can try to extract some educational or instructive value from a position like this you know he might set himself a mini goal like one thing you want to do when you're really having a hard time at a position is just setting yourself a mini goal even if the goal is I'm just going to try to survive five more moves or I'm going to play the next five moves without dropping something else so c3 okay that's the solid move he's defending his B for pawn a bit better he might be thinking in terms of trying to trap my Queen I'm going to put my Queen on a2 this helps defend my bishop on e6 I also get an out of any potential discovered attacks of my Queen on a1 I'd like to bring my Queen back to d5 I think that would be a good move just to regain some influence with this Queen it's not just far-flung in the corner it's more centralized it helps guard d6 and E for from that square it would attack his Bishop on d3 that would be a nicely coordinated move Queen d5 also I like that I'm opening up options of Bishop c4 to try to trade off his lights permission okay h3 tactical mistake for him and if you want to try to figure out what blacks should do against this you can pause your video now black to move in win material okay if you said Knight g3 you are correct so I didn't mention that this was an undefended piece but I probably should have and I just kind of took it for granted a little bit later but yeah that piece was somewhat vulnerable and the h2 pawn was the only thing preventing the knight from coming in with fork so unfortunately for him he does fall victim to this now and we'll see if he decides to play on in this position but I wouldn't be surprised if he resigned okay I'll just take his pawn on g4 now I'm opening up an attack on his rook on f1 so he trades his take with this rook again even though we're completely winning it's really nice that I've moved my light square bishop so I can seamlessly recapture with this rook that's where it belongs so undefended pawn on g4 let's just pick that off up a lot of material but there's no reason for us to rush or make any sort of mistake now so I'm not going to be not going to be moving at light speed I think I'll still try to get my Queen back over to d5 there may be faster ways to win this you can see he's still thinking in terms of trying to keep my Queen out of the game so just go Queen b3 tack his undefended Bishop if allowed I think I'll try to get my Queen over to h3 assuming he moves this bishop because I see a checkmate and a couple moves that I would have and he plays Bishop b4 and here I've got a few different mates in - let's just do this one okay and now we have rook f8 or work f1 rather checkmate okay so how do we go analyze this game for a minute I'll flip the board around and two things are going to be talking about one-piece coordination because that's our topic of today and the other concept undefended pieces which we were discussing in the last video so he plays the Kings gambit if you have trouble with undefended pieces I would not recommend playing this opening because already unmoved - white is offering upon I wouldn't say this is an undefended piece error though because the King's gambit is just an opening that is playable for white it's a risky opening but it's playable so I'm not going to criticize that for I could take the pawn on f4 but there's a lot of ways white can play and try to gain compensation and I said I wanted to focus on piece coordination getting my pieces out quickly not spending too much time on you know pawn moves and individual piece operations so I like Bishop c5 now if you're thinking d6 is a good move which it's not a bad move compare the position I got into the game to the position I got if I would get if black played e6 this also defends e5 but we're blocking in this Bishop try to avoid this scenario if possible because bishops often get blocked in by D pawns or iPods and often it's needlessly so I see many games from beginning players where they just do this and they're kind of just voluntarily doing it try to get your bishops out on along the same lines I wouldn't recommend being keto in your bishops too often and for those who don't know what if fianchetto is a fee and keto is if you push a knight pawn usually up just one Square and then try to develop a bishop to a long diagonal I wouldn't mess around with that too much if you're an improving player some coaches may disagree with this but I think you should focus on developing more classically aka having your bishops out in the center like this before you move on to concepts like the fiend keto because classical development you can do so more quickly generally because you pushed your center pawns V&K dough's require moving your wing pawns and you get into territory where you have to judge with whether that's worth it for you or not so here I played Bishop c5 the trap I was alluding to is if he takes on the e5 now he runs into Queen h4 check this is asterisks for white because I'm forking his King and his pawn on e4 and if he blocks with the Jeep on which is the best move I can take on e4 and guess what undefended piece problem for him rook on h1 is hanging after he moves his king black is winning already and oh if he were to move his King to you too he just loses immediately Queen takes e4 mate so Bishop c5 it's a free developing move because he can't take this pawn on e5 and he seemed to know that he played Knight f3 and now I played d6 so nicely coordinated my Bishop and pawn my bishop is happy because it's outside of the pawn chain he played Bishop c4 good move I went knight c6 and already this move a3 I was mentioning that you can get into trouble if you make too many pawn moves in the opening I think this move is too abstract for his position right now there might be something to be said for controlling the b4 squared but it's too early for him to commit to a single pawn move like that he'd be better off playing Knight c3 directly or pawn to d3 I wouldn't mind that pawn move because it defends the bishop and opens his dart or Bishop those would be two more constructive moves a3 I do not like so a3 and I just focus on development so I've already I've developed three pieces and only took one move for each piece I'm not worrying about moving multiple pieces unless there's a real compelling reason to do so here I was talking about I was either fighting on castling or playing Bishop g4 I think either move is good I just castled and as luck would have it after b4 another pawn move Bishop d6 95 he committed an undefended piece error on defended pawn error he let me take on e4 so this move Knight d5 just perfectly hits the two concepts we've discussed and it shows you how how common it is that this player I think he was 1155 made this 95 move because he's committing two sins he's leaving the pawn on e4 undefended and he's moving the same piece twice in the opening so if he had played a move like with this Bishop maybe Bishop d2 or d3 and maybe Bishop d2 later on d2 not a great square for the bishop but for the sake of argument we'll just say that that would have been more constructive for his position so 95 and then I took on e4 he's trading you can see the effect of him having traded the pieces that he's already developed I was talking about how I didn't mind trading now because I'm a pawn ahead and every trade that he does in the middle highlights the fact that he's behind a development like he hasn't got this Bishop out and now I was opened up for this tactic Queen d4 check forking all three and I won't talk too much about the rest because I think I kind of did a justice in the game but even here Bishop e6 was a nice move for coordination purposes connecting my rooks I didn't want to delay that development any further and anytime you can develop a piece and also attack or defend something that's great so the fact that I was able to develop this piece defend f7 and attack his bishop on c4 I think it's perfect move yeah and ended up winning he fell for that fork okay let's search for another game renew the same thing I'm hoping I can get a maybe a white game - we'll see and one thing I neglected to mention in the last video but I talked about in the comments - the undefended piece video if you have trouble with any of these concepts and you don't think you're capable of going an entire game without leaving a piece undefended or you're not capable of coordinating your pieces right now in their entirety that is totally fine in fact I would expect that for most of the people watching this video so it's okay to set yourself mini goals of playing let's say five moves where you're practicing these principles or ten moves like telling yourself I'm going to go ten moves without hanging a piece or moving the same piece twice unless it's clearly good to do so that's totally fine and work your way up just like your weight training just like you're in the gym you know you're not going to start benching 300 pounds if you've never stepped into the gym before provided you're on you know not like a ridiculously strong person no you're going to start with some more manageable wait work your way up chess is just like that okay so we're playing a Sicilian in this game this is a 1268 he's played d6 and I'm not going to criticize too many pawn moves in the opening like this because again this is standard theory I'm going to go Knight c3 normally I would play d4 but I'm just going to focus on quick development getting my pieces into the game ASAP he played knight c6 let's go let's go Bishop b5 normally I'm not in favor of playing Bishop b5 in the Sicilian but it's kind of with tempo because I can threaten to take his Bishop let's castle now just quickly getting our King to safety I will play a pawn move with this deep on if I get the chance and given the way he's played it I kind of like pushing d4 again I wasn't sure if I was going to make this move but let's do it if he takes me I'm happy to recapture with my knight even though it means moving the same piece twice I like it because I get my Knights centralized also I'm offering to trade for his piece one of his already developed pieces he plays Knight f6 he is I'm my e for pawn but I have that defended by my knight on c3 so if you guys were thinking about this position for white what moves would you consider if for me I'm considering moves with my dark square bishop and in the Sicilian from the white side usually this dark square bishop is best off on either III or g5 f4 is not not a good square generally because II 5 could fork the night in the Bishop d2 could block the Queen's defense of d4 so I like III I'm going to play that because it over protects this knight on d4 I like to look at that he's playing well so far I like how he's played it so he plays a6 I'm not happy about having to move my bishop again but I think I will because I don't really want to take when he's able to take back with his pawn that would really strengthen his central influence if he's able to do that so I'm going to tuck this Bishop away on e 2 I would give him an A for hobbies playing this this game so far if he moves this dark square Bishop I like his game even further yeah there's your v7 okay let's play Queen d2 let's just get our our queen up we've already developed all of our minor pieces so I'm happy like that and they're all centralized now I want us to coordinate my Brooks he'll probably castle here he plays Queen c7 instead kind now here since we're both doing a good job of coordinating this guy doesn't seem to have too many problems with this development I could start getting into more complicated plans like one plan that is pretty good here is f4 but I'm going to play my rook to the center first one thing with rooks don't feel like you have to commit them too soon in positions like let's say you've developed all your minor pieces you brought your queen out as I have rooks are coordinated you don't have to feel like you immediately have to get it work to the center some people make that mistake because I found with rooks here sometimes just kind of guessing like where the rook will be good like here I'm taking an educated guess that the rook will be useful on the D file which is probably not a bad guess because he has a pawn on d6 but um yeah I might have been justified in playing some other moves and here I'm going to play f4 this is the plan I was referring to this is a good move for white a gain control over the e5 square it might allow me to play pawn to e5 in the future okay he's played rook c8 Janna lots of praise for my opponent I really like the way it light she is playing this all of his minor pieces were developed in one go he hasn't wasted too many times too many moves with pawns only C 5 D 6 e 6 I'm capturing my pawn on d4 and a6 all these pawn moves are useful they control squares there's no pawn that's like wildly out of position for him I haven't moved this rook yet but I like this rook on the F file so I'm not going to disturb it what could I do here I could get really creative and start pushing upon on this wing I could I could play Bishop to f3 he might move this Knight he might go Knight a5 and into c4 in the future so I want to be aware of that I kind of liked the idea of playing f5 i think i will play f5 let's just see i just want to put him to the test i am giving away the e5 square so it wouldn't be a bad idea for him to jump this night into e5 but I've got this pawn well-protected I want to apply pressure here we'll see how he responds to it but like she if you're watching this good job you're doing a great job for the first 12 13 moves or so he plays 'if I've attacks my knight I'm going to retreat this Knight to b3 not sure I like d5 so much for him because it does weaken his control over d5 so I like the fact that I have one two three four pieces trained on that d5 square and also I have some pressure on his d6 pawn to which is a backward pawn meaning it doesn't have a pawn on either side of it to protect it now this kind of gets into some Sicilian strategy as well but this d5 square what's the only piece that's guarding it for him it's the knight on f6 right so I would love to get my knight in to d5 but I don't want to get focused on the individual operation with that Knight like ninety five is great but if you can just trade for it there's no point in really doing that so what would be a potentially good plan for me to ensure that this night ends up on d5 when he can't trade for it in other words how can I secure d5 he can't chase me away or trade for it if you said Bishop g5 good job that's what I'm going to play so I'm moving this piece again but you know we're not neglecting any other piece so I think it's fine to move this Bishop again and my thread my positional threat is to take his knight and make way for this night to come into d5 also by taking here on f6 we may be deflecting his Bishop from defending the spawn so there might be some auxilary benefit in that I enable Queen takes d6 but yeah no major coordination issues for either side he plays Bishop ee8 probably a good move because that allows his rook to help defend here only possible because he has some decent coordination he's made way for his work to come d8 and open up that possibility I'm still going to go ahead with my plan I'm going to take and on the next move the knight is hopping in once he recaptures I think one thing he's noticing now is that when my knight does come in assuming he's captured with his bishop here his queen won't be able to support his bishop so now I'll bring my knight in with tempo on his Queen his queen either has to go to d7 or b8 yeah and now I'm noticing his major pieces they're a long ways away from his Kings side and I didn't really move this Knight to d5 with the intention of exchanging but I am going to make an exception in this case because I see that after I take on f6 he'll have this undefended pawn there which is pretty hard for him to defend given his current piece arrangement so you guys might see where I'm headed with this but I'm going to take and then I'm going to move my Queen all the way into h6 and this pawn is a goner I don't think he can defend this pawn he needs his Queen somewhere a little closer another attacking move I might have here is lifting one of my rooks up to the 3rd rank so maybe I'll use this f1 rook because I like how this rook is eyeing his pawn on d6 so maybe since this rook hasn't done anything in the game yet other than just castle coordination wise it might be good for me to use that now in plain Queen age six I did leave a couple things undefended like c2s on defended also my e4 pawn is undefended same with a to move he could think about playing right now is night be for because that would attack both c2 and a2 but given the weakness of his King I'm not concerned about that in fact I think after work f3 its position is just presentable so he just has some serious problems with this King in this position simply speaking and actually Bishop e8 has heard his defensive possibilities now as a transpired because his rook can't assist in the defense of the King so easily so the more I look at this the more I'm thinking I just won't even bother taking this pawn on f6 I'll just move my rook up is my next plan and just get it over to g3 or h3 I think for him I don't want to write his position off too quickly but this is going to be very tough very tough for him for him that moved 13 d5 that was not such a good move you know that that gave me the d5 square to work with okay he gives a check on a7 I'm just going to move my king rook f2 would block that check but that would be poor for my coordination because that's the rook I've I have had aspirations to go up to f3 with so I don't want to just block him so I'll play king h1 fortunately for me his rook can't really are his queen rather can't join in the defense of his king i saw a while ago that if he plays queen d-iii i can just take his queen so he's hard pressed to defend yeah he plays Knight d4 so I like the thinking in that attacking c2 and a2 but unfortunately for him I think this was going to be too little too late he did block my Brook from coming to d3 so I don't have that rook lift but I can coordinate using this other rook and this is an educated attacking move I'm recognizing that I'm leading these two pawns hanging but I know that I have bigger fish to fry I'm going after blacks King and I don't see a defense for him I'm threatening made into rep g3 check King h8 Queen g7 mate there's not much he can do about that if he plays King h8 I can play Queen f8 mate directly so this this is going to be over in a matter of moves after this I'll take a quick look at this game with you guys and then I wanted to discuss some d4 d5 scenarios so deep on lines and he resigned a pretty good game though by him as far as the opening goes so let's take a look at this one so I opened with e4 we played the Sicilian and I said I wasn't going to criticize pawn moves played that are just book theory so d6 it's a completely good move it helps him control the center likewise white can play d4 d4 is the main line move here that's what I usually play in this position and after take the knight gets here we're breaking some principles like making multiple pawn moves moving the same piece twice but this night ends up on a good square main line theory we're not too worried about it but for the purposes of this video I just wanted to develop quickly so Knight c3 he played knight c6 I brought my bishop out he brought his Bishop to d7 I castled be six so the pawn was that he's making are all centrally oriented like the difference between a move like be six and a move like Age six can't be overestimated or overstated I mean like e6000 from out here also he's controlling a key center square I move like h6 which a lot of beginning players player just to control the g5 square that's far too of a one-dimensional move usually it's played only to stop something from coming in there it's not facilitating your peace development anyway it's not combining goals we like moves that combine goals in the opening like developing a piece and attacking making a pawn move and opening an avenue moves like that so in that sense ESA's is a good move i play d4 he took i took with the knight so I'm offering to exchange but I don't mind that because I have a slight development lead I've already Castle I have one more minor piece than him so if he were to just go willy-nilly exchanging pieces the fact that he exchanges that makes my leading development more pronounced because now he has no pieces out and I have to Anam Cassim okay so if you're behind in development you shouldn't be trading too much you should be focusing on developing your remaining pieces so I like that he played met f6 here I brought the Bishop to e3 I was discussing how this Bishop usually comes to either III or g5 in this opening so here he played a6 I did go back going by what I had just mentioned it might make some sense for me to take since I am a little ahead in development but I would just fear that he would take the coupon and I know from experience that having these three pawns to fight against from the white side and the Sicilian is kind of difficult you can often push your minor pieces back with them in the center so this is maybe a point in the game where I'm slightly embarrassed for having played Bishop b5 not embarrassed but I haven't been able to take on c6 favourably so Bishop b5 does seem like a slight waste of time but still it's it's fine I played the bishop back to e2 he when Bishop e7 very good I played Queen d2 connecting the rooks he played Queen c7 I probably would have cast hold if I were him but Queen c7 is perfectly fine that's the squares queen is probably going to want to end up on anyways so I played rook d1 I like using this rook for d1 rather than work f d1 because if we were to play rook F t1 we would essentially be saying that we think this rook is going to be good on a1 b1 or c1 and given that I haven't moved any of these ponds that's that seems far-fetched I don't think the rook is going to be great on those squares so rook a d1 and this leaves me options with my F pawn two and I played f4 and looking at the respective positions I think we're both doing great as far as our coordination I'm very centralized all my minor pieces are working together the Knights are positioned in the center the bishops have sort of dual purpose diagonals they could be they could be active on both the Kings side and the Queen side my works are pretty well placed once behind a pond that has just moved and maybe has aspirations to move even further the other ones on a half-open file where it might target one of my opponents pawns and for him if we just flip the board around good development he has one extra center pond than me so he's controlling all four of these squares that looks great um the next step for him will probably be to move the ropes to the center which is what he did so good stuff happening he played were kc8 and here I played f5 I mean given that this guy's playing at a pretty high level so far I'm now having to resort to you know more more plan type things to really get an advantage rather than just like exploiting his undefended pieces or taking advantage of some egregious error so I played that five to see how he would respond and I think II five is a positional mistake for him I would have preferred him to jump as knight into that square that would be a better option because now his knight is pretty secure here it can't be chased by one of my pawns because I've already played f4 f5 I've already gone past the e5 square maybe his knight can get into c4 g4 down the road his pawn on e6 is sufficiently defended if I take he would take back and my knight is looking at that pond but with his bishop here it coordinates nicely in defense and also I would have to take on an isolated pawn myself on e4 if I wanted to do this so he played a five and I did not take on c6 because again if I take on c6 he could take back although I am noticing that if he takes back with the pawn he would have an undefended pawn in this position which if you spotted an already good job it's bishop takes a six I could take that and hit his rook so actually might take c6 might not be that bad but he could maybe just take with the bishop and add another defender to the d5 square so I'm fairly satisfied that I played instead the retreating move Knight b3 now he would be if he were thinking prophylactically about my threat maybe he would consider ways to prevent vision g5 or somehow bring another piece to defend the d5 square like a move he could think about his H six which would preempt Bishop g5 it might be a slightly risky move though because I think I might have some possibilities of sacrificing this bishop for two pawns to open up as king so I'm like in whites game here I think I just have this straightforward plan of playing Bishop g5 and I don't think black is that much worse here but I have a clear plan and I'm not sure what he should do so he played Warcraft d8 I went Bishop to g5 and this Bishop e8 move I like the idea behind it defending the pawn with this rook again but unfortunately it just looks like his King side becomes too exposed once I trade and jump the knight in so compared in in the last game you know I had an opponent that played Knight c3 to d5 compare what I've done this game to what my opponent in that last game did first of all I play Mike d5 in this game much later like moves 17 last game it was probably not even moved 10 yet and he had played that move also when he did it my opponent in last game he dropped the pawns on e4 and he wasn't playing 95 with tempo here I'm playing 95 with tempo hitting his queen and hitting his bishop so I'm in fact like gaining time and improving my knight rather than just really nearly jumping the knight to the center without attacking anything in particular so this is a much better example of moving the same piece twice than in the previous game and and by the way all these concepts I'm talking about as far as coordination and moving the same piece twice you as the game goes along you're of course going to be moving pieces multiple times it's just in the opening and early middle game I see beginning players moving the same piece twice way too often so that's why I've been harping on it constantly in this video you shouldn't like ever second-guess moving the same piece twice like in a late middle game now that would be kind of ridiculous so so he went here and I took yeah and this this attack is too strong for him I think he's losing already mainly thanks to this rook lift and it kind of seems like everything came together and that's what's so remarkable when you look at games of good players I mean even players much much better than myself when i review grandmaster games i'm always just fascinated by how it seems like their pieces come together in the right moment but that's just a function of having good coordination like the fact that I have rook f3 available here it's not just blind luck it's the fact that I've been doing everything correctly in regards to coordination in this video you know I played f4 I castled early on I played f4 f5 I made some attacking gestures against his King I weakened his pawns that paved the way for rook f3 to be possible so it's it's by design and that's how you guys want to play - ok before I wrap up this video I wanted to talk about a specific scenario so actually let me do this from the white side so I was mentioning the special relationship between Knights and sea pawns I'm going to use Queen the Queen side example of this because King side it doesn't happen as much so let's say we play a game and it starts out with d4 and black responds with d5 now in this position beginners are often confused why the move Knight c3 for white is considered to be kind of a mistake they think well this is a developing move what's the problem with it but in deep on openings what usually happens is white wants to put pressure on blacks d5 pawn and playing the move Knight c3 really hampers that goal because you're blocking your c2 pond the best sort of attacks are usually developed with a pawn in front and the pieces behind it think of something as simple as a pawn store when your pawn storming your opponent by definition you're pushing your pawns towards their King and you're not doing it with the goal of like checkmating them with your pawns you're doing it with the goal of having the pawns lead the way do the dirty work create weaknesses and have your pieces at a supporting role behind it to really come in and finish things off so here Knight c3 kind of gets it backwards a little bit the knight is blocking the pawn yes we're attacking d5 but d5 is already defended by the Queen and it's hard to see how we're going to get further attackers going with having play Knight c3 on the contrary if we play C for the Queen's Gambit and then with Knight c3 on the next move assuming black doesn't take us that is a more harmonious way of continuing because then we'll have two attackers on d5 so let's just play say black plays six we play Knight c3 so we've doubled the amount of attackers we have defended or hit we have attacking here also a lot of times you end up getting Queen b3 - especially if this light-square bishop spell to early and we're letting our pawn lead the way I think I mentioned this in a previous video - one of my Bloods videos but they often say that having a pawn on c4 and a knight on c3 represents a happy marriage and having the knight in front and the pond behind is an unhappy marriage ok so if you're if you're white and you play d4 and you're trying to develop your knight I would really recommend getting the pawn to c4 in front of it like so same thing for black - so let's say let's say we flip this position around we're in the Queens gambit declined opening black plays Knight f6 this moves perfectly fine I wouldn't worry about it on the King side as much because then you're getting into situations where you know f5 it's possible in some lines but playing f5 because you you want to get your knight to f6 I would say is not as good so if you want to think about it in terms of pressuring a center pawn it's best to push your C pawn and get your knight behind it when you're pressuring a center pawn you'll just want to do it just to do it so f5 would not be that good of a move here Knight f6 is perfectly fine let's say white plays Knight f3 yeah and white doesn't mind blocking the F pawn to forget about a pawn you want to forget about moving that pawn too early black can go Bishop e7 let's say white plays will just say Bishop f4 black castles white plays III I do like this setup for black because in d4 d5 openings I think it's good for black to complete their King side development quickly and then focus on how to arrange the Queen side pieces this is doubly true for the Queens gambit declined which is this opening so here a common move I see and I've had so many students do this when I first come to me is they'll play 96-well plate knight c6 in this and I almost always tell them this is a slight mistake this is not a good move for coordination because you're blocking yourseif on it develops a piece so you're not moving you're not spending a whole lot of time on pawn moves here but with these closed positions that are possible out of d4 oftentimes you have to think more in terms of your piece and pawn coordination rather than just your piece coordination which is more applicable to e4 openings so I think knight c6 is a mistake and it would be a better idea to play C 5 and then put the knight behind it so even though this introduces a lot of pawn tension Black has a lot of stuff defended in the center so they can afford to play c5 and put the knight behind it or if you want another good strategy and this goes against some previous advice but another good strategy is to fianchetto this light square bishop this is one opening where I would give you permission if you are black to adopt a setup like this and that's because your light square bishop doesn't have a lot of good conventional ways to develop because you played pawn to e6 so develop developing it to b7 and maybe later hoping that these pawns clarify and you get an open diagonal that's perfectly fine here and then you you would be even more justified in playing c5 because you have this pawn on b6 defending it you could also if you want develop the knight to d7 so as not to blocked upon practicing good coordination again like having a pond that we know is likely to fight for the center being uninhibited and free to advance to the square it needs to without worrying about having a knight in the way so that's just one very specific things having to do with the Queen side Knights and the sea pawns it's more relevant to closed in the semi closed positions usually positions that arise from d4 so okay I'm going to wrap this video up here I hope you guys enjoyed this discussion of peace coordination so remember to not spend too much time on individual operations with your pieces pieces especially early in the opening um only make pawn moves if it facilitates your piece development or if you think you have a really compelling reason to make a pawn move you think it will help you fight for the center or take away some key square that your opponent wants to use and really try to strive for harmonious positions positions where you have multiple pieces working together and you're not relying on one or two pieces to do everything for you okay and always always always be aware of your undefended pieces from video 1 so thank you guys for watching if you have any feedback on this part in the series please leave me a comment and thanks again guys I'll talk to you later bye

Channel: John Bartholomew

Views: 477,664

Rating: 4.9630427 out of 5

Keywords: Chess Fundamentals, Chess (Game)

Id: TWJ6751RRis

Length: 51min 50sec (3110 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 03 2015