The French: McCutcheon Variation - Chess Openings Explained

all right welcome to another edition of chess openings explained I'm Jonathan Krantz and today a lot of people were requesting the French so I wasn't really going to do the French tonight because last week we did the caro-kann and it's you know the pawn structures can sometimes be a little bit similar I was thinking maybe I do something a little bit sharper do some Sicilian do something else but I noticed how many people wanted to see the French and then my dad told me I should cover the French tonight so so this is for you dad alright so we'll begin and we'll be looking at today we're looking at the at the McCutchin which is a line I'm surprised a lot of people don't know about because I was just talking to some people in the club and it turns out a lot of people don't even know what this opening is which means it could be a really great surprise if your opponent is not expecting it you can really get the advantage and it's a long it's sort of a strategical struggle which when you play the French typically you're you're a strategically minded player and that's the kind of thing you're going for so we'll jump right into it the French is defined after just one move after E for black plays the movie six so similar to like when we played the Carl cotton with c6 the point is after white takes the center because if you can play e4 and d4 you should Blackwell on his second move strike at the center with the move d5 so there's a couple moves I can choose from here there's about four moves that are played regularly and even a lot of sidelines already just in this position white needs to decide what he's going to do about his epon because it is attacked so if he does nothing we'll take it so the most common move is Knight c3 and we'll be looking at that today the other popular moves are Knight d2 which is the tirage there's ie 5 which is the advanced variation and then there's the exchange variation but today we're going to be looking at Knight c3 and here black has two main choices today we're going to be looking at night F which can usually lead to the the classical lines or it can lead to the McCutchin which is what we're going to focus on flex other option is to play the winter wear which tends to lead to some sharper positions so if you're an attacking fighting player and you still want to play the French these are the lines youyou probably want to look at but today we're going to go a little bit more classical to move Knight f6 and again there's a another branch in the theoretical tree there's two popular moves here we're going to look at the most popular which is to pin the knight that's that's one way to deal with the threat of your epon the reason you you played the move Knight f6 is to attack the pond again so once more you're threatening to win it so white will usually either push and enforce your knight back and that's that's a very decent way to play or he'll pin your knight and in this position the most common move if you wanted to play the classical line is the move Bishop to e7 which I'll show only briefly mostly because I have a funny story to tell white will play the move e5 and after you go back he has two choices so there's a lot of choices even in the opening so the French is really rich in possibilities in a lot of moves you know there's several moves you might need to know if you want to play these lines so you can even spend kind of a lifetime just learning the French in the same way a lot of people spend a lot of time with different Sicilians I mean there's so many Sicilians and equally there's so many French to you know defense moves so okay the ala kind Chatard gambit is one possibility so you're offering a potential pawn to get some some active play but the classical line is when white just takes the bishop and now that the Queen will take back and on the surface this is pretty good for white because all of his pawns are going to end up going to some dark squares usually in this variation so that's really good for him and also this guy is a little bit silly and when you play the French you might even call this Bishop the French Bishop because it's often you know you're bad Bishop your strategy will revolve around how can I make my bishop good or something like that so this looks pretty appealing for for white and in a way it is and I know a lot of people have been put off of playing you know the French just because of the classical line they don't really like the positions that black can get into they're fine and I play it I played it a lot myself so it's it's a perfectly fine way to play but if you're kind of sick of it the McCutchin is so it's the way to go so we got an answer for you and we'll get to that in a moment but I want to show this just so I can tell my story come on in I've had this position I was playing in a team tournament so I was playing with one opponent so I ended up playing lower rated people because I was on board two of my two-person team and I played three 1200s in that tournament and I had black and white against all of them so I had the white position here and in every game black made the same exact mistake so I won three games this way in one tournament the big mistake is black plays the move c5 so I'll give the audience a quick chance here what is the problem with the move c5 it's already a blunder yeah why is c5 a mistake that's that is the question and I'll give you a hint if you check out these these dark squares man they're really weak because the dark squared Bishop swert raided so white does have a way to exploit the weak dark squares nothing nothing all right fine awesome Knight b5 and now you have two threats the knight is jumping in on either one of these squares and it's going to be trouble so I mean you can Castle and you can give up your rook or you can allow the check you can play something like this and you'll get checked and okay this also is it's not a lot of fun and we're not going to go too deep into it I just wanted to mention that's the alternative to playing the McCutchin okay so we return to the Bishop g5 line and now this is the move that makes it McCutchin Bishop to b4 so you're pinning this Knight but you may be wondering if you've never seen this before we'll wait a minute white is going to play the move e5 and my knight is pinned so aren't I going to lose my knight so after E 5 you have to play the only move here for black you have to attack the piece that's pinning your knight so h6 is the move and now most people will treat their bishop the most common that we're going to look at is Bishop d2 but it's worth mentioning what happens if they take the knight on f6 because I know a lot of I've played a lot of people even in blitz even you know people a lot higher rated than me and they've even played this variation and it's it's actually okay for for white but most people won't play it they'd actually know what they're doing because they don't like to give up their Bishop so China is almost in the room here so what's happening here it looks like it's it's a really big achievement for for white but these lines are are kind of known to be sort of equal ish and I kind of like playing them as black what what will end up doing is he's going to play moves like h4 and Queen h5 and he's going to try to make sure that it's it's really hard for you to take this pawn because I mean this Queen check would it would kind of embarrass you sometimes but black will just play Queen to f6 I'll just show this line briefly so this is the kind of thing that will normally happen the Queen will eventually get the pawn back and okay black is going to get his pieces out and he's going to castle on the Queen side and if you are to play this line you do want to keep this dark squared Bishop on the board he's really important because you do have some weak dark squares in your in your camp here so that's so just one line when she wanted to touch on that briefly before we head to the main line which is Bishop to d2 we will be covering other lines there's other places to retreat your Bishop you can go to e3 you can go to c1 but today we're going to focus on the main line and the purpose of this move is you're trying to force black to concede the dark squared bishop so indeed here you have to do something your knight is attacked you would like to jump your knight in to e4 but if you do this immediately it would be a huge blunder because what would white play yeah Knight takes Knight right so if you take the knight then you lose your bishop and if you take the bishop then you're down to peace he takes back with the knight not the Queen so that would be a big mistake so black will first take the night and again this move the mainline might surprise you but it's B takes c3 let's look at what happens if we take with the bishop because some people might you know want to keep their there are score Bishop and avoid having the double pawns but this is nothing special for white again we're going to jump in and if they wish to keep their Bishop they're going to end up playing a move like Bishop to b4 and the move that black plays here is c5 so will notice a couple things either capture doesn't promise wait anything and in fact if you take with a pawn this is a big blunder so we'll see how can a black take advantage of this move this one is a little bit tougher and I'll give you a hint it has to do with this unprotected bishop okay if Knight takes e5 it looks like you have a little trick here right so you're hoping he takes and you're going to give this check and then you're hoping that you get this Bishop back but I'm going to shock you when I play b4 and then you're not going to get your piece back so that is the right idea though we're along the right lines here we're looking for a good knight move that does take advantage of the bishop so we're on the right track and I'm glad somebody said that because that does it does seem like it's a an appealing move in this position so how else if only we could go to the other side with the Queen if only Queen g5 does attack upon now Knight f3 will come with tempo though protecting the pawn and kicking your queen away and preventing the trick that you haven't seen yet mm-hmm have you got it awesome Knight takes f2 which is a great move the point is if you take with the king after this check you're going to lose your bishop so there's already a little trick there which is why they'll often just take with the bishop in this position and now in this position you got there bishop back which was the whole point was to try to keep the bishop but that doesn't work blacks gonna play moves like 97 Queen c7 and he's going to try to get these these pawns back you can try to hold on to all of your pawns but it's not going to work for very long so okay it's hard to protect all of your pawns now in a training session for this lecture this move was suggested but this is a mistake so let's see if we can figure out white is trying to pin the knight and then saying I'll get to keep both of my my pawns here and I'll be up a pond and you know I'll play Knight f3 to defend the e pawn I'll play B forward to defend the C pawn but black has a really good move here and it's kind of same as the trick we just saw so let's see if we can find this one Queen a5 check and the bishop is lost so okay there's no way of saving the bishop so this would be a mistake and I just point it out because I somebody tried to play this against me today and there's a quick reputation that's the same trick so that's the kind of tricks you want to be be looking for as black so now we have an idea of why in a let's get back to our position here after we take they're going to take with the beep on so our knight is attacked let's remember so we got to move our knight and we're going to go into efore and we're hoping to get their bishop it is possible to keep this bishop and sacrifice this pawn this is one line that the white can play but we're going to focus on the main move here which is to a force black to make a decision on the Kings side so the movie is going to play is Queen to g4 with immediate pressure on the Jeep on so black has to do something about this now you can do two things a very popular move is to move g6 but notice this does weaken the King side so today we're going to focus on the move that hasn't been played in as many games but it is the the more modern trend it's to avoid making any weaknesses on your Kings side because White's trying to play for a King side attack and you play the move King f8 defending your pawn so you're not going to Castle in this game and it might seem kind of weird ok your rook on h8 where is he going he's not going anywhere you know how are you going to get him out it's going to take some Rema nuvaring so we're starting to see the outline of what the plans are going to be in this position so it's a good time to take a little pause and try to figure out what both sides are trying to accomplish now according to the the pawn pointing theory white his pawns are all porting towards the Kings side which means he has more space on the Kings side so he's going to play over there and he's going to try to play for a checkmating attack black on the other hand he's going to be thinking about play on the queenside and trying to take advantage of you know the weak pawn structure over here and he's going to try to play moves on on this side of the board so we'll see that in just a minute so his plans are gonna be play on the Queen side White's playing for an attack the most common move here is Bishop d3 forcing the knight to make a decision okay we want to take the bishop anyway so let's take it and now neither side gets the castle in the mainline here but okay we'll see so black wants to play on the Queen side so the move c5 is the most popular and White's move here might surprise you if you've never seen this before Knight f3 seems like a good move but actually the most accurate move here is h4 you don't really know where this this Knight is headed sometimes you're going to want to maneuver your knight all the way to h5 and there's two paths that you can take to get there so you're not really sure where the Knights going to go also part of whites attacking plan is he's going to bring the rook out and over and he's going to put pressure on some of these pawns so wherever the rooks going to go he's playing for an attack right away so he's got to get his rook into the game so white will be attacking with four pieces and some of his pawns over here he's got the Queen the rook the bishop and the knight and so he has to try to do that black on the other hand he's going to defend and if he defends successfully then he's going to do well on the Queen side in the endgame so blacks strategy is to just know the the attacking plans by white it's important to familiarize yourself with White's plans so that you can defend properly and then in the long run you're going to have the the better position going into the endgame because of some of the weaknesses on the Queen side so these these pawns here are pretty tender so is this isolated pawn and so we'll check out kind of what's what's going to happen here c-4 immediately is possible by black but we're going to look at games today by sergei volkov so he's he's one of my my favorite players just watching his games and he plays the McCutchin quite a lot so in the database he's played over 50 games of the McCutchin so if you're trying to study this I definitely recommend you look at some of his games because they're they're very instructive and he spent a lot of time researching this so he's already done the hard work you can just go watch his games and check out all of his ideas there and we'll check out one of his games here so in the first game he's playing a 2100 so he did pretty well because he's 2600 and he was close to like 27 that is at his peak and alright but the next game will show you opponent that was evenly matched so first black will develop his knight again you can place five first and white begins the rook maneuver so the rook is going to go to g3 which will force black to find some way to defend his Jeep on all right but first we play the move c5 or c4 sorry and here come the pawns this is how black is going to get all of his counterplay it's going to be on the queenside so he shuts it down he's he's got a lock down on these ponds and eventually if he manages the b4 break he's going to be doing really well white can actually put this bishop on two different squares and so this is kind of our starting point so we're going to check out from this position White's ideas in the first game we're going to put the bishop on e 2 and in our next game we'll put it on f1 the purpose of this you know strange retreat is you're keeping the e2 square open for the night so the might night might want to use this square to maneuver around potentially all the way to h5 so when you put the bishop on e2 you're not going to put a night on e to you know probably the the night is going to end up going to h3 and you have some options of the bishop coming to h5 and we'll see those implications in just a second okay so black continues with this plan white doesn't have any serious threats yet he's going to expand on the Queen side and so white goes through with his we plan he puts pressure on g7 so now black has to defend and okay will defend with our rook and now what white wants to do is he wants to get this bishop into the attack so he's got to move his Queen out of the way so the only real square to go to is f4 you can go to f3 but you got to worry that you're dropping your h1 so ok Queen f4 the point is you're putting a bishop on h5 and then you're going to have threats on f7 so I've asked the class if you were black how would you start to prepare to defend because that's kind of what's important here is black you need to know how you're going to defend the f7 pawn and so you need to be thinking about it now in addition to thinking about how you're getting play on the Queen side so let's first defend on the King side how should we do it reroute this Knight this is a very common idea so yeah the knight can go to f5 where it will be protecting some of the squares it'll be shielding and that is that is definitely one thing that happens a lot in this opening but also the knight is quite useful over here because it's it's on some of these squares that you're trying to push your pawns to who's not very useful over here on the Queen side is the bishop so while 97 is definitely a possible move and like the computer likes it in like every line it always plays Knight d7 but most humans play Bishop to d7 the point is if your F pawn gets attacked you just drop your Bishop back and you've got protection so white should attack and force the bishop back to e8 and we'll notice black is just defending over here and he's waiting he's waiting to win on the Queen side and it's kind of funny but what black will often try to do is have a little Exodus with this King and he'll try to run all the way to the c7 square that's kind of the safest square for the King so it's funny you put it on F 8 and then you run all the way over to c7 and we'll see that in both of our games today that's what you normally want to do when you're black c7 is the proper square you're really safe even if you open up the game eventually with your your break on b4 your king is still going to be quite safe on c7 so here comes the night okay the night is eventually going to f4 which means White's going to have to spend another move with his Queen and okay he's not doing anything to stop black on the Queen side and in this game black doesn't do anything to stop before from coming so black just gets to do it right away sometimes they try to stop you they play moves like a3 and rook b1 and they try to stop you in which case you would have to go a lot slower as black you know you just have to keep defending your pawns preparing and it's it's important to time it right so if you're playing in a game make sure when you play before that a your opponent's not going to somehow get activity from it it's in it's kind of tough to judge so it comes with with a lot of experience the problem with this for white though sometimes is the pawn on a3 tends to be really weak so so we'll see what happens here now he's going to move his Queen so that his knight has the f4 square and he didn't stop black from playing before so in this game he just gets to do what he wants it's kind of nice to see this game because it kind of shows what happens with both players just do what they want to do and they just ignore their opponent as much as possible so white did all of the moves he wanted to do on the King side and black did all the moves he wanted to do on the Queen side so okay he wanted to put his knight on f4 so there he goes and now it begins the King March over to c7 alright in this move is a bit of a mistake and you'll know that after he makes his next move you'll kind of scratch your head why do you play rook b1 it seems like a good square but he's going to move it again on this next move so black is doing quite well here and in general if you don't get checkmated or you know then you're just you're going to be much better in the ending and that's what's already happening here black is has a very nice position he scoots the rook over and now white moves his rook again so I guess he was he was her and it kind of suggests that he didn't you know know what he was doing okay black takes and when white takes back black now comes up with the plan Queen to b6 his point is the queen is going to be for most endings will be favorable for him especially if the Queen ever takes the Queen and will look at it and you take back with you're a pawn this pawn is going to be on an open file and so we're going to kind of see this this theme going on in our game here it is hard what does white do on the on the Kings side how is he going to generate any play well he's got to do something he's got to come up with some break so in this game he's thinking f4 f5 but it's it's very slow Black has already made great progress on the Queen side so he's in a lot of trouble so the Queen was going to be four so there she went and now it would be a big mistake to to trade if you were white once again okay the open file is going to be great for the black rook and that he's going to be able to put a lot of pressure on your weak pawn here so he's unable to trade and he goes on f4 he's got to go something like this he's got to generate some some counter play so he's trying to do it black would like to connect his rooks so he gets his Bishop out of the way a lot of the times you know this rook will go somewhere and then he's going to swing his other rook in to some some square over here on the Queen side in blue white thought black had a threat here and he kind of does he's worried about the move g6 because if he if we just pass we'll just we'll just wait a second not make the best move but alright you can play move like g6 and when you move back play h5 and now we shut down all of the breaks that you have on the Queen on the King side you're going to have to like Riemann over your rook and then you're gonna have to push g4 is going to take a lot of time and black is still making a lot of progress on the Queen side so afraid of that he brought his Bishop back so he can meet g6 you know getting ready to play h5 with the move h5 himself so okay black didn't play necessarily the best move here but this move is fine and white should realize he's worse here and he should just trade these these rooks so he's a lot worse so he should trade things instead he keeps the pieces on the board and so it's kind of like white is playing for a win okay this makes some sense look at how how weak those pawns over there so why it is doing something but black is a lot faster so alright a good move the knight is getting ready to jump into beef b5 the bishop has the a four square so a very good plan for for black here okay let's see and now this move was another mistake I don't think that white saw what blacks next move was so I'll let the audience try to come up with what was played here because he was probably expecting maybe he'll trade Queens maybe he'll retreat the Queen somewhere but black didn't do that and we kind of talked about when white plays a3 that that pawn is weak so I'll give you guys just a second to try to come up with what the plan is here and it's not a brilliant move it's not like a wild tactic it's just just a good solid move okay he kept the Queen on the board Queen a4 so the knight is coming in to b5 which is going to you know have a lot of pressure over here so a3 was a big mistake and I guess he didn't realize just how bad it was so he's got to get on with his play here and after Knight B five white blunders and this is the big mistake to cost him the game even though it seems like a normal move he plays Queen e3 he gets the Queen out of the way but it's actually a blunder that's going to lose the game the right move here is really hard to find so I'll give the people at home here just a second see if you guys can configure it out you can pause the video to if you want to try to figure out how white can take care of this because he's in a lot of trouble you know how do we what's going on our queen is attacked but but okay here it is I'll reveal the answer he can play the move rook to b1 and what will still be worse than this line but it's his best try to save his game so just you're saying okay well okay I take your queen right now white will insert to move f6 the point is the King has to go to the back rank and now the rooks are no longer connected so I can safely take the rook so you're going to get some pieces you're going to get a rook and a knight for the Queen but blacks position is quite enviable here okay so why it's going to take some of this some of these pawns but okay at some point he's going to play the move King c7 he's going to kick your rook away and black will still be better here but this was White's best try instead in the game we saw Queen to e3 so now we just take the pawn we just take on the pond and we're attacking c2 so white has to do something about that so you don't have time to like pin the night and try to win it because okay there's gonna be checks coming here so he first gives the check and then he has to protect his pawn so we all welcome Danny Machuca to the audience are all star now we're getting serious all right so he comes up with a nice way to attack the pond again and now his rook is infiltrating so his plan on the the Queen side has been a real success here he's able to get all of his pieces in and you're when the C pawn falls you know your whole Queen side is collapsing and okay we got this past pawn when we take your seat pawn we're going to have to pass pawns White is in a lot of trouble alright he tries to defend and now black missed a tactic and we have a brilliant tactician in the audience who can maybe find this move right awesome yeah so the point is you can take here with Knight b1 forking the the king and queen so this tactic was missed and it was missed twice two moves in a row so okay even though even the best missed some good tactics instead Queen before was played obviously this is a good move to white doesn't really want to trade and help connect your pawns but okay he takes one of the pawns so again rook c2 is best with this this little tactic but it was it was missed okay so instead Bishop to a4 like how many times can you attack the same pond so he's using all of his pieces now and all right you're just you're in a lot of trouble he trades Queens it's not going to help them you're still dropping your pawn all you can do is prepare for the pond to be gone and all right things are things aren't really falling apart it's not pretty here and these guys are looking really good so he he pushes his C pawn now is his Bishop is getting ready to come back and pin the night and it's basically over here white tries to get some counter play he has this is his target but black is just too fast now okay pins the night you all right now you can just take here if you want but but what's the point of allowing any counter play so he plays rook f8 now you're not attacking here White has some plans of keeping attacking the pawn but it's not gonna be fast enough okay so he gets out of the pin but now we can take your knight and remove the defender of d4 so that was played and all of a sudden black now has three passed pawns and the bishop is attacked so it's going to go somewhere where it attacks this pawn and you know you could eat obviously easily just defend it and you'll win but the move c2 just ends the game right away and white resigned here the thread over up to b1 is just too strong and you're going to lose a lot of material and the game is over so that was a good example of what happens when both players play what they want to play white played for just a King side attack ignored everything that black wanted to do black defended properly he understood all of the attacks that white was going to come up with and then his Queen side advance won the day for him okay so we'll look at one more game here bye bye Sergei and this game is against somebody much higher rated so they were almost the same rating at the when they played this game and we'll check it out so we'll go back to our position right the McCutchen so they they attack our night we have to attack the piece that's pending us they retreat we have to take their their knight first and then we hop in queen g4 forces us to either play g6 or King f8 king of âge is what we're looking at today I force us to take the bishop we're happy to do so we get to play c5 and here we go we'll notice we get back to this position now in the last game the Bishop went to e2 which is of course a good move but now we're going to look at the the different move here Bishop to f1 which we mentioned was possible the point is e 2 is available for the night ok so and I like what black decides to do here he protects his stuff in advance we know that the rook is is probably going to g3 we understand ok the night is coming in and he prepares to immediately run his King over to the square we know we want to go to c7 and he does it as early as possible in this game you don't have to do this you can of course play you know just moves back b5 a5 you can do these sorts of plans but in this game he's prepared for a mass exodus of a king and he's not joking he just goes for it the king is running to c7 alright we know the night is coming in and now black kind of has a little problem ok this is going to go here and put some pressure on our Jeep on we understand that but he's prevented us from playing the move King d7 which is what we were trying to play because if we played King g7 what would white play here Knight takes d5 exploiting the pin so notice it won't let me take the knight because of the pin here so he had to come up with a way how can I you know get my king over to the I'm trying to go to and also deal with the fact that my G pond is about to be attacked you played Queen to f8 which protects the Jeep on in advance and now the king has a safe route over to the c7 square okay now the night isn't on e to make sense for the bishop to be there and the King keeps going we know where he's going white plays all the moves where we're expecting and I in a minute here we're going to get our King to c7 alright this is a useful move sometimes he's going to go here also nice for us one of the things with the Queen on f8 that we should should mention here is she'll often be able to go all the way to the a3 square which will prevent white from ever playing a3 himself or a4 trying to prevent our Queen side counter play and we'll see that soon all right Queen f4 a very typical move the King gets to worry where he wants to go and now this is the plan by white he's got to do something over here so in the last game we saw somebody go f4 f5 here white begins with g4 so we'll we'll take a good look at this this pawn advance and now that gets to play the move that he wants to play here so he gets to play his Queen to a3 preventing white from moving his a pawn and now this this rook is stuck passively defending the pawn what happens if we take this pawn there's a tactic here for black awesome right so there's the pins all over the place in this opening and this is a sacrifice you always want to be looking for when you're black the knight will often sacrifice itself for for one of the pawns here so in this case Knight takes d4 would be good the point is you can't take because then you're dropping your rook all right yeah so I mean there's there's some pretty rich possibilities here we need three those a sensible move now the rook is protected so these sacrifices won't work also the Queen is protecting the d4 square taking away any potential tactical possibilities so black gets on with it b5 at the right moment he's going to play b4 he'll proud prepare it and here he comes okay so he's he's trying to get some some play over here he has to find some way to open up the kingside otherwise he's going to have no play in this game so black just calmly prepares he might consider in the future to move like a five then you'll play B for it at just the right moment and let's see what what White's going to do what is this rip going to do maybe it'll come here maybe it'll go here and support the F pawn push which it will because I know the game okay so black gets on with it and white comes up with his plan he's going to play f5 he's going to have you know with the rook on the F file he'll be able to at some point take here and the rook will have the open file and that was the time so b5 was played so white gets on with it so both people are doing what they're trying to be doing and here black makes a really strange move flex position is quite good here he's a lot better and then he makes this this really strange move Queen to b2 which throws away his entire advantage okay white now just kicks the Queen back and that was kind of a waste to turn now white gets to do something he wants to do so he just reroutes the knight he's putting some pressure here on e6 at some point he'll he'll take obviously we're never going to take here because then our D pawn is going to be too weak so okay g5 and it's it's funny I've seen it it only seems to be in his games I've seen a lot of games with the McCutcheon and I noticed Volkov he plays g5 and a lot of them it's a good way for black to stop a lot of the the counter play on the King side and it's kind of unusual normally you don't want to push your pawns on the Kings side because that's where your opponent is attacking but here it does really limit what white is able to do so after he takes on passant we take back all right it's kind of nice that the pawns here on this side are are nice and symmetrical so if they ever push upon either way we can always meet it with advancing the other pawn so that's that's a possibility which is kind of nice positional e4 black all right and I assume white says okay I'm a little bit worse here so I'm going to try to trade the Queen's so he allowed that to happen we can take our pawn back but he first inserts the move g5 like and take her or just move this Knight and that will take back the pawn and if white does nothing we're going to play rook to a8 and then we're going to target this guy and we're going to bring our rook into a3 which will be a good Square for the rook okay our rook is attacked so we'll move it and that white tries to rid himself with the weakness he plays the move a3 which is kind of what you want to do you got to get rid of the weakness but it also allows black to get a passed pawn here so black pushes and now he's going to make a passer white can take once and will this guy be strong or will he be weak well he's looking pretty good right now we're only two squares away so we'll see what a white comes up with you can take first and now here he comes with this rook so he's getting ready to play rook h7 and I exploit this he'll make a pin here and he'll try to win this bishop now whenever black can push his uh his passed pawns he should do it so he pushes right away and now his his rook is at you know stuck here stuck on the B file he's got to prevent that that guy from coming and okay but now black is infiltrating black is a lot faster here so he played back if you defend with your bishop here actually black has a really good plan he's a little bit faster he can just go win this pawn in the time it takes you to go win my bishop and I'll go somewhere I'm ready to take your Bishop and I'm ready to play a move like rook a 1 so this would actually be quite good for black so I guess he saw that neither side just put his King on D - obviously that hangs the D pawn so we should grab it and now we have to pass pawns all right so things are looking good he attacks our rook and whenever he pins us we'll just defend our bishop okay but weight also has some counter place so we do have to be really careful you're better is black but it's still really complicated and sharp he's going to take try to attack our pawn here and here black decided to go for for a kind of cool little tactic he just brought his King back and now after he takes who could find this tactical move what was blacks idea yeah Bishop a4 was his idea the point being if you take now there's a fork we're going to attack your king in your rook and we're going to win material also it gives them a chance to get rid of the delight squared Bishop so okay the route gets out of the way we get to chop off the bishop and now we just need to find a way to make use of this this really nice pass pawn so okay this move is good there's also there's some other moves but this move is good enough now we have to pass pawns so when you can push your passport white doesn't have time now to take this pawn because what will we play here our main choices are pushing or taking the rook okay so d3 I can just put it on the board that's what you're saying okay okay this is fine so right we gained a tempo on the King and okay if you try to protect your rook you can lose your rook and stop me from queening immediately but uh if you go anywhere and protect your rook I'm going to take it and I'm too fast you can go back and sacrifice your rook but not really because I'm gonna block with my knight so okay so d4 here is a nice move not giving wait a chance to take his very strong beep on all right so he goes back to defend and when we can push our passed pawns we should do it so there we go again the King comes up well we can push our past pawns we should do it so he pushes this passed pawn and we're we're getting ready so he is he's blockading with his two rooks and here black missed the best move he took the pawn but there's even better because white is hoping he gets to take you know some of our pawns here if you're white you're thinking man maybe I can just get one of these guys off the board life will be easier then I can focus on on getting the other guy and we got to make sure we don't lose these guys or suddenly it's the tables have turned the best move here night.they we're usin 95 was played in the game 91 is actually a stronger move this prevents both captures of your pawns here so if you take this one then we'll give this check and we're rallies winning your work here also it should we mentioned you can't take this guy because of this move so either way we're winning your rooks you can't take I'm taking the pawn is a good move it just wasn't the the best so welcome people just keep coming in very popular class so alright he ended up taking one of the ponds which is good for him but he's in kind of a lot of trouble here so we can remove one rook and okay this guy is is quite strong it's hard to move your night because of this pawn and okay so he gives this check he can win another pawn he's gotta move his rook and he trades into a winning ending soon white accepts that he needs to lose an exchange here so he he gives up his rookie allows this this fork just to pick up that pawn he was too dangerous and this is actually a winning endgame for black it's a it's going to be tough you know but a good strong Grandmaster should be able to win this pretty easily so he's just going to gonna pick up some stuff you don't want to drop your pawn I'm so he searched this check and then the last the last trick here the white has up his sleeve he in this position pushes his pawn so my my last question is what happens if we take this pawn what was White's drawing idea this was why tried his last little trick here yeah excellent work Knight to c5 how do you defend this pawn so you move your rook somewhere if we can take the pawn king of rook versus King and Knight is going to be a theoretical draw but uh okay black was on to it he just improved his King and then white gave it up so he's going to collect the pawn and rook with and upon is going to be a win for black and okay he's he's a strong Grandmaster so they both were so they they resigned here so hopefully that gives you kind of a unique move that you can play in the French maybe you haven't thought about playing the McCutchin or maybe you have for a while and you just you wanted to see some of the ideas here so I'd encourage everybody to to go and try it try them a cut shin please like subscribe do Internet stuff and keep sending in your requests for openings maybe I'll pick yours next week thank you

Channel: Saint Louis Chess Club

Views: 105,604

Keywords: Chess (Game), Chess Opening (Literature Subject), mccutcheon, maccutcheon, french maccutcheon, french mccutcheon, french defense, french defence, chess openings explained, schrantz

Id: nYlH2vvT8Hg

Length: 46min 29sec (2789 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2015