Climbing the Rating Ladder: 1800-2000

hey guys this is john and welcome to part six in my series on climbing the raiding ladder in this part i'm going to be playing players in the 1800 to 2000 range and our first game we have black cat 11. once again this is actually a player we encountered i believe in the last video 1600 to 1800 and he has been climbing the raiding ladder himself apparently so i am defending his e4 move with e5 double king pawn and let's see what we get so he plays roy lopez i'm going to play a6 the move or a custom 2. so at this level players are a bit better in the opening they tend to have more opening knowledge their calculation has probably improved but i still think many players in the 1800 to 2000 range are exploitable i'm gonna take this pawn uh because at best white can recover the pawn and that's about about it but i think players at this level are exploitable in the end game and also in regards to positional and strategic play so we're gonna test that hypothesis but uh expect me to win many games based on superior positional understanding and end game play i think opening wise and calculation wise you'll see my opponents doing pretty well and for the most part hanging with me but i'm gonna try to exploit my advantage in those other areas we'll see if that's the case so here i almost castled but they can take and give me double pawns i don't know that i really mind that though because i can take with my d-pawn and even though i have double pawns that pawn's going to come up to c5 and hopefully cramp him so let's give that a go and see all right he does not recapture so maybe here it'll be a little difficult for me to uh complete my development because i see i can't move my d-pawn i probably should have captured on e5 on the previous move i think that would have been better yeah because now uh if i take he gets to take with a pawn and it's a little difficult for me hmm okay let's play b5 i'm going to try to back that light square bishop off and i'm going to put my bishop on b7 and look to complete our development that way so to bishop b7 he is attacking f7 twice with the knight in the bishop but i'm not too concerned so let's just do this by now if you've been climbing the raiding ladder with us you'll know that trading a knight in a bishop for your opponents pawn and rook is not a good idea most of the time so he plays bishop g5 i think i can play d6 safely now and just try to induce him to trade on c6 so d6 knight takes knight bishop takes knight and that seems fine uh if d6 knight takes f7 rook takes f7 that also looks reasonable once again i don't think we're afraid of that trade necessarily i'll pre-move this capture you could argue that um the qualities the strengths and the weaknesses that i mentioned right at the beginning of this video um may only be apparent because i am a stronger player than these opponents you know you're looking at my rating and you're saying well of course you're going to be better at positional understanding and of course you're going to be the better end game player but in my work with players at this level and just seeing thousands of games between players 1800 to 2000 um those are the two main things that i've noticed that they lack positional understanding and and game play because a lot of people have done the work in the openings and with their calculation but um if you want to make strides at this level look to improve those two things so he retreats the knight that's an interesting decision avoiding the trade i can play knight a5 and attack that light square bishop maybe get it to back off to c2 so i'm debating that like knight a5 bishop c2 let's say knight c4 attacking that pawn then they could play b3 but i can play knight b6 rookie eight is also possible let's play let's play rookie eight so i don't need my rook on the defense of that pawn for the moment because it's only attacked once so i'm just going to try to line up and oppose him along the file queen d3 is preparation for bishop c2 almost certainly so if i play net a5 that's probably what they'll do at a5 bishop c2 and then he'd be threatening bishop takes f6 i can play g6 though so i don't know that i have to fear that too much knight a5 bishop c2 g6 rook takes e7 doesn't look like it quite works yes let's do that there's also the interesting possibility bishop c294 but that doesn't appear to be necessary yet uh and also it might lose something knight e4 rook takes e4 bishop takes e4 queen takes e4 and he's still on that h7 pawn yeah so let's just play it safe and play g6 we gotta react to our opponent's threat of bishop takes f6 followed by queen takes h7 and this is the way i want to do it okay i think he's completing his development in a decent way b4 might be something i have to be worried about so maybe bishop d5 uh knight d5 also makes some sense trying to simplify let's play bishop d5 though uh bishop d5 does he have rook takes e7 maybe so hmm maybe i should move this knight as bishop d5 rook takes e7 queen takes e7 ricky one could be an issue okay sneaky all right let's do this then so looking for trades looking for simplifications he's played very quick so far this guy's kept us under pressure i should have traded that knight on e5 in the opening that variation that white played is uh known to be sub-optimal but i think in the couple games that i played against this line in this series i haven't really demonstrated that okay so he avoids the trade and just plays bishop h6 maybe c5 c5 might be a good move to strike out at his center i don't see any threat per se so yeah let's go ahead and play c5 this also discourages the b4 move a little bit he has the queen bishop battery but it's blocked by my pawns so i'm not concerned about that since i do have all pawns on light squares on the king side my dark squares are a bit weak i'm gonna pre-move this move just in case b4 instead okay so about c4 now trying to banish his queen somewhere bad maybe that's reasonable it could also take and then play knight back to c6 that might be better let's do it that way is now he's going to take a timeout and defend this pawn and i'm thinking maybe bishop f6 or d5 let's go d5 make sure he can't play pawn d5 himself bishop b3 he repositions attacks let's go bishop f6 no bishop f6 is going to drop flaunt let's not do that maybe queen d6 yeah how about queen d6 so keeping an eye on this i'm trying to prepare bishop f6 on the last move it would have dropped a pawn because uh bishop f6 rook takes e8 queen takes e8 bishop takes d5 so i have to be wary of that my opponents did a good job of keeping the pressure on over the last few moves this game has not been easy for me thus far through 20 moves of play okay now i will play this and look to pressure that pawn on d4 that's the plan with a symmetric pawn structure in the center and on the queen side i might look for an opportunity to play a pawn break a5 later and try to attack that pawn on b4 by playing rook c1 he does introduce an idea of bringing the rook to c5 but i can always drop my knight back to e7 if i need to defend this pawn so maybe knight e3 he's gearing up for uh let's let's do this i'm gonna maybe try to play knight f5 we'll see okay let's go knight f4 now see if we can swap with him on f4 so we've gained the bishop pair still gotta be a little careful though rook in okay let's do this just defend that d-pawn rift d7 make sure he can't play rook into c7 note he can't play g3 because he drops the knight on f3 interesting position i might want to play rook ed8 in order to over protect e5 because long term i'd love to get knight c8 to b6 and into c4 that would be like my dream scenario a4 okay good move by him excellent move putting the pressure i'm gonna come here and see if i can get a swap of queens if he moves the queen away though how am i going to deal with the threat of a takes b5 that will be the issue he takes them probably knight e5 because then if rook takes d4 he's on f7 i guess with 95 just bishop takes e5 though i do expect him to play that move knight e5 hmm he doesn't okay so now i can take here though looks like he lost the threat a little bit this last couple of moves we'll come here just reinforce our rook on d7 i'm still a little bit low on time the increment helps we're playing a five minute game with a five second increment uh each move so the increment does help but they still would not like to be this low on time i think if he hadn't traded queens then there might have been something to that a takes b5 threat because when i brought my bishop to d4 juan is pawn he was unable to maintain the rook there so now at some point trading the rooks would be useful especially one pair of rooks he's on the seventh rank he's pretty active in that regard so trading one pair of rooks would be excellent but i don't want to make a concession in order to trade you know every trade that you make in chess you should be able to point to something that you gain from that trade and if i take c7 i don't see anything that i gain uh maybe bishop b6 is a good idea kicking that rook out i like the look of that so let's play it i'll remove this capture because if i had initiated that trade on c7 he would have been forking my knight my bishop okay so he just goes back i think here it makes sense to play king g7 just to get out of the way of this pin he's maybe going to maneuver for the f4 square i could play knight f5 that would be interesting let's try that so look to swap and open up my dark square bishop these bishops operating together on uh the complementary diagonals like this could be a real force so rook into d2 would be the thing i'm looking at next he plays knight over there okay maybe king f6 king f6 rook check i take he takes rip d6 that holds for us now let's do it seems weird to protect your pawn with your king like this but as far as i can tell he's not getting anywhere okay now we can play this move and let's swap and then probably play rook into d3 next just double checking to make sure he doesn't have anything against that i don't think so we're attacking the bishop and we're also hitting this twice i could have taken on e3 first but i don't see a point to doing that i think bringing the rook in and keeping bishop takes e3 in our back pocket for a moment is fine ah clever okay so he's hoping to get into a rook ending it looks like from that move so if i take he takes takes he's gonna take there at the end aha okay well let's do this i didn't want to have to get into an opposite color bishop ending but it seems like we're gonna have to play that so maybe i should have taken on e3 on the previous move we'll go back and have a look at that bishop there all right let's come over so i'm going to win this b4 pawn he's going to win b5 f2 is weak so in the long run i'd love to win that pawn but you know it could be a struggle we'll find out bishop n4 versus bishop n3 here's where i get to uh test my theory about endgames at this level let's see this guy's end game technique okay let's play let's play rook b3 i'm going to bring this back for protection the main rule of end games is don't be afraid to take your time you know it's okay to play end game slowly don't feel like you have to rush them especially if you have the advantage okay so he's giving a check can i get rick c7 and into c2 in he's probably going to see if i play rook c7 that i want to come down to c2 but for the moment his bishop's under attack that seems like kind of an odd move right there so i'm going to do this now it looks to me like he has to play rook a2 and come back maybe then i can play f4 yeah let's do that so try to offload this pawn and get our king up to f5 and then win f4 so in doing so i've traded off uh a bad pawn here okay now i can play f6 ah but he has to check here gotta be careful okay let's play bishop c3 i didn't see king g3 that was a good move by him so he's pinning me now excellent defense by our opponent okay better go here now excuse me give a check over here and then i can play bishop d4 next move not sure he should have allowed that rook g7 because now he's gotta put his king on a pretty awkward square h3 or h4 right on the wing king h4 he chooses okay let's come here as planned so now this rook moves bishop takes f2 is always possible so he's perhaps playing with fire with his bishop over there again good defensive move uh let's come here let's bring the bishop to a7 actually where it's defended by her rook aha but now he loses this let's take there comes back with the king okay let's play e3 i know you can check me on d7 or d3 after this maybe win this pawn but we'll see so i am still up upon whether he can blockade it or not and also his work and his bishop are attacked so what's he going to do about that situation let's come here aha rook over yes rookie 8 then i if e2 i can take c8 he takes back e2 but actually i'm not winning that end game because i have the wrong color bishop that's a bummer okay let's play our king up hmm let's play king here king here really working hard to win this one taking some risks king all the way up so now maybe i can check here it's a possibility time is a constant problem however let's come here now e2 check is a possibility okay now i might be in a position to win this hmm all right let's give this check let's play bishop here we'll see if he sacrifices for this pawn he shouldn't yet because i'm not threatening to promote that pawn yet so maybe he can come away with this rook somewhere like rook a8 and try to check from the side quite tricky yeah rook a8 good move he found it let's come here protect from the side he's going to have about the same amount of time that we do black cat 11 stepping up to the plate though this guy is not going quietly into the night uh let's play let's play bishop d4 idea king d2 or maybe king f1 i'm controlling a1 now so i've got that working for me okay i'm gonna come here let's give a check let's check again and finally i'm going to try to do this i think he has to give up his bishop for the pawn now ah clever clever clever he's still fighting okay let's do this now we're gonna get into a theoretical end game okay so his king is cut off by my rook i'm gonna win his h-pawn but if the if the king is cut off by a certain number of files or less it's a draw we'll see how this one plays out let's come here so i don't want to move my rook off the e file because that would allow his king to come back rook pawns are notoriously difficult to win with in rook endings i'm gonna play fast and keep the pressure on him for the moment i think with his king cut off by this many files it's a win if we're only two files it would be different so you see i'm slowly making progress up the board yeah i believe this is a win for black let's come here it's going to check from the side now you can come back to a2 hmm no okay so now i can push yeah let's push he's gonna check my king into the corner like rook g8 king f3 uh rook f8 king g2 etc i could maybe have my rook instead of playing h2 but i think this is the best way still keep this king cut off yes now we go to the corner okay so now to get out of this situation i have to play my rook into the g1 square so what i'm gonna do is rook up to e1 he's gonna attack with king d2 you just offered a draw but we're definitely not taking that yeah and he has no way to oppose the plan of rook g1 now he definitely can't trade rook so he's gonna have to flee and now we get our king out it's the problem for him yeah if he had been a little bit closer he would have been able to draw so now we can come here and our pawn is always protecting our rook and i can even boldly come out to the center yeah if you would imagine that uh he was one file closer with his king he could have played king to f2 and thereby prevent us from coming out with arcade this is close to a hundred move game we're on move 98 so well played by mr black cat 11. and he's just gonna run out of checks here eventually i can zigzag toward him with my king now he's gonna have to come back to h8 and we can promote king and rook versus king all right he resigned 102 move game so uh yeah heck of a battle and very good effort black cat 11. let's take a look at this one since it was so long i'm gonna just just try to hit the highlights but as i mentioned before like at this juncture after after bishop e7 white should play rookie one in order to defend the e4 pawn c3 is a mistake but again the two games that i played in this line because i've actually had this a couple times in the latter series i don't think i played it completely correct uh like here i'm pretty sure i should simply take and after rook takes e5 then castle uh because actually after castle's d4 it was hard to free myself a little bit since he was attacking c6 twice so i cannot play d6 because i would lose a pawn there so b5 bishop b3 bishop b7 i bet white's a little bit better here because like i said i kind of confounded my development a little bit by doing this so queen d3 and he gets to operate with this battery i'm gonna go forward a little bit b4 not sure about b4 wasn't bad for white but there might have been better now he defends that b4 pawn and i ended up pushing d5 i feel like the position is close to equal maybe white has a little something here he just seems a bit better mobilized like his queen is already out mine is not he went and attacked d5 played rook c1 i played bishop f6 i think the moment where he lost the thread though was right after he played a4 this was a good move to attack b5 yeah because attacking b5 in this way is awkward for me um i can't put the bishop on c6 he's got two rooks bearing down on that square nor can i take this pawn because after bishop takes a4 he's skewering my two rooks and by the way i'm making a conscious effort in my analysis here not to move the pieces as much because you guys are at this rating level or aspiring to be at this rating level should really get used to analyzing your head and some of the stuff that i might have shown and played out at uh the lower climbing the rating levels um is too easy for you guys now and you got to push yourself that applies to your tactics training as well so when you're doing like uh the tactics trainer online you should be trying to solve the solution entirely in your head without like making one move uh reassessing making another move that sort of thing so um here i played queen e4 yeah i think he should have moved the queen and not traded the queens training the queens on e4 allows me to take with tempo and i'm attacking d4 if you were to move the queen somewhere like you know say d2 uh then i still have to solve this issue of the b5 pawn it's possible that i'm just worse you know if queen d2 that he's four choice there he might be winning the b5 pawn so we traded he put the knight back on e1 and i win the d-pawn yeah and i think my technique was far from perfect after this it looked good for a while i definitely slipped up and it's funny because i was actually commenting on how flexibly i played this but i think i slipped up when i played rook t3 i probably should have traded first on e3 bishop takes e3 and then after f takes e3 then rick into d3 attacking the pawn and the bishop so this variation take take rook here that gives him less wiggle room and actually i'm just winning a pawn aren't i uh well maybe not he can play bishop takes f7 and then if i take here he comes in check but i think i would have preferred this honestly to the game like having the same color bishops same color bishops if one side can win a pawn like in the event of let's say bishop takes f7 rook takes e3 those tend to provide more winning chances than opposite counter bishops where being down one pawn is sometimes not as big of a deal so let me reload this just going back to that moment a little bit earlier here yeah because as you can see once we got to the opposite color bishop ending with pawns all on the same side of the board it was pretty difficult to win i mean i'm uh i i'm impressed by the way he held on because he resisted for quite a while in a semi unpleasant position so it's four versus three we have the double f pawn so advancing at f4 at some point trying to get him to trade the g for the f pawn would be good possibly i slipped up when i played f4 i'm not sure the timing on that move was perfect yet maybe i should have played something like another rook move maybe rook here or uh perhaps bishop e5 to try to enforce f4 when my bishop's defending because after here take king f5 king g3 it was a little tricky i had to play some moves i didn't want to have to play necessarily like f6 to make way for rook g7 and then we got to a situation where i had the e pawn so h and e versus his h but this two proved very difficult to win one key moment was right here so rookie one a rookie eight rather so i can effectively win a piece by playing rook takes c8 rook takes c8 e2 looks awesome right i'm promoting my pawn well after here promote take and take if you're at this rating level you should have the knowledge by now to know that this is a total draw because i have the wrong color bishop um he can camp out with this king in the corner he doesn't even need to have to run his king towards my h pawn winning my h pawn is irrelevant he can play something like king g2 and then even give the pawn away with h4 and this is a theoretical draw white is uh completely safe because i have an h pawn that's trying to promote on a light square but i don't have a piece that can control that square so he can just park the king in the corner and hold out so let me reload this one more time so that was kind of tricky because even though i had that possibility i didn't want to go for it i was trying to preserve the winning chances so i marched my king up i bet there was somewhere he could draw around here um even way up towards the end like right about this move this is move 72 now it was pretty close bishop b6 king d3 here i mean perhaps he can give up the bishop and try to win my h pawn but that's actually tricky because let's say he takes here i take with my king the two squares uh h7 or h8 rather and a7 that he would go to to attack this pawn or covered by my bishop he could try to play bishop takes e2 king takes e2 rook d8 attacking that bishop uh but that's a little bit different because then if i go here then his king is so far away from the h1 square he probably can't get back in time and draw but the transition to that rook and the end game uh this might be losing for him king g3 take and take and then h5 because once again the issue is that he's cut off by one two three files or more accurately four files i always forget how they count these files whether it's three or four um he needs his king one file closer so if like rook run f7 king were here uh he would eventually be able to get his king into f2 when i play rook f1 to g1 yeah and this was just a slow grind and a win for black uh maybe here after king g4 would have been better for him to play rook a2 that probably would have made my task more difficult although i guess i could play rook h7 in that case and get behind the pawn so all right i'm going to look for another game we'll see what we find and maybe while we're waiting for that i can kind of show you what i mean so let's flip this around look at it kind of from the point of view that i had in the game so in the game um whoops this is like here let's say so in the game he was cut off a little bit too far but if we shifted everything over and black still went for a plan like this then it's not as uh easy and in fact it kind of depends where white's king is i believe because if the king is on e2 already then i don't even have rook f1 available but even in this case here rook here uh rook here king out check it's a lot closer oh maybe this is still winning yeah actually this is still winning um so even with uh the king being one file closer i think it is important whether the king controls that f1 square or not because if let's say king here yeah this should be a definite draw now with this king being that close okay uh red blossom is our next opponent 1888 i'm going to play d4 in this game place d6 and let's play knight f3 so sticking in d-pawn territory rather than going into a pierce with e4 knight f6 i'll play c4 so i'm playing like my semi-usual repertoire knight c3 and we're gonna have a king's indian bishop e2 or castle and let's play bishop e3 here d5 is another move but this is also fine just reinforcing the center again i don't expect to win too many games honestly based on better openings although title players do tend to have better openings i'm still going by this theory that uh i've seen to be true in my own experience that players at this level are weaker in positional play and end games so i want to force this guy to make strategic decisions it's going to be harder in a sharper opening like this he's pausing to think a little bit okay bishop d7 seems unusual to me so this knight's kind of hanging out on g4 i can try to play h3 and push it away h3 he'll play knight h6 i can take on e5 and then maybe install the knight on d5 seems like a good plan i could also put the knight up to d5 right away so h3 knight h6 say i take on e5 he'll probably take with the pawn knight d5 looks like a very annoying night for him to deal with let's try that so back that piece off and then take we're leaving the tension i like that he can't take with the f-pawn he would lose his queen if he did that okay so he takes this way and now knight d5 d4 is a weak square for me so i want to make sure he can't utilize that square in the future just attacking our bishop let's back that off now maybe queen b3 attacking the pawn on b7 and preparing rook fd1 let's do that always good to develop your queen with tempo uh in kind of a late opening early middle game stage because now this rook is going to get over here real fast and i'm using this rook because if i use the a-rook then my f1 rook might be boxed in so i like using this one this one can come to c1 and maybe assist with c5 so now this is going to make him nervous having his queen lined up with my rook there's tactical opportunities already like knight takes b6 you can't play queen eight because the knight takes c7 he could try queen c8 although queen c8 he might be opening himself up for moves like queen b5 trying to get the knight to move so 97 is working so that knight would be the only thing guarding that square so i'm just trying to think on my opponent's time right here place that maybe queen a3 queen a3 looking at knight e7 bold move this one but maybe not bad okay let's come here so 97 is on the table and he just wandered it check win the queen yeah he completely missed that move um maybe c5 would have been better that way knight e7 is not possible i play queen takes so yeah just a calculation mistake uh which i shouldn't give the impression that players at this level are not going to blunder because as i said in the very first climbing the ladder video you're going to see blunders at every level as we climb the ladder especially in blitz but um yeah this was a pretty big one allowing knight e7 and king moves and i'm gonna win that queen so i just played pretty straightforward in this one just uh trading on e5 and then jumping the knight into d5 it's possible there are better plans but um it looked like a good outpost square and i like the fact that it's hard for him to use the d4 square he can't exactly leap into that square right away because i have my knight and my queen both participating in the defense of that square switching back to the analysis board while we wait for our next game so we were looking at this ending an ironclad fortress in rook endings where you're fighting against a rook pawn a fortress that's very good to know is one in which you have your king like this and your rook on the same file as the king so the defensive king um on a square opposing the opponent's king or on the immediate adjacent square right here and the rook on the file because with this fortress even though black has complete command of the h and the g files there's nothing black can do to win and white will just play their rook or even their king back and forth along the file because black needs to be able to get the king out in order to win but they just can't they can't engineer that scenario you know check king here king still can't move check again white's going to go here at all times the white king can stay guarding those two squares and this rook is helpful on this file because it prevents a check from from the f-file to attempt to force the king away all right let's see who's up next who wants a piece of fins who wants my rating the real cuckoo head 1885 he opens with the bird f4 i'm going to play d5 because the bird is just a reverse dutch and when you're facing unusual openings i think it's good to be straightforward uh i know how to play the dutch from the white side and fianchettoing your kingside bishop is a good idea in that line so i'm going to do it from this side as well let's just play knight f6 so this is like a reverse leningrad dutch now c5 and i think preparing an early d4 is is pretty smart against this line so i'm gonna do that hmm knight a4 tricky okay so he's going after this pawn in an unusual way putting the knight on the rim i can't play b5 he would i would just lose that pawn so probably queen d6 or queen c7 somehow queen d6 looks correct to me let's do that so develop the queen and defend this looking to play knight c6 in the future he plays c4 not unexpected because he wants to rule out a future b5 so let's do knight c6 just develop a lot of times this opening white suffers with a weak e3 square so maybe he's trying to rectify that with his last move uh let's take even though he gets to play bishop takes with a gain of time on this i think i can play b6 b6 95 bishop let's say to b7 and it looks reasonable i think i think i'll be able to defend and hold out on that c6 square so let's do that note after 95 i cannot take his knight because my work in the corner is going to be lost after 95 bishop d7 also makes sense it's kind of a close call between um bishop d7 and bishop b7 interesting so he's bringing the knight back maybe he's looking to play knight e4 that would make sense nonetheless i like our position already if knight e4 and i could trade and try to win the b2 pawn that looks pretty good like knight e4 knight takes e4 d takes e4 bishop takes b2 i could also try to bring my queen back to c7 he's probably preparing b4 with that last move rook fd8 looks good attacking that pawn this is a backward pawn it's it's extremely vulnerable so i think i'd like to go after it i'm just debating between work fda and rookie ad8 i think i like rook fd8 a little bit more let's keep this regarding the a pawn for now this is kind of a similar rook issue to the last game which rook to move to a central file yup knight e5 maybe here rook b8 ah rook v8 though i could run a foul of knight b5 i gotta be careful queen c7 looks pretty standard in order to defend this bishop and thereby threaten to take on e5 not sure it's a huge threat though maybe a6 maybe i should play a6 in an effort to rule out knight b5 completely he could be trying to come at me with b4 though knight d7 knight b5 yeah i don't like where my queen is having to go after that if i take on e5 that's actually kind of interesting knight takes e5 if f takes e5 if queen takes e5 and i'm on his bishop so if bishop takes b7 i have queen takes e3 check also on knight takes e5 if he plays bishop takes b7 i can maybe play just rook b8 thereafter and once again same thing if he takes i take with the queen uh he has bishop e4 though bishop e4 okay let's play this safe we'll just play a move that rolls out knight b5 so right now i'm just trying to get a handle on his short-term activity so that when exchanges do happen um i can go about attacking his d3 pawn again knight e4 does that work so knight e4 i take it he takes it the bishop e5 is still vulnerable i still think he's gonna have issues there if i take he's certainly not gonna want to take with a pawn because then he's blocking that bishop of his all right so let's do this looks to me like he's sacrificing a pawn if bishop takes e4 i can do bishop takes e5 oh no he's playing this little in-between move well this also seems to lose a pawn though because remember b2 is loose by virtue of having moved that knight from c3 he's giving me a shot at that b2 pawn so i'm going to take with the queen or sorry with the bishop let's see which way he recaptures with the pawn now here i've got a couple options uh the b pawn is loose but he's always gonna be able to play rook b1 and try to get on the file so i'm considering queen e6 as well like queen moves that will attack his weak pawns i do see on queen e60 as queen c2 however maybe we can move our queen back queen c7 he moves his queen and then we can play the bishop into d4 that seems like a good option as well how about queen e6 queen c2 bishop d4 trying to swap those dark square bishops get our rook into a dominating square then he's going to have trouble on e4 and c4 all the same yeah that seems simple i'm not sure about bishop takes b2 he's got a big time advantage so i'm just gonna play it this way and look to simplify as is consistent with uh my game plan against these players i'm heading for an end game that looks pretty comfortable for me now i get in on this nice d4 square attacking c4 and i'm preparing to double up my rooks with tempo hmm that's weakening i can actually just take that pawn because he can't recapture he hangs his rook also i can simply take c4 which to do i think i'm just going to take c4 though easier because if i took on f5 maybe he could double up his rooks and thereby uh threaten to do a discovered attack this way he still keeps kind of sketchy pawns yeah f5 lashing out i'm not sure he wants to do that okay now e4 is hanging once again any drawback to taking there maybe maybe maybe maybe i'm gonna i should do this first yeah let's exercise a little patience maybe go rook d2 in the future so if rook f1 i can play rook d2 rook f1 he might want to play to try to create threats down the file rook c3 is possible for him here it's probably his best chance so now he takes but um if work c3 here i have queen e6 available okay so he's bringing the rook over defending that weak e pawn let's invade rook d2 rub a pawn simplifications are our friend let's give it a check i'm probably going to trade a pair of rooks but i just want to do it on a square of my choosing here i can play queen c1 if i want yeah let's do that and he's unable to initiate the trade at least i don't think he should rook takes d1 rook takes d1 check rookie one's not possible i would just take it so he'd have to play bishop f1 but then i have bishop b5 at the end of that line ganging up on the bishop on f1 so this is unpleasant for him bishop f3 probably a good move trying to get me out of there okay let's take now probably i'll take with a rook this queen is guarding the second rank let's badger him with another trade queen d2 and then if rookie 2 queen d4 is my plan now the queens are likely to come off the board too so we have a three to two majority on the queen side that's where our extra pawn lies a plan i have is to to swap the queens on f2 then play e5 so as to fix this pawn on a weak square that's kind of my my goal right now if e5 i guess he can bring the king up so maybe rip d3 first just to be super accurate hmm nah i'm gonna do this anyways i still think this is good yep he does bring the king up okay so we're up a pawn once again the motto of don't hurry applies and i'm in no rush to try to win this i want to bring my king up get that participating but i also want to activate these pawns so i'm looking at moves like c4 already f5 is a good move to play at some point let's bring our king up and just await further developments make a good move maybe i can probe him with bishop a4 just see what his intentions are now that this bishop is no longer opposing his bishop on the diagonal f5 is a serious possibility so compared to that first game uh here we have a same color bishop and i like my winning chances here much better than that previous game here i'm gonna go bishop b5 which is annoying for him because um rook d3 is always hanging over his head okay looks like he's getting ready to play potentially a4 let's play a5 he can play a4 but then he's fixed a lot of his pawns on the same color as his bishop they might be targets for my bishop in the future plays h4 and he has a hard time ever playing bishop e2 bear in mind because i can take and then e4 is hanging now i think is the time for f5 so let's play that trading him trading off this weak pawn but i think this is the best way to try to make progress but i only did that after bringing up my pieces a little bit i might even prefer to centralize my king a little bit more before playing this move but all told i think it's a good time to do it so we do get a trade i'll probably bring my king up to f6 just to get that up a little bit more um yeah and that's a blunder because of rookie four this time yeah so we dropped the bishop would have been interesting to see how uh i would play for a win if he had not blundered that piece but it's very tough for him you can see he's pretty tied down like swapping the bishops and trying to get to a rook ending which might offer more drawing chances it's not possible um and he can't really move his rook from the third rank here because rick d3 check he could play a4 but i'm just going to drop the bishop back to a6 so yeah so this was a bird variation and i didn't try to play anything too fancy d5 is an excellent response to the bird it's just a reverse dutch defense and arguably black should not play d4 this quickly because it does kind of encourage him to go and attack this pawn but my concern was if i didn't play d4 he's going to play um he's going to play pawn e4 so say i had played knight c6 he can advance with e4 in the center because that's a pawn advance that white would love to achieve in this opening you can see that that pawn on e2 was backward later and he would love to just advance it before it becomes an issue so what were things that i thought he could improve on um i was a little suspicious of e4 i'm not sure that's the right approach i'm not sure about putting the knight on a4 at all by the way um although this does kind of happen in some dutch positions comparing it to that opening maybe right around the time i played a6 he could have handled this better because knight e4 just invited simplifications that benefited me um i would have been more concerned about moves that kept the tension and kept the pressure especially on my bishop on b7 he's pinning me down with the knight in the bishop here um what moves would those be uh perhaps moves like queen f3 looking to pump out the pressure there actually not sure that's the best one i can play rook c8 and reply and just guard this uh maybe queen b3 queen b3 though can be can be met by knight a5 so maybe it is a little tougher for him to find a move in this position after a6 just stopping knight b5 but i i i'm almost positive there's something better than 94. knight e4 seems to lead to favorable simplifications for me so we traded and here i had a choice i mean we don't just want to take the pawn on b2 immediately without thinking about it it could be a good move but um i saw some lines where like say after bishop takes b2 he takes on d6 and then plays rook b1 and if this bishop moves from b2 the pawn on b6 is weak possibly that was okay like let's say take rook b1 um maybe i can play just trade on d1 take take take and he's not on the b file anymore so i would be upon in this case he could also initiate the trade himself on d6 actually here maybe i have to be careful because if here possibly e5 is playable attacking the rook and opening the bishop so with my time available those lines looked um not entirely clear so instead i opted to just move my queen so after d takes e4 play queen e6 attacking this and this the bishop and the queen are gaining up on e4 queen is attacking c4 and attacking along the file and i saw this plan of going bishop d4 and encouraging him to trade off the dark square bishops and getting this excellent d4 square and just trying to grind him down from here i think he maybe should have inserted the move work c3 like this would have been a good moment to do it after rook 88 play rook c3 attack my queen and i'd have to go to b5 maybe he could play bishop f1 then i have to go queen a5 i think my queen is not going to get trapped or anything but um actually that line's kind of interesting rook c3 queen here bishop f1 queen a5 because he almost has b4 and if pawn takes take here but i guess i can play this move using the pin so that might have been another moment where he had a better move but yeah as played he um swapped down into an end game and ended up losing yeah i think this move e5 is a nice one for black after we've swapped the queens um this fixes the weakness on e4 and my rook on d4 is dominant if ever he challenges that rook i might just leave it here so like you know the game he played king e3 if ever he plays rook d2 i would perhaps not even initiate a trade with him i might just leave it there and allow him to take me but thereby give me a protected pass pawn and from here the big thing is patience just working our opponent over um not feeling a need to rush with our pawn moves black is ahead upon here probably i'm gonna win based on that but i don't need to rush it okay we're playing uh a guy with a bunch of fours in his name 1836. let's play e4 this game get one game in with that so e4 e5 will play knight f3 i'm going to go roy lopez if offered and we'll make this our last game too he plays knight f6 the berlin i'm going to play d3 and just play it flexible castling is of course possible but this way is a way to avoid the end game there's the famous berlin end game okay a6 are you blundering upon mr uh four i'll just call you that so bishop takes c6 if you take i take e5 i gotta watch out for tactics but i control the c3 square so i'm not sure there are any bishop takes c6 d takes c6 knight takes e5 because you know normally you have to watch out for bishop takes f2 or queen into d4 but i don't see it so i'll take and take queen e7 played instantly attacking my knight but i can just retreat this knight d4 would be a mistake i think because of knight takes e4 so i do want to play to retreat so let's do that maybe he'll play aggressively and go bishop g4 and castle long that's what i'm predicting looks like what he'll do it's castle short i still got my entire queen side i have to move out castling long he does get pressure on d3 but all told i like my position i'm up a pawn all right so i want to develop but i think playing rookie one is is quite helpful so i'm going to start with that move if i want to play d4 in the future it is helpful to have the rook on the file there i actually did not see that move to be perfectly honest uh yeah cause now he's attacking uh along the d file he's pinning me so if i take with a rook he's going to play queen takes and he's ganging up on f2 so blunder by me knight takes e4 unless i can punish this somehow but i don't know bishop e3 we should b3 is just a normal move it's not winning or anything i could play d4 but d4 i'm not even threatening to take his bishop bishop e3 maybe bishop takes f3 and then could he play rook takes d3 uh i have rook queen f5 check after that so that doesn't look quite right okay let's do this move so i made a mistake i thought i was going to go the entire session without making any egregious blunder but that has not happened so just like we saw in the last video when you make a mistake what do you got to do you got to try to recenter yourself don't react emotionally get your bearings again take some time you know i didn't immediately respond after knight takes e4 there are some opponents who will like try to play a quick response because uh they want to act like they actually saw the move that you had just played but uh i don't think i have to explain why that's a bad strategy basically just don't compound your error try to regain your balance recenter yourself and proceed as normal like now i just have to look at this as a position with equal material it's a new game from here it's not a game where i was up a pawn and i deserve to win because i was upon it's a completely new game probably one of the most overheard things that you hear in tournament halls for over the board chess is when someone feels they should have won a game they'll they'll stomp out of the tournament hall and they'll say something along the lines of my opponent played so bad he blundered and i just deserved to win that um but i made a mistake i did x and i actually didn't win you know and um you know your blundering can negate your opponent's blundering just always bear that in mind uh chess is a two-way street like that and you won't hear top players complain very much about blunders they make because they know that's part of the game and they know that how you react to the blunder is just as important if not more important than the blunder itself whether you or your opponent are making it okay f5 so he is pretty pinned up along the e file i mean i can move my queen now and i'd be threatening to take his knight like say queen e1 what's he gonna do about it i like queen e1 because that gets out of the pin simultaneously so let's calculate a little line here if queen e1 bishop takes f3 rook takes f3 i don't want to take with a pawn because that opens up my king so queen e1 bishop takes f3 brook takes f3 he's still pinned along the file and off the top of my head i don't see how he's going to deal with that situation so let's come here unless he comes up with something creative maybe he could do something like um i don't know try to arrange f4 like let me take on e4 but after pawn takes then push f4 but looks like he's going to do it this way so this is my plan trying to utilize the pin knight i gotta be careful about backrank stuff our sense of danger should be kicking in here because i have not completed my development yet my night is not out i do think i'm in a good spot here to exploit the pin but i'm not going to completely forget that i'm underdeveloped and my king's back rank is weak so for instance let's say i get a chance to play d takes e4 and he responds with queen takes e4 it looks great for us because we can trade queens but bear in mind queen takes e4 rook to yuan oops a daisy for white we lose the game all right so queen over so if i take and he does take with the queen i should make a developing move like net a3 perhaps i think he's going to take with his pawn so pawn takes and pawn takes after which we're going to try to convert we'll find out so take so here i can play rookie 3 or rook h3 and try to gain a tempo on his either one looks reasonable let's do rift e3 and just blockade that pawn i'm not really afraid of his queen on h4 if he could play like rook d6 rook h6 and attack that pawn on h2 maybe i'd be concerned but for the moment i think i can deal with anything he throws at me i haven't moved any of these pawns which is really nice okay so what's his threat after queen g4 he's threatening rook d1 pinning my queen to my king uh i'm not gonna take on e4 that would just backfire completely you can play queen takes e4 or rook d1 actually let's play knight a3 uh knight d2 also is good knight d2 is probably even better yeah let's go knight t2 gang up on the e4 pawn complete our development and this rook assists in defending d1 and he resigned so a mistake by my opponent in the opening this might just be due to insufficient knowledge of this particular line but he should not allow bishop take c6 because after knight takes e5 i don't think he has quite enough compensation i did make a mistake though right here rookie one i underestimated the knight takes e4 move i have to play a bit more carefully here maybe queen e2 is necessary in order to escape the defile maybe i should play it that way because ricky one i ran into knight takes e4 uh even if this happens to be good for white somehow i would still consider my rookie one move to be a blunder because i didn't see knight takes e4 and it's plausible for him so i would categorize that as a blunder but again it's very important to proceed unemotionally proceed objectively don't get flustered by the fact that you made a blunder you're gonna blunder many many times throughout your chest career and it doesn't stop just because you're climbing the raiding ladder it just becomes more seldom um but because it comes more seldom you and your opponents are gonna be blundering less the reaction to those blunders will be a more visible part of your game as opposed to like earlier when you were you know at the lower rating levels you're blundering left and right it's just a normal part of it now blundering hopefully has become a little more rare and you you really need to manage the spots where you do blunder in order to fully exploit your chances whether you're the offensive or the defensive side the the beneficiary of the blunder or the blunderer himself okay i'm gonna look for one more game and then call it a session here we've had a couple games that were decided by big mistakes from the opponent again like not uncommon um just to touch on a point i mentioned earlier i i did say that i think players in the 1800 to 2000 rating level can calculate pretty well sometimes they calculate the wrong thing though this is one thing that maybe i should have mentioned at the beginning so if you consider calculation in chess the moves you look at when you look at a position uh it's not it's well known that the higher rated player it's not that they calculate more than the lower rated players is that they know what to calculate they do a better job of filtering out lines that don't make sense to calculate by and large though i've found some lower rated players who can calculate just as well as players 300 to 400 points higher than them they can see tactics when they're there they have tactics trainer ratings often online that are on par with very strong players yet their ratings are still lower because often in games they they don't know what to calculate they can't tame that calculation so they spin their wheels looking at lines that stronger players might gloss over completely moreover sometimes they have glaring weaknesses in other parts of their game that's usually the case which kind of counteracts any calculation but um as i've said earlier my default strategy when facing players in this rating range 1800 to 2000 is to try to avoid getting in a calculation war with them i'll certainly take my opportunities should they arise but um i'm not trying to go to war over calculation i'm trying to use my positional edge my experience my better knowledge of middle games my better knowledge of end games what end games i can go into that's the bread and butter and if you want to get beyond this rating level you would do best to start studying things like that okay so i'm playing jake's a beast 1920 is he gonna make a move i can't tell this game might have got aborted actually yeah i think it did so i'm looking for just one more game to wind down this session one other thing i want to add at this rating level if you don't have uh some way of systematically studying your openings and studying games of good players then that is kind of a problem you might want to look into that so one piece of software if you're very serious about chess and you're in this rating range that would be good to get is chess base chess base is the go-to software for strong players um there are a couple copycat programs out there like chess assistant and skid is a freeware one that's not nearly as good but still serviceable but chess base is the gold standard for um here i'm going to play the same variation against his king's indian chess base is the gold standard for doing analytical work in chess because that allows you to look up games you can utilize their database um a very large database you can get databases with you know six or seven million games plus here i'm going to play bishop e3 this is all theory and it's just a a good way to to approach your study you can organize databases and you can dive into a lot of the finer points of chess study that you may have been neglecting up to this point i don't want to get into a debate about chess software in the comments but i i'm of the opinion that chess base is far and away the best piece of software out there okay so here after a6 black's usually trying to play rook b8 and b5 queen d2 is the normal move and after rook b8 in preparation for that b5 move i can play a couple different things i can play rook c1 which is a nice prophylactic move as you'll see if he decides to play that way chess fun play yeah so i'll do this move so b5 would fail now because if c takes b5 a takes b5 knight takes b5 and if rook takes b5 rook takes c6 and white is one upon if you do get chest-based by the way uh or you have some other database that you use um the best way to approach your opening study is to try to link it to the middle game so whichever lines you're studying and you might have external resources to study whatever lines you're interested in for both white and black try as much as possible to find games between good players like grandmaster games using your database and thoroughly dive into what they're doing you know don't just stop at the point in your opening book where it says that the positions equal actually try to find a game or multiple games ideally in that line from that position and see how it was played because that's really what's going to help you over the board having the theoretical knowledge and being able to memorize the moves is one thing you need to look at a lot of grand master games and build up a rolodex of ideas in your head so that you're not just walking into a position blind that you know the moves to but don't know the ideas to and that's very important like 1800 to 2200 you got to do a lot of that type work database work looking up openings studying games between good players you can make a lot of progress in that rating level by doing that below that rating level i wouldn't touch that stuff too much okay so knight d1 is a little unusual but my point is if he plays b5 i'm going to push c5 push past he defended his knight on c6 so i'm looking to play b5 push past and maybe get a pawn trade in so if b5 c5 take i can take with my rook is the thing i don't have to take with the pawn now so this is just a specific idea i didn't make this up this is standard in this line moving the knight back to d1 he's taking quite a while in the opening b5 was not the hardest move in the world to figure out how to play so his time management is a little concerning not that i've been a paragon of uh good time management in this video okay he plays d5 so here i can play e5 i've actually looked at this line in the past they usually play 98 and then white wants to follow up with f4 and i want to try to cramp black's position i don't think i have to play it quite yet though i can play knight f2 first this knight would be um well placed on f2 it's a nice square for it it's round our king provides extra protection yes let's do that and if f6 i'm going to support my center with f4 we've got a pair of nice pawns on c5 e5 let's see where this leads yep f6 f4 so in the event of a capture i'm going to take with my f pawn i want to keep that pawn firmly on d4 it's nice for me that his bishop is staring at a wall of pawns this is a pretty explosive move so if i take g5 he's going to take on e5 i believe it's his point but you know what i can do i can just reinforce my pawn chain i think the um potential damage to his king side is a little more concerning than me opening up my king he's already committed his king to this wing where it's open whereas i have not uh it's not like i can castle queen side but i might be able to hang out in the center a little bit okay bishop h6 so i can give a check but he's undoubtedly gonna hide his king right away bishop g2 is interesting trying to go after this pawn i could also play this kind of forcefully i mean i could i could check king h8 and maybe think about f5 some means to open the position so rook g1 king h8 f5 bishop takes e3 queen takes e3 that pawn on f5 is hanging though another approach is trying to arrange e6 somehow because i think he would love to play pawn e6 soon if he gets a chance i think it's not a mystery he's going to be trying to play that move this is a sharp position so i want to use some time to calculate it properly i'm not going to make a an autopilot move like richie one check because such moves can easily be mistakes it looks so obvious but it could easily be an error you might not want to push your opponent's king to the corner what about knight g4 knight g4 bishop takes g4 it appears to hang a piece but i have rook g1 then and then f5 i can play h3 and try to regain it favorably i kind of like the look of that to be honest again it looks like an outright blunder but it's pretty interesting knight g4 bishop takes g4 rook g1 um he can play e6 i take with check maybe knight g3 to come i'm not quite sure though if i could stuff him with my f-pawn and my e-pawn i'd be doing that on a heartbeat but that also i'm not completely sure about f5 bishop takes e3 queen takes e3 bishop takes f5 maybe keep going back to that knight g4 move you know what i could also do is play bishop g2 and then if e6 then go knight g4 attacking that bishop bishop g7 i can take f6 let's do that thought about a little while maybe a bit too long for a blitz game but i like the look of this move hitting that weak d5 pawn i think knight g4 is a nice idea and enticing his pawn to e6 maybe i can get that in this one i wasn't so sure about because of knight g3 attacking his bishop again let's do that where are you gonna go with that that bishop knight g7 okay hmm so if i take f6 what is he going to take with pawn or rook let's find out so i'm giving up that pawn on e5 but i'm trying to open a few lines i think this is a reasonable plan if he takes with the rook e5 as a potential outpost so maybe in the future like knight d3 and e5 i probably won't take this bishop now for the moment because he is ready to jump in with his knight and recapture so he's poised to do that recapture so i would expect pawn takes but that is blocking his play down the f file so i don't know if he's jumping for joy to play that move this bishop is a potentially bad piece though all to figure this piece out in the future my bishop on e3 that is hmm this guy alternates between using a lot of time and using uh very little time like i thought maybe after knight g3 or sorry bishop g2 he maybe um would have faced a mildly difficult decision but he moved right away but now he's taking a long time on a pretty normal recapture okay maybe castles now let's do that again i'm not sure about the knight takes f5 move and because i'm not sure about knight takes f5 i don't think i'm going to have an attack on the g file per se so maybe we just castle and await further developments you can possibly play queen d7 now i wonder how that works out because um it prepares a rook coming over maybe king h1 is helpful threatening like to take and then play bishop h3 let's try that my rook on the c file no longer seems to be doing much ditto for his work on b8 so i wouldn't be surprised to see these rooks gravitate towards the middle like rook c to e1 if he plays like rook be8 i think i'll play that move i do like the possibility of knight takes and then bishop h3 especially if he takes with his knight because i'd be pinning him he's under a minute now now let's just quickly play this move just for time management's sake simple move i can just whip off uh so okay so if take knight takes bishop h3 what is going on there he can never move his knight i mean knight g3 check pawn takes my knight is protecting that so he can't ever do that so it seems like he's gonna be in a tough spot as far as how to deal with that and if take queen takes i can always play bishop h3 so let's try that this is our intended follow up with the pin he's under a minute i've got a minute 36. we'll try to press that that time edge a little bit plays a reinforcing move maybe knight g4 attacking the bishop yeah knight g4 if bishop g7 maybe bishop f2 followed by a move like knight e3 although i'll have to watch the uh knight g3 counter got to pay attention to that so like bishop g7 bishop f2 h5 knight e3 he would have knight g3 check i have king g2 in that case though hmm she's gonna take i wasn't expecting that so if rook takes i don't want to take with my knight due to the pin so rook takes seems normal now my bishop's defended ooh he's got to be very careful here like bishop g7 that just drops a bishop right knight takes h6 just making sure i'm not missing anything knight takes h6 and because that bishop's defended i don't see what he's going to do that's a piece yeah you just resign okay so black got a slightly cramped position out of the opening in this one um when i looked at this line a while back several years ago i remember thinking that this position was not something rock wants out of a king's indian most king's indian players prefer open lines and uh if they must accept a cramped position they want to know that they get an attack out of it uh i think he did actually a pretty okay job of coping with it um i thought g5 was way risky when he played it but maybe it's all right and i was just trying to reinforce my center yeah like this was an idea that turned out decently well for him bishop f5 followed by knight g7 i would say he used a little bit too much time on some of the moves like in the opening he definitely used too much time like he spent quite a bit in a theoretical position um so right around here bishop d7 he might have played all right in a decent amount of time but after knight d1 i think this is where he spent quite a bit but probably he miscalculated something later on after i put him in a pin with bishop h3 so possibly he overlooked the idea bishop h3 um you know always have to think about your opponent's threats and he might have missed that one it looks a little tricky for him to play now he can't easily relieve himself of this pin so all right on the whole i think we got some great games in against this 1800 to 2000 rating level i think they definitely brought it especially that first game uh that was the closest game uh against mr black cat and uh some of the games kind of went as predicted where i was able to get like a positional advantage uh grind them down um i have a positional style for those of you guys who don't know um i'm not a big believer in thinking about your style necessarily when you're a little lower rated but as you become higher rated and you get closer to master your style does tend to come out more but otherwise you shouldn't think about it too much my style is more positional but i really believe that this is the way to beat players at this level um the the stronger players that i've seen that have tried to battle with players in the 1800 to 2000 range tactical calculation-wise um usually end up losing a lot of games because they're almost calculating something but if you uh if you use your superior positional understanding and you really make a point of that to study that if you're in this rating level if you're at 1800 to 2000 study your positional chess pay attention to games played in the openings that you frequent um you can you can gain a lot of strength work on your calculation too of course but start to make the finer aspects of chess more a priority in your own chess study so positional plan and games so hope you guys enjoyed this and learned a thing or two and let me know if you have any feedback in the comments uh next video we're doing is climbing the rating ladder 2000 to 2200 so that'll be the last one in the series so thank you guys for watching have a good one bye

Channel: John Bartholomew

Views: 331,562

Keywords: Ladder (Invention), Chess, Chess Improvement

Id: qf7NifPzeKI

Length: 87min 22sec (5242 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/LastPageofGatsby]

If there is one person that will keep me in chess, it's John. What a great series.

[u/Drew-]

"Well it's pretty long, I'll just watch the first game."

Annnnnd now it's an hour later and I'm going to watch his other videos.

[u/mucco]

Man, last video I was following John clearly, seeing the things he pointed at very quickly and spotting where his opponents made mistakes. This time, no way... he constantly explained three-four move tactics I totally missed and his candidate moves were entirely different from what I was thinking. Man, I guess I found out what level I have not reached yet.

[u/arottenmango]

Can't wait for 2400-2600!

[u/Wave_Existence]

Even at my low level his higher rating videos tech me so much. Thanks John!

[u/[deleted]]

I am in this range and I recently assessed exactly like John that my main weaknesses are in the strategic/positional and endgame. It felt great to hear confirmation of that as I am already attacking those weaknesses. Studying Chernev's Capablanca's Best Chess Endings right now, for instance.

[u/[deleted]]

haven't even started watching. i just wanted to post how happy i am that this is being continued. i thought maybe getting enough material at this level would take time, but i was also worried that the engine cheater in the last segment upset him!

you do great content, john!

now... for the video.

[u/[deleted]]

the first game was really good. someone mentioned in the youtube comments that it was a theoretical draw. i think this supports the theory john kept mentioning.

it's a great coincidence that john spoke of databases near the end. just hours before this video i set up my own database (freeware route) and was beyond blown away by having these millions of games in my hands to study. finding the top games and finding the outlaying lines that had high success is something i will be doing now that i'm able to think with more focus.

also, thanks for the chessbase recommendation. it seems my version of icofy (last updated sometime last year -- unfortunately discontinued until the creator sees how to bring it back more sustainably) still has a discrepancy of 1 million games despite only the year difference. i do have to wonder if that if i get the program and the database, that i do actually own the version of the database i purchased instead of just having access to it.

[u/LususV]

I was looking forward to 1800-2000 and 2000-2200, as 2000-2100 is where I've been stuck the past few years. That first game was very well played by the challenger, though I think the endgame was a theoretical draw.