Crush the Caro-Kann - Chess Openings Explained

all right thanks for coming out for another episode of chess openings explained today we're going to take another viewer submission that you guys sent in from YouTube so eduardo de la Garza it's your lucky day we're going to be going over the carro con and specifically how to play against it with the white pieces so I'm also it is going to be a sad episode because it's Julian's last day here so he's the guy that's always behind the scenes asking the tough questions and so he knew this is the last class he can go to before he goes to China so we're a bit sad about that but nevertheless we'll begin with the Karl Kahn that begins after e4 c6 so after two moves we already know what the opening is and so okay black isn't challenging the center on his first move but on his next move he's going to challenge with the move d5 so when white follows today we're going to look at just the most natural moves you can play the two Knights variation where you just develop your Knights to normal squares but we're going to look at the most principled reply today which is d4 when black lets you take the center you should take it so that's what we're going to look at today and this is blacks point so on the second move now he's challenging the center alright so he is already he's making a threat here so we need to decide what we're going to do about it how what are we going to do with our epon and today we're going to look at the classical lines that begin after Knight to c3 simply protecting our pond so if they take and they usually do then we'll just recapture with our Knight another really theoretically challenging line for black that's really popular at the top level right now is the advanced variation and then white is just going to get his pieces out to normal squares and castle and that's a there's a lot of cool lines than that but uh that's beyond today's lecture today we're going to look at the classical lines that start after Knight c3 so when black captures our pond we're ready to take back with our knight and now here there's already a big parting of the ways they're sort three main moves they black can choose from here so I could have structured the lesson that we just look at a little bit from one but I'd rather go in-depth and look at the classical line which starts with Bishop f5 in a greater detail so that's what we're going to be checking out tonight which is blacks most common reply there's other moves also popular is a Knight to d7 which is popularized by Karpov and the idea is now when you put a knight on f6 if white wants to trade then you have another Knight that can come to f6 so that's one idea an aggressive idea is just playing Knight f6 allowing white to take and you can pick which way you want to take back usually they take with the Jeep on and they're hoping for some active counter play which is kind of strange because normally when you think of the caro-kann you think of a really solid opening you you know they're not really expecting them to do something kind of crazy like this but it is very possible and I think that's why a lot of people they don't like facing the caro-kann is they know it has a really solid reputation so they you know that's I think that's what a lot of people were asking in YouTube how do you get something aggressive against it and I'm going to show you even in the domain line which which begins with this move you still can get some aggressive kingside attacks and so we'll see that shortly okay for the moment our knight on e4 is under attack so we better move it the most common square to go-to is g3 winning a tempo on the bishop so there's you know no sense in going backwards to where you came from so he's going to stay outside of the pawn chain and the bishops going to go to g6 now if you've never seen this opening before the next move might surprise you you can play a normal move just Knight f3 you can even also consider another challenging line that we won't discuss too much today but bringing your your Knight to f4 to challenge the bishop so that's all another nursing line also you can go to h3 first which that's an interesting line too but we're going to look at the main main move here which might look like something you'd play in one minute if you've never seen it before but it's the move h4 threatening to try the bishop so already black has to decide what he's going to do about this and it is signaling that white is going to probably be thinking about going Queen side already because he's kind of trying to create some weaknesses on the Kings side so if black castles over there he'll have something to attack and we'll kind of discuss the H pawn because sometimes it's a real strength for white and sometimes it's a weakness so that's what we're going to see now almost universal is H 6 H 5 is kind of a mistake first of all you can just play normal and just develop your knight to f3 and play kind of like the main line and the pond won't be better at E 5 and you can also think about kind of the maneuver that we're thinking about before maneuvering a Knight to f4 where it puts a lot of pressure on the fish up and on this pawn but ok so we're going to focus on the main line here and we're going to look at h6 okay you can push right away and challenge the bishop to force them to retreat that's possible but the most accurate only slightly more accurate is a Knight to f3 and so part of the point is you're trying to force black to move his knight here if he doesn't put his night on d7 and he plays ecig soar Knight f6 you'll be able to get your Knight to e5 which is which tends to be good for white and so since we haven't already provoked the bishop to go back to h7 here we win a temple on the bishop he can't really let us shatter his pawns on the Kings side and then all right in the future I will just we'll develop our pieces and in the future if whenever you place this sometimes we'll have the move f4 and it's it's kind of known to be good for white these lines so we're going to look at the main move okay they're they're trying to fight for control over the e5 square and now we push our pawn forcing the bishop back so alright we have a very high rated audience tonight so that's excellent all right yeah get all the good people out of here yeah all right so there goes Julian that was his last appearance ever all right he will be missed so white is thinking in this position about castling on the queenside so it's interesting does he doesn't really want to trade this you know his nice bishop for the other guy but if the bishop on h7 is really strong afore castling queenside because this is an excellent diagonal so it's a it's a testament how strong it is the white is usually willing to just trade it off okay so you don't want to let white take your bishop and then your work is going to end up on h7 which is going to be silly so black trades and we take back okay now we're going to see here white has two main moves East 6th is the normal move from black you know you can play some other normal moves but we're waiting to see which side black castles on so we're going to see that tonight we're going to see what are the plans when black castles King side versus the plans when he castles Queen side so that's what we're waiting to see as white so II 6 is a flexible move we still don't know which way black is going to go and again now there's another branch in the theoretical tree here the move we're going to look at today is that the simple move Bishop d2 which is funny cuz I tell all my students never play Bishop d2 but here it makes a lot of sense but only if you understand what happens if we put the bishop on the most active diagonal possible well actually when when this move is played this move is known to be a blacks best reply so he's giving this check and what he's hoping to goad white into playing is a move like c3 since we're going to Castle over on the Queen side we really don't want to move the pawns in front of our King we want all of our pawns to stay right where they are so that when we castle our King is going to be extra safe so typically let's see typically in this variation if it lets me do it is you bring your bishop back instead of playing c3 that's the move you're trying to avoid and then black has two good moves either he can retreat to c7 while which is fine and then it's kind of like you're playing the Bishop d2 line from before but you've already gotten this extra move which black is going to try to show that it's useful for him and another very popular move is Bishop to b4 again you're trying to provoke white into playing the move c3 after which you know you can still Castle queenside but it's a it's a small achievement for black so that's why very popular especially I've been looking at a lot of high rated games for this this lecture and it seems like recently sorry in this position Bishop to d2 is really becoming the the top trend at the highest level so we're going to check this out today and now we're going to look at a game that kind of you know inspired me for this whole lecture because I was watching it live here at the Chess Club in 2012 in the u.s. Chess Championship so there was a big game between gotta calm ski and yessir Sarah won and unfortunately for yes er who just became our resident Grandmaster again this this week it wasn't a good tournament for him and so here he had kind of an unfortunately bad game as black but it's very instructive so I figured it's it's worth going over and in this game we're going to see the black King decides to go King side and white launches a really nasty attack right away so well we'll check it out so he develops his knight he's just going to develop his Bishop and black is going to castle that's a that's his plan so white is going to Castle queenside if you Castle kingside well this guy is just going to be really weak for a long time so that's that's really undesirable so Queen side is the way to go black gets his a Bishop out and now he's ready to castle and yessir is really a traditional classical player so I'm sure God I was expecting yeah he's going to go Kings side because that's sort of that the classical the normal way to play so I bet that's you know was was in his prep and I he even mentioned after the game that most of this game was was all prep and it was you know some nasty sacrifices that if you just see it for the first time over the board it's really tough to defend so an excellent game by by white here okay so he's attacking plan and I there's a couple normal moves white kind of wants to play okay his King would be slightly better on b1 where all of his pawns are protected he might want to think of out you know bringing a rook in towards the center and he wants to think about what to do with this Knight because it's in the way of his Jeep on so whenever black castles white is thinking about a pawn storm moves like g4 g5 real aggressive stuff trying to get to the King immediately and trying to show okay it's hard for black to get you know a real attack going on the Queen side because I you know white doesn't have any weaknesses here but black is thinking about you know getting active play after a move like c5 that's the traditional break black is seeking to play here so all right so when you're attacking you don't really want to trade pieces but you got to get that night off at g3 so that now g4 is a possible move any move now okay so often they trade and then once you take back they can win a temple on your queen so they used to have a knight on f6 and so now they bring the other one there so it's it's kind of like you know this this night on g3 is really getting traded for that the night here on d7 which is what sort of ends up happening so they attack your queen and now the most popular move is a queen to e2 which was not played and we'll kind of look at the differences at the time of the game I didn't really understand this because you almost always find the Queen going to e2 in this variation and we'll see later that's where white puts the Queen but there's a very good reason why he went to d3 immediately if you after we trade if you go to e to right away there's a very popular endgame that black can go into which is known to be fine for him the Queen can come to d5 a very active Square and the Queen is very safe in the center because there's not a knight that can go to c3 and harass or kick her away and it comes with a threat okay black is going to try to take our a pawn so when we defend our pawn black is going to try to trade the Queen's and we're going to go into this endgame so which is known just to be a you know decent for black so white can certainly play this way and there's a lot of games that have gone this way it's actually the most common way to play but he's trying to avoid that that end game and he's trying to play you know a longer more aggressive game he's waiting for black to castle so he can go attack them so he doesn't want to trade the Queen's he's trying to win quickly because now after d3 if you try to do the same thing and again I play the move c4 and you want to trade Queens I can transpose until line we just saw I can take your queen and you'll take back and then we'll we'll have that endgame again or I can try to keep the Queens on the board I can play a move like Queen b3 and now I have ideas like my rooks coming to the e-file my Knights jumping in quick maybe I can get a quick d5 in your King is still in the center so you know your Queen can actually get into trouble right there that's not the ideal place so now it's unlikely that uh Yassir will be able to train into an endgame and I mean both of these players are known for their endgame technique so you know it's something maybe they both would like to do but god I was in a real fighting mood this game so that was good okay so black Castle kingside we know where his king is now and I guess I'll I'll see I'll ask the class now we're going to be really aggressive we're going to go attack so what do you think is a good move for white in this position but what we're really going to do is we're going to attack over here on the Kings side so we're going to look for moves that are you know attacking over here in this general area yes 95 is definitely a move to consider it wasn't played here though it's it's the kind of thing that will be played at some point that's definitely where the knight Knight is headed but okay but he didn't go there just yet he played a really aggressive move oh sorry actually he waited a turn sorry yeah just parked his King over on b1 okay extra safe we're protecting all these ponds and now after a black plays his uh his break okay now we see the the very aggressive move g4 so he's he's sacrificing upon he's saying you can take my pawn and then I'll get an open G file and then I'm gonna go check mate you and black is kind of compelled to take this because if you don't take it if you just wait for a second White's going to be able to play g5 and now he has a hook so because you moved to this pawn I'm now White has something that he can attack and now he can force something to come open either I'm taking your pawn or you're taking my pond and then files are opening up for my pieces so black feels compelled to take it pause yessir is kind of famous for saying you know I'm a pawn grubber whenever I can take a pond I'll take it and okay that's a good idea whenever you you can take it you can get away with it if you're not getting checkmated then you're up a pond so okay this position has been seen several times before but Kamsky played a relatively new ish move in this game in the old days even though white is threatening this really big fork where he's attacking all of your pieces you can actually get away with one of these moves like just attacking I'm letting them take and then you know just things like this are going to be really dangerous and there's there's lots of compensation for white and then I was wondering what the computer thought nobody's ever played this move but the computer also likes it you still get all your stuff forked but then you know there's a lot of stuff that you're attacking of blacks so you can do these such moves but this was all all goddess prep still he played on Queen d2 just protecting his pawn very sensible and now he's going to you know continue with his attack so he's probably going to bring one of his rooks to the G file the knight is definitely going to the e5 square this bishop has you know some intentions of sacrificing on occasion so it's already it's a very sharp game so yes there anticipates okay there's a rip that's coming to the G file which means if if it was White's turning he got to put his rook here with you couldn't retreat because then you'd be losing a very important pawn here because of the notice the pin that we got going on on the G file so he can't take back because uh because of the rook so okay so he you also saw that coming and he so he got his King out of the way so that when calm Sookie does put a rook on the G file he can move his knight back safely obviously he doesn't want to give up a pond like this so he's not like he can play a five who protect his knight so he's got to go back all right and now now what to do first things first he realizes okay sometimes black's gonna going to take here he takes this pawn first and now he's threatening discoveries there's a rook and a queen on the same file so all right he's thinking about sacrificing his bishop so if the Queen doesn't move again if we even flew past then we're taking this pawn we got threats on the Queen and we got threats on g7 which would be a disaster for black so he's got to move his Queen out of the way so Queen c7 all right he gets his knight to the square we know it's going there he takes back the C pawn and now an amazing move so it was fun watching this live because there's a very typical sacrifice that if you have seen these games before it's a kind of sacrifice you sacrifice on the same square that you'll see over and over again in these lines sometimes with the bishop sometimes at night let's see if we can find what was his big sacrifice so an amazing move was played here and the computer doesn't like it at first so even the computer doesn't find it until you tell it and then it knows and then it's you know says oh wow that actually is really winning so so I played an excellent move here yep yeah what did White play here I'm letting I'll give the audience a chance all right it's a tough move to find it's not one you you would think about so I'll I'll reveal the big move he took the H pawn so he's giving up a piece what could this be well you can't really decline so let's see you know I mean you can't let me just take your H pawn for free you have to accept it and now alright so you're down at peace which all right but now he plays even another great amazing move in this position so yeah this was a really inspiring game to watch live because it was it was fantastic and white was still moving fast like he knew all of this so all right so I'll give you one more chance to play another amazing move rook we're awesome whoop computer thinks you should put your knight there but he put his rope there rook to d7 awesome an amazing move and I'll see if we can understand this a little bit the author felt compelled to give up his Queen which is the best move but let's try to understand this for a second I mean what happens if I take with the night what is how does white you know punish black for this move and I'll give you a big hand it has to do with the fact that all right we already have this this whole file covered so that's good so the King really only has two squares available so that's just a little a little hint so we're not going to just trade nights because that would just be for two blacks advantage we got to find a really good move here you have to got it Queen g4 okay okay yeah so if he brings his rook over you can take here with this check I'm wondering what happens if I take here yeah okay I'm trying to not get checkmate it and keep taking all your stuff that's my that's my goal okay but it's a it's it's kind of the right idea but we need a different square so right so the right idea we got to get the Queen into the action so we got to find the right place for her all right and the the real big hint is we're going to attack the H pawn if we could teleport which is kind of how I teach my students you want to look at where your pieces want to be and only then you can figure out how to get them there you know that's how you can kind of make a plan you need to know where do I want to go well if I could cheat I would put my Queen right here on h6 because that would be checkmate but I can't get there in one move but apparently I can I can erase green lines so that's kind of cool but I can't get there in one move so where where should I park my queen so that I'm threatening the H pawn there's only one safe square r-e three so right good good you attacked me but uh bad that you gave me your queen so right that's the right diagonal we're getting very close getting very close right so the the Queen would here go to d2 okay we have pressure here but mostly here so we can imagine let's say if he tries to go here with this night thinking that he's gonna block well he's going to go be sadly mistaken when you checkmate him so the other option he can try is to protect with his king but he's actually defenseless after the move Knight to g4 now I'm taking here no matter what so if your computer you'll give away all of your pieces and then you'll like check me a bunch you'll give away all your pieces and then eventually I'll meet you which is funny so that's how the computer likes to lose and then I take care and I meet you so which is funny which means you know there's there's no defense so that's what computers do this kind of funny when they're losing they just give away all their pieces so all right so that's what uh so that's one reason why we can't in this position take the rook so work d7 is looking pretty good and we'll look at the move he played in the game in just a minute but uh what actually has another spectacular moves the spectacular moves just keep coming if we say okay I'm not going to trade I'm not going to take your rook because I know that I could check made it and I'm not even going to you know trade my my Queen for two of your pieces but here there's another brilliant move that rook that out the white can play so I'll give you a chance again this one is this one's very difficult it's probably the most difficult yet so try to give away all your pieces maybe it'll be right yeah rook takes f7 yeah seems like a like a decent move so your point is if I if I take you're going here and then am I getting checkmated yes how do I get checkmated the bishop the Queen um yeah this looks pretty good so right so I'm probably getting checkmated I can I can block with that's about it so okay so if you take here which i think is a very good move and then you're just going here this also looks a pretty crushing how can I defend a little bit better also again I can train my queen for your your stuff if I'm really trying to bail out but uh okay after a move like this you know still still living on the edge here so you might you might have something do you have something 96 okay so I have to take it take with the pawn the rook take with the rook okay so you're you're on my guy here I'm going to try to hold on trying to just barely hold on it's not looking good for me but I'm trying yeah look I have certain and preventing you from certain access points to my king which is kind of nice I'm just barely holding on to my my guy it's look uh Queen where Queen d2 yeah this is what I was I was getting worried about this move at some point I might have to give away a lot of my stuff but let's see um yeah I'm not feeling very happy about this right so I mean I know that this is this is one of the moves there's actually several good moves if they if they just in this position putting it back to it if they decline there's actually a several good moves for white so I know I knew that that was one of the the good ones and it does eventually win also rook to g6 is another you know very stunning move with the idea being that if you take now you're getting checkmated and all you can do is block and you get checkmated so okay so there's a lot of good moves so we can kind of get an idea of why when rook d7 came on the board Yaser decided he had to take it so that was played in the game so I'd better take the Queen and after the knight takes okay if we're just looking at material black-ass still up some material here but his attack is still pretty strong so now he has a nice little fork he's attacking two pieces the most important thing is not giving up your H bond with checkmate so he must you must avoid getting checkmated so he protects his pawn and now probably the best move is just to take the knight so you might be surprised that he didn't take it he instead played you know move it you might not consider g4 so he's not going for the knight he's trying to get the bishop which is which is kind of interesting so he gets to take the bishop instead of the night but now okay are these guys going to be strong enough are they going to be able to make a queen does white have enough serious tempo gaining moves how is he going to keep the initiative going here well after a discovered attack on the Queen Queen comes to f4 okay we have a little threat also the Queen might come in and start munching up all of the queenside ponds here and that's kind of what happens he's going after these guys so all the big fireworks are over so we're gonna see he just he gets some some passers and now these guys are just just too strong and black is kind of helpless he doesn't really have a good way to prevent all these guys from queening so white just calmly gets all of his pieces into the game and okay once he the point is is he okay alright these guys are going quick so black called it quits which is sad because yes there's such a likable guy but it just 2012 was not his year for the US Chess Championship so all right we'll check out one more game with black castling kingside and this was the highest-rated game that I could find um let's see so this is a choreo converses mahmoud are off from the the feet a grand prix and this was played in 2013 so we're still looking at a really recent game and it was the same sort of sacrifices that you hope to get as white when you when they play the caro-kann okay so we're going to get back to our our main opening here okay and so here it is that the caro-kann with Bishop to d2 okay so blacks getting ready to castle again in this game he's going to go to the Kings side again but at the moment white doesn't know he's still waiting but white knows where he wants to go he's going to go on the Queen side now in this game let's see so he's waiting his waiting move was here you know there's other moves you know you can play 94 that's fine but King to b1 is always a nice move to have in in this sort of position you're just protecting all of your pawns and okay your King is a lot safer over there you won't you know you're not going to get checkmated all right and here are black weights which is another idea so often you know the Queen will go to one of these squares and they're just waiting obviously with the bishop on d2 we've prevented lines that they sometimes pick with the the Bishop to f4 lines because the Queen's not going day five because we would take it okay but Queen b6 is kind of a useful waiting move the Queen often turns out to actually be be quite good there okay in general it's a good idea to have your your queen on the same diagonal as your opponent's king it helps it's helpful when you play a move like c5 and she's she's not in the way on this on this D file so with even if the D file opens up your queen is going to be out of the way and you White Castle queenside so white I can't tell just yet so he's got a wait to find out so okay ninety-four is a fine move but he played kind of a tricky move knowing that if his opponent Castle kingside he would actually have kind of a real amazing move taking advantage of the fact that there's sort of a pan on the e-file because once you castle nothing's protecting this bishop so now what great move can white play here taking advantage of the e-file so this guy he's not really defending the squares that it looks like he's he's defending so I can play this this really cool move Knight to f5 and okay so if you take it which was not played white will take your Bishop and whites going to be a little bit better because of your pawn structure you know you got your here's your majority you got a four on three but the way the pawns are set up you're probably not going to ever be able to make a pass there so why it would just be a little bit better in this line and for example I always play Queen d8 and the rook will come back and you might get your your pieces in here is just a sample continuation but okay eventually your your Knights going to get the boot when I move my knight out of the way and I get f3 in and this is just going to be slightly more pleasant for white so as a as a top Grandmaster he knew okay this is slightly worse I'm going to try the other line which is to try to move my bishops to Knight doesn't take it and hopefully he's hoping that maybe you take and he's hoping you can provoke the move c3 which is going to come in just a second but white again played an amazing move he sacrificed on the same square we saw a sac fights last game and pay attention to this night because he is hanging now so black is threatening to win our night so I guess what should we do here yes awesome that was played Knight takes h6 what's really cool about this game is okay he took back but now okay he's sacrificed but now he just waits what's you know it's like normally you sacrifice something and then there's an immediate follow-up you know you just you go and you checkmate your opponent here he just plays nice and calm c3 and it's funny because in the press conference karyakin are sorry mommy Dourif said yeah i knew when he played c3 that i was going to lose cuz this was all his prep so he knew cardiac and had prepared like all of this and so okay over the board it's hard to find the best defense and he did a really good job and it's kind of funny the computer thinks okay blacks a little bit better because he's up material but then if you keep playing all of the moves the computer recommends suddenly it realizes okay whites winning so it there might not even be a defense it's it's kind of crazy but white could already be winning in this position so okay what to do about his bishops that's threatened well he makes a nice threat okay so we're getting checkmated here so white has to stop the the checkmate so he he just moves his bishop back and now normally you don't get to sacrifice and then let your opponent have a turn to play some defense but there's there's not a whole lot black can do so we're going to see okay we're about we're thinking about getting our G pawn into the action you know one of our rooks is going to come over to the G file again if we're lucky we'll get you know our Knight to a good square eventually we'll make this guy go away so our Bishop has threats and whites attack is quite strong here even if you don't see it right away so black makes a really useful move he gets the rook out of the way so that one of his pieces can go back to f8 probably the bishop you know he might rima new ver his bishop for defense um also we've maybe heard the adage night on f8 can't be mate so maybe he's thinking about you know bringing his knight back for defense as well but ok also such a move is it's useful if I can give it a few these arrows for a second occasionally White is thinking in such a position that he might sacrifice his rook here on g6 that's something that might happen in the future not that it should work immediately but for example if we take this you're getting access to the the g6 square so this is another common sacrifice that there might white might want to try ok it probably doesn't work here black probably has some sub defense but just as an example so the the rook is is quite useful if we go back here on f8 protecting that the e6 square so if you take it we can take back with the rook and not with a pawn and okay so we got to find the move for white so some of some of our firepower is back in the audience we lost we lost some strong players but they're starting to come back so what do you think white should play in this position we're thinking about attacking so it's the same sort of aggressive plan that we've seen in the other games so anonymous guy that just walked in the room all right let's see pongee for excellent um so yeah it would be kind of devastating to open up the the G file here so a better defense is to try to just guard the G v square black doesn't need to think about winning any material he's already up a piece he's thinking about how can I defend so okay there's a there's a few different things that a white can try here but he decided to give this bishop the boot here so that this frees up his bishop so it might be able to do certain things like maybe it's going to try to attack the H bomb and okay we are threatening just our Queens going to take the bishop so the bishops got to move and it's got to protect the H pawn so he played Bishop f8 to make Ben Feingold proud so yeah I always play Bishop f8 that's his rule okay so white played another aggressive move how do we keep opening up the King side here we got it we got to keep it coming all right g5 you can also think about bringing a rook to the G file preparing this move but a g5 right away works and is a pretty powerful you need to get rid of some of these these defenders so it's okay to try it a few more pieces to get those guys out of there because we still have a lot of pieces that are going to be in the same zone as the black king so like had to take and I white takes back threatening checkmate so okay if I get to take take your night with my queen I'm going to win so you had to trade that too and okay so again you're still up a piece but things are looking very scary the G files open this guy actually looks quite strong I got a lot of lot of pieces that are you know going to do some some pretty scary stuff in here probably the best move is just getting off the G file you know a rooks going to the G file so that's again what happened and here it's black played this move which actually is a the losing losing move it's it's just a Israeli gives gives the game away but it's really tough to play black here and over the board even if you're a super Grandmaster it's it's hard to defend slightly better was was either of these bishop moves and in a later game that was played after this Bishop to e7 was played in a game it was a much lower rated game between people they were you know like twenty-two hundred and twenty-four hundred something far below the at the super Grandmaster level but that was a an attempt at an improvement was Bishop e7 in this position but okay also a move like you know Queen to a5 which looks good you know you're you're attacking all the way along the fifth rank will always be met with a move like c5 just shouting the Queen out never letting her come back to play some defense so okay but Queen c7 white also played an inaccuracy here Queen to f3 a very good move okay maybe slightly better is just Queen to e3 staying on the dark squares but okay Queen f3 is fine and now f6 you you can't really play a move like f5 you need to somehow defend your pawn here what's wrong with f5 see if the audience can configure this one out because it's tricky so we're counting on somebody very high rated because it's tricky this one okay the move is kind of a silent but deadly threat you just you double up on the the G file okay and you have some some really nasty threats you know you can't really defend because any move you make I might do a discovery and okay thus I'm 13 checkmate and your queen so something like that would would be impossible so but I felt like you had to play the move f6 attacking our Bishop so okay so we go to a very natural diagonal and now I'll see if we can find White's move here because uh okay these these things where you're winning and you're attacking they're very difficult it's you know it's easy for the defender to go wrong and make mistakes and get checkmated but it's also hard to be the attacker because if you don't find the right moves and your opponent defends really well well then you're going to be down on a piece or so you know you might be down so material so you you got to play accurate here with both sides it's a very sharp position so you have the guys another chance what what what do you think whites should play here so we need to keep the threats up we're trying not to trade pieces even though trading the dark squared Bishop isn't so bad for white because I the dark squares are on the King or I mean that's as weak as it gets okay so as before we want to get on to the G file with our queen so our queen to g3 is a good move you're you're threatening a checkmate and okay black can play here relatively best is just trying to trade some of the big pieces and this would end up in an ending like this in which okay white is up upon but also his position is still you know really good this guy is a strong pawn this rook is going to come up and he's going to be kind of a menace on this this rank here so there's a lot of potential for white and it's you know the kind of endings that you know super grandmasters are trying to avoid because I know they're going to be suffering here for a long time but that was relatively the the best practical chance to survive in this position instead the move Knight c5 was played so very very interesting move and we'll see the point well okay if you take the knight then you're dropping this bishop and we'll see what happens if you take the bishop because that's what was played in the game so it kind of seems like Oh black just you know gave away a piece but he had an idea all of these guys are attacked but he gets one of them out of the way with check so now you you check the white King and then now your knight can get out of harm's way on the next move but okay so white got his piece back and he's still attacking but all right our Knights attack so it gets the night out there's a fork but uh but white doesn't have to part with any material here which I assume both players saw but uh the black still felt compelled to give that the piece back so you need to find a good move here if we can imagine the night you know going back here where could we we put our Queen we're in this position she'd have a really strong threat yeah Queen afore the same idea as in the game in the game yeah Queen h4 was was played same idea so if you you take the bishop you're getting checkmated because okay you have to block and you get you get checkmated here so so rep g8 was preferred so you didn't have time to take the bishop and now we we still want to take this but the problem is this guy so we tried to kick that guy away and we still were not minding him taking our bishop because he's going to be in a lot of trouble so instead the knight tries to block the pawn so that we we can't take it with check okay we're persistent though we really want to take this this F pawn and okay things are things are getting pretty bad so he feels like he has to trade Queens and I so I can accept this ending which is actually going to be really good for him as we'll see after a few more moves here the last move here is really nice okay so we're going to we're threatening to win your want your knight so the only way you can get out of this is okay to try to attack our rook and then here black resigned if we can imagine this endgame okay so he's got to take back our our piece here and now what would we play here with white that would I you know be the reason why a super Grandmaster would resign this ending we got a really nice move and okay this guy looks kind of kind of strange in our back field here awesome yeah Bishop f4 now when your Bishop has two spaces in between it and a knight it's really boxing out the night so here the knight is basically trapped it's got nowhere to go we can attack it with our rook and try to win the night we can bring our King in and okay these guys are looking really strong so with you know the passers and the knight being blocked out and trapped black gave it up here so okay and that's like the kind of attack that you're hoping for with the white pieces when they go Kings side so if you're the more aggressive player and you're playing this line that's what you're hoping for you're hoping that they they go on the Kings side so that you can you know blow them away sacrifice all your stuff so hopefully took note at the sacrifices on h6 we briefly talked about you know rook sacrifices on e6 and okay so there's a lot of aggressive attacking plans there so now let's see what happens if black decides to go the other way and castles Queen side okay so we're going to go go Queen side this time all right so we're going to get back to our position okay so here this time black is going to try a different path and so often the way that they begin is where the Queen to c7 obviously can go to b6 as well so okay all normal moves so far now white would kind of prefer to get this this Bishop to a better square it's kind of done this job on on d2 it's you know you might it might have been thinking the whole time that that's kind of a strange piece why is it why has it been there so that explains the move g3 he's trying to make sure he get onto this nice long diagonal the nice thing for white about these positions where the Castle queenside is okay so already there's you know some weaknesses on the dark squares because you know the move c6 was already played and that's also for the same reason why they would like us to have a pawn on c3 that they try to provoke in some earlier lines but uh but okay here they trade this prevents you know they're trying to sometimes they'll put a bishop on d6 just to prevent you know any any Bishop f4 ideas but in the game after the Queen was kicked okay the bishop did come to a to d6 so alright the plans are a little bit different for white his advantage will probably be in NYADA for on the three over here that he's kind of got going on so often you'll see in the endgame White's gonna be pushing all these ponds and one of the big questions is that the pond on h5 is it strong or is it weak so we're going to we're going to find out but white gets his is going so he's gonna play on that side sometimes you know he's gonna play them of c-5 if at the right moment and okay c5 wasn't the only move that that could be played here I had when when I when Julian was here I guess I was showing him the game before he was thinking about this move but actually it runs into some trouble one of the things to know is whenever white puts a knight on e5 you you want to be able to take it with your bishop but then you need a nice square for your knight so in such a position it would be hard to ever find a really good home for him so okay so that's not not the answer okay so we'll see what will white what have black shows here so after c5 he's just thinking about taking so what improves is a bishop now this is a nice diagonal for the bishop so it's much better than he was on d2 and after you take we can take with a knight threatening to go to b5 and then winning is a trying to get a stark squared bishop off the board to exploit the weak dark squares and it provokes black into playing another move which really weakens all of these dark squares around the king so white might now be thinking about how can I get my my pieces into like g6 to b6 to a7 obviously if we had if our Bishop ended up here for a night ended up on one of these squares we'd be looking pretty good so he first gets out of the way he's thinking about bringing his rook over so he can play moves like c5 keep expanding and he'll prepare it nice and slow which is was just really instructive he takes his time he gets his rooks over okay black doesn't want his king and queen on the same file this white has a rook and now now a nice move if it moves okay at Knight to b3 kind of a dual-purpose move so he's thinking about moves like c5 also he's letting one of his pieces go into that a five square so maybe the bishop will go there attack the Queen okay and here so c5 could be played immediately black is thinking about a trading cool so that explains why why trotters woke up to a four it's important to make sure you're aware of blacks threats in these position it's always black that wants to trade queens in the caro-kann because normally the the pawn structure will be favorable in an endgame where maybe this guy will be weak if the Queens are off the board my knight is just sitting on f6 there's gonna be a lot of pressure on your pond and in an endgame that might turn out to be a bad news for white so row K for prevents his idea okay and so again you know c5 can be played any moment now but white is really chill in this game he's going to go slowly he knows at some point he's going to play a move like b4 he's going to expand over there but right now he's creating a little square for his King so we'll see both players they just kind of slowly improve their King because that's what strong players do they just slowly they improve their pieces and only then do they do stuff when everybody is ready okay so this guy tries to stay by the dark squares okay you can also go to two f8 but all right he's trying to stay in this neighborhood to protect some of these squares and now white goes in all right so he's attacking the Queen he's getting out of the the be pawns way so these pawns are starting to come up the board and then we got a three-on-two over there so that's where were White's going to win in an endgame okay so now he decides to trade some some pieces here and now this endgame looks really nice for white these guys are quite strong the King is quite safe on a2 there's there's no real threat to them at the moment and these pawns are just slowly advancing and notice how hard it it is for black to get these guys going he's got the four on three over here but he's having a difficult time you know getting him to move the pawn on h5 is doing a good job in this position you know it's really cramping black and so somehow black you know needs to get these sorts of moves in he's got to get these guys rolling down the board to create some some counter play but it just never happens alright so the knight goes back where it has some pressure on the H pond and whenever white likes he can take the knight so he took the knight all right and why it just keeps going up the board now okay his knight has some good squares to retreat to all right slick the Queen had to move and so you can move the knight to up to c4 which is fine you can go to b3 which is fine and you can just keep the pawns rolling up the board this is the the basic strategy that the whites should know when he's when your opponent castles Queen side is you're going to need to get your Queen side pawns going up the board all right so now you can't play b5 immediately because your knight would be hanging so he brings the knight back and okay every time he can push she just pushes his pawns alright so takes and all right yeah it's right you don't really want to take and let the Queen take on a6 so he tries to keep it closed which also has some some problems this check is that it's quite annoying okay so what do we do to pin pieces we attack pinned pieces and that's what happens and okay so this ending is looking quite good for white this Knight is much better than this this bishop at the moment and okay even though there there's a lot of air around the White King he is quite safe so for thinking about teleporting our pieces probably our queen would go to b7 so in just a minute black resigned so now he's kind of powerless against this this threat here so he called it quits I mean if you go back well then this check is also quite quite deadly okay if you have to go here then you know something like this is going to be lights out keep sending in your submissions maybe I'll choose your favorite opening this next week like subscribe and send me your feedback thanks a lot

Channel: Saint Louis Chess Club

Views: 346,962

Keywords: Chess (Game), Chess Opening (Literature Subject), Caro–Kann Defence, caro kann, seirawan, yasser seirawan, serawan, karjakin, kamsky, chess openings explained, schrantz

Id: wUZAyFpMQxw

Length: 55min 10sec (3310 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2015