Reports of my Scandi's Death are Greatly Exaggerated | Climbing the Rating Ladder vs. SiJayka (1705)

hey guys this is john and i'm playing c jacob in a five plus five game on chess.com i'm playing white let's open with e4 shall we it's my first video of the month other than that video i posted on april 1st and shout out to those of you who sniffed out the april fool's joke i feel it has to be said i am not giving up the scandinavian defense that was 100 an april fool's joke i do thank you for the nice messages those who got in touch with me and said you know john i'm sure it was a difficult decision having to give up the scandy i just want to know you have my support best of wishes for your future opening endeavors i got a lot of those types of messages i'm gonna play c3 here by the way and go for d4 in this relopez and i do greatly appreciate it but yes it was april fool's joke so you scandi die hards out there no fear i i'm continuing to play the opening and analyze it and uh practice what i preach so expect more scandi's in the future okay so in this position here the bishop on b4 looks a little awkward i have the nice center so c3 d4 that is a primary plan in the lopez and i was able to execute it pretty smoothly and i've got these two pawns side by side i'm thinking it moves like bishop g5 here to hit the queen certainly d5 attacking the knights it would be nice to somehow capitalize on this bishop but i have learned that you don't want to play d5 too quickly in a lot of these setups but again i'm thinking about it because if i could get queen a4 in somewhere it might be nice i mean what if i play queen a4 right here idea of bishop a5 i take on c6 and then that bishop well and truly is undefended this move seems to pose black some problems and if black has to play a5 then i think it can go a3 so i'm gonna go ahead and play this black's played very quickly up to this point that was a minute i spent on that last move i'm gonna chalk part of that up to explaining the april fool's joke and you know how explaining a joke is it's always a little cumbersome but yeah i think black has played this too quickly and has now found themselves in a difficult position is this is the is this the belarus flag belarus yes it is okay i know a title player from belarus um andre gorovitz who became a grandmaster a couple years ago super nice guy yeah i don't see a good way out of this for black a5 is about the only move that makes sense here in order to save the bishop but this a3 move crowding the bishop is going to win a piece so the damage looks to be done but we'll see what black comes up with i hope you all have been well i've been rather busy this month you know i generally stay pretty busy but i'm going to be moving quite soon i'm like 95 sure and i'm only going to be moving about 20 minutes away but i own this house i'm gonna have to sell it put it on the market you know how that process is it's just time consuming and moving into the new place i'm gonna be downsizing actually so i'm downsizing significantly in space i'm gonna go d5 because i want to get this night away so that'll be a bit of an adjustment but i'm looking forward to it i basically have you know a fair amount of square footage in my current place that i i don't need so it's been nice to have over the past several years but i'm looking forward to a change the the area i'm moving into is a little bit more urban and i think more of a happening place i currently live in the suburbs and it's just a little a little too boring sometimes so shouldn't affect much in terms of the videos but my my usual setup here will be gone i mean the computer is probably the last thing i'm gonna pack up or maybe the big king trophy actually that'll probably be well and truly the last thing i pack up but uh don't expect any changes for about a month or so now if we go back for a second while black is thinking black can get away with this setup but they often do not take on d4 at least on the rilo pets they they try to maintain the pawn on e5 and now here i can take on b4 or i can throw this move in first i think i'm gonna play knight takes e5 first i just like that a little more so black doesn't play knight takes f3 with check and double up my pawns yeah now i can take d7 or bishop takes b4 ah it doesn't matter a whole lot i think i'll just take the bishop first just so we don't get black uh a free tempo let's say with bishop takes d7 queen takes d7 [Music] c6 let's take that okay and bishop c4 looks normal here maybe bishop g5 now attacking this knight no black cannot play f6 because of the pin and this is going to be another piece moving relatively quickly there's not a whole lot to discuss with those moves okay and my opponent resigns i'm gonna offer a rematch here let's see if they accept that game was pretty quick and they do accept okay so we're gonna get a double header in this uh climbing the raiding ladder video okay now just just to prove to you that the scandi is not dead i am going to play the scandinavian and okay a lot of people do play e5 but unlike openings such as the french defense of the cairo khan the advanced variation is not good against the scandinavian and the main reason is black gets to play this c5 move in one move in one fell swoop control the d4 square and black tends to enjoy pretty easy development here so knight c6 we'll see if white plays knight f3 or bishop b5 those are almost always the moves you see here yeah knight f3 i'm gonna go bishop g4 i think pin the knight and i like to develop like e6 knight h6 knight f5 the dark square bishop can come to e7 it's a pretty harmonious setup we'll play e6 bishop outside the pawn chain so you can see the improvement over let's say a french defense yeah and look to put this knight on f5 it's often the plan and black just has great breath of control here all those squares on the fourth rank under the pawns control i've been tweaking my camera settings a little bit too sorry if there's any autofocus issues i think that's primarily a lighting thing again when i move i think it's going to get better but i'm going to continue to play around with things it shouldn't look quite as yellow as it did in the last video so that seems to been cleared up a little bit okay so now yeah knight f5 i think is fine just seeing if there's anything in delaying that knight move but now let's go ahead and play it i have given up the bishop pair i've traded off the light square bishop for the knight on f3 but the position is closed so this is fine and i like the harmony i've got going no bad pieces pretty clear path to castling king's side there's a lot of game left here but i i like my position here on the face on the face of things play bishop e7 could put a knight on d4 to attack the bishop and also the c pawn but white is likely going to drop the bishop back to d1 so i don't see any reason to rush that now i can play around with bishop h4 if i want i might even play it here i'll think about it because bishop h4 white would have to play queen d1 because queen e2 is going to walk into knight g3 what else is reasonable i mean certainly knight h4 if i want to attack the bishop uh knight d4 again if i want to do this and this ah maybe i play here bishop d1 and then bishop h4 although white does have queen e3 so it's not quite a queen trap feels like there might be some move order that maximizes my advantage here but just pause for a moment so knight knight fd4 bishop d1 bishop h4 queen e3 and i gotta be careful that knight has a has a way back if i put it on d4 because c3 could be a threat for white at that stage so i'm sort of shying away from that still thinking about the bishop h4 move maybe bishop h4 followed by knight g3 it's definitely possible to go after that rook bishop h4 queen d1 knight g3 rook f2 let's say knight e4 can always go to g2 maybe nothing too crazy going on there so just knight h4 yeah i'm really not sure i'm gonna go bishop h4 let's see where that queen goes and there's a possibility white will blunder but probably not given how long i thought on that move generally the longer you think at a tactical moment the more careful your opponent's going to be on their next move yeah so queen d1 is correct known knight g3 was my original intention 97 i think is actually still pretty decent too maybe i go from 97 followed by g5 that could be pretty interesting let's try it so i put the knight in the bishop's place and i'm kind of hoping this bishop is helpful over here penetrating into the position and this while kind of crazy looking it would intend to break up this mini structure that white has going in the center so i may go for that or h5 some undermining move towards the white king and one of the main reasons i feel comfortable doing this is i have not committed my king yet i haven't castled white has though white's king is committed to the king side so the stakes are higher for white in terms of king safety if things get real open on this wing this is an idea you see in the french defense as well by the way okay now i'm going to capture and on bishop takes i'm going to play knight g6 hit the bishop and hit the pawn on e5 now i i might not actually want to take it immediately is the thing let's say white goes bishop h2 here okay white plays bishop h6 now i might take it but i do have to be aware of let's say bishop g7 maybe i throw in this move first or even bishop g5 bishop g5 is kind of appealing x if i take on e5 immediately um bishop g7 followed by a capture of one of the knights in queen e2 i have to watch some alignment issues down the file here so let's let's play this first basically i want to give myself an out to easily castle queenside at the moment there's trouble on the e-file if there's any alignment issue on the e-fail e-file i want to be able to just whisk my king away to the queen side so i think from a coordination standpoint this makes sense okay this this is interesting yeah i see white's point so white is going to argue that if i take queen takes they have bishop takes d5 ah but i have queen d4 check let's do this let's see if i can get white to blunder yeah and white does check in between move and then pick this up ooh this is not the end of the story though um i maybe played that a little too fast quite honestly let's see where white steps here uh i notice now if this knight b5 knight b5 is important and okay it's not totally over yet it's not over yet josh famous movie searching for bobby fischer um yeah so take knight b5 and on queen e5 there's rookie one very important think think think i kind of have to take it now i do somewhat well i really don't know actually i don't necessarily have to take there's knight here for instance pulling an audible but ah it's kind of a broken plan take knight b5 yeah i don't like it i don't like what i've done here this was a pretty big error on my part going down this road you know let's go here i'll be interested to see afterwards um what the computer thinks of this but i think i've made a mess of this position now if knight b5 queen takes d5 comes with check so that's no good if bishop takes b7 rook b8 my idea is to counter attack down here if bishop takes b7 rook b8 then knight b5 feel like queen d7 white's position is a little too loose yeah i'm mostly playing this for coordination purposes uh disallow bishop take c6 check as an option try to better reinforce this also maybe stop queen f3 but we're we're in a melee now this is unclear also the time situation not great for me spent a huge chunk of time on two moves bishop h4 i spent way too long that was a minute and 50 seconds inadvisable for a five plus five game to spend uh a minute 50 seconds on a move okay bishop e4 so my opponent does not capture now what if i step here maybe i go after this pawn seems kind of threatening so let's let's do it and on king h2 maybe knight and f4 after h3 trying to make up some time as well get a little bit closer on the clock a bishop f3 is an option too for white but bishop f3 psychologically is a hard move to play it also might run into knight h4 okay so white does step there and am i going to continue with knight f4 what else is there i mean i could just castle queen side but i don't want to give white a chance to play something like queen e2 so i think continuing with this move is correct try to force white to do this and then i'd really like to play h5 bishop f3h5 i just think knight e4 may be annoying knight e4 king e7 94 would threaten knight f6 by the way so oh white sack in the exchange okay yeah now i think this should be very very good for me up the material again h5 is a consideration maybe just castle though just get organized don't think sacking on g4 is working quite yet i could consider it but risk reward probably not quite there let's just castle i'm up the material now maybe we'll get some sort of queens off situation white could play queen f1 but let's just secure the king and connect the rooks f5 is an idea as well here yeah castling is one of those moves that may not be best but under the circumstances and in general you're not going to regret castling too often unless you're castling into a huge attack or something castling is one of those moves that people try to delay often times for uh invalid reasons i would say okay queen g3 is a move i'm thinking about could just trade i think queen f1 is a good try by the way just defensively uh because an endgame is not immediately winning or something for me although i could trade and play h5 that actually seems pretty good i think i'm going to do that let's just swap and play h5 love this knight here on e5 you see how it controls the f7 square nicely defends that point and it can't be kicked away by a white pawn d4 is very hard to achieve so loving that knight okay knight b5 sometimes this type of move is more or less just a random jump with the knight i can play a6 i can also just take on g4 let's play a6 though let's just see where that knight's going this is not a threat so if you move those knights to the fifth rank you gotta have a good reason to do so because they often get kicked by enemy pawns all right let's take kind of indicates white's going to go here by moving the knight to a3 but yeah white does they really want at this f7 pawn but i can trade and play f5 so i think that's what i'll do see how white plays here but capturing is the only thing that really makes sense pawns on light squares against this bishop i'm ready to take here this is looking decisive but let's stay vigilant always okay now let's just move the king up and defend i actually wouldn't mind if white takes this pawn because it'll probably make it easier for me to convert if king h2 for instance i might play rook g2 white plays the rook up rook here makes some sense again moves like rook g2 or rook g4 let's go with g4 rook takes h3 and i'll just double at that point i'd be threatening a maton2 this is like an inverted or a shifted 90 degrees blind swine mate where i would go rook g1 followed by rook g2 with the white rook on h3 blocking the white white king's escape and i'm totally happy with the trade here we're up so much material trades are good so i would suspect white's gonna i was gonna say white was probably gonna keep the rooks on but maybe not okay thanks for the games to my opponent yeah so this second game was of course much more competitive than the first one let's take a quick look at the first one followed by the second one in the first one it was this relopez you know i think the rue lopez's white is a good opening to get into when you uh maybe have mastered like the italian game or sharper openings in the e4 e5 realm a lot of you play scotch game or danish gambit stuff like that the relopez can lead to more protracted strategic struggles the the tactics let's say tend to be a little more delayed in this opening it's an absolutely fundamental line and and one that you'll probably enjoy studying it has a rich tradition pretty much every top player has played the white and black side of the relopez in their careers i've even dabbled on the black side of it before so bishop c5 is not so common usually black plays a6 or knight f6 a6 being playable because even though white can take the knight black takes with the d pawn and on knight takes e5 many of you will know that queen d4 wins the pawn back for black due to the dual threats of queen takes e4 and queen takes e5 so bishop c5 there's nothing wrong with it but black does have to play accurately here because c3 followed by d4 looking for the pawn duo as i i often talk about my videos i've hammered this into many of your heads like try to establish the pawn duo if you're if you're able to sometimes you can do it and the opponent just allows you to do it because they're sitting back with their pawns in the opening but this is a a major plan on the white side of the relopez and my opponent more or less allowed me to do it effortlessly here so bishop d7 let's throw on the opening explorer yeah because this is acceptable but as i was saying in the game black typically tries to hold the e5 stronghold so bishop b6 is the main move here as played in 70 plus games and again white can try to win a pawn bishop takes c6 bishop takes c6 d takes e5 but this pawn on e4 is loose so i bet if we follow this variation yeah there's some trades and black eventually takes and i guess black is able to avoid disaster down the file because this f pawn is pinned black has the bishop pair i would bet theoretically white doesn't have anything here so that does seem better but you know a lot of people's instincts is going to be to take but i just think after c takes d4 look looks like the stats bear this out as well white's doing well here and how this bishop b form was played in a few games and i played uh queen a4 at this point didn't i makes me wonder if black actually has a defense because queen a4 has not been played here at least in the chess.com database and this i'm sure this position has been reached beyond what's indicated in the chess.com database but i wonder if there is a defense after the queen a4 move remember i spent some time here because it just seemed to me that this was worthy of punishment you know had black played bishop b6 black is solid for the moment but they lack space so likely i would have built around my center start developing my pieces knight c3 maybe bishop g5 if black develops a knight kind of menacing some stuff here maybe black goes knight ge7 instead you you often want to look for a moment a good moment to push one of these pawns but i would probably build up a little bit more bishop e3 rook c1 moves like that so queen a4 does black really have something here to hold i'm not seeing it the threat is bishop takes c6 followed by queen takes b4 and it doesn't matter if the black bishop flees there as well because it's a similar problem and i mentioned in the game a5 runs into a3 and black runs out of space with this bishop so since we've kind of thought about this let's throw on the engine a little selectively here no queen a4 is plus three and a half minimum for white so yeah that's that's the move i don't think we're gonna get anything better than that queen b3 is also good a little less direct though queen a4 is the top move that's interesting right that white hasn't played this i wonder how strong these players are it doesn't say but i would be curious if some top you know master level player let's say has missed queen a4 the strength of it here this these might be somewhat lower rated games but okay an idea worth remembering and after this knight ge7 decent attempt that allows black to try to replace the the knight with the other knight but d5 really shatters black's coordination and this knight's attacked which is in turn supporting this there's no way out here this is the threat take black could maybe try something like a6 here but it's gonna lose a piece one way or the other let's say take on c6 take b5 gets a little confusing but i can even throw in the capture on d7 first and then take here or if queen takes even the brook hangs it's too much of a domino effect that's going against black here so black played 95 but this was just a cleanup job after this black did lose another piece at the end rookie 8 would have hung on a little bit but um the position is losing so do you remember that from the bat from the black side if you're an e45 player if i flip this around real quick you generally do not want to play e takes d4 unless you have immediate counter play okay now the immediate counter play would come into play in let's say a position such as this in the italian game i have a video on my channel it's called know your joko piano where i go over this line this is one line where white ambitiously tries d4 and the only reason black is willing to capture like this it's not to play bishop b6 or bishop e7 or something we don't want to let those pawns stick around it's because black can play bishop b4 check often with knight takes e4 on the way if white blocks with the knight using the pin or on bishop d2 there's lines like this for instance where black punches in the center counter attacks with d5 and generates counter play so in short if you are going to allow this from the black side your opponent to get those pawns or even with colors reversed like you got to have some counter argument otherwise you're giving up too much space and too much of the immediate center which is these four squares all right let's switch to the other game now this was tougher okay i mentioned rumors of the scandinavian's death and me giving up the scandinavian have been greatly exaggerated on my part so i'm here to tell you that no it's it's alive and well it's just fine now contrary to popular belief i do not recommend the candy to everyone if you're a beginning player you're getting your feet under you in chess the scandinavian is not the defense i would go to play and even for those of you who are experienced i mean this is an opening that uh you have to want to play and it maybe shouldn't even be your only line against e4 probably shouldn't so i do think it's it's underrated but i just want to say that it's not not something you should jump into just because john says that he likes the scandinavian i'm just one guy one content creator if you're starting out i think e4 e5 is the way to go you could maybe throw in the sicilian and if you want to branch out even further i think the caro con is also a good opening fundamentally looking for d5 where you don't suffer any perhaps bad pieces like the french the french is the third most popular defense against e4 but i've never really understood why to be honest because to me the french looks like a bad version of the kero con where you're challenging the pawn on e4 but you have this bad bishop blocked by the pawn that you gotta struggle with for the rest of the game i'm sure some french purists will disagree though but anyways if you're a beginner and more stick to the classical stuff e5 or the sicilian where you're controlling d4 in some way um but in this game on d5 taking the pawn is is the really the only try for an advantage for white but my opponent played e5 and we saw elements of the caro khan the french here but good versions of both there's a line in the kerocon where so in the advanced variation or after d5 white pushes e5 and black actually voluntarily plays c5 here moving the c pawn again twice in the first three moves and there's quite a bit of theory surrounding this line so if that's the case there and there's theory that backs this up then of course playing c5 on move two in one go making use of the double pawn move must be good in this position we're trying to control d4 we're not going to allow white to set up d4 unopposed as a you know let's say something like e6 and contrast like this would transpose to the french defense bishop f5 is another good move here by the way you can also do this i cover both those options i mentioned both those options and cover some lines in my scandinavian course on chessable so c5 f4 supporting the center and now white could play bishop b5 that's sometimes a move you see and i usually meet that with bishop d7 this always contains a sneaky threat kudos to those of you who can spot this threat but for those of you who just want to enjoy the show shout out to again mature if white plays a routine developing move here like knight f3 you can play knight takes e5 and unveil the attack on the light square bishop and on night on bishop takes d7 check black plays knight takes d7 and reply and saves the knight those of you who do play the french defense you will know that trick well or you should know that trick happens all the time in the advanced french uh no joke i have a couple students who play the french i've seen that that trick probably a hundred times without exaggeration in some of these students games over the years so that's how i would handle the bishop coming to b5 but white played knight knight f3 and i decided to pin i like this i think the pieces just slot in really well for black here this bishop coming out navigating this king side knight to the f5 square if bishop e5 now i think black could ignore it and play a move like e6 also queen b6 makes a lot of sense attack the bishop defend the knight no problem either way do i play bishop e2 i'm gonna fast forward a little bit i don't think i have anything to add to these moves yeah and i i think i just spent way too much time at this moment on g4 deciding between probably relatively equal options here i mean in hindsight most everything looks looks okay knight h4 bishop h4 and i was mulling over the ramifications of this it's kind of attempting a double attack here because white probably wants to keep their light square bishop but the thing i didn't like is that c3 could be a threat in the future i guess i have the b5 square to get back but if that knight goes to the d4 square and takes away the other night square and doesn't have a way back um not sure and i got a little bit too carried away in looking at stuff like this where the queen is almost trapped but there doesn't seem to be anything concrete knight here hitting this there's always knight a3 just not quite seeing it so i like what i did in the game bishop h4 and 97 with this g5 idea in mind but i just wish i would have done that faster and i think even this is totally fine let's see what the computer thinks though yeah all these moves are good for black even the knight fd4 move it actually gives this as a possibility h5 and again black is willing to play this way because white's king is in the line of fire the engine even thinks that i could potentially give up the knight on d4 play for an attack this would be a nice exciting line this does look pretty good with all white's pieces on the back rank i must admit but wasn't really looking at that okay so yeah all decent bishop h4 queen d1 again queen e2 would run into knight g3 with the fork so that's no good yeah knight g3 is fine knight g3 followed by f6 another undermining pawn move so hit the rook do this yeah knight g3 looks looks excellent here now that i look at it again with fresh eyes and if we can break this structure that white has i can easily see how black's pieces and activity really start to show themselves okay but i went for this g5 yep same principle another top move here is h5 trying to attack with the h-pawn not worrying about takes because that would give up the f5 square we can jump right back in and just in general that open line towards the white king is going to be a problem but g5 i like it i think this is all fine but i let my guard down a little bit you know i am just as guilty as any of you out there uh any any player is like we let our guard down sometimes sometimes in chess okay thinks i can take immediately you know i was a little bit worried about this i gotta say some lines such as this where white might play queen e2 in the end and i was talking about this alignment like let's say i move the knight it would allow a capture here let's say bishop takes d5 using the pin the engine is not at all concerned it just says queen g5 aha defending the knight and that bishop is is handy controlling the e1 square okay so white can't easily move this knight from e5 yeah i can see that being good it's always easier in hindsight right whether you're running the engine or analyzing without the pressure or playing it's always easier still though i don't mind this move bishop g5 because statically the position is great for black i mean that pawn is not running away okay yeah and now i think i just got a little too clever with the queen takes f6 queen d4 idea and i say that because i i was employing some gamesmanship here i was trying to get white to blunder bishop takes d5 by moving faster i thought i had spotted just the refutation of a somewhat natural looking continuation and white very well may have missed the knight b5 idea maybe white wasn't looking at it at all i think there's a very very good possibility that's the case just judging by the speed at which white played bishop takes d5 but that doesn't matter i i didn't do my due diligence here and that's the the only important thing as in i didn't fully vet this continuation so the fact that white also fully didn't vet this is irrelevant because this if this were a classical game this is something that very easily could have got me in trouble and it almost did in this game so i shouldn't take that pawn queen d6 queen c7 yeah i'm pretty sure i would have played one of those moves engine likes them they just make a lot of sense let's say queen d6 i like that move a lot because that threatens queen g3 and also just makes way for castling we don't have to go after the pawn the engine thinks this is substantially better for for black and i'd say that's mainly due to the the king safety issue that white experiences just the chronic king safety issue my king's going to be very safe over on the queen side um yeah black's just gonna have basically a free shot at white's king coming up lots of attacking moves okay so queen takes f6 bishop takes d5 yeah and now white okay unless the engine comes up with something here yeah white white is probably doing fine unless i can take on d5 i kind of felt that same way in the game okay you know i saw this line this is the reason why i didn't play this e takes d5 because of knight b5 threatening this and threatening this and i can't move my queen to cover this square effectively because queen f4 that's covered by the rook on f1 queen e5 walks into the alignment we always have to be aware of the e-file alignment this happens so often uh in a huge portion of your games this will be some sort of theme either directly or indirectly so yeah i did look at queen g7 i don't remember if i was articulating this in the game with the idea of maybe um getting two minor pieces for the rook when the dust settles this was like queen f3 that could cause issues this is still a little bit loose but you know why i didn't like this is i thought white could play knight d6 here instead ah okay the engine is ruthless king d7 takes and just king takes d6 okay and the engine's gonna argue that when the dust settles here i have a rook and two minor pieces for the queen okay that is compelling but yeah not something i wanted to allow but i could see how this is the best line i definitely like that line more than what i did which was what knight c to e5 yeah and here taking on b7 is crucial so i was kind of daring white to capture this pawn and i was looking for counter play here and the engine's not convinced though oh his work takes be too bad for some reason here how is white going to hurt me against that just knight e4 threatening here yeah the position does look kind of loose i gotta say queen c whoops queen c1 maybe looking for queen g5 yeah the emperor has no clothes i could see how my king is just exposed here in the center this is already plus three and a half so bishop takes b7 seems best white played bishop e4 on the other hand and here the engine likes h5 i played queen e3 it's also says that's fine yeah queen e3 is kind of a nice move because it highlights the achilles heel of white's position here which is that h pawn i mean the defense around the king is already pretty pretty scarce and this hits that pawn really nicely yeah bishop g2 i don't know if i saw bishop g2 in the game but white didn't play it white played king h2 instead and my attack started building steam so on bishop h2 i probably would have castled here engine wants to play h5 or knight f4 again i kind of like castling just just to coordinate but um yeah bishop g2 is definitely the best move after this it gets tougher maybe still not quite too late to play this but then king h2 looks looks less necessary yeah castles and this is already tough for uh for white to defend um there's some nice tactics the engine is pointing out like if queenie won trying to trade queens at this point knight takes g2 and that one tempo white loss by playing king h2 can run into tactical problems knight takes g4 hard to meet here defends the queen ready to take and and fork and if takes takes black's just crushing just mating actually queen h6 coming yeah yeah this is where the position starts to slide downhill for white so i think probably around here bishop takes b7 best move and after bishop e4 queen e3 white has to play bishop g2 to have a chance yeah in the game white did that what else was i thinking of here was there another move uh maybe i did mention bishop g2 i can't remember but yeah that looks to be the only way to keep the position together rook f3 loses the exchange but i i guess after this the attack is probably decisive already so king h2 i think is probably the real culprit okay well i think i might have mentioned bishop f3 i'm having a hard time remembering but yeah bishop after bishop g2 yep and after winning the exchange okay the engine again brute force it just wants me to go for the throat here knight takes g4 queen g3 and knight takes g4 is minus nine and a half the engine just sees that this is uh a winning attack i didn't even want to have to calculate this so just castle in a longer game i probably would have looked at that spent some time but i had already burned quite a bit of time up to this point yeah and swapped here again there's other ways to play queen h6 maybe that does look awesome actually because white's kind of caught on these files knight takes g4 or rook takes g4 as an idea but no harm in playing this end game too h5 finally played this h5 move yeah and hard to offer white a ton of advice at this point you know stuff like takes i was going to go here snipe's doing a great job again but i i think you should really avoid moves like knight b5 that can easily be kicked back with pawns then it's just not stable there if my pawn was on a5 or something maybe but um still wouldn't have much of a threat and this was just cleaning up rook h8 better here didn't even look at that move that looks to take the rook or take the pawn with the rook rather than the pawn cause when i take this way white's kind of hiding in the shadow of that black pawn if that makes sense but the position is overwhelming here just got to avoid major blunders still play aggressively but also look for traits like this yeah easy win here in the end game can start bringing up my kings advancing the pawn weights cut off if white had avoided a rook trade you know something like this i can um probably eventually force a rook trade to be honest but i can also start slowly bringing up my king what would i do maybe i think i would play maybe this move to start or king e7 yeah maybe maybe something like this then start bringing the king a little bit closer e5 e4 white's cut off don't think i would check unless there was some sort of force mating sequence but the white's almost going to run out of moves here soon and just gradual progress being made maybe try to force a rook trade on the h file but even that's unnecessary okay so a couple of instructive games there that first game getting in c3 d4 and then taking advantage of that bishop b4 hopefully he picked up a thing or two and this game far more competitive i let my guard down and didn't fully vet this sequence i spotted a good idea and i went for it in a longer game this could have got me punished um so there were better ways to play that cleaner ways and i think for white i just am skeptical of this setup and e5 in general against the scandinavian i personally think black is even slightly slightly better after this already because that pawn on e5 can be a liability i definitely wouldn't have played like uh g4 as white i think that's a little too aggressive white should probably look to develop their their pieces over here a little bit quicker even h3 i think sometimes that can be a bad move in these structures because it creates some weaknesses on that side of the board you really got to be careful about moving lots of pawns in front of your king and in this game white moved all three of the king side pawns hg and f okay as always thank you guys for watching i can tell i haven't recorded for a while just like talking specifically to the camera i've been streaming on twitch but i haven't recorded youtube specific only and i can tell that because my voice is going a little bit after uh wow 45 minutes so now thanks again for those of you who stick around for the entirety of the video or a lot of it i try to give you as many takeaways as possible uh because i want you guys to improve so and thanks again for all the nice comments on the april fool's video keep scanning if it's in your repertoire and um i'll see you guys again soon as i'm working on the move so take care guys bye

Channel: John Bartholomew

Views: 62,564

Keywords: Chess

Id: -OxtcRRLJmI

Length: 46min 2sec (2762 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021