NEW SERIES: Chess Steps!

ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to welcome you to episode 1 of a brand new series here on the Gotham Jazz YouTube channel known as the steps of Chess or chess steps or steps to getting better keyword steps and in this series I'm taking you through the entirety of the rating ladder against my very own subscribers playing them in five minute and five second bonus games although 10 and 15 minutes is absolutely okay for practice it would just make for an extremely long video uh and in this episode we're going from ratings 200 to 800 so we're going to play seven games uh and we are going to just see the kinds of mistakes that folks are making uh mating no pun intended making up the rating ladder uh timestamps are on the video player and if you have any feedback do let me know them in the comments below first opponent is Yoga dad who I suppose is a dad who does yoga which is a shocking thing now in every one of these games we're going to be focusing on certain Concepts and the very first one that I would like to focus on is the very beginning of the game now you should be putting pawns into the center of the board if you have the opportunity early on to play two pawns into the center without having one of them get captured uh that is what you should be going for if one of them can get captured or is attacked in some way that is going to be an exception and we now have two Pawns in the center now my opponent actually happens to be playing an opening known as the Karo Khan defense you don't have to know that if you're a 200 but now we have a situation where one of our pawns is actually being targeted now uh as long as you're following basic opening philosophy uh you can continue with development of your Knights before your Bishops that's a general good rule of thumb Bishops tend to be a little bit more flexible Knights are generally going to be moving toward the center but if you have a question asked of one of your pawns you should solve it you should either take or push um I would recommend taking uh early on it's honestly one of the easiest things to do because now the pawns are sort of Frozen there's not a whole lot that can happen now I said nights before Bishops uh and generally we're going to be uh developing the knights which are helping us on our way to castling uh our King should be moved out of the center now early on in games you're going to have opportunities to check this check shouldn't really be happening uh and I'm gonna play it because I'm 200 right I'm sort of playing to the level of of the opponent uh and uh it's okay it's just it doesn't really offer you any advantage it's actually a little bit better to put your Bishop out here better than also putting it back here it's just a bit passive um now you don't need to take generally if you're not really prompted to capture you shouldn't uh you can finish your development in some form in this case I'm just going to play short Castle I will only be moving my Bishop again if my Bishop is attacked but right now it can sort of stay still um and I still haven't moved my other bishop and I still haven't moved my knight so uh yeah like right now for example I can develop my knight I can develop my bishop and pin the Knight that's what we're doing here our Bishop is pinning the Knight to the king meaning it can't move uh we have a lot of moves we have many many moves one of the best moves about castling is that you can then put your Rook on the open file as well so let's play night out to C3 it's a bit better here to pressure the center with the with the pawn uh which we obviously have blocked and then put the Knight behind it but we don't know that we're a low rated player Bishop G5 so now we have a crisscross applesauce pin the hardest part about Chess he has a 200 and 800 or a 2100 or anything in between is what to do in the middle game we've developed our Knights and Bishops so now what uh general rule of thumb is that if you can continue to slightly improve your position like bringing your queen in out and connecting your Rooks like right this is good a rook Now controls some open space and for the entirety of this game we haven't actually been put under any attack right that's the main thing right now if we've been attacked at any point with a bishop with one of the pawns attacking our Bishop or something we would need to react but so far it's just okay beautiful here we have a great example so my rule of thumb is even though both things are worth three points bishop and Knight I don't want to give away Bishops unnecessarily because Bishops are long range pieces and uh the best way to describe this for you is and and to show you why our Bishop belongs here and not here is because you would need to make this trade so I'm going to retreat and now we've sort of lost a little bit of time but the light squared Bishop is very useful for targeting the pawn near the enemy King when the opponent castles uh and if we can kind of get a little bit of help with a queen a knight a rook right then we're going to be in good shape so first thing I always look at we're not going to be taking that that's not a fair trade uh you know in in chess there's a moment in the game where you can make forward progress into a position uh particularly a knight which is why you try to develop it into the middle of the board so move like Knight E5 which you support with the pawn and The Rook you see these moves now tied together right the other thing that this does is we're not looking to make this trade we're just looking to get a nice centralized Outpost for our piece from where we can deliver pressure and we've opened up the queen We're not gonna go out there and you see I'm not gonna go up there because we're gonna get taken but you see our opponent takes and doesn't anticipate that after Pawn takes we now Fork right we now Fork the bishop of the night while being protected so our opponent missed that we put the Rook uh on E1 this is a counting mistake and now we have won a bishop for a pawn now I mentioned a while ago that I'm putting this bishop kind of out into the middle of the board to pressure on H7 the only thing guarding that is the knight uh so if I can get to a situation where I can remove that knight from existing and then play Queen takes H7 Checkmate defended by my Bishop that is how we can win this game that is one path of Victory uh to winning this game but first a rook is under attack right so Queen takes Rook is a possibility and that's very important you can't just get tunnel vision because then you're gonna lose everything um now there's two ways to get out of this uh number one uh move the piece to safety number two is defend the piece defend the piece something like the bishop the pawn um I'm going to for simplicity's sake just move it back to where it came from that's generally good rule of thumb and now the notice that when the queen moved this is the hardest part about Chess the queen didn't just attack us it also unpinned itself so the Knight is now able to move and the queen will not be lost also if we take the Knight the queen will not be taking it's going to be the pawn opening up the king so there's a lot of these constant Dynamics going on right and uh besides a slight counting mistake which led to a loss of material for my opponent um the slight expansion on the queen side uh was was was slightly inaccurate uh but honestly the person's playing a fantastic game of chess for someone rated 200 you think 200 you think blunders Galore um right so but right now the game plan for us is still very much to go over here so remember I I kind of Drew this up so Bishop B7 doesn't doesn't threaten us we're uh we're gonna play Queen to F3 uh which is actually a very slight maybe inaccuracy in the sense that we're lining up our Queen in this bishop it's a hard part to see um for many players like you might get hit with this move now if my opponent plays this move I'll be very impressed it's a great move kind of seeing the opening of the board the Knight is now under attack and the queen is under attack uh and that Queen defends that Bishop so that's a really nice example of Peace coordination but I will still go here and I will continue kind of my my attack uh furthermore we are actually threatening to Great move you see fantastic so a lot of players here will maybe see this and put the knight in the middle that's another way of moving out you can play Knight to E4 which blocks the attack as long as you're well protected but I'm going to continue with my plan um and uh Pawn takes Knight will lead to that same idea so if that entire attack is successful it will show you how kind of middle game planning works okay my opponent has sort of thwarted me but I'm still going to take the Knight because upon recapture this Pawn will not be able to protect against this right so we have Queen takes H6 and now we are threatening made the only way to stop this mate is to do something called interpose which is block the line of sight of one of the pieces that is a very tough move but you can come to it if you just sort of take a second and go well I don't really have anything else right so um Queen H7 is the winning idea the other idea is to give the king an Escape Route so kind of remove the Rook if you will and okay they do it um now there is an idea here to go with the bishop instead and that can lead to hunting the king out of the corner and while that is probably good and winning I cannot safely say that that's going to happen it's probably far more likely that a low rated player will follow the king and that's what we're going to do and we're gonna run into a situation here where if you actually check the king to its death it runs away right so let's see let's watch this happen in real time and all of a sudden you now have um you now have two problems you have a hanging Knight and a hanging Queen so now you're like oh my God right I have to rescue my queen but where do I go so let's play you know Queen to G7 or something right or queen to H7 or queen all the way back to H4 and now Pawn takes Knight but okay opponent sees this oh my gosh right I've got people who are in my Discord who are freaking out that I'm making mistakes that uh I'm not playing at the level of uh of the opponent so this is actually really really nice I think people are not realizing the point of the series but that's the beauty of these live recordings my audience goes nuts so now if you take this Pawn you get mated which is kind of nuts this queen and Bishop battery uh and uh you actually can move the Knight into the middle that's a nice example of blocking interposing an attack but you're not just playing defense you actually have a queen and Knight lined up against this Pawn just don't take it with a knight and get mated that would be very tragic understand that your Queen Bishop and Knight are now kind of in a these three pieces are in a bond here so Queen takes F6 nice idea here protected um let me drink some water and King's gotta go so the opponent really should go here because if the opponent goes to the back rank I can't take the Rook right because of the protection there so I can give this Pawn a capture now and um right now the king will have to go to the back rank but we did we did make an inaccuracy we sort of went hunting with our Queen which is not what you should have done there you should have understood that the chugs don't lead to anything so we go to the back rank we still can't move the Knight um the best move here is probably to preemptively block this diagonal with like a pawn move for example and then move the Knight but what I'm going to do now is I'm going to bring our Rook we have a lot of great moves here like really truly we can keep checking we can but what I what I I'm gonna do is just bring my rook and this is just an example of um Improvement of your position getting pieces in the game not getting tunnel vision pumping the brakes uh and uh so this move remove the defender of the bishop all right so our Queen now has a choice and uh we go Queen takes Bishop so now we don't have to worry about this and uh the King right now doesn't have a lot of breathing room so if we get a a way to not just attack the king mercilessly with the queen but um maybe bring a rook to the party right that pawn is in the way it's very important that you kind of see the Dynamics of the position as the game is unfolding uh I imagine Rook C8 is going to happen and then we have like here for instance we have a night Fork which you're more than welcome to do um in fact you can also take the Rook and then get the night Fork I'm just gonna do the night Fork because it's good tactical awareness that's another decent idea I must say by my opponent um who is combining their pieces extremely well here but after King to E7 we have a very nice move the queen is hanging but you can avoid an attack with a equal or exceeding danger and the hardest thing to see here is this move right so Rook takes E6 which actually is made the queen protects the Rook the queen which is under attack protects the Rook now if in this position you want to play Queen check just to get the queen out of the way absolutely acceptable but this game was actually that was a very good game I mean we we didn't we didn't do a whole lot right we didn't do a whole lot the hardest part of this game was when we transferred our Knight into the middle of the board this is like a move that doesn't take much risk and just slowly improves the position and if the opponent hadn't blundered maybe we would have again gone for that week Square near the king um but uh overall honestly that was a fantastic game by my opponent and uh uh we followed basic opening principles like putting pawns into the center understanding and seeing the danger of the threats of the opponent and coming up with a game plan surrounded uh sorry based completely upon a weakness right a Target in the opponent's position uh and here we made an inaccuracy here we should have pumped the brakes we could have gone hunting like this and trying to get our Knight in our Rook but that's a little bit too high level it's a little bit too high finesse and we had to not hang mate it's actually very important we had to pause for a moment and go is there a threat to me and there was there was absolutely a threat so uh next game we're playing a or we're not we're not playing a 400 the game automatically aborted um let me retry I'm playing somebody named ruling Shadow so again Queen spawn we're gonna with black we're gonna try to put a pawn into the center of the board and we have a London okay so this is a London system we're not going to be able to put a second Pawn so we're just going to develop our Knight and normally the DNC pawns go out together uh in this case we're just going to have to develop our Knight at some point so the best thing to do is to play the C Pawn in Queen's Pawn positions and then tonight we don't know that because we're 400 so you know we're just gonna have to play normal moves we're gonna have to bring our Bishop and by the way it's probably better to bring out your Bishop instead of blocking it in you see when they see what we've done here in the Queen spawn positions Queen spawn positions are slightly different than kingspawn positions so here's an example of why this check is really bad by the way last game it turned out not to be terrible but if you could if you're gonna get blocked by a pawn it's a bad check right that's I'm trying to show you the mistakes of the prior game okay so we're gonna have to just come back now offering this trade um that same Knight transfer to the middle but first let's Castle and this is a very close position the last game featured a pawn trade in the opening this game doesn't feature a pawn trade so in positions that are closed and you sort of make as many Knight and Bishop moves as you can at some point when you have such a close position pawns are gonna have to get involved so for example we can both trade each other's Bishop right so here's an example of why that can be dangerous if you take your opponent first if you take your opponent first notice what happens you have a Target here right that's very tough to see because they haven't castled yet if you just lazil it you could lose the game right now if you just play like this bishop takes Pawn you're on the verge of getting mated so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to play H6 I'm gonna move that pawn out of the line of sight of these pieces the board is Big you have to be very careful okay opposite side castling so we've played um to uh to I've played Short Castle they've played long Castle right in a position of eight pawns you need to constantly look at Pawn breaks so I'd like to attack in the center and trade but I can't because they have two what I do we need seven also in opposite side castling right we've kind of both want to attack each other now that move is just a clean Pond blunder that is Knight takes Pawn it's a one mover so you have to notice this stuff because if we don't notice that and instead we continue with our plan there's superseding Concepts in chess if we just continue with our plan Here Comes This it's chaos we're gonna get attack so free stuff is good you should take free stuff you your plan does not matter unless it's like a checkmate right free stuff okay now we go back to our plan right now they've defended this E5 going back to our plan of moving upon in the center of the board my opponent's playing super fast I can't really change that right so Pawn takes now we have a choice uh we can take with either Knight it's too difficult to decide which one so I'm just gonna take with this one it's far too difficult um now we've opened up the position a little bit so we made a pawn trade to open things up now we don't have many more Pawn trades we don't we know we don't really want to push Pawns in front of our King um we can push pawns on the other side of the board because there's a king over there Rook H4 wow what the heck so can I take that no can I take that and then take that oh yes I'm so smart right I'm so clever if if oh I got replaced by a knight that's what happens sometimes you think you're very clever so that that was not the best move right however what if you remove the defender of The Rook isn't that really clever that's really smart if they take you take certainly must be good right that's the plan I hope they take my knight okay well they they it's not that they missed it instead they actually defended their Rook which is very clever as well um and now if they had taken my knight and I took the Rogue they could have actually taken my Bishop it's very careful it's called a capture chain or a capture sequence the best thing for me to do there might have been actually to take back the night so now we have a situation where I can take the Knight or the bishop more often than not the best thing to do is to actually take a bishop for a night it it's this is like seven and a half times out of ten the bishop is preferred it's a long range piece um that's attacking that so I can defend it with my Pawn for example with my Bishop I'm gonna defend it with my Pawn and I'm I'm not really any close to getting mated but G4 G5 is kind of scary that's a very Advanced plan if my opponent plays it I'll be very very impressed because again Queen mate Queen here is mate if I don't have this Pawn which is one of the main dangers of going opposite side Castle because there's a scary position it's not an easy game at all um so and how do you get rid of this well you can take it that's one way you can go boom boom Rook H6 but that's a full Rook you're giving up a full Rook you really have to have mate if you give up a full rook and remember interposing how do I interpose this with my Pawn that's a very useful defense Knight to E5 so that's that's free that's a freebie so my opponent thought for a little bit and that's just Queen takes that's just Queen into night and unfortunately that happens at this level you but both of these players played this was like one of the best games by 400 I've ever seen to be honest uh they're 600 rapid right but okay so now how do you win a game where you're up a night don't hang a queen how do you win a game hurry up at night let's go for a queen trade without Queens on the board the chance of us getting mated is significantly lower my opponents should not trade Queens they should play like Queen D4 or queen D2 that really should not trade Queens when they are down material because you and that's that's just good rule of thumb and this is still far from over at the 400 level uh uh definitely far from over but now you have Rooks you have to use them you what you do in a position like this is you double your Rooks similar to this but this Pawn is a lot softer than my Pawn over here because I'm protected by a pawn they are not also don't hang your Bishop we can move the bishop or protect it as we've seen uh I am going to if you protect it and attack it you stop guarding that pawn you notice that that's called continuity you want to make a move but suddenly you forget that a move that was impossible becomes possible so be very careful anytime you move something you might have been defending something else right so that's uh all right just move out of the way and now we're gonna double up and we're gonna go for this pawn and we might not even win it to be honest with you if they protect it it might still be a while before right we actually break through okay well we don't that's not good that is a misunderstanding of the position you should not be trading Rooks now we've we've get we've gotten a queen and Rook off the board so you might be thinking well if I trade these pieces I get into an end game I won't lose actually it's not that you won't lose well you will probably but it's more a matter of you can't really win rook and six are not gonna beat a rook bishop and seven it just got too much stuff you're not gonna beat me I'm a that's a freebie so three or four things given away in this game right that's accounting that's a counting exercise I have a feeling my opponent will trade Rooks yeah you see I've kind of noticed the the pattern that we're gonna we're gonna pick things up and now you don't need to take the pawns now you need a queen what you need to do here is you need to make a queen now to be honest with you the easiest way to win a game of chess as a 400 is to make a second Queen of course they might resign you shouldn't you should give away your pawns and try to get stalemated that's what you should do because with pawns on the board you will not get stalemated and you shouldn't resign opponent might resign against me but you don't even need to take these pawns I wouldn't play it like that uh I would try to promote another Pawn if you are met with resistance of some sort then you can fight the resistance or or you can go and win those pawns and push on the other side of the board so the easiest thing to do uh is to do like this and make sure you're not stalemating always make sure that the King has a legal move always has a legal move right and push and push and push it doesn't matter if you lose the bishop don't be worried about losing the bishop in many cases you actually want to because what some people will do is they'll move the bishop and forget it controls certain squares lose the bishop as long as the King has a legal move make two queens that's the easiest way to win a game of chess if you can okay still legal moves two queens and now for example Queen here is stalemate no more legal moves of the king what I would like to do here is bring the bishop to a centralized position so it's kind of out of the way and it lets your Queens operate that's very useful you might up close accidentally stalemate and queen and queen two queens like this you can give a million checks you absolutely can but the easiest thing to do cut the king off as close to the edge as possible without stalemiting bring one of the Queens without checking and play a move like this and now the king is completely cut off on G and H and the other Queen ghosted like this that is the easiest way we get all the pieces out of the way Quick Ladder mate to seal the deal okay Quick Ladder mate the easiest easiest solution at the beginner level uh this was a quite decent game um This was um opponent you know I I made some inaccuracies in the opening and here's where all you got to pay attention don't open up the position against your own King that is one of the easiest ways to lose if anything play Queen E7 keep the tension of the pieces now had the opponent played like this this is actually quite different there I don't hate that you traded but you want to make sure that if you're training you're not just opening up a rook directly at the place that you've already castled and if you do do that okay at least anticipate it and see it and protect against it um there was a lot of kind of understanding of that here there was peas Dynamics right understanding can we take this can we remove this oh and then I you know I'm so clever not not really I'm not not that clever capture chain right okay he takes me I take him game over wait wait but then what about what about this so we want to make sure we don't we we take the next step we don't just stop it oh I take the road boom done what's the opponent gonna do they're just gonna sit there and let you take them not I mean right not necessarily so uh and then Pawn breaks is so important so important in a closed position close position means more pawns on the board so seven pawns eight Pawns in a closed position you want to make those Pawn breaks to open up the position right so that's but also free stuff free stuff was given away a few times during this game and that happens that's gonna happen we're gonna take as much free stuff as possible um and the next person is not online so we're gonna play uh we're gonna play CJ so this person is rated 500. uh last time I played with the kingspawn let's see what happens if we play with the Queen spawn um yeah unfortunately some people register and then they don't they don't continue the game uh they don't stay online so two Pawns in the center if possible in this case possible Right now one of our pawns is under attack uh the best way to protect this Pawn is with a knight so we don't want to we don't want to go here that just takes away from our own Knight so if you can protect one of your Center pawns with a knight it's generally the rule of thumb okay now we want to go two nights yeah something like Knight to F3 generally good we're not attacking the Knight just yet because that would be overextending uh we don't want to do this a little I mean we can it's not like terrible but it's not good you're not building the right approach you want to for as long as you can just develop just get your pieces out into the open right like castles or something Bishop castles uh last game we had opposite side castling so we had um situation where we were just on opposite sides and oftentimes uh in this case you can do opposite side castling something like Bishop out Queen out bring the king over here so this move uh is not bad they are pinning our Knight uh you if a piece ever gets this far into your territory because this obviously is your territory you are allowed to ask a question like what are you doing here right okay they're taking all right they could have hung around maybe we would have tried to trap them now obviously you're gonna take with the queen and not the pawn the pawn opens up the king that is not that's not good but I'm gonna do it because I'm 500 I don't I don't know better I don't want to bring my queen out that's too scary so the problem is I have an open King and I have a very weak Pawn on H3 right so here comes Knight back to D7 okay that's that you know okay let's finish my development so I've put all my pieces out like Gotham told me to but now what now what do I do well we both have eight pawns Gotham said the position is closed yeah but you have a lot more space we're not both jostling in the middle can I bring a rook can I bring a Queen yeah you can make these very subtle improving moves at some point you're gonna have to go forward the tough thing about a position like this is like for instance look let's say I play Bishop D5 attacking this right the problem with a position that's so closed is that it's just a little you're just gonna get kicked out like despite it's very spiky oh my opponent misses my idea so they they counter-attack me in the center but they missed that my idea was to play Bishop takes Pawn so now I'm gonna win a rook I've trapped their rook in the corner but at what loss I'm gonna lose a bishop right so Bishop takes pawn pawn takes bishop and I'm gonna win the rook in the corner so the idea there was I just made a one move threat it wasn't that good but it guarded that all and I attacked it and it wasn't good I would have had to move move on with my life you know if that happened right but I take the Rook now what you do if a bishop wanders this close shut the door don't let the bishop out keep the bishop locked in your corner so maybe you can win it pawn queen and everybody right there is this check on my king but checks don't decide games I just slide over to the corner that's another very important skill how can they attack my king see I'm not just drawing arrows for myself I'm constantly drawing arrows at what do my opponent's pieces see and that's so important what do my opponent's piece to see and right now they they see a lot of open lines right moves like Queen to H4 right but you gotta trap my Bishop here this is the most important thing don't let the bishop out respond to this move and make sure the bishop stays in jail and then if I'm clever I'll try to trade and kind of rescue the bishop give it a helping hand out of this diagonal I'm 500 though I don't know that I don't I'm like oh all right it's dead whatever you know and uh and then it's a goner okay does this move do anything this is so tough I'm moving on to all right I'm just gonna I'm gonna go I'm gonna go attack tonight Queen was attacking the bishop I got a little lucky lucky I got lucky I missed that the queen was attacking the bishop I could have I could have ran away I could have gone all the way back from Bishop all the way back into my territory but I forgot I didn't see it got a little bit lucky but I saw that I could play a one mover attacking that night okay but you have to anticipate that it's not just the night anytime a piece moves other pieces start seeing things in a different way for example my queen used to guard this Pawn that's a free Pawn now because my queen used to guard it so that's how the board changes from over here the queen sees the middle luckily my middle is quite well protected admittedly but uh Bishop takes spawn is a free Pawn now it's a very open the board is opening up right now the board is you're seeing this like board is opening up a lot um excellent fair trade I'm up with cereal so I'm fine with the trade um I can attack the bishop don't hate it I can move the Knight which attacks the bishop and that I kind of like that kind of like that uh if I move the Knight they can take me on B2 but I can take and that's a fork oh that must be good right Knight B5 must be good the bishop can go back and protect that actually and then I have to move on to my next plan Bishop back to B6 is uh yeah wow awesome move by my opponent now I I can't really break through over there this is when you don't know what to do what do you do right like what do you what do you do uh I'm gonna play uh a rook move I don't know I haven't moved my Rook yet I'm just gonna bring my Rook to the kind of open file now at this point there's an extremely strong move here by my opponent uh and that move is the move Knight to E5 attacking the pawn which is near my king that is a very very decent move it's very hard to defend by the way that pawn okay they go that way and they're attacking my queen not a bad move I have to now move my queen to safety this one's not so hard this is the only move I have that I mean that's a very easy way to lose your queen but uh we're not going to do that so I'm gonna get our Queen to safety Queen C6 is not a bad move Queen C6 actually might be a very instructive moment okay Rook d8 can't really take much can play a one mover attacking the Knight um it doesn't seem like a terrible move especially at this level just Pawn up to B4 I mean the knight's gonna move out of the way and then we got we gotta keep thinking it's not an easy position at all really it's not like how do we you know like a couple games ago we were trying to attack weak spots near my opponent's king but how do you attack a position where everything is protected not not it's not easy uh we have to now weaken our position right we have to not blunder anything we have to make moves that don't like for instance just kind of an offhand move like Queen C3 just bringing the queen more toward the center not blundering anything our Knight is a little offside right like maybe Rook up our Knights a little bit offside so if it gets attacked okay five we can take most people at low ELO just take like if they can take they just take right so now if Bishop takes a queen's under attack and it's protected so we have to move to safety we can be safe or we can transfer the queen very deep into our opponent's territory this is kind of a good strategy like just kind of hanging out near all the enemy pieces as long as you're not going to get taken as long as you can't really be attacked or messed with it's a good strategy people kind of freak out sometimes if you just put the Queen near stuff you know for example if my opponent had put their Queen on H4 early and hung out near my territory I might have gotten a little bit freaked I might have not that probably would have been quite calm actually but uh in this case you know my opponent doing a good job sort of chilling out I did a good job chilling out they did a good job chilling out ah D5 okay takes takes takes takes are we up material Gotham taught me I should trade when I'm up material right yes and no in this case this exchange is not bad but it it does do something called activating our opponent's piece right we're bringing the queen to everything the crossroads of the entire position and this game is a good example of the fact that even though we are up a rook for a bishop which we won early on right when I trap my opponent's Rook if a rook is not participating in the game how are you going to say this Rook is worth five points right now when the queen arrives here what is it attacking it's attacking the Knight it's attacking the pawn it's attacking this Pawn that's kind of scary right so we can move the Knight uh we can also defend the Knight so I'm gonna kill two birds one stone here but does my opponent see this this is this is actually a very good position for black 's King is a lot safer than mine and in chess uh despite material probably being the most important thing the second most important thing is King safety and right now I gotta tell you my king is not feeling safe and if I try to bring my Rook to the party it's just gonna get taken it's gonna get swarmed like you know like I've got vultures outside of my house I can't bring this queen to the background because it's gonna get taken and I have to guard my king it's a really tough position it's not an easy position to play at all like at all um so I can probably protect this right the pawn over here um I can also you know maybe bring this Knight back right and that's hitting the queen and the Knight maybe trade but this is this is a fantastic game that my opponent is playing here I've kind of played to their level for example here Queen takes pawn and I'm I'm sort of scared I mean my and this goes all the way back to why you shouldn't have taken like this do you remember this why why we should have taken with a pawn because this is what happens the game begins proceeding and all the pawns near our King are collapsing this is really dangerous for us well for example Queen Here pawn here it's mate I'm already getting mated so I've got to be super super careful not easy but not easy at all um G5 okay uh can we check yes we can also Fork but the first thing you always need to look at is checks in any position in any position that check is good and we can now immediately win this pawn and actually the craziest thing about this look at this look at how big the board is the bishop is hanging I'm not sure if 500 catches that I I'm not I'm really not um I'm actually not going to take this because I I just that is so beyond the pay grade but you know what's not beyond the pay grade the king is a little trapped and even though my Rook still can't come to the party on those files it can on B1 and Rook B8 is borderline checkmate like if it gets if it doesn't get stopped it's made it can be stopped that's what I'm calling it borderline Rook B8 is mate I am threatening mate because the king is cut off it cannot Escape right that should be six wow and you know what the craziest thing about that move is there is now a threat to my own King which is so hard to see um part of me wants to play A5 if my opponent sees that they can win the game after A5 I will be so happy I'm gonna do it because this is the point of the series does my opponent see Bishop takes F2 let's see and then King H2 and then Bishop G3 and that will that will show you exactly why you don't open up your king A5 is a tunnel vision move it's a move like oh my God if the bishop moves Rook B8 and then my opponent can say forever that they beat Gotham chess rated 2700 I'm not sure they're gonna have that it's completely winning Bishop takes is just game over they are probably scared of mate which is why and there also might be like is Gotham actually blundering against me is Bishop F2 actually they're so oh no they missed it now I take the bishop ah okay now even though Rook B6 is still not so terrible there might be a draw like it's it's actually it's actually kind of crazy oh no no it's not a draw the only thing you need to worry about when you've got a weak King like this is Perpetual check okay unfortunately my opponent did not go for checks and we can trade Queens here one of the ways to win this is to uh trade the queen but again this was our plan for a very long time so I'm just gonna play Rook B8 and um now we can um take the queen for The Rook but we also can give a check and remove the defender first that's a little bit too much something like check and then taking that's not gonna you know so I'm gonna do this and we're gonna follow our strategy of the last game oh okay they resigned but the strategy of the last game which was just making a second Queen removing the pawns I'm gonna tell my opponent I'm gonna tell them that they were winning I'm gonna tell them yes that's the point of the series okay you know it's like chess.com you like play those games and then and then it tells you immediately that you were uh you had an opportunity to be winning it's like very no but I mean that's the point you know that's that's that's why I'm doing this series it's very unique I haven't lost games to my viewers before I'm playing another 500 by the way um so I'm gonna actually be white one more time uh I played D4 last game uh I guess I'll play D4 one more time I can play E4 D4 it doesn't really matter as long as you're playing a center Pawn um okay so now I can't play my Center Pawn right so I'm gonna play Knight F3 um yeah Queen's Pawn positions like I said the best friend of the of the Queen's Pawn is the C Pawn so uh playing like the The Queen's Gambit is what this is called officially in this game I'm gonna kind of begin showing you how the DNC Pawn go go together um yeah if they take this Pawn really can't be saved um so for instance again you can't put your other Pawn to the middle yet but it needs some support so you go like this and this Pawn on C4 the Queen's Gambit style positions the pawn can't really be guarded unless black like defends to the death so you bring two pawns to the middle and then you take which is one of the reasons the Queen's Gambit DNC pawns go together so well because you're gonna move your onto the center and have two Center pawns right so I'm gonna play something like E4 now the best move there by the way all right the best move is D5 anytime your opponent leaves nights in the middle which can be attacked without getting taken the difference of the last game I don't know if you remember you said last games to Levy you told me in the beginning of the last game not to extend because you can be taken that is the difference if you have free passage into your opponent's territory whoa what are we doing here why are we blundering this is just a free night free now if you have free passage into your opponent's territory without Pawn trades do it pawns are so lethal they take so much space away right um all right so Bishop to F5 attacks our Knight we can defend it or we can move it uh for example Queen C2 defense but also that's called pinning yourself like why would we just move our queen or the bishop in the Knight like that so you can just move for example back to where you were right simple four subscribers CJ's devastated he's like I can't believe I missed that no I mean look this is the this is the point this is why we're doing this for y'all to see that right these things are possible to believe in yourself night back to C3 now here there's an opportunity for my opponent to come in here with a knight like this and uh get after me um E5 maybe D5 maybe Pawn takes I have counted that we win this trade so we're gonna take the pawn if Queen takes right if Queen takes like this um we can take with the Knight or the king so if you take with the King obviously you don't have any right to Castle anymore it's not the worst thing in the world considering we're opening we're up at night so you know if you're up at night but you can't Castle it's not terrible uh but in this case um all right in this case it's Bishop takes Pawn Maybe let's do it just a free Pawn The Rook sees the night now that my opponent castles long and um um now we are up a piece but we still need to get our King to safety Bishop back to E6 I'm up material so we're gonna trade and then we are going to Castle The Rook still sees the night right Rook still sees the night and we are also up no we're not up upon pawns are equal we were down upon but then Bishop to C5 okay let me go Bishop to E3 this is a perfectly reasonable move here so is Bishop to F4 so is Bishop Bishop to G5 attacking The Rook the only reason I'm doing this is because again we are up material so a bishop trade is completely fine then if we trade the Rooks in the night we're gonna have a knight they're not gonna have a knight throw Knight's gonna hop around gonna be kind of simple if you want to you are more than welcome to play Bishop G5 you have like probably 10 or 15 moves here that don't lose anything so one Pawn push somewhere is also okay uh taking with the Knight here is better than taking with the pawn because if you uh take with the pawn that's called doubling your pawns and you're isolating them there's no real need to do that your pawns are much better kind of hanging out all together and my next move is Rook D1 so another good move here is Knight G5 to threaten this pawn and also threaten this Fork arriving on F7 it's also a good move you can also play Rook to C1 Rook to E1 you can push any of these pawns one square and move the king over right the position doesn't change you're still winning you're winning because you're up at night your King's safe you're up at night and okay you see it's a perfect example of a move that doesn't doesn't do a whole lot if anything it stops my knight so at this point I don't really care which Rook you move let's move this one and I would like to trade Rooks because the less pieces my opponent has on the board as we learned the less resistance they're going to have my opponent should not trade they should move the Rook that's what they should do okay let's go Rook takes Rook um I'm actually thinking I'm going to cut this first episode short because it's already quite long and I appreciate your patience very much but I will be playing all the same players that I promise to play in the long version of this episode in the second episode so the episode will not be out for the first like day or two but it will be posted uh I will play against the uh the higher rated players like uh 600 plus in episode two of steps I feel like 40 minutes is good I feel like if you're still watching I appreciate you very much but uh you know I wanna 40 minutes so uh 50 minutes is is quite good so Knight D4 idea trade nights but a bad move continuity I've talked about continuity uh before continuity is um in this case the Knight used to guard the pawn so the Knight guarded the pawn and it doesn't once I move it here but okay Rook takes him yeah it's gonna be very difficult for my opponent to uh to get any sort of counter Play Now useful advice you see how my back rank has nothing on it if an enemy Rook were to make it down here would be made somehow so just a useful move if you're not under attack give your king breathing room I cannot tell you how much rating this will save you so you never blunder back rank Checkmate now your king is safe now what you need to do is get into the opponent's Barn right so get in as far as you can if that was there we wouldn't have been able to do that and start eating start eating the pawns right because you have a rook in a night they only have a rook at the end of the day you have more attack than they can offer you any sort of defensive resistance now if the opponent is smart what they will do are clever smart is too strong of a word good that's also very good good defense excellent defense I would love to get my knight into the game but I can't um so sometimes to go forward go back the point is to go here and like I said we have more attacking possibilities than they have Defenders you can take this you can ignore it because it's a fair trade taking is completely fine you don't have to but and now Knight D4 take a step back to go forward right now E6 this Pawn that we're trying to win notice by the way how I haven't just given a completely absent-minded check you might have been asking why I didn't do it there's no you can and you can't like it's completely fine if you do it's I'm it's just not you don't need to you absolutely don't need to in some cases it forces the king to the outside of the board but it doesn't change anything right we're gonna try to win this Pawn I am going to offer a trade of Rooks as well because we'll be winning if the Knight and the pawns take but uh it's we're gonna play Rook takes Pawn okay now the Rook moved so maybe we take with the Rook or something right and now what do you know about winning these positions you know that we're going to promote oh this is a fantastic move oh my God I'm gonna give this move the credit it deserves right Pawn takes we forgot about Rook takes Knight that's gonna happen that is gonna happen in your games now you go oh my God I hung my knight oh my God so this was an extremely clever idea a sneak attack on our hanging night and this is a perfect example of doors open and doors close when pieces move that is super what I should have done here guard my knight move my knight right so now we have rook and one two three four five rooken five versus rooken three but we have Pawns so we need to somehow move our pawns forward we can move the Rook up and push but in end games the best way is to bring the Rook behind the pawn and Advance it forward it's like a just defense like behind it forever rook in front of the pawn is messy because you can't really you can't move right so this is a great move oh my God this is a fantastic move Rook D2 to hunt meat just like I was hunting my opponent but I'm gonna push the only thing is my opponent can attack my Pawn from the opposite side so if they go behind my Pawn it's going to be very annoying for me to move I can't really move right can't move my Rook can't move my Pawn but I have this Pawn I still have another Pawn now I can also probably ask The Rook where it's gonna move and hopefully he doesn't see my opponent goes eating my pawns my Pawn just promotes they don't want to take my pawns I have too far of an advanced Pawn they need to stay great that's excellent now at this point I'm like um um if I give a check the king just runs so what if I push my pawn and then if they take me I push this Pawn so I've got two pawns right I have a feeling my opponent's gonna try to bring their King and that will be a fatal error because there's a major difference between getting checked on that square and that square okay C5 King C8 led to Checkmate this would have been Checkmate which is kind of crazy it's a totally different thing because the king is boxed in right so now G5 I'm using my Pawn as a decoy so take me go ahead I'm gonna keep pushing now this is very important I can promote my queen when you have a situation like this you don't need to guard your Pawn you can actually check the king you can use the check to defend the back Rank and if the king is far enough like this you will Queen and it's okay that you're gonna lose it because you're gonna get a rook for it now if the King was able to get closer we wouldn't be we would not have been able to do that now obviously the game is very similar philosophy as we've shown make a queen anticipate that you're not accidentally giving up something here right so when the okay and we'll just make a queen and now and now and now and now I'm gonna teach you probably the easiest thing just for peace of mind is to take this but you don't need to stop the queen what do we know about queens and Rooks don't go hunting with checks cut the king off Queen right where's the king the king is two rows right so cut the king off like this make sure the king is completely cut off give a check and that's it ladder mate even though I'll move away from promotion and Rook 28 and that's Checkmate this game I began showing you that DNC pawns go together very much and if you cannot put d and e in the center together the Queen's Gambit intends to do that it intends to put d and e together and win back the C Pawn the dangers uh of trying to defend this Pawn early can lead to some really funny blunders like for example there's a blunder like here in the Queen's Gambit accepted um where if the opponent is not careful it's a very famous mistake um you can play moves like A4 just splitting like this and this is terrible it's like Battleship you just I mean you pick up everything uh but there is another famous blunder where the diagonal is open and The Rook just cannot be protected at all right so um the Queen's Gambit is a fantastic opening just because it kind of makes sense like in this game we we saw an example of it purely making the most sense where white gets the whole Center d and e with no questions asked and yes black would better play can put up a little bit of resistance you know begin pinning us I also mentioned how attacking a knight in the center of the board like this to just force it God knows where like to A5 or here or something or losing it right if you can attack Knights like this with well coordinated defenses behind the pawns and you're not overextending you're not getting into Pawn trade that's good but this is also very good de in the middle oh it's fantastic it more space leads your pieces to to better degree of activity opponent did blunder and we cleaned it up but um for now folks I did mention that we were going to go to uh 800 but it's going to be 800 up in episode 2 because this one's already quite long let me know your feedback in the comments um and uh I'm gonna launch uh episode two basically immediately afterward so um let me know if five five is good I felt like the time control today was very reasonable and let me know any feedback welcome to the series

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 3,309,200

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

Id: dEGogMh9Tzs

Length: 57min 25sec (3445 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 03 2022