How To Calculate In Chess

ladies and gentlemen it's no secret that chess is a pretty hard game and one of the most important skills is calculation calculation is the process of coming up with good ideas for yourself and realizing your opponent's best move in the process going down a few moves evaluating the position coming back and making a decision or for my under 1 000 players it's not hanging a piece in one move in this video i'm going to get you thinking on the right track about how to calculate better as a chess player so you will understand videos like this here i take if here i go check if here i go check there should be two king e2 bishop d2 king d2 b5 e3 g8 i take i'll go to page six bishop d5 look at me you will learn concepts like the checklist which is figuring out what your opponent wants to do looking for your forcing moves checks captures and attacks and you will also learn the advanced concept of the process which is coming up with an idea finding a negative verdict with it either fixing it or discarding it evaluating a position coming all the way back and choosing between two options time stamps are on the video player we're gonna do a lot of different fun things here we go so we kick things off with beginners and i don't really know what the rating cutoff here is necessarily i'm just gonna say like the ceiling is a thousand but some of the eleven hundreds and twelve hundreds watching might also benefit from this we're going to start introducing the concept of the checklist but as a beginner you need to minimize your one move damage you need to evaluate what's under attack and what you can do of the one move nature for both yourself and your opponent and let's introduce the checklist two of my subscribers volunteered shout out to mango we're gonna look at their games then we're gonna solve some exercises based on this kind of stuff so here we go e4 c6 first we have the opening stage mango plays the carl khan defense all good d4 knight to f6 not the most accurate move it's slightly better in this position to play e6 so that you don't get hit with this move e5 but still not a blunder as far as i'm concerned this is totally okay now knight to h5 is kind of the first inaccuracy but it's still this is still the opening knowledge understand listen to me opening knowledge and understanding how to get out of the opening is not calculation you need to have a good opening f like set of fundamentals okay here black is able to kind of mitigate the fact that they don't have a such a great position okay but now here we go one move attack over there this move drastically weakens this knight so the first thing that i'm thinking of in this position is to bring in this bishop because that pins the knight and it's very difficult to defend because for example if queen to d2 how do we apply more pressure here queen to a5 and the game is just over like you take the knight and then it's like this and this is all falling apart now what's harder here is what to do after bishop to d2 this is where it gets a little bit tricky and this is where we start applying that checklist number one what does the opponent want well the opponent is just defending their knight okay do i have any checks no do i have any captures yes i have this but that doesn't do anything i i also have this what does that do that on defends the d4 pawn which is hard to see but that will add an attacker to this and to that and that's bad news now what does this do for the opponent this is where it gets hard this is where you have to pay extra attention the knight is hanging but if i look at one more forcing move i attack their knight as well if they take my knight i take their knight we've emerged with an extra pawn but even better we're probably gonna win a second pawn and there is even a chance that we win a rook okay and potentially a second rook potentially not if they defend all the best ways so when you have these one movers beginners you can like immediately swarm weaknesses if they are available that that is like the immediate calculation we will do positions later in this video which are not this simple okay that don't have these immediate ramifications okay black plays c5 not like not a terrible move but uh bishop b4 was obviously a lot stronger now here you take take now what's hanging here okay what's hanging the knight okay that's how the position changes but black finds a move kind of following along with their plan which attacks the knight on c3 that's perfectly good that's a good bit of calculation okay now white plays knight to a4 your knight is hanging your queen is hanging what do you do you have to save the queen but how are you going to save the queen and the knight oh by giving a check oh i like that okay so you're not going to save either of them king moves now this is a problem so what do you do you give another check now white in this position had just moved the king right so white ended up moving the king again but this is wrong why well the knight is still hanging and you're in check so how do you make sure you can win the night and it's not going to go anywhere by just bringing the bishop back because now the queen hangs and the knight is hanging you see what i'm talking about that is how you would do it by moving the king this gives black a full move to play this and now black saveguards their knight they can still lose a pawn they can still lose a pawn but that is how these one movers work bishop back to e2 is a very difficult move to play considering white has already moved to f1 but that is you need to be cerebral enough to pick this stuff up in game flow like oh i can win the night i can win the night because it can't move anywhere but it can be protected and if i just move my bishop back to block by the way blocking checks is a big blind spot for beginners like they they often move the king when it's check or you know they don't want to trade queens now black safeguards now white plays this move that move doesn't make any sense that move is designed to prevent me from castling black just develops and now white plays g4 oh turns out that that move did have an idea and it was to trap the knight and not let the knight escape uh well there you go that's a very tough move to see i don't actually know if that was the full extent of white's idea but credit to uh to white because i'm not gonna lie i didn't even see that in the middle of the game flow so there you go very tricky idea now knight takes pawn free pawn you see we're picking this up now ladies and gentlemen why is queen takes pawn bad why is queen takes pawn bad like let's say you were playing with the white pieces here you want to play queen take spawn oh i'm pinning the knight to the rook if the knight moves i take everybody because and i can flip this just to show you if queen takes pawn knight takes bishop it's check and you lose your queen you play this move because you see this but you forget your queen is guarding your bishop these one movers happen all the time and that is something that we have to pick up on as beginners but this game concluded with the knight getting taken a trade long castle now long castle stop protecting the f7 pawn okay queen f7 and now e6 is under attack so black plays d3 just pushing upon not really not really sure what's going on there queen takes pawn check king b8 now white plays c3 attacking the bishop you cannot take this right but black plays another really nice move not moving the bishop counter attacking the queen danger levels rook t8 very nice move activating the rook queen moves out of the way and now the bishop comes back trade of bishops c4 okay queen b4 queen d1 and remember that at this point the players are in a little bit of a time trouble um so obviously like one movers are getting overlooked now one last thing i want to draw your attention to in this game what is the softest spot in your blacks near the king this you have a rook there right and it would be really nice if you could take there with the queen but again one movers don't work because the knight is right there so that is how you would calculate in the span of a game right there would be this kind of constant evaluation process of what is it that my opponent is doing what is weak what can i capture we're gonna try to apply this in another beginner game shout out to the longtime supporter uh of my uh of my twitch channel in particular um rated 759 now this game begins with the okay a sicilian defense but at 670 there's no such thing as a sicilian defense there are some opening mistakes okay queens are traded uh black can no longer castle great uh white should probably push the pawn in the center because white goes here and forgets that even at this stage there's these one movers right these one movers okay knight takes now white trades and takes with the king which it's not a bad move but uh you have to justify it and actually white does white finishes developing and now brings the rooks to the middle this is all very very smart rook d1 knight d7 and castles what's known as by hand it looks like white has castled the most important moment of the game begins right here this is the typical middle game of beginners black plays the move e4 obviously not bad now white can either go passive with knight back to d2 or aggressive with knight to h4 that is a good move black needs to protect the bishop black does now you can pause here and try to find this this is not a one mover this is a two mover the the whole concept here is a two move tactic why well let's use the checklist the bishop has been protected fine look around the board do you have any checks yes is it good no but your rook pressures the knight and the king is on the other side so what should that trigger in your brain king can't move king can't move okay great king can't move which means that if we add another attacker to this we can win it bishop b5 but who's guarding the knight the bishop you see how that thought process works so of course you take and now all you need to do is attack the knight one more time and you're gonna win it you see how the checklist will fail us if we're just it was just not cerebral enough but if you're 750 and you're playing a five minute game the chance of you seeing this in the game flow is lower because you're you're not that strong yet but that's why you watch videos like this okay that you like you improve by doing things like that okay king c7 now we move out of the way this is still a very good move because you're gonna fork pick up a couple pawns white checks and now black plays this one move blunder just forgetting the fact that there's this and this white takes backs up and brings in the rook okay great now if you move the rook anywhere it's a check but it has to be good if you go here they just take you right instead what white does here is realizes that the bishop is hanging in the middle of all of this chaos which is very good by the way and plays the move b3 perfectly fine i don't hate it knight to c8 what does that do attacks the rook rook moves anywhere we win material rook takes f6 fantastic move king d7 now here white gets a little bit of tunnel vision and takes this pawn i don't hate it but as you get better at chess you pause on rook takes f5 and you go do i have any checks if i just bring one more rook to the party the game is over the game is over you will swarm this king with your rooks and your bishops and black dies like black is dead here it's made in four um which you know is like this the rooks come in and you base you literally just ladder mate them in the middle of the board like this and by the way it's double check at the end which is very nice you can also play the very flashy rook to g6 which is double check and mate so taking one five is fine you're still completely winning the whole point of beginner chess is to minimize your blunders if you can minimize your blunders you will be very very happy and here what's funny is that after rook and bishop remember a couple of moves ago that's where black blundered a bishop on d6 you see remember a few moves later white black blunders the knight on d6 but white doesn't take it but still white is completely winning and you get into some time trouble uh but uh bishop d6 has played and okay black just chooses to resign uh because i guess they're kind of frustrated with their position but that was a great game you see what white did white activated their pieces down the middle was cerebral enough to move the king out of the center put the rooks there that's why i brought the rooks right but still if you apply that checklist uh you can figure things out a lot faster now i want to solve a few puzzles in puzzle rush survival to kind of really hammer this home here we go okay now for this part the beginners are going to have a lot of fun um we're just going to do the checklist and we're going to try to get to 15 using just the checklist okay checks captures attacks rook to d1 um and then take the rook and it's checkmate and puzzles are different because they are already structured for you to be winning but again this is just to get that point home you don't need to calculate that much uh every single one of these has been a one move checkmate or a two move checkmate okay we seem to have our first kind of tricky one our knight is hanging but again apply the checklist queen to h5 they can block with either of these the queen just will just take or if they go king to d8 what you will do is you will jump in here with the knight attacking that king and that rook and on that square you will be protected by the queen that you just moved there you see that's how calculation works knight to f7 follow the money queen f7 okay this one uh well i wanted to go there but the only check we have that doesn't lose material is this one and that also happens to be checkmate in one move beautiful okay well this is an endgame um i mean this is kind of outside the realm of of this of this but of course you just push your pawn and well end games are not hard you need to go make a queen uh okay this is attacking this and this uh all right this is a combination of check and attack we go queen to e1 let's say they take our queen if they don't we have the exact same tactic i will show you in a moment uh and then we take king h2 now visualize rook is down here king is here you have a dark squared bishop the king and the queen are on the same diagonal how do you win them by putting the bishop on e5 so we play queenie one and the second that the king arrives on that square we have bishop to e5 how does the brain pick up on that so fast pattern recognition is a massive part of this that's just the reality if you've never seen this before you need to memorize it it will come up in future games the escorting of the king and then winning the queen you will have a rook versus bishop end game and you will be better or winning right okay knight queen teaming up on the same f7 square that we just saw queen to f7 queen to h7 boom uh this is uh probably some sort of checkmate it's uh rook f5 probably rook h5 and then rook back this is a weird rodeo that you do with the rooks here h4 the everything gets taken so rook f5 i think i'll go up to 10 i don't want to waste a huge amount of time um just solving puzzles okay knight is attacking me here if i take they take back do i have any queen checks all of that is occupied oh but i can go that way and that's actually just maiden one and you see in this position i'm like dead lost but if you look for checks it's all there queen a5 very nice uh we'll do this one because this is a very famous queen and rook you go here and then the back rank checkmate the king has no escape same thing see sacked the queen on the back rank we just saw that a couple puzzles earlier um this is probably some checkmate yeah like knight c2 or or something you have like some checkmate here uh knight c2 king d1 and visualizing that the king is no longer protecting the bishop and queenie one is mate yeah so this is checkmate in three knight c2 boom and uh around here they stop being checkmate so let's pause here for now but you see how we apply this let's move on to the intermediate and advanced concepts okay so intermediate and advanced players watching this the most important thing for all of you beyond the the basic tactics and and all these kinds of things the most important thing to get better is to begin proving yourself wrong and identifying your opponent's best moves stop only calculating for yourself so you need to find an idea that's called the process find the negative verdict of that idea and either fix it or abandon the idea completely if you find an idea and five things about it are good and one doesn't work at all there is not a five out of six chance that it works it means it doesn't work i don't care how many positives you see and i will show you this in the following example i had a blitz game the other day okay and this was my position i'm playing with the white pieces and here i am completely winning uh in in case you can't tell my attack has clearly succeeded i would really love to play the move queen to h8 hunt the king down and the move that i saw here to create a box by the way feel free to pause and try to find the move um the move that i saw and also while evaluating my opponent has no counter play is bishop to f6 and the idea of this move is that while it just attacks the bishop if they take take the king is just can't escape the only move here is king to e8 right again only move because otherwise it's made they can sack the rook on c3 but only move then i was going to go here and hunt the king right and then once i get here i get in with my queen and my rook the game is lost i mean the king is just lost but i started coming up with some crazy ideas i was like can i sack my queen and the idea of this move is to go here check if the king goes to the back rank it's mate so king g6 okay and now i wanted to go rook h3 with the idea to go check and mate ladder mate that was my big idea i was like the king has no moves and there's no checks i'm so smart and i spent like 30 seconds my chat was yelling do it do it do it do it do it i was like well how does what is black gonna play here well they have to stop my idea by playing the move f4 and then i was like well i'm so smart i'm just gonna move up one square and go to g4 and g5 instead and then i had a brain blast and the craziest thing is i had this brain blast back here that's the thing about chess you can't play the moves and then do you have to think and i was like well take here here here rook h3 f4 rook h4 visualizing and a lot of you asked me how to get better at this practice that's it just practice and i was like what about e3 so the pawns are here and the king will run out on the light squares and you know what the craziest part is after that entire sequence of moves oh i apologize after this sequence of moves that is literally the refutation black plays e3 and escapes and it's actually a draw if i find like some insane computer move but i discarded this because i saw this and instead i played the simple move bishop f6 and i ended up winning the game some while later although i hung a rook in a time scramble but again time scramble aside that is how you find negative verdicts and the thing is the most important thing is um i will show you one more example really quick of a daniel neridisky calculation which you probably saw in the intro uh you have these positions which are like on the verge you are on the verge of winning and losing so it's a bunch of only moves take a look six queen f8 bishop g7 if queen f8 king f6 queen h8 king g5 f4 king g4 h3 king g3 queen takes d4 rogue d2 m8 okay so i literally i have the game here in front of you the of the clip that you just saw and daniel naredinsky here was calculating rook f2 check king e1 93 here and rather than checking weaving a net around the king and this move threatens rook d2 as well as c2 checkmate all he had to calculate here was the checks you understand like positions like this where it's very clear what the opponent can do to you that's it and he calculated queen h8 here if here bishop blocks if queen takes that doesn't stop the checkmate okay great does that mean you play your idea no because he needed to also calculate queen f8 and now the king cannot run to h6 so the king has to go this way now the queen gives this check only move king g5 and what happens if the pawns attack you he said f4 king g4 h3 kg3 king is safe doesn't matter if the again because the bishop is not involved in the checkmate attacks right so then he calculated h4 and then he was like oh my god i think that works and it did he was a hundred percent right rook f2 check all the way back here he had to calculate rook f2 king e1 knight d3 king d1 c3 queen uh f8 king f6 queen h8 king g5 and then the king runs away however ladies and gentlemen what if what if i edit this position by just one move and i move the h pawn forward does rook f2 check work now rook f2 king e1 knight d3 king here c3 no it does not why feel free to figure out what the difference is the difference is that i give you uh this check you have to go here and then i give you this check and you have no escape because my h-pawn is covering g5 you see that when the king is on f6 and queen h8 the king has no escape because every pawn is covered i mean every pawn is covering the king's escape squares the major difference there is the positioning of this pawn and therefore you would rule out the move rook f2 and you know what the crazy thing is this position's still winning for black if black plays key h6 voluntarily and just goes for a run just goes for a run position is still completely winning which i find fascinating um and for example if g4 here trying to prevent the king from escaping then this does work because you have now softened up the f3 pawn so i can checkmate you by force with this this and c3 and the same idea because again you will block that's the major difference so uh well that was the daniel naradiski calculation but let's now show the intermediate and advanced players how to calculate positions that aren't so dire where you cannot clearly evaluate you understand what i'm talking about all of these positions have been right along the edge but in many games that's not the case so let's take a look at what that looks like so what i was the line i was talking about was c5 knight c3 bishop v7 knight t5 bishop d5 cd5 knight d4 trying to win the pawn on d5 d6 cd ed rook d6 and then he had rook fv1 because if king of sixers knight e4 and king f8 then then my king and my rook are passive so we'll begin the next few examples with me just saying that when a position is not so clear-cut winning or losing for both sides you need a process you need to identify obviously your opponent's plan but furthermore the concept candidate move coming up with one two or three ideas that look good finding the good and the bad responses for the opponent and evaluating now you'll notice with this hikaru clip that he says he wants to begin with the move c5 and the idea there is that he wants to have control of this diagonal but he calculates that his opponent would play knight c3 and here he calculates bishop b7 check knight to d5 counter check takes takes the knight jumps in to disconnect the rook from the defense of the pawn but white plays d6 sacrificing the pawn because otherwise it was going to be lost you cannot take with the king hikaru doesn't even talk about that because knight f7 so you can't do that and if you take with the rook then he goes here and hikaru's really only move here not to get a losing position is to go back and he says my position is passive and the scariest thing is he's completely right he did all of that in five seconds every one of the moves he said was the top engine move and he discarded the move c5 because of this and instead waited and played bishop b7 because then c5 would be pinning the knight and not allow that to happen and for example now if white plays back here uh well potentially he just doesn't play c5 he'll play something else and he'll delay the move c5 maybe knight d4 first or something and then and only then play c5 uh or if his opponent plays c5 well then he abandons that entirely and just takes the diagonal that is the way chess works you have candidate moves ideas and people like hikaru do them instantly literally bang bang bang bang bang but let me show you a few examples from my own games okay so let's begin with this example i actually played this game about two hours ago was just hanging out here and i played some blitz strong armenian international master rated 2700 uh and by the way in armenia did you know that uh chess is a mandatory subject for kids in school like ages six and seven in our media it's pretty cool anyway uh here we have a position where it's the opening and i don't know the theory anymore but from here on out i'm basically just kind of playing solid and simple moves and we go back to the principles i told beginners be solid be smart and don't overthink things and get low on time so i just played a3 it's like i want the bishop okay we traded now i have the bishop pair and i wanted to put my bishop on a3 wouldn't that be nice so what did i play when my opponent played e5 do i have to take no i evaluated this very briefly as bad for me why i give myself an isolated weakness here it's just not good why would i activate my opponent's pieces for him so no that's no danger to me so i play the move a4 to try to play bishop to a3 right rook d8 okay i can play a5 why am i playing a5 softening up the structure my bishop is very strong i want to undermine prevent knight b6 as well right and then here i had a very big decision and i spent some time here how do i defend my pawn now again should i take no horrible very bad candidate move throw it out immediately why would i trade my bishop for that night my bishop is so strong but i did not i could not figure out the difference here between this this and this all ways to protect my pawn and i figured i should move my queen and you know right but i couldn't figure this out i just i just couldn't i'd have no clue what the difference is between those moves because everything my opponent can do is the same no matter what and it's funny i thought for a while and i blundered i forgot that this now is not guarded so my opponent just went bang bang and took my pawn and actually white is still better why massive lead in development black's pieces are very cramped and i ended up just focusing on the queen side i continued with my plan i jumped in i attacked the weakness and here is another very important moment in the game my opponent is extremely passive and using the nature of forcing moves i really wanted to attack the queen so i did that by with tempo i attacked the rook first then i kicked the rook away and then i i kicked the queen out and then i just kept improving my position i just went forward i kept improving my position and i ended up just overwhelming my opponent i'm down two pawns but it's dominant i mean my opponent cannot move the knight cannot move the bishop this is all soft and i want to but it got a little bit chaotic when we had like 20 seconds on the clock but that is how it works and sometimes you just don't know like you just don't know my my intermediate friends advanced friends who are like 2 000 watching this you don't know so just play a move just play a move especially if it's blitz you just don't know be solid and i i wasn't solid i hung up on but it ended up working out um so that's one example now i'll show you another one so this is yet again a blitz game that i played on stream like maybe a few days ago uh very complex game relatively closed position and what i mean by that is we both have seven pawns we both castled queen side i'm under a bit of pressure you know opponent has two bishops i only have one but notice i put a bunch of pawns on light squares to counteract my opponent's light squad bishop and here i played rook d7 why did i play this move well i want to play knight f5 but my knight right now is guarding my pawn okay simple so i play rook d7 and at this point i'm looking can my opponent's sacrifice on e6 and take with the rook they can't play c4 so there's no threats to my position i play rook d7 rookie one no threat knight f5 now i am threatening to take this pawn an opponent here trades now of course what do you take with it's funny of course it's to me it's very obvious g you take with g because why on earth would you would you open the red carpet for your opponent like this doesn't make any sense why would you allow the rooks to no i don't like that let's stick with the g pawn okay opponent plays b3 what does b3 do you remember the very first example we looked at i did this on purpose i prepare for my videos okay so if you made it this far i just want you to know i appreciate you and you should appreciate that i prepare and i try to tie concepts together it weakens this the only way i can get to those pawns is by opening up my bishop with a pawn break c5 but i don't want this move to come with check so i slid my king back and they can't play c4 because d4 is super soft opponent played this and well what was my plan the whole time and remember i'm monitoring this constantly it's a constant mental thought process is that possible is something there boom c5 and the second that happened i took with the bishop because they can't take there would be a fork with my knight then i glue in my bishop with my pawn and then i transfer all my rooks and i'm ready to go and you'll notice as this game progresses i completely shift my focus to this side of the board bring back the bishop i end up winning a knight for a rook and we had low time so we shuffled a little bit here but i ended up offering a kicking out the night activating my rooks and i i just the game was completely decided on this side of the board like completely all because i softened it up with a pawn break now we go all the way back clearly the move b3 was a mistake my opponent should not have played the move b3 but it's also not easy to do anything for example if you play f4 trying to rotate the knight it's not a terrible move but i'm gonna continue to expand on this side because this is all shut down no one's getting in there no one's really getting in down the middle so it's a free pass for me to just attack on this side of the board attack on the queen side that's it that's what i'm trying to accomplish and that is really how you calculate at the highest level it's constant analysis of their threats what they want and what you can accomplish and what based on your moves they are going to get in terms of opportunities okay so let's summarize full screen beginners what you need to do have some understanding of the fundamentals of the opening begin applying the one mover concept to punish your opponent's mistakes and constantly scan for checks and captures and attacks and forcing moves but before you make a move look at their possibilities to you checks captures attacks for them you will see a massive massive massive increase in your abilities as you start traversing you get to 11 1200 you begin applying this process in positions that are not so clear-cut if there are no checks there are no captures there are no forcing moves okay minimize my blunders i'm gonna be solid improve my position make a one to two move plan potentially expanding in the center or improving the position of my pieces or getting a favorable exchange and that is where the middle game lessons start applying but this is a video about calculation so at the end of the day what that means is i have three ideas my candidate moves okay number one i've evaluated to the end bad number two looks good do i play it no let me evaluate number three unless number two leads to checkmate then you don't need to evaluate number three okay i have ideas one two three one is bad two is okay not bad three also not bad i can't tell the difference that's where your experience comes in sometimes you will choose wrong you will play the move it's wrong you were wrong you were actually correct about playing the other move that's chess that's just how it works so that is how you calculate sometimes it leads to checkmate sometimes it leads to a small strategic advantage and sometimes four options look good it's like being at a buffet everything looks delicious what do you choose i don't know you can't really go wrong and that ladies and gentlemen concludes this video i hope it was useful please let me know if there are any comments in the comments section i will happily address them uh but this was a lot so peace out i'll see you in the next video get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 959,144

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, hikaru calculating, hikaru calculation, daniel naroditsky, gmhikaru, hikaru nakamura, naroditsky calculation, naroditsky calculates, how to calculate in chess, chess calculation, chess calculations, hikaru calculates, chess calculating hikaru, chess calculation tips, gothamchess calculation, gothamchess calculating, chess strategy, chess lessons for beginners, chess lessons for intermediate

Id: 9Ga9dP3bvN8

Length: 32min 2sec (1922 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021