How I Learn Openings FAST

hey everyone in this video we're going to be talking about how to learn and study openings and especially the difference between memorization and actually understanding the moves that you're playing I got the idea for this video from Ben Johnson's new book Perpetual chess Improvement I'm also quoted in this so it's like pretty cool you should probably check it out he has pretty much an entire chapter about the best way to learn and study openings and so many of the guests on Ben's podcast have said that is so important to actually understand the moves when you are learning a new opening and of course this is easier said than done that's a very abstract concept So today we're just going to look at one line of an opening that I play and I'm going to show you how exactly I understand the moves that I'm playing and how I go about doing that when I don't have a coach or somebody telling me what to do a book a chor something like that so this opening line is a variation of everybody's favorite opening for the white pieces the London system so we start off with D4 black plays Knight F6 we go for our London with Bishop F4 and now black plays this very testing move an immediate C5 now what does this move do well it strikes at our Center we put a d Pawn in the center and black doesn't want us to keep it there if we take this supposedly Free Pawn Black's going to get some very quick development some tactics they're going to be able to take over the center pretty quickly and we'd actually just rather keep our D Pawn there so that's why it's usually not the best idea to take this Pawn the way we get into the line that we're going to be talking about today is with the move E3 just defending it if black Evert takes we can just capture back everything's totally fine and now we get into the guts of this variation which is the weird looking move Knight to D5 and I've heard this called the crazy Knight variation it's kind of weird looking because black is moving a piece twice in the opening but the idea is that they're going after our really nice London Bishop they don't want to allow us to keep this bishop because this is the only piece we have developed and because if we just leave it there and allow black to take and take back with a pawn we're suddenly going have doubled pawns it's just not the best idea to keep our Bishop on the F4 Square so usually the best case is just rocking it back it's still nicely defended back here keeping an eye on this really nice long diagonal and we're all good the Knight seemingly has moved for no apparent reason at all and now next we have boom Queen B6 this can be pretty scary if you are not expecting it black is being super aggressive right at the start of the game moving pieces twice bringing their Queen out doing all the things that you're not supposed to do giving up pawns but the idea here is pretty simple they're going after the B Pawn and in conjunction with this Knight that has moved a little closer to the center of the board the center of the action there can be some very real threats if white doesn't know what they're doing so there are some options here that lead to a relatively equal position for white but one thing that black has already gotten out of the opening is forcing white to play a very sharp tactical line that most of the time londen players aren't looking for so that's another psychological aspect of the why Behind These opening moves why are they breaking all these rules is to get the person playing white out of their comfort zone so white has some options here that like I said lead to a pretty equal position can immediately play the move B3 just defending the pawn that's under attack I don't like this so much because it weakens this dark diagonal that's aimed directly at our King and if White had our way um we'd also just rather play the C Pawn forward instead of the B Pawn creating our typical London structure but obviously that's probably not going to happen at this point another option that white has is moving the Knight out to either A3 or C3 looking for possibly Knight to B5 potential for trapping the queen if black doesn't know what they're doing but in my opinion if black has already gotten this far they probably have a pretty clear idea of the typical responses that white will play here and how to break them down so instead I opt for a a sharper line which is actually to play the move C4 so black might calculate a few moves in advance here and say okay after I take the B Pawn white can't actually take the Knight because they're going to be losing their Rook so after you know white moves their Knight defending the Rook then black can move their Knight and they are just going to be up a pawn with a queen sort of infiltrating the entire position but that's actually exactly what we want to happen with a little bit of a Twist so after black takes our B2 Pawn we're actually not going to worry about our rook in the corner we're just going to take the Knight and allow black to grab our rook and that's where we lock in the black queen in this corner and suddenly the queen just has no way to escape so now we're at the point where if black plays the wrong move things can go downhill very quickly so if black thinks okay I'm going to trade on the D4 square and get my queen out of here right it it seems like this Pawn is under attack twice should be able to escape unharmed and potentially even up a couple points of material but as soon as the sea Pawn takes well it has made way for our Queen to come in and deliver back rank Checkmate so a better idea for black here is to attempt to bring this Knight down potentially down to B4 and try and go after this A2 pawn and escape with their Queen and their life but as soon as black plays this move we're simply going to snap it off the board giving black doubled pawns on the side of the board and preventing that threat entirely so Black's only other hope here is to bring another attacker somewhere along this B file potentially aiming at the B1 Knight and because we are pretty far away from defending it that is just Black's best hope to get their Queen out of trouble here but our idea is now to go as fast as we can to potentially trap that Queen and not give black the chance so there's not any quick way even though Black's Queen is on the dark squares for us to bring our dark squared Bishop anywhere where it will be sufficiently defended and be able to also attack the queen at least not anytime soon so our real hope is to probably get a knight somewhere where it can attack the queen maybe a knight on B3 or to quickly castle and then move this Knight block the Queen's escape and have the Rook looking at the queen but if we can get a knight in exchange for the queen rather than the rook in exchange for a queen that would be even better especially because we're already down a rook so our first idea is of course to bring the Knight out if we want it here well the best path for that will probably be through these three squares so we'll move our Knight out to F3 to start and now black would really like to get a rook onto this B file as soon as possible adding another attacker so the queen has somewhere to escape but if they do that right now of course we can just snap it off with our sniper Bishop so in order to prevent that black needs to block our dark squared Bishop so the best move for black here is to play the move D6 and we have a few options here all of them are good we can Castle but my move of choice is just to continue with the very simple plan of bringing our Knight over to B3 so we continue with Knight to D2 and now black finally has the time to bring their Rook onto B8 just in time for us to trap the queen with our Knight but since black has already taken our rook in the corner they're pretty happy to sacrifice their rook in exchange for our Knight giving the queen a place to escape we can capture with the awn that's totally fine but then the black queen is pretty quickly able to escape give us a check and it's at the very least going to be a draw so better is capturing here with the queen and this is also good because it forces Black's hand here if they don't play the next move correctly they're completely lost they're going to for sure be losing their queen and the move that they have to play is C4 seeming to give up a pawn but of course if we take it then they win our Knight and subsequently probably going to win our Rook so we have to drop the queen back we can also give a check first but it doesn't do too much in my opinion and now again Black's only move to survive here is the move C3 just providing a space for the queen to hopefully go and they may be losing a pawn at the end of it all but at least their Queen is getting out alive we of course cannot take this Pawn even though it's attack twice because again if we take like this our Knight is free for the taking and we can't take with the Knight because then well we lose our King and that's just an illegal move so instead we Castle here and now it's pretty much the end of the line Queen has to go to B2 and we can win this Pawn now because the Knight is protected so we can take it with the queen and after Queen takes Knight takes we have equalized our opponent has doubled pawns on the side of the board and our pieces are going to be very active it's going to take black a few moves to get their other Bishop out get their King castled if that's what they'd like to do meanwhile our Rook has this nice open file to play with our Knight is in play our Bishop will very quickly be in play if we can break in the center everything is great here so just like that that is our 16 move line that we've gone through and I've tried my best to explain the why behind each of these moves and as I learned this line that's what I was doing too so how do you figure out these moves and the why when you're on your own you don't have a book or a video telling you exactly what to do well the best way is to use some kind of analysis feature and play through the moves yourself if you're worried about a specific move like oh I I understand that this is the move I'm supposed to play the engine says it's plus two but what if my opponent makes this move then play a few moves further in the line and see what the compter computer comes up with in order to refute that move that you've come up with for your opponent a lot of my opening study has really just been trial and error I will play through logical looking moves from my opponent's point of view and see how the computer refutes them and why exactly it's usually pretty clear um why the move that I have made that is not at the top of the list is a bad one after just a few moves into the line so it takes a little bit of upfront work but once you've got it down and you can import those lines into your opening database it makes it really easy going forward when you are reviewing those lines because you will instinctively just remember the why so now if I play through these moves with just a quick reminder of why we do each one you'll probably remember the more in-depth explanation that I gave and it makes it just a lot easier to memorize so D4 and the Knight comes out we've got the London system black striking at the center we protect our Pawn the crazy Knight comes attacking our good Bishop we'll just slide it back and now the queen comes going after the B Pawn we don't care about our B Pawn we'll go after the crazy Knight black takes we take black takes and now the queen is trapped and we have hang on to our Knight Knight comes out attempting to Save the Queen we just snap that baby off the board and double Black's Pawns in the process now we want to trap the queen in the corner so we develop our Knight black pushes a pawn to prevent our Bishop from attacking the B8 Square where the Rook would like to go we continue with our plan and The Rook gets to be eight just in time to Save the Queen by sacrificing itself we will take with the queen not allowing uh Black's Queen to escape up the a file now the only winning move bringing a pawn in closer to defend the queen when she wants to escape we will castle and now Black's trying to escape here we get to win a pawn win our Pawn back and after the final exchanges we are 16 Moves In Black has double pawns on the side of the board and our pieces are really active so when you're learning new opening lines no matter how short or how long they are this is a great way to review them is just go through very quickly explaining verbalizing to yourself in real words why exactly you're playing those moves while your opponent is playing those moves and I hope this helps you with the memorization component of learning a new opening thanks so much for watching if you like this video please consider subscribing and I'll see you [Music] soon [Music]

Channel: Kamryn

Views: 37,276

Keywords: chess, kamryn, chess openings

Id: VAd9qqEgTq0

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024