Chess Rating Climb:1200-1400 | Chess Strategy, Ideas, Concepts for Beginner and Intermediate Players

hey guys today we're doing the rating climb from 1200 to 1400 let's go find some games all right so we have an opponent 1346 and we're white here we go okay he's playing the sicilian defense i like to play the bishop b5 lines so usually the main line is d6 or knight c6 and then i play bishop b5 check the main line for white is actually d4 but i just have a lot of experience with the bishop b5 lines so that's what we'll go with and one of the ideas behind playing bishop b5 is that you can castle right away so i'm going to do that get my king out of the center now i can play moves like rookie one and you sometimes push this pawn forward to open up the center quickly also knight c3 is usually pretty common or you could also play c3 and d4 to try to get a nice pawn center that way so right now i'm just thinking about you know which route do i want to go this pawn is under attack so one move that's coming to mind is just developing a piece and defending it i'm also thinking about playing rookie one to defend it and like i said it puts more support if i want to play e5 later just considering if there are any other options i could play e5 immediately and if he captures i can recapture i will have you know some pressure on this knight but he can just play bishop d7 and pretty easy to deal with so i'm probably going to hold off a little bit so i think i will just play knight c3 i just want to develop a piece and defend my pawn okay so i'm just kind of you know assessing the this pin and and how how i want to deal with it so one option is h3 the issue is he doesn't have to trade off he can just go back and then i don't really want to play g4 right now because my king is here so that's why i'm kind of debating do i want to play h3 or just maybe um do something else i don't have to worry about you know this knight coming in and attacking this night because i have a pin of my own and if he tries to chase my bishop away i'll probably just trade it off so i'm okay leaving this pin for a little while so now i'm starting to think about what other moves do i want to play so d4 comes to mind and if he captures the issue that i might have is i can't take back with the knight like i normally normally be able to capture with the knight but now because of this pin i can't do that so i may delay playing d4 so i'm thinking about playing maybe rook e1 i'm also considering just playing d3 just to kind of defend this and really let my bishop out i think i'll play rookie one um because i'm i'm thinking of trying to open up this e-file since his king is still in the center it's still going to take him a few moves to to be able to castle so i'm i'm going to go ahead and set up my rook okay so you play e5 which is a good move because it prevents prevents me from playing e5 so that makes sense now one thing that this move does do is create a nice hole on d5 so i'm looking for opportunities to put my knight there eventually maybe if i can get this bishop over here and trade this night off my knight could find a nice home on on d5 so that's what i'm thinking through right now so i'd like to develop this i think i'm just going to play d3 obviously i can't play d4 anymore he's got too much control over that maybe at some point in the future i can get this pawn to c3 after i move my knight and then play d4 but right now i'm just going to play um d3 just to let this bishop out okay so he doesn't want me to to pin it so h6 is a move that makes sense he's preventing the the bishop from going there so right now i'm thinking okay bishop e3 is a is a place i could develop my bishop to i'm just kind of scanning for if there are any other moves like i could play knight d5 right now because if he takes me when i recapture i have an attack on the knight which is pinned so that actually looks like it might make some sense just go ahead and put my knight there and so i'm just kind of scanning for for other ideas right now you know if there's anything besides those two moves um i'm still looking at h3 and if he goes back playing g4 just because this pin is is very annoying so that's something i'm considering so i think i will play knight d5 okay so bishop b7 um one thing that i'm considering now is i'd like to break open the center if possible so c3 and d4 is what i'm would possibly like to do i'm also considering bringing my knight back here to attack his bishop and you know if i can force him to trade that would free up this pin if he doesn't trade and goes back there i would have a hole here for my knight to go to so i could also maneuver it over to the king side it looks like he's probably going to castle king side so that's why i'm kind of thinking through you know this maneuver to relocate my knight over there the issue with developing my bishop to e3 is it doesn't do a ton on e3 not really attacking anything there so i don't know that i necessarily want to move that right now i think i'm going to play c3 just to control control this d4 square because he's gonna castle and break this pin i don't want i don't have to worry about his knight coming in here and and putting more pressure on this f3 knight and it i could also at some point in the future play d4 open up the center and it does let my queen out so i have ideas of bringing my queen over here if i if i need to if there's any ideas for that okay so now that he's castled on this side i'm more comfortable playing moves like h3 and g4 because now both of our kings are on the same side before it's risky opening up my king like that but now that his king's there i could launch an attack by doing that so that's what i'm considering now i think i will do that just because the pin really prevents me from i can't move my knight i don't really want to move my queen because then he just takes the knight so that bishop is is really annoying so i'd like to get rid of that so i'm gonna probably play g4 next move after he goes back so i think i will do that now i'm considering moving here to trade off my knife for his bishop the issue is i'm putting myself into a discovered attack this is something that you have to be very careful of by doing that it gives him the ability to move this knight and then also attack my knight at the same time so he could just like capture my knight and then i have a problem because my knight's under attack and i have to recapture his knight so i'll lose a piece so i can't play that right now but that was something that i was wanting to play so now i'm considering possibly knight e3 to hop over here like i talked about before or playing g5 so that if he captures i can get my bishop involved in the game if i'm going to do that i might want to trade this off first that's what i'm thinking about i think i will do that and then i'll play g5 i'm trying to activate this bishop get it a little more involved in the game and so this is seems like a good way to do that okay so he didn't capture it looks like this pawn is just hanging i'm just checking for am i making any blunders i don't think so so i'm going to take this and then recapture and what i'd like to do at some point is move my king either to h2 or h1 and get this rook over to this open file to get some pressure on his king but the immediate threat is his rooks he's probably gonna move that here here and i'm also considering trading this bishop for this night i'm trying to see if it makes sense to do that i don't want his knight to be able to come over and defend his king okay so he's giving me a rook for a bishop i'm just going to take the material and now i'm thinking about the move i said earlier like k2 to get my rook involved king h2 looks a little risky if his queen is able to come in here so maybe i don't want to do that just yet i'm considering playing queen d2 to get control of this diagonal that looks pretty good to me so i'm going to put the queen there because now i have options like going to h6 because he's attacking my knight i have to deal with that so i'm considering where do i put the knight also considering he might play rook over and attack my king but i can just go to the corner that looks safe enough so i'm thinking knight h2 is okay just trying to think through that as quickly as i can because yet again running out of time okay so he's attacking this i have to be careful for the rook coming over here it looks like queen e3 defends everything knight g5 actually would be a good move for him double attacking this pawn that's hard to deal with so i'm just thinking through if he plays this what am i going to do i think queen g3 then he's going to capture this with check i'll move my king over or i may have to move to g2 now then i get pinned yeah that's a really good move for him if he plays that i could be in some trouble could be in a little bit of trouble the issue for me is that this pawn is is hard to defend okay he didn't play that i'm thinking of playing bishop d7 just to kind of control some of those weaknesses i am going to do that okay so he wants to get his knight in there i would like to trade queens i'm up material so trading queens would be a really good thing for me so i'm gonna go here and offer the queen trade okay he did a good he made a good choice not trading i'm gonna go here and again offering a trade this one is pretty much forced i'm gonna take this way because i want to close off this file yeah because that rook was very annoying i'm gonna just defend my pawn okay this is under attack i'm going to defend that and i'd like to relocate my rooks to this open file i have to watch out for tactics along this diagonal but you know i've got this pawn pretty well defended right now king g7 okay my knight is doing nothing here so i want to relocate that i'm going to go over here and then i have some nice holes i can go into there this one looks the best and i'm also thinking about playing like d4 to get my rooks involved yup i will play d4 i need to kind of hurry up here okay he's going for the queen that was a really good move actually he's going to play knight takes here and i'm in a bit of a bit of trouble yeah that was a really really good move by his on his part if he takes his with the knight i have to take it with my queen otherwise i'm getting mated if i go sorry if i go to f1 he's going to come here and i'm mated so i have to take it yeah so i got into a little uh time trouble obviously and i didn't have time to really think through this but um i'm gonna get a little counter play after i take back with the rook although i don't think it's enough to win but we'll see okay he he's gonna go for that fork which is fine because i got the rook in the night so i'm happy with that this is better than the alternative i think he's blundering just trying to flag me but now i'm gonna win yeah okay we'll play him again he played really well so we will do a rematch d4 okay so i've been experimenting with the gambit i like to play more aggressive positions and d4 generally leads to more positional and kind of setup based openings so i've been experimenting with this gambit okay he plays e4 interesting i'm going to take it and i'm going to gain a tempo on the queen so just considering how i want to develop my pieces i'd like to push this pawn up and get this bishop out but i don't want to block my bishop in so i will develop that first so i'll play bishop c5 and now i'll follow it up with d6 just to let this bishop out so now i'm thinking about ideas of attacking the square seeing if there's any tactics available so a lot of times when you can sacrifice your bishop on here and they have to recapture you can bring your queen out and do some cool stuff i'm just looking at that right now it doesn't look like i have anything in this particular position um but that's what i'm just kind of thinking through so okay so this pin is is kind of annoying this pin so i'm just going to play bishop d7 to break the pin immediately okay and i just need to finish developing so i'll play knight f6 so now if i if i just like let's say castle then this pin is a big problem he's going to play knight d5 and he's going to have a double attack here and because the pin i can't really do anything so i don't want to let that happen so um i'm considering how to you know how do i prevent that and i think the route that i'm going to go is play h6 and then after he goes back i'll play g5 just to force the bishop away so i don't have to deal with that that pin now because i push these pawns up i think i'd like to castle queen side so i'm considering going here just to open that up as an option i'm also just kind of scanning if there are any other moves that make sense but i think i like queen e7 so we'll do that and i still have the option if i want i can still castle kingside i'm not you know i don't have to castle queenside but it's just giving myself the option to go either side um depending on you know what he does next okay so he casts king side so you know usually opposite castling leads to like attacks like i'm probably going to keep pushing these pawns and he might start pushing his pawns i have a head start because i already have these guys somewhat advanced so i like my odds um i mean i'm looking at this pawn but i don't want to take that because after i recapture he's going to play rook over and pin my king right so you don't want to open up the center if your king is still there so it looks like the move is going to be castling i'm just kind of scanning like does it make sense to do anything else but i don't think so i think i'm just going to go ahead and castle and now that my king's out of the center now i can start thinking about pushing these forward to attack his king one idea is to bring this rook over so they're both defended and then i can just kind of march the pawns forward and he's trying to do the same thing so it looks like he's getting ready to play b4 now if he plays it immediately i'll just take it if he captures here and then plays b4 i'll have to retreat and then you can play a4 so i'm considering you know i i'm gonna have my own attack if i start this like maybe h5 he can't take that pawn do i want to sacrifice it is what i'm thinking about and then the other thing i'm kind of trying to decide is is my attack gonna be faster than his attack or should i spend some time to try to defend and slow down his attack um i think mine is going to be quicker so i'm looking at h5 and if he captures this pawn then i could play h4 and then he could play bishop f4 and i don't know that i necessarily want to just give that pawn away so i might want to play this rook over first and then play h5 i could play g4 the issue with playing g4 is that he's going to play knight h4 and then it's it's going to be a little bit tricky for me to break through he's going to have a nice blockade with with his knight there defended by the bishop and it's it's going to be a little tricky to get through that so i don't really want to do that i think i will move this rook over first just kind of considering if there's any other moves that make more sense than that like i could play 95 to trade off this bishop and potentially trade the knight and then just play h5h4 doesn't look bad either but i'll just go with this i'll just go with this bring both rooks over sometimes you just have to make a decision and and go with it and you can't always you know spend all your time figuring out the exact best moves so i know what he's going to do next right he's going to play b4 and attack this bishop so is there any benefit to taking with the pawn if he plays b4 i'm going to go back here um or if i take with the bishop and he plays b4 i'm going to go back here regardless he could play b5 and then i'll go back here you know generally speaking you don't want to open up your king like this would open up my king so i think i'll just take with the bishop i was just considering if you know there was any reason why i would want to do that okay before really there's not much of a choice here um i have to go back and then b5 okay again not a whole lot of options actually i could take this now if i want let's see so it's risky to take this because he can play rookie one and pin it i can play d5 and defend it but then it opens up his bishop here and then my bishop is still pinned it might be okay the other option is i play bishop back hmm so i'm just thinking through i don't think i like putting this bishop into this pin although yeah so it might work but i think i'm i'm comfortable with my attack over here so i'm just going to leave that and go back to d7 and continue my plan of pushing this pawn forward i just didn't like giving him you know the open file there and pinning my bishop so now i'm going to play h5 and i'm ready to play h4 and trap his bishop okay knight to d5 so i think i'm going to capture he's probably going to take back and then i can just move my queen like to f6 and that looks okay i'm just checking if there's like any blunders that i'm making am i going to lose any pieces by doing this am i going to get checkmated by doing this i don't think so so i will trade that and then i'll play a queen f6 again i'm just looking for blunders that's why i'm not immediately moving it i'm pretty sure this is what i want to do just doing a blender check i don't see any blatant errors so we'll play queen f6 and again my threat is h4 to trap this bishop and follow that up by g4 okay so h4 doesn't trap the bishop anymore he can go back but g4 looks good because now it's creating a fork right i'm either going to take his knight or i'm going to take this pawn and then my bishop's going to come in and if he takes me well then it's opening up this file for my rook so that looks really good i'm going to play g4 and this bishop over here is actually doing an awesome job lined up on this pawn now i have a really nice threat there uh knight to e5 it looks like a free piece um okay it's not if well so i guess his idea is that he takes here and then attacks my rook but it doesn't look like it works because i can take that and we've got the bishop so that looks really good for me i'm just considering is it like any does it make sense to do this first and try to do something here but i don't think so i think i'm just going to take this i don't see any reason to not so we'll take that and if bishop b5 i have queen of two if rook e5 okay i was probably going to take this but um now i think we're going to go for this check here that looks really good i'm getting to his king and now capturing here looks really strong because if he tries to take my rook i have checkmate if he takes back i also have checkmate because my rook is open i'm looking if he can put me in check anywhere just to make sure that i'm not missing anything i don't see anything as far as check i don't see you know anything to be worried about so i will do that the threat is checkmate here it's not easy to stop yeah he took the the rook and then that's just checkmate just making sure that i'm not like blundering that it's actually defended but it's not so but he played really well for 1300 and we'll play him one more time all right um okay so we'll play the danish game again i've been playing this a lot and i'll just stick with it nobody wants to accept this gambit it's too bad all right so i'm going to take it and i have a nice strong center okay so i'm just going to block with the knight if he you know captures i'll recapture and and this pawn will be even stronger looks like he's going to castle that way so i'm going to just develop d5 that's a good move so right now i'm considering if i capture it he's gonna either capture with the knight or the queen because this is pinned and then he's gonna have a nice solid uh square on d5 if i play e5 it does open up this square so his bishop could go there but that looks okay i think i'm okay with that and i like gaining the space in the center so i will just push forward i'm expecting either bishop f5 or maybe knight f5 at some point and he might just castle okay bishop g4 so i'm going to play bishop e2 just to break the pin i don't want to leave my knight sitting in a pin especially when he has pressure on on d4 with this knight so breaking the pin makes sense create castles um [Music] so one thing i'm thinking about is h3 and again if he goes back playing g4 to get an attack on his king since he's already castled there i haven't castled yet so i could kind of keep my king in the center a little longer and maybe even castle queenside or i could just castle kingside and continue developing that's an option too i could play bishop g5 just develop a piece and pin his knight just trying to figure out which one of those options i like best we'll play h3 i like to be aggressive and okay so he captured so i'm not going to gain the tempo chasing his bishop away but at least i got rid of the pin and i have the bishop pair still which is a good thing so now i'm thinking about castling and what's going to happen if he takes i take it he takes here am i losing a pawn or do i have some kind of trick it looks like i can take this and then if he captures i can recapture and i'll be good i'm also thinking about just playing bishop f4 to just defend that pawn if he captures i'll have to take this way because of the rook and then if he takes i can take back or i could just trade the pawn it's another option if i trade it he's probably going to capture with the rook if he takes with the pawn it's opening up his king doesn't look ideal so let's say rook takes is that any better for me then i could castle maybe follow it up bishop g5 hmm so i'm i'm just considering either capturing and then castling or castling first letting him take and then trying to recapture this pawn i think i'll just take it and castle yeah so i want to go ahead and castle i don't want to get stuck in the center if he like puts me in check which although i could just block it with bishop e3 so it's not a big deal but i think i would like to just castle anyway get out of this pin so now my knight is active okay so i think that's a mistake it looks like he lined up his queen and rook and so bishop g5 looks like it's gonna win the exchange when they work for the bishop i'm just double checking to make sure there's not some trick like if i go there and he captures this bishop if i take it then he takes this he ends up getting both of my bishops for a rook which is really good but if i go there and he captures i could just take his queen so he can't really get away with that so it looks like it's fine i don't see anything he can do so i'll go that go that route and probably will take this next turn well next turn after i recapture this and the bishop pair in an open position like this is is pretty strong usually okay yep so i'm going to take the rook for anyone who doesn't know when you when you trade a piece like a knight or a bishop for a rook that's called winning the exchange so i just won the exchange there which is which was a good thing so now i'm considering rook b1 to put that rook on an open file or rook e1 to put this work on an open file i also just noticed that this pawn is hanging so i probably should just take that yeah that looks like a free pawn i'll take it okay i'm thinking about playing queen f3 because since i'm a head material so being up the exchange trading is good gets me closer to the end game and most likely a victory so queen of three would offer the queen charade as well as pressure on the knight um just considering what is he gonna do if i play queen f3 he's gonna probably move his queen somewhere here or here or here or here i'm just kind of looking am i worried about any of those moves this one is the most concerning because his knight could come in but i think i can play like queen g3 and be fine so it looks okay because of those reasons i'm just gonna go play queen f3 trying to trade off the queens but my next move would be to capture this okay queen d6 so it looks like by trading here i can mess up his pawn structure as well as get closer to the end of the game again because i'm up material i'm gonna do that if it was a very even game i probably wouldn't just trade the bishop for the night but since it's since i'm a head material it makes sense to do that it takes to the queen i'll trade it okay so you can see the pawn structure is is messed up so those are easy targets for my rooks now so i'm just considering i have two open files rick e1 rook b1 both moves look pretty good i'll go with rook e1 i'm anticipating maybe rook f8 and i'll have to move my queen somewhere but it's not a big deal okay so queen g3 is what i'm thinking again offering a trade and you know also it gets out of the the file and also defends the pawn that he's attacking so that looks like a pretty good move i'm right now i'm considering if there are any back rank mate tactics so sometimes there are little tricks where you can like let them take your queen and then you can bring your rook down and get checkmate in this case it doesn't work because whenever i go there he can always just block either with his knight or with back with his rook so it doesn't make sense right now but that's what i was just kind of looking at queen here just doing a blender check looks fine knight f4 actually looks like a pretty strong move for him queen f6 okay so he's attacking this but i'm already good there got that defended now i'm just considering do i want to bring this rook to another open file or do i want to try to double up these rooks on on this file like maybe rookie 2 and then rook here benefit of doing this is that i get more protection on this square which is not i don't necessarily have to do that i don't know this also looks pretty good because i can go to v7 um if his knight comes in here it would attack my rook which would make me lose a tempo so we'll play rugby one just putting rooks on open files this is pretty pretty basic stuff and you know looking for opportunities to trade pieces because i'm up the exchange trading is going to be good and also we're getting closer to the end game so i don't want to lose any of my pawns and if i can capture some of these guys that's going to be good as well and also because this king's on the back rank keeping an eye out for back rank tactics in case there's any tricks that come up okay so his knight maybe wants to go there or there i'm thinking okay i wanted to play queen e5 to threaten to trade and threaten that but the issue is this pawn is undefended he's going to capture it i'll move over i will have his knight attacked and then the ability to follow up with rook f1 which might force a trade it's kind of interesting to sacrifice this pawn to get into that position i'm not sure if it's good enough to do so i think what i will actually do is just play f3 i don't like that he's got this pressure on this pawn right i can't like move my queen anywhere because then he's going to come down here so i'm just going to play f3 to get rid of that right now i can move my queen wherever i want then he can't uh he can't do anything right if he takes that i just take his queen so that's why i played f3 i was paying attention to this diagonal but it's covered by these pawns so i'm okay doing that okay so he's attacking my queen i am going to go with queen e5 again offering a trade and also getting more control over this open file okay so now i'm starting to look for more background tricks i think i want to bring this rook down to the seventh rank i've got lots of targets i've got control of this open file so he can't you know move any of those pieces there and i'm just kind of scanning if this knight moves anywhere do i have any weaknesses and there's not a time i mean he can move here but it's going to take him quite a few moves to be able to to get anything going there okay so my rook's obviously under attack i think i will just take this free pawn again i'm keeping my eye open for for back rank tricks if these pieces ever leave the back rank there's a very good chance i can do something and get checkmate so i'm kind of constantly paying attention to that okay so i got to do something about the rook i'd like to play queen e7 but then he's just going to take and then take my rook so i can't do that right now i'll just go back to b7 this this pawn could be captured but then i have this one okay so he's going for my rook so i think i have a little cool move queen e7 the idea is if he takes my rook i'm going to take his rook with checkmate it does look that i managed to uh it looks like i managed to get trapped over here which is not ideal but worst case we can just sacrifice it here for the night in the pawn which is what i will do i still have quite a few pawns that was probably could have been handled better but i'm kind of running out of time so i'm just gonna just gonna move okay so i'm trying to trade off this rook you have to watch out for a perpetual check so like if he goes here and here with his queen he could probably like keep checking me so but i think i should be able to get out of it let's see queen here king here okay that wasn't the right move he needed to go here so that he could leave that open all right i'll take that and i'll just push this pawn down and win okay and the important thing is my queen controls this diagonal so he can't yeah he can't do that that wasn't controlling that diagonal i could have gotten into a perpetual check but i kind of misplayed that rook over here i didn't see that my rook was going to get trapped so that was a mistake there but um it turned out okay because i got enough pawns for it i ended up getting like two pawns and the knight for that rook so all right guys well thanks for watching hope you learned something from those games shout out to kilas490 thanks for letting me play you um three games he played really well so uh props to him be on the lookout for the 1400 to 1600 range that's coming next but as always stay sharp play smart and take care [Music] you

Channel: Chess Vibes

Views: 54,863

Keywords: rating climb, speedrun, chess speedrun, chess rating climb, chess rating ladder, climbing the rating ladder chess, climbing the rating ladder, chess rating 1000, chess rating 1200, how to improve at chess, how to think in chess, how to think during a chess game, chess thought process, chess examples, chessmaster, chessmaster examples, free chess lessons, beginner chess lessons, chess tutorial, chess strategies, chess strategy, chess lessons, chess practice, chess tricks

Id: CaOod0tO9G4

Length: 43min 10sec (2590 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021