CHESS STEPS #3 (1000-1400)

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to chess steps this series where i play against my very own subscribers and i go up the rating ladder in five minute and five second bonus games episode three is called what it's called because yes we did actually win a game in four moves there is a timestamp on the video player to it if you just want to jump ahead the major difference in the feedback that i've received from the first two episodes is number one why is this different than your how to win it chess series which is almost the same thing well the difference in that series is that i'm always trying to play the best move i'm just trying to optimize the game and try to give you all the best kind of moves at that moment but in this series i'm trying to play at the level of my opponent as i go up so at times i'm letting them get away with things i'm also letting them hit me with certain tactics and hopefully i'm going to lose a game at some point um and uh the other bit of feedback that i've received is um it's it's a bit more of a freestyle learning and you would appreciate if i kind of threw uh concepts like that we're gonna try to follow throughout the episode i know some some folks do it like that i have my own unique style of all this so um other than that the you know the feedback has been pretty positive it's very difficult to compartmentalize just concepts into every single episode so we are going to try to build on chess steps one and two today against 1 000 to 1400 uh d4 we're also not going to be playing any unsound gambits although we can but uh that's that's more how to win a chess style so um i'm going to play uh d4 d5 okay this is not the the first time uh that we've played against the london but today we are going to play the optimal way against the london system this is a very good anti-london especially if they play d4 bishop f4 if they play d4 d5 knight f3 and bishop f4 you can play uh still knight f6 and c5 but i'm going to show you immediately this move c5 uh and and in general against the the queen's pawn i've already mentioned this in previous episodes the c pawn is your best friend so the reason the c pawn is your best friend is that when the knight goes behind the sea pawn you actually have genuine pressure on the center whereas if you put your knight in front of your sea pawn which is kind of what we did in chess steps one um then uh then you don't actually have genuine pressure on the center your knight drives directly into a pawn so uh as you move up the ladder you need to have certain responses ready against certain openings so for example you can't just freestyle against the london uh you actually have to put them under a little bit of pressure so what i'm gonna do uh is i'm going to play pawn takes pawn and this is a little bit more rare uh besides the knight coming out with the c pawn you also have the queen coming to b6 uh my idea here is because i haven't moved my knight to f6 yet this is very very important there is another way to play against the london that is a little risky a little bit risky but it's actually very strong and that way is the move pawn to f6 the move f6 uh intends to expand on the king side into the bishop in the night why is it a little bit dangerous because you're obviously weakening your king and you're breaking normal protocol with the move knight to f6 like you're supposed to be putting your knight here but believe it or not this way of playing against the london is very annoying so playing f6 and either for g5 h5 or for the center break e5 which right now you can't achieve because white obviously controls it but if you pin the knight to the queen um then you can play the move e5 successfully so right now bishop g4 and e5 are both possible meaning sorry that plan is possible but also the expansion on the king side i'm going to play the expansion on the king side because that's sort of my point and i'm going to just show you how how annoying this really can be for for an unprepared london player that just wants to play their bishop out to f4 again it's a risk but it it could be a risk worth worth taking because in admittedly it's a very annoying way to play uh when you're met with this kind of spiky structure bishop b3 is actually not a bad move so now now here's the thing you have these pawns right so if you move this up you're going to lose this pawn right so where are we going to put our pieces well if you move g4 that move actually doesn't look that bad it looks like it follows our strategy uh and i'm gonna play it i don't necessarily think it's the best move uh and uh the reason is because when the knight comes here i i don't i don't have that much i okay my pawn is on g4 but i've sacrificed basic development for a little bit of space right and i'm a little bit lucky that the queen is is kind of guarding this right sorry that the bishop is guarding this from from the enemy queen um but this this really does look like a 1000 rated game why does it look like that well it looks like black watched a new video right of mine or somebody's and wants a london weapon and here they have this very strange position so uh now what well we can develop in a bit of a strange way but remember we we did talk about playing in the center as well so now that the move e5 is possible which is the other kind of idea of putting that out there uh and now the bishop doesn't really really fight against any of our pawns i am going to go for this move e5 it's a very strange position and it definitely comes with certain risks uh the risks being that our king is open i've already talked about that the king is a bit open on the light squares but we're doing a pretty good job boxing everything in let's also not forget that we are threatening some stuff in the center of the board uh but 1 000 games can be extremely extremely chaotic right so uh bishop bishop b5 pins the knight to the king and now i can imagine there being many many moves played uh my my general rule of thumb is we can either continue to develop or we can attack this bishop if we take in the center then after bishop takes we can't actually take that because we're still pinned so i think a very natural move here would be just asking this like what is it doing right so the bishop takes the knight we take okay this is still equal this is still equal okay now now this this is really uh this is really where one thousands can get lost um and uh and and the reason is there's so much tension in the center here uh and there's bishops nights i mean we we still have to get out and develop if we trade too much then we're gonna open up the board um i'm gonna take this pawn i feel like it's kind of a natural reaction of course developing is also okay we're gonna take take that seems like a fair trade and now and by the way these are like i'm saying these are not necessarily all the best moves i'm playing moves that are safe and sound um now what i'm looking at is okay if i just keep all my pieces on the back rank this is move 12. this is probably bad so what i need to do is speed up my development the best way to speed up your development is um is with tempo so if you can make moves that actually attack the opponent's pieces that's good and the opponent should probably not move those pieces the opponent should try to improve their position if the trade is fair so rook c1 very reasonable move queen a4 yes also a pretty reasonable move and an attack on my pawn so i've sort of fallen behind here in development and um it's you know it's causing me to uh it's causing me to suffer like what am i gonna do and and this is under attack oh man okay so uh i'm going to play rook c8 which is um this is hanging but so is this so this game is is is super super chaotic right and it's an example of you're trying to refute an opening with aggressive play that doesn't always work uh at at the lower levels right uh but can lead to total chaos castles okay so my opponent misses pawn takes and and i guess this um i gotta get my pieces out right so so let me play uh let me play pawn takes d4 uh because i see that that's a free pawn and the bishop's under attack now this is an extremely dangerous position for black like because again i i need a few more moves to get developed my opponent should move out of the way good and now uh attack me uh on on the e file i'm thinking i need two more moves to get settled right so what about bishop c5 so i mean i could have gone to e7 but i think i want that square for my knight rookie one is a menacing move because against rookie one i'm gonna have to protect my my my bishop and most likely i'm going to have to protect it with my king or my queen and both of those things seem very unpleasant okay incorrect because that's not that that's not actually putting genuine pressure on my position so now i'm going to play knight to e7 i am just a move or two away from consolidating and being out of problems opponent needs to be attacking stuff creating threats that move comes too late that move comes too late and i might have r8 here by the way trying to i think we're k8 by the way immediately going for the queen attack right but my plan was to castle i'm not trying to play every best move i'm trying to castle get to safety okay now my position is beginning to make a little bit more sense um and uh rookie one finally arrives uh my bishop is under attack i can protect it i can move it i'm not trading i'm not trading because there's no you know gotham told me in a video i don't need to trade bishop for night unless there's a very good reason not to mention that that comes with checks so don't just auto snap uh i'm gonna move my bishop to safety i don't think it's the best move but the bishop is kind of safe this knight is kind of protecting the infiltration square of the enemy knight i don't know it's a tense position very very tense position right now rook a8 is still possible and now that that move is what you should be thinking about because you should be thinking of maximum danger how could i put my opponent under maximum danger the move rook to a8 comes at a moment where the queen's just got nowhere to go and my opponent forgets right they forget right and now they might blunder again they might blunder again usually one blunder follows another blunder but right now rook c1 okay b4 it's actually a pretty good move uh i'm gonna go man where do i move my bishop um okay let's go bish uh d6 gotham said to trade pieces when i'm uh when i'm up but i'm forgetting the night the night is being hit twice and my bishop was protecting my night oh no who's gonna take my night now is it gonna be the queen of the rook right queen trade maybe if we get that on the board i still have a very strong pawn here i don't know rook takes is definitely the best move i just want you to know rook takes to combine the queen and the rook right so if the rook were to arrive then we need to worry about getting checkmated right right so now my opponents also there's an element in this series that you might get nervous because you're just not you're like why the hell is gotham just losing against me but that's the point so i'm having fun uh rook takes uh okay opponent completely misses it completely misses that my knight is hanging oh my gosh what is the point you want to attack my pawn right um so now obviously i'm thinking about harassing the queen i'm thinking about rook takes pawn i also i'm like oh my opponent wants my pawn what if i push it a lot of us we forget about continuity like we can just push the pawn it doesn't necessarily have to stay on that square right the the the the nature of uh of peace is just stagnating right and by the way this knight has been trapped the entire game the knight just can't make it back into the game but it's very common mistake for players continuity you used to control that square i'm gonna play here thinking i'm gonna trade but boom the knight is gonna jump in rook c4 okay that attacks my bishop in the pawn tunnel vision though tells me i wanna promote so let me play bishop to b3 so that i want to go pawn push but i'm forgetting it was a fork and my king would get hit but white might forget that the check comes and you don't actually have to protect the rook right but if you sidestep with the rook i'm going to push push rook d2 you see see what i'm saying now there's this i'm like [Music] what if i go here and here that's back rank oh yes that looks really good i'm going to take this and and okay check like hmm move to safety and now i see back rank now that that rook went up and my opponent thinks that this move escapes mate but it doesn't rook d1 comes i mean rook a1 and now i'm gonna take always remember when you make a fort and a getaway square for your king it has to not be covered by the enemy long diagonal piece and ladies and gentlemen that is how a 1000 rated game tends to go that right there that what you just saw is a pure 1000 rated game now a couple of things right off the bat um while i do think that c5 in general is the way to play uh against the against the london system as you saw in this game this f6 system while it can be very very double-edged and annoying it's not for the faint of heart um it's uh it's not a bad way to play the problem is that here even though even though after all of this this is actually the best way to play like the computer thinks that you know playing like this or for example um playing something like uh g5 and then and then knight h6 very unorthodox development of the night to try to play knight f5 and take the bishop and then finish your development uh with something that looks maybe like this take take bishop g7 castles and then e5 in the future um this like is okay but uh it's risky and the truthfully the absolutely optimal way to be playing against the london is to put a knight on f6 then c5 and then play with queen on b6 to go down to b2 and that that might look something like this get your light squared bishop out and then try to expand on the queen side with uh or taking in the center and playing on the queen side this is the best way according to top level theory uh this is if you're looking for some sort of swashbuckling action and um yeah i mean this is the risk is that if you don't flip the switch and go wait a minute uh i'm actually not doing so well here like this position is equal but it's extremely dangerous because you just have all your pieces on the back rank and i actually didn't i didn't play the best and at this point i i actually think it's it's plus five it's plus five for white if my opponent had played rookie one and the point is that like for example if i'm just gonna defend like this believe it or not because i'm so far behind in development my opponent actually can just sacrifice so there's these ludicrous moves that bait the king out into the open like come to me and for example queen b3 and there's just it's just not easy it's just not easy to to protect my king right even rookie one in the future um but because my opponent played rook d1 and queen a6 now they're lost they go from plus five to minus four this is a nine point swing because here i could have played rook a queen b7 and bishop takes c4 and i'm up a piece i'm just i mean i'm up at night and that's actually what ended up happening because i i changed the gear completely to castle right now the queen got stuck in like i said maximum danger you always have to be thinking about that right here was the critical moment opponent absolutely had to take advantage of my king being stuck in the center but that's life you live and you learn uh if you'd like a little bit more solid way to play against uh the london then well there's many ways like that but f6 g5 is a pretty interesting and exotic one uh for this next game i'm actually gonna jump uh to play against the highest rated player believe it or not so uh and um against the highest rated player because they have to go against the highest rated player we're actually going to play some theory so i'm going to play e4 uh and my opponent plays e5 so there are many many good ways to play against e45 there's various gambits i'm going to play knight to c3 so i'm going to be playing actually what i recommended my uh my my e4 course which is the vienna and my opponent plays a very interesting move this is called the jura vlove counter gambit and they immediately put pressure on my knight so there's a couple of things that you can do here you can play f4 which is uh which is kind of the vienna gambit style and normally the vienna is either at knight f6 f4 which is the vienna gambit or knight c6 with bishop c4 uh and etc etc but if you let's say you're like 1400 you've just got my gotham e4 course or whatever wherever you get your courses or watch youtube videos and you see a new move like what the hell is that well i know my plans in the opening are either to play f4 in gambit style uh queen g4 to attack g7 is a common idea um okay yeah let's uh let's go queen g4 so queen g4 attacks the g7 pawn and i'm just gonna very quickly show you all why do i know about queen g4 well i know about queen g4 because in one of the vienna things that i studied right queen g4 is a move to attack the g7 pawn in the copy cat variation so because my opponent played bishop out i'm gonna go for queen g4 do i know it's right now on 1400 i have no idea if it's right or not ah now after queen f6 we have knight to d5 we know about knight to d5 because uh we know that the knight in a move ago actually could have gone there and and it's it's very natural to react with the move knight to d5 but i'm like well the bishop's just gonna move back right now there's a major difference and i actually think that black just lost the game i think that because the queen has to guard g7 and b4 i think black is just straight up losing i think my opponent blundered on move four i would almost want to give them a rematch actually because i feel like this is a little bit too short for the series um i'm gonna ask if they want a uh if they want to rematch but but that that that's that's the advantage of learning these these openings as you get to 13 1400 um and it's actually just devastating here because if you move the queen i'm going to take the bishop and then i'm going to take on g7 um so i i don't know yeah so my i mean my opponent is just going to i guess give me a piece uh i'm gonna ask my opponent if they want to redo i know you're not supposed to yeah i asked i think we're gonna do it okay for the integrity of the series we will do it i just told my opponent not to play queen f6 all right so we're gonna do e4 e5 but there you go that's how you win in four moves tell you when in four moves bishop before and i'm gonna i'm offering my opponent the opportunity uh to just not play queen f6 so maybe g6 but again folks that's that's welcome to the big leagues the venom in these openings is unbelievable the vienna is one of my favorite openings in blitz i don't play it in classical because uh it's it's equal for black and it's not played at grand master super gm level because it's equal like the whole point of openings at the meta level is to equalize you want an equal equalize like a position where you want to pose problems to your opponent at a microscopic level maybe with white um and uh and with black you're trying to equalize so the super gms they know how to equalize but below a certain level i mean nobody knows that equalize and chess is supposed to be fun you're supposed to learn i mean so bishop takes c3 right now i'm starting to think about queen takes g7 anyway i mean i'm thinking do i just take back can i just take on g7 regardless i don't know because this bishop still kinda i'm gonna say oh you know what i'm gonna try to be a little bit fancy what if i play queen takes g7 anyway right okay bishop takes d2 check nice move that is a very very nice move great move uh it's important you don't just play queen f6 here because i'm gonna trade and then win your bishop and keep my pawns together bishop takes uh bishop takes it two is an excellent move because it's called a desperado so my opponent's gonna lose the bishop anyway so what they do they sack it with check now i take it now they're going to play queen f6 so they're going to avoid significant material loss great that is a much better version than what my opponent just got right um do i trade queens or do i go all the way back i'm 1400 i feel like you know what queen trade is a is fine queen g3 is a waste of time i want a long castle but first obviously i have to deal with this and since i want a long castle the move f3 is actually not so stupid now on the other hand you can put your bishop here but it's passive and what i mean by that is 1400s think more long-term they think yes i'm temporarily solving this problem but my bishop is what gonna stay there forever no i mean i want my bishop out in the open right so let's loan castle okay great i have seven pawns opponent has seven pawns i have two bishops they have two knights um we both have seven pawns which means that the position is relatively closed and in positions like this you you you're looking at pawn breaks but you're looking at pawn breaks that don't create massive weaknesses which is you know something like e4 is a bit of a massive weakness you also would like pawn flexibility and what i mean by that is if you play a move like c4 you have a gaping hole on d4 so you want to maintain maximum flexibility with that i'm going to put my knight on e2 and figure out where it's going is it going this way is it going this way bishop e6 is that under attack no actually believe it or not no because i can trap the bishop but i don't know that i'm 1400 i'm gonna play king b1 because you long castle you might as well play king b1 right okay right might as well so now where are my opponents pawn breaks in a position of seven pawns i just made a video on close positions d5 uh decent pawn break right could be something okay h6 is kind of you know h6 actually is uh potentially brilliant because um maximum danger tells us we have to look at attacks on the pieces right and i think my opponent wanted to go long castle but my opponent saw the move bishop g5 right so they saw bishop g5 which would have pinned the knight to the rook and they played h6 that's a great move i thought it was actually silly at first but i'm like ah i see what your point is i was like i don't know what that's funny um what do i do position is completely equal like i mean just simply completely equal i want to develop my bishop right um so where am i going to move my knight am i going to go to c3 am i going to go to g3 can i take some space and then put my knight behind it very committal right i'm ver i'm very committal if i do that uh let's put the knight on i'm trying to think like a 1400 let's just put the knight on g3 i don't know i want to move my bishop out maybe bishop here and bishop here to double the pawns doesn't seem like a stupid idea right that's the only reason you would trade bishop for night um and also knight f5 is actually a pretty reasonable move so i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna play this i don't necessarily think it's best but i see that because my opponent gave me a weakness i'm gonna i'm gonna go and attack it right my chest is relatively simple okay and now i'm gonna say i have two bishops so i'm better am i better i don't know i actually don't know if i'm better because i've doubled my own pawns uh and when i when i've done that exactly that's actually a great you know my opponent's immediately going for it if i go and protect it i lose this pawn because so i i at this point even though earlier this move i didn't really want to play because it was going to be kind of passive i have to i have no other choice danger levels doesn't apply i can't do anything so bishop to d3 the other thing that i've done by doubling my pawns and giving myself this kind of annoying weakness is i've surrendered the center my opponent can very confidently put e and d together oh no no no no miracle blundered again because bishop g5 the pawn was there to prevent the move bishop g5 and immediately blunders but you know what i'm 1400 i'm gonna kick the knight out of the center i'm giving so many chances against mirko but yeah bishop g5 just is huge it wins material because the knight is not guardable um yeah okay i want to go g4 so i'm going to play rogue g1 bishop g5 wins on the spot black would have to move the knight sacrificing the rook for my bishop uh but again i want to i want to expand with my pawns here i miss bishop g5 completely because uh in my mind it was impossible and that happens all the time that happens you just you're just like oh i can't go bishop g5 i just can't do it now bishop g5 actually is really funny bishop g5 now there is rook d6 which did not exist to move ago so d5 actually made way for that uh but i'm gonna i'm i'm thinking about g4 here right so my plan is to go g4 i'm going to do it and it's a blunder i've blundered how how did i blunder well when the pawn takes there is this i've completely forgotten about the fact that when i moved my rook over to push my jeep on i didn't visualize that at the end i would be losing h2 however oh my gosh this is crazy e4 wow so i can take then there's this then i have to move my bishop um my pawn is still out here i can move my bishop somewhere like there i can push i can go bishop g5 again i don't know what to do crazy i can danger level right pawn this um bishop g5 if takes then it's a fork let's say um the best move is actually bishop g5 i i i think if takes takes bishop comes here to attack this pawn but then i'm hanging here i don't know let's do it the best move i think is bishop g5 because it is the most forceful move i have bishop g5 must be dealt with because when they take the knight it's a fork whereas pawn takes c4 is a little bit less forcing i mean the opponent can actually right yeah they can still do that um i have to make sure all of this is protected uh i'm gonna go bishop c4 so this little pawn movement from d5 to e4 gave me that target however g4 is just left to die because the move e4 undermined my my defense of g4 so this is a game that can really go either way uh especially at the 1400 level if you don't see bishop g5 if you miss bishop g5 it's sorry that's chess that's chess knight takes g4 knight takes g4 and um this is under attack but so was f7 right so was f7 uh now here it's very hard to see that there's a move which the knight will go to f2 and attack the rook and that could be very tragic that could be a very tragic way to lose because we're going to lose some material if that happens um man i don't know what to play let's play bishop g5 so we're attacking the rook if the rook takes us we take back and then we're still threatening to take on f7 it is very easy here to blunder bishop takes f7 and knight to f2 right because we we just miss that the idea is not to take our pawn but the idea is to go for max danger that's what i'm trying to teach you all look how they can attack you that is a good move f6 is a uh is a is a good good move um okay maybe just bishop back to h4 okay this can still be taken knight e3 is a fork but not quite because we can take the rook and we can also give a check so you can get out of attacks like this right so i think this is my opponent's idea yes now how do you deal with this rook d4 you get taken bishop back that's the last resort you it's better to lose a knight for a rook than lose a bishop for free so if we just go rook somewhere and lose this that's not good but losing at least this is better but we have check that's the most important thing danger levels now we have danger levels again we can move the rook but we can also take i'm gonna take there's a rook hanging here but now my opponent's gonna be like wait a minute but i have rook f8 and now there's a bishop hanging and this is hanging craziness but there we can attack the rook again it's crazy it's an insane position right completely insane position um rook f8 is a is the best move here probably and and now as we we get to the end game both sides have passed pawns there's an f pawn and an e pawn both sides my pawn is probably more vicious it's supported by two bishops this king is quite far and cut off and my opponent has no they reconnected um knight takes d1 bishop takes h8 and now f6 f7 f8 is a massive threat so is e3 e2 e1 in fact my opponent is faster but e3 f6 e2 f7 e1 we queen with check so there's f6 e2 right f7 f7 but you know the craziest part is there's check there's check and if i take there's queen with check oh no but i'm a little bit lucky here because number one i can take with the bishop and i cover promotion you always have to look at checks i can take with the bishop cover promotion yes so right now i can just play this and the game is over but you also have king c2 if you really need it you can queen you can avoid the queening with the check with king c2 but then there's other checks with the knight and it can be a little bit insane this is the easiest and it's a little lucky a little bit lucky it was there but now by the way um at the 1400 level you can come back and win the pawn but we actually just have a mate queen c8 is just you know you you should follow the money you should follow the money um and it's made but i mean that was that that was a great game and as we saw from actually the rerun of this game that if you know your openings and you know the ideas of your openings and in the vienna in particular you have bishop c4 with this build up or you have you know various queen g4s for example the vienna in the vienna you have the copycat and by the way this is brand new to you you've never heard of the vienna or the copycat variation you are missing out on some stuff um but uh the vienna is crazy and again bishop before is is a move and i mean it's it's not a very popular move at all so when you're when you're met with things you don't know in the opening you still have to kind of play uh similar to the plans that you know from your opening but obviously not identical yeah the rest of this game was very very balanced i mean i'm constantly hunting at threats on my opponent transferring to attack weak squares and making decisions that transform the position and potentially leave me with certain weaknesses right in the opponent immediately responding to that and me defending and then we had a bunch of pawn jostling here first of all obviously i missed um bishop g5 missed but you always have to be on the lookout for small positional changes and um yeah the best move here is bishop g5 but the position's equal position is equal here um actually after bishop c4 knight e5 which attacks this and defends this look at that and black is winning knight 2e5 attacks my bishop and and if black had found that move and i would have just lost my pawn with no counter play i'm just lost i mean i'm just down a clean pawn and black is playing knight f2 knight d3 so there are chances in your games folks these chances absolutely do exist uh let's move along to game number three here we're going slightly down from fort wait what is this wait my opponent told me that oh my opponent is 13 30 and rapid what well they snuck into this episode so e4 let's play a karo khan because the the motto here uh is to play some openings that we are familiar with sorry i'm writing about being disappointed this is a crazy episode taro khan trying to play in the center with c6 and d5 um that's funny okay we have a little bit of an imposter here the series says a thousand to 1400 and they are if we take their other rating that's hilarious and i mean how are the how are we expecting to get really good at chess if we can't even follow simple instructions you know before all these recordings i i uh i say hey i'm looking for volunteers are rated a thousand to fourteen hundred in um in blitz my opponent gave me the rapid rating okay kara khan defense against e4 is trying to meet that center pawn and support it with the center pawn the opponent trades and plays bishop to d3 so now the general rule of thumb here is to play knight c6 knight f6 to me the karo khan is one of the greatest openings to learn as an aspiring intermediate player by the way this pawn structure if you remember from a game ago folks i don't know if you uh how much attention you've all been playing you recognize this pawn structure from two games ago well look at this game you see how it's similar that's because the london can actually become a karo khan with the right pawn trade there's just no bishop on f4 i am not going to be playing f6 this time i'm going to go back to this and if the bishop does come out i'm going to play queen b6 as we saw in in that game so let's see what happens i want to develop my bishop i want to develop my pawn i want to develop my other bishop and again the point of today was to um play certain openings uh and actually begin the game with some knowledge of what to do not just following basic principles and that's that's what you have to do as you get better so we're going to play bishop g4 finish our development and go like this you actually have to have certain things prepared uh nobody freestyles in the even in the early four digits i i mean obviously there's the chess world is big now so there's many people who don't study openings and just do what they want but um i would recommend having some idea of what to do okay bishop g5 that's the whole point of playing cpan night out is to play queen b6 uh move ago that didn't make much sense because there was a bishop defending the b-pawn and yes we could have finished our development with e-e-e-pawn and out but i'm trying to show you why you would play with the queen now okay b3 is reasonable move i don't hate it just simple simple e6 bishop takes f6 here is not a crazy move by the way because if pawn takes i will have an open king if i castle short right so i can play bishop e7 to avoid that or i can just play bishop d6 i'm just going to play bishop d6 because that's what gotham told me to do this pin is still alive and well we're still very strongly pinning there right the only reason we're not taking it is aha so my opponent did this right am i gonna do the same thing no no no i'm gonna slide back now this is terrible because this is a tripled isolated pawn that would be a horrible pawn structure decision trading here would be better and because my opponent did this before i castled short oh this is going to be very bad news for my opponent because i'm going to castle long you see you broke my king's my king's uh structure but i don't actually have to castle that way i can castle long right because why would i castle into that boom but this still comes with certain risks certain risks meaning a4 b4 a5 i might still get attack like right now what my opponent should do and go oh yeah see this is too slow i don't know what that does my opponent has to go b4 a4 immediately because i'm not going to mess around i'm gonna play rook here which by the way hangs upon but that pawn is so meaningless why because i want those lines open i mean you win a pawn but you open up my entire h file by winning that pawn right so it's it's really dangerous to take that point why needs to play b4 a for a5 like white needs to go for it now but they like a pawn so i'm going to go up i could bring my other rook see this is what i this is what you're trying to when when you when you castle on opposite sides i mean imagine a position my opponent didn't have an apon you think that matters they have an open rook now right so now you've given me i can go to h8 but this this looks pretty natural as well to just attack this wait you've just given me a bullseye right this is this is you didn't wait for me to castle to open up my king that's what that's what you should have done but because you allowed my king to go to the complete opposite side and you're not even attacking me you're letting my king survive oh now there might be some sacrifices so folks what i like to say is the rule of plus two if you have two more attacking pieces than they have defenders there's a very good chance you should sacrifice um so right now i think bishop takes g3 i mean i have the rook barricade down here even if you don't see it down to its conclusion you have massive massive massive capability to attack here with your rooks um if king i can just take this i mean that's almost made and i can take this as well but it isn't just i mean i mean it's almost a ladder made here oh my god it's almost a ladder mate this is crazy knight has to come back to h2 now at this point what do you do this is this is like how games are won and lost right here you sacked a full bishop you got some pawns you have a big attack what now bishop f3 takes whoo you've got some pieces not attacking right so at this point i think there's a winning combination i think rook h2 right away check most forcing option and then come back with check so none of these pieces get to move understand check check and then bring the queen but i'm gonna do this because i see this that's too slow because i think there's knight f3 now and i think maybe white can begin consolidating so i've made a mistake rook takes h2 right rook takes h2 is the most forcing option but queen c7 is the more more 1100 1200 whatever you want to estimate my opponent's strength as that's queen c7 is much more obvious obvious right because then you bring your queen as well okay rook f2 so if i take take that's nothing right so maybe queen g3 i'm looking at now oh yes queen g3 is a very nice move because because i'm threatening the rook and stuff here and the hardest thing to see is this i got a little lucky let's just say i never saw that right i just bring my queen down there just because that's what i wanted i wanted to bring my queen and activate it and now i have two more three more attacking pieces right than guards i can hardly call this a guard but so now i'm i'm constantly i'm looking is there a maid is there there actually is there's a there's a force mate i'm actually threatening rook takes h2 rook takes and bishop f3 which is just no no no no that's not mate oh my gosh that's actually not a mate and i will analyze that afterward i thought that was a checkmate but it's not boom boom boom it's not wow because when the night takes the queen's vision opens up this is crazy oh gosh but hopefully this is at least instructive you know don't rush opening up the king's position now obviously that's under attack so i can go go take that do i have anything better no i i don't think so i don't think i'm missing anything a successful attack does not necessarily have to end in checkmate it could end in the winning of material and in this case it will be ending in the winning of material we're going to get in we're going to win our p's back all right and then we're going to we're going to try to do some damage beyond that do this now there is rook f6 but then d2 is falling and my rook is here among the pawns so if i can win c3 i'm gonna probably win d4 and uh we can at any chance we get we can continue to attack the king but obviously the easiest thing to do would just be to take on c3 and just win some bonds um i'd be one okay how do we win this now we can reroute our night that's this is this is the high level move i think 97 knight f5 knight in here just like we did with the queen but knight e7 is absolutely not that's not normal i would go bishop g6 i cannot deliver a check with my bishop but i can deliver it on e4 where it probably just paralyzes white like bishop e4 and the king is stuck in the corner so that's my idea i mean you have a lot of ways to win you can probably just get this pawn out of danger by playing f5 i think knight e7 and knight to f5 knight to g3 is devastating but if you have a 1400 opponent that does that you can report them for cheating so bishop g6 to try to go to e4 opponent is gonna get is a really nasty way to lose here to play king g2 king g2 is an incredible move by white if white plays it that would be so sick this is a double check and a mate bishop e4 double check and mate i almost hope the game ends like that okay it doesn't i can take this now but i'm gonna finish my plan and uh now white is gonna have to play knight to f3 and again i can i can do this and this but i think this is the easiest you just add pressure to the knight which is pinned it's getting completely ganged up on and i don't know if the opponent is going to uh i don't know if the opponent will resign but i mean you can definitely play a few more moves even even at 1300 rapid or whatever this person is make them checkmate you you never know you never know knight b5 okay uh i can take or i can take rook takes f3 i'm even gonna take like this yes you can take with the bishop but uh like i've been saying many times in this series uh you you should try to win end games if you can you there's a lot less pieces on the board and um i probably should not have allowed knight d6 but okay you can sometimes take your foot off the gas right you just go on autopilot you're like ah i mean i'm just gonna push my pawns yes you can go definitely win as many pawns as possible but really when you are in an end game in a position like this you can push i think taking here is better but i'm gonna push because past pawn must be good and then when they try to blockade you which is going to happen what you need to do is you need to get some help you need to either help with the knight many people this is not the best move many people will quickly rush and try to just push the pawns like to f4 for example oh i don't want my bishop taken so maybe i don't really care but but then you're gonna get blockaded and getting blockaded is really annoying because you can't you can't move forward as easily right so what you can do here is like okay maybe bring my king still not the best you should be trying to bring your knight which you haven't moved since like move three try to bring your knight back and forward where it will be able to push through with f4 but yeah now you know knight h3 okay uh king f6 okay we're just bringing our king ah damn double attack okay so let's come back that's annoying getting this knight out of here so we can go here and here or we can go here and here i don't really see a difference so i'm gonna go back and this way still don't see a difference right i don't know it looks the same so i need to get rid of the blockade and then i'm going to be able to push through uh yeah let's go knight e7 there is a difference by the way when the knight is here what's the difference when the knight is on e6 you block this so it's never too late to just begin blundering for no reason there is a difference that that was the difference king g5 now we've won control of the first square so with that okay well that's just a fork so now not only do we get through opponent is also going to lose a knight and you can push but again you don't want the king to get close so just hold on a second you have knight in a bishop extra what are you rushing for right just make sure the king just can't block your pawn you have that's it the game is is all yours just bring the pieces control the squares in front of the pawn don't stalemate but obviously in this case there's a lot of we can even leave the night by the way i can even do this because again we we won the battle for the squares in front of the night and now just like always the the easiest thing to do you can go hunting for checks you can easiest thing to do cut the king in a box just cut the king off just do this first that's it and now now made made the king as if you know your your checkmating with uh your checkmating with with regular king and queen but now you have the added benefit of the stalemate see if this was just this it would be a stalemate but because white has legal moves you can you can do the stalemate you can get close you can win the game um this game was a was a very solid karo khan we played the karo khan defense against e4 right we exchanged and we played normal moves we just developed now what do we know about the karo khan we know we know we know about this queen idea is it necessary would have been obviously a lot stupider with the bishop back here we can still do it we did it okay got thwarted developed and our opponent did this and we obviously did we didn't castle into that right now uh had we um castled into that something like this and we would have tried to do the exact same thing in terms of attacking we would have maybe slid the king over would have maybe avoided losing this pawn something like king h8 rook g8 that's another way to do it but because our opponent took immediately we went the other way we got out of there we didn't allow that to happen and that's why we uh that's why we got the win uh final game of the day final game of the day is against 12 20 from south korea i've played e4 so let's play uh let's play d4 and let's um let's see i don't want to play london actually e6 okay let's play uh let's play c4 we're gonna play uh just queen's pawn d and c knights out okay e6 b6 very normal setup um let's just play knight f3 knight c3 something like this and my opponent is playing a setup i really really like actually it's one of my courses with black yeah you pin this uh and again i i want to develop this bishop before i block it in right so i want to develop the bishop before i block it in so i'm gonna i'm gonna put it on f4 and then i'm gonna play e3 i'm just gonna play like basic basic principles um if you've never seen an opening or a defense for the first time you're seeing it for the first time rather uh you're not going to refute it i mean for example when this bishop is here we can we can always ask what it wants so we can you know what is our opponent trying to accomplish here with this bishop the point of this opening this is definitely not the point of the opening no no no no this is not good this is an example of an individual who has purchased one of my courses and has not studied them correctly the point of this setup with black is to pressure the knight which fights for the center so black should be playing f5 and knight behind the pawn to support the e4 square so every opening has its own set of ideas right um so e3 is now what i'm just gonna by the way that might be hanging but that is such an absurd like move that almost never exists that it's completely natural to overlook it but the problem with this move is it's very short-sighted when you develop your queen like this particularly when your position is lacking space as my opponent says uh very high chance you just struggle to develop let's say i'm not even going to develop this i'm just going to be like why is your bishop here right take stakes okay but now what because your queen is in front of everybody the knights and in the pawns it's it's it's not so clear how you're going to develop once you've kind of run out of moves i mean my development is a lot more natural i have a little bit more center space i have a good bishop and um my opponent actually plays a move which can lead to uh can lead to some really funny stuff here the queen is trapped trapped will my opponent see the response bishop takes f3 incredible move incredible move bishop takes f3 danger levels and if i take with the pawn i lose this if i take the queen i lose my queen if i take this and then rg8 bishop takes f3 so i'm gonna have to take back with my queen yes they see it amazing good thing they didn't tilt resign nothing excellent stuff so i take with my queen if takes takes all right i can't get the rook do not forget you just abandoned the diagonal so there is a rook in the corner oh no oh no no and this is very bad because i have this but of course short castles here okay right right now folks i'm going to be completely honest with you while your queen can continue gobbling um you have to be very careful because if your queen takes this queen can take this this queen cannot take this pawn right now right it's not possible so queen f3 which actually kind of looks like a blunder i would recommend more like nine times out of ten if you just did that and you want to gobble make sure they can't take you and if they can't just come back do yourself a favor as long as nothing is hanging come back why you might lose the queen i'm going to be totally honest with you you might lose the queen if like you might get it trapped with a pawn the door shuts queen's dead okay um knight h4 here is is a max danger move by my opponent knight h4 who's my opponent is still struggling with the fact that because they develop their queen so early they don't have a lot of space and they just sort of have some random pieces standing around right knight h4 was pretty good it was a decent move and now i'm gonna castle so i i am castle i have a little bit more space uh we still have an extremely close position so we have um eight pawns each right knight h4 so we have to be careful if we move the queen it's a mate so i'm gonna slide the queen over a square try to trade queens of course queen trade is nice for me i am up a rook for a knight and what we want to accomplish in a position that is closed is take as much space as possible where we can uh and pawn breaks we need to rely on a pawn smash somewhere to open up the position so queen g3 is a good move putting some pressure over here and i'm thinking a4 a5 now this is not great it's generally better to take toward the middle by the way you can do this and it opens your rook but you weaken e3 i would take toward the center even this like this is opening but this is almost impossible to take advantage of um now if you would like to make this trade and your your logic is kind of like well you know i have two rooks and the more i trade the better you can it's not the best move but if you want to be really stubborn like i'm gonna simplify the position no matter what yeah by the way c my opponent does give himself that f takes better to play h takes okay a4 we want a pawn we want a pawn breaking okay doesn't work c5 not quite there uh take some space wherever you can right so uh d5 is fine but again we want to not allow our opponent access to squares if we play d5 opponent's knight will live on c5 forever right now the knight can't come up so i'm gonna play e4 if the opponent plays e5 hoping i push or take i'm just gonna leave it you see because they want me to take but i have reinforcements f4 i told you close position take some space take some space where you can where you're not gonna be surrendering uh anything to the opponent take some space now some serious tension here obviously if pawn takes i might try to offer a rook trade i might undouble my pawn i don't know but yeah close positions can be annoying they can kind of show you it's quite difficult now knight f6 attacks this but continuity it forgets about the e5 pawn so while this move is very natural this one to protect this pawn now we should probably take because we are guaranteed a trade of rooks which is obviously good for us because that leaves us rook versus knight and let me tell you rook versus knight is probably not a good situation okay rook trade this knight is attacking this but first i'm going to throw in this pawn capture the more i trade the better now you want to get to a point where you stop you don't want to trade everything okay knight takes this is hanging push it that's not complicated right just push it obviously push it pawn break trade some pawns right we want to leave about three or four pawns on the board one takes pawn takes and by the way this move is a fork yes very good very well done so uh now the best move is the is rook f1 check with the point being that and that's why you always have to look for checks the point being that if the king moves to the e file we actually pin the knight to the king that's way too mean so rook f1 would either force the knight back or the king to get passive i feel like no human being sees this move it was like 1200 so instead i'm gonna push my pawn why am i pushing that pawn that that pawn is the most advanced so if i push the c pawn here this just comes back but this pawn has hopes and dreams of becoming a queen so what i want to do is maybe bring my rook and win these pawns right so folks do not hang a rook that is so brutal don't hang a rook like this please for your own good rookie one is not a terrible move but i have no future prospects over there uh so i'm gonna play rook a3 rook a3 is another way of bringing my rook to the party with tempo we've talked about this in this video uh tempo right we want to attack the night the problem with attacking this knight like this is an inexcusable blunder and it happens all the time the rook attacks the knight the knight attacks the king and the rook it happens so much because you just forget you're just like ah right just forget so which pawn should i go for i guess i can play rook d3 and rook d7 i can play rook b3 and rook b7 as well um i don't know i mean they both look fine right so let's go [Music] here let's go here at night before maybe annoying rook d7 by the way winning move here check check king up check again i call that the boomerang technique that way you don't lose this pawn if you check check and do this right you're going to win that pawn but i i i just see this that was my idea but rookie rook d7 is the best idea and these things exist this is the difference between the 12 and a 1500 rook d8 rook d7 bait the king forward check it again we saw that by the way with rook f1 rook f1 to bait the king to the e file but i'm 1200 i don't see that i don't see that instead what i see is i'm gonna go here and i'm gonna try to win this a pawn i'm gonna try to use my rook and this is a great example of just rook is going to beat a knight like this in an isolated situation all right like a rook is just going to be tonight so now i'm going to play um or k7 or or rook c5 rook c5 is even cleaner right rook c5 for k7 the knight just comes back so now rook c5 is a fork and i'm going to win the a pawn if i'm going to win the a pawn i'm going to have an apon there which is why uh you need to leave a few pawns on the board uh when you want to win like a rook versus knight end game this is the easiest way to do it because the king is the k the knight and the king are just they're just way too slow and once the king starts piping up and trying to take it you know you start doing stuff like this and the king unfortunately just has to stay and protect the pawns okay well my opponent doesn't uh doesn't think so so now we're gonna as the king runs to stop our pawn we're gonna gobble the rest of the pawns and there's no way king and knight can stop a.g that's the pawns are way too far apart i mean they can't stop a and b together too but right so hopefully this was instructive right hopefully this was instructive um don't lose this pawn if you don't need to no need to lose the pawn so just push it folks i want to uh draw your attention to um a couple of things that we obviously talked about in today's episode as we wrap up uh the karo khan course which is one of my opening courses uh absolutely incredible in fact i play many of those lines myself even against title players uh they're awesome awesome lines e6 b6 which we saw in this game but uh the warning that i have for you in this game i'm gonna actually go rookie six and if the opponent blocks my pawn i'm gonna fork the warning i have for you is if you get a course actually study it and and don't just don't just get it to feel good but not actually study it okay let's bring this rook back and push we're gonna bring the rook back cutting off the king in the night and we are going to push the pawn uh e4 course vienna one of my favorites absolutely love the vienna i adore it it is so great um for so many different levels of chess probably about 2400 and below you're gonna be melting people with how with how good the vienna is and now this is the conclusion we go after the night to try to remove it from that promotion square and by the way here after okay i was if there we had a fork but i'm gonna queen and the opponent will probably play this out probably i don't know obviously okay so what's gonna be annoying about this is that when we check the king is gonna get the stand in for the okay i was going to say like if the king comes to f6 we have to somehow like it we have to move the rook out of the way but then we would just obviously march up and make the queen and not stalemate so uh yeah some of my opening courses obviously were played today some not but uh here you have to play for f5 the whole point of the setup with black is you have to develop in a way that makes sense in a cohesive way so the bishop pins the knight so the knight cannot support the center the bishop and the pawn support the center so does the knight black castles but not not like this i mean the the danger with bringing the queen out is that you you just fall behind in development and accidentally trap your own queen it's so lucky that this was this existed right so lucky like imagine this was the position and then you did you just lose you just lose the game because your queen's out there how's your queen doing out there in a position where you have no pawn space your queen should not be among the pieces the queen should be back here waiting just like mine my queen's not out battling stuff right and then small tactical oversight and then hopefully you learned how to handle a closed position right trading simplifying down in an end game so uh try to keep this episode about 50 minutes unfortunately it was an hour long uh but i hope you enjoy it very much and i will see you back for episode number four

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 996,108

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna

Id: ghJRGPXsjfk

Length: 62min 56sec (3776 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022