Master Tips To Defend In Chess - 10 Ways To Defend - How To Defend Your King In Chess, Chess Defense

in this video i'm going to give you 10 things to think about when you're trying to defend your king now there are other types of defending in chess if your other pieces or pawns come under attack but in this video we're specifically talking about your king and how to not get checkmated [Music] so tip number one is to be careful when you castle and realize that sometimes it's okay to delay castling in certain situations so let me show you a quick example we're playing as black and the game starts out pretty normally and then white plays h3 and follows it up by g4 now we could consider castling in this position it's not a terrible move but there's a phrase called castling into it and if we castle kingside in this position we're kind of castling into an attack right white already has two pawns advanced and he can very easily you know if we castle he can trade this bishop off and then play h4 next move uh g5 and h5 g6 we we have to deal with an attack on our king rather than even deal with this if i'm playing this game i'm gonna go back to this position right here i'm not going to castle right now right i see that he's planning this attack so i'm going to do something else i'm going to play c5 to try to generate some pressure in the center and maybe i'm even going to follow up with knight c6 bishop d7 bring this queen somewhere and i might even consider castling queenside and the option is always available if i decide later you know what i do want to castle kingside after all but i'm not going to do it immediately and set myself up to come under attack so tip number one be careful when you castle and remember sometimes it's okay to delay castling by a couple moves tip number two is pay attention to the queen most of the time in chess when one player gets checkmated from an attack on their king it's because the queen was involved the queen is a very powerful piece really good at checkmating and if the queen is involved in the attack you have to be extremely careful if your opponent is attacking you without using their queen most likely you're going to be able to survive it so let me show you an example there's an opening that i like to play as white against the french defense and it's when they play the the winner of variation bishop before pitting this knight i play the move queen d3 which is kind of a weird looking move and most players playing black will capture i have to take back with the queen because my knight is pinned and then they play knight f6 and they they do gain a tempo on my queen but i play queen to h4 and the reason that i do this is because it relocates my queen on the king side to where if they decide to castle guess what i'm gonna have an attack ready to go on their king so let me just flip this around and from black's perspective before they castle they should very seriously consider what is going to happen because my queen is right there and and as an example what i usually will play is bishop to d3 and you can see how i'm setting up to begin a checkmate threat right now it's not really a threat because the knights controlling it but next move i'm going to play bishop g5 and now this knight comes under fire and if i'm able to get rid of that knight there could be a checkmate here now it's not that easy because black can play knight here and you know reinforce it with another knight but the point is my queen is in a very good location to attack their king so if we go back instead of castling one of the better moves that black can play is queen to d5 and remember the knight here is pinned so the knight can't capture it and the point behind this move is that black wants to play queen to e4 check and trade off the queen remember knight pinned right so that's fine we can do this and if you know if white plays here we just take it but it's a very annoying move for white i don't like it when people play it against me because all they're gonna do is come in here trade off the queens and then they just have an equal position it's a very solid move and it's it's noticing the fact that hey if i just castle here and don't pay attention to this my king is gonna come under fire and it's very very dangerous so tip two pay attention to your opponent's queen and if they start to bring it to where your king is at or where your king might might be if you castle there you might want to think twice about that all right tip number three is that a lot of times the best way to defend is to trade pieces and simplify the position so here's an example where we're white and black plays queen to d6 and he's lining up this battery the the immediate threat is gonna take our knight and after we recapture uh he's gonna checkmate us right on h2 here because right now the only thing that's stopping that is is our knight so how do we defend this what what can we do well one move that i think a lot of players would play is g3 and the idea is good it blocks off the the queen and the bishop so that it's no longer attacking the square the problem is that it creates some weaknesses right this pawn was controlling these squares and it's no longer controlling and black can actually play knight g5 this knight is pinned and there's no way for white to really save this knight it's it's really a bad position for white so g3 is not the move the best move is actually knight to b5 and the idea is black has to deal with his his queen being under attack right and after he let's say moves here let me just trade off that bishop and there's no more checkmate threat here we've completely eliminated that threat by a very simple trade knight to b5 trade off the night for the bishop and now we can move on with the game and we don't have to worry about getting checkmated over here so tip number three when possible trade off pieces that are pressuring your king that sometimes is the easiest and simplest solution tip number four is to plan ahead if we go back to some of these positions and this one you remember we said instead of castling maybe black could do something else because there's already an attack coming here go back to this position you remember again instead of castling doing something else was black's best option both of these examples illustrate the fact that you really don't want to wait until it's too late to start defending if you can plan ahead and see the attack coming before it actually happens you're going to be in a much better spot so tip number four plan ahead as best you can and try to avoid even putting yourself into a situation where your king comes under fire all right now for tip number five um one of the phrases that you may have heard before if you watch sports or football or something like that you may have heard someone say that the best offense is a good defense well i think in chess it's kind of backwards so i would say that the best defense in chess is a good offense and so a lot of times instead of just reacting and defending and you know paying attention to what your opponent is doing if you can counter attack a lot of times that's a better option so here's an example this is a random game from two players about 15 1600 actually played a really interesting game but at this moment in the game white plays bishop to a3 which is not a great move but it's attacking this rook on f8 and most players i'm pretty sure their reaction would be uh well i gotta save my rook let's move it over here right it's it's a common sense kind of a move well this player actually played knight to d4 which is a fantastic move he's taking advantage of the fact that this pawn is pinned so he can't capture the knight and instead of dealing with his rook he's he's creating a bigger threat on the queen and so fantastic idea white moves the queen out of the way and then again instead of dealing with the threat on his rook he ignores it it goes for a bigger threat right is it it's a check why can't take his rook if he's in check has to get out of check so who's here and then queen to f4 again same idea he's ignoring this going for a bigger threat bringing his queen into the action to put pressure on black's king and these types of opportunities exist all the time in chess games but most players just don't look for them uh and you're gonna see you know white actually captured it and then after queen takes e4 black is just crushing he has he has made a few moves the queen comes in knight h5 and then we had this kind of cool checkmate so but all that was set up by instead of reacting and and you know dealing with this threat on his rook plaque was like i don't even care i'm gonna go for you know for a counter attack like i said tip number five a lot of times the best defense is a good offense all right tip number six is you want to avoid opening files if possible so here's a position where black has a very nice attack set up he's got both rooks lined up behind the pawns and he's pushing them towards our king and our knight's under attack and so let's say we play the move knight to e1 which i think i would really prefer probably playing knight g5 but let's say white played this move and black plays h3 at this point we have to make a decision we can capture the pawn we can do nothing and let black capture us do you know do something else or we can push to g3 and nine times out of ten when your your king is facing pawn storms like this the best move is going to be pushing by uh because it blockades the position i've talked about this in a previous video but it blockade the position to where the rooks can't get through and now black is is gonna have a hard time figuring out how to get to white's king if white decides to capture this well i think you can see pretty right away that that's terrible now black has the rook um open file he can even double up rooks he can bring his queen or bishop or all kinds of threats that the white has to deal with whereas just g3 is better and if we do nothing or something over here same thing is going to happen now there's an open h file really bad news for for white's king so when you have the opportunity try to keep the files closed all right keep the keep the pawns on the files so that the rooks and the the long range pieces can't get through tip number seven is that you want to consider all the different threats and not just one at a time so this is a position that we saw earlier where i told you that knight b5 was the move to trade off the knight from the bishop but the issue is the reason why a lot of people would play the move g3s because they're only thinking about one thing they're only thinking about oh there's probably checkmate here well i'll stop that by playing g3 alright cool good move they failed to realize well yes you stop that but what about these weaknesses that you create just created and then that's when you know knight g5 would happen and they're losing the peace there's you know holes over here for the knight in the bishop to go into it's really bad but most players don't consider that hey there's more than one threat to be aware of and so kind of an extra tip here is that whenever you make a pawn move around your king you're going to be creating a weakness okay even if you move h3 now there's less support on this square now it's not as big of a deal because it's still controlled by this pawn but especially if you move the g pawn you have to understand you're creating weaknesses by doing that so make sure you consider all the different options and all the different possible threats around your king before you make a quick move like like g3 so tip seven consider all the different threats tip number eight is playing f4 or f5 so this is a tip that's specific to when you castle king side which is probably the most common side that people cast on but when you castle kingside white has the move f4 and black has the move f5 and these are really good moves to keep in mind because a lot of times they can stop attacks and i'll show you an example so here's a position where white plays queen to d3 and he's lining up for checkmate on h7 it's defended right now by the night but there is some pressure there and so if white was able to maybe you know bring his knight in capture this and then trade this off we could sorry we could get checkmated on h7 so one of the easiest ways for for black or for us to defend is to play knight to e4 and then after like takes takes if white plays knight to d2 trying to undermine this knight that's blocking this battery we play the move f5 and immediately we have total control over the square but more importantly we're completely blocking off this diagonal but the cool thing is that we're not moving these pawns so we still have nice coverage in front of our king we're not creating holes like when you play the move g6 if i go back a second you create some holes weaknesses that nothing is controlling so f5 is is a better way to do that if you can it also has the added bonus that now our queen is helping out right it's no longer blocked off by the pawn and so the queen is doing something and we've also you know got a rook we could bring our rook up and over do a rook lift has the benefit of that and sometimes you need this escape route for your king and you can come up here and run over here and get away from a checkmate so it does so many different things all in one move this is one of the first moves that i look for when i'm trying to defend against all different kinds of attacks on my king especially batteries along the diagonal but even if there's a you know a queen and a rook lined up on the file you could play f5 to block it off um and if you're white same thing with f4 be on the lookout for opportunities to play this move a lot of times it's very good at stopping attacks right tip number nine is that sometimes you can use your own opponent's pawn as a shield for your king and now it sounds kind of weird when you hear it but here's an example so we've played knight c3 black clearly has an attack on our king going here and he captures on a2 now what do we do well one move that comes to mind would be knight takes a2 and it's not a terrible move but the move that i would probably play in this position is king to a1 and it looks really weird leaving the pawn instead of capturing it but the idea is that like let's say black plays a3 now trying to you know take here now we can play b3 and these pawns are actually a big problem for black's attack how is his rook gonna get to our king when he has two pawns in the way how is his queen gonna get to our king when there's two pawns in the way now there are ways if we move these pieces away and you know we let his queen come in yeah he could still checkmate us but the way that it is right now black can't get through these pawns are in his way if these pawns were gone guess what we would have a serious problem right he would move his queen over somewhere and and we would be getting mated but we're totally fine because the pawns are there we can go about our business continue attacking over here and it's going to take black a while to figure out a way through so that's something that you want to consider it doesn't always work and it's not always the best option but sometimes just leaving a pawn there and putting your king in front of it can be a good shield in this case there's two pawns but you get the idea if there was just one it would be like a shield to prevent your opponent's pieces from coming through tip number 10 is just work on your tactics if you are really really good at tactics you're going to be able to spot the potential ideas that your opponent is going to try to do to you and then you can play the moves that prevents that from happening so work on your tactics it goes a long way not only when you're attacking but also when you're trying to defend against an attack really really helpful so if you if you haven't been doing those pick up a tactics book make sure you work through those and stay sharp all right those are the 10 tips that i have on how to defend hopefully that helps you let me know if you've used any of these in your games or if i missed any that you think are important but as always thanks for watching stay sharp play smart and take care [Music] you

Channel: Chess Vibes

Views: 240,822

Keywords: defend in chess, how to defend in chess, defense in chess, stop attacks in chess, stop checkmates in chess, chess defense, chess strategies to defend, beginner chess defend, defending in chess, how to survive in chess, chess tips to defend, 10 ways to defend in chess, 10 tips to defend, chess tips to not get checkmated, beginner chess guide, chess ideas to defend, defensive manuevers, best defenses in chess, best way to defend in chess, defend like a grandmaster in chess

Id: XUTsWcWyYnw

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021