The Great Snake Chess Opening (English Defense Counter)

a surprising way to respond to the English opening as black is What's called the Great Snake variation it starts with the move G6 and a lot of people will play this but then transpose into other openings but in this video I'm going to show you what I consider to be the system that you should use if you're going to go for the Great Snake variation and why it's a good option as black against C4 all right so first of all the English opening is one of those openings that's kind of flexible for white like there's a lot of ways that they can approach the game after they play C4 sometimes if you let them they'll play D4 and just turn it into a queen Pawn opening sometimes they won't they'll play Knight to C3 and then kind of follow this typical English setup maybe with G3 and Bishop G2 sometimes they'll play Bishop G3 Bishop G2 but they won't play the night out sometimes they'll put the pawn on D3 sometimes they'll put the pawn on E3 sometimes they'll play E4 pretty early on there's so many ways that they can approach the game it's kind of annoying to play against so one of the things that I recommend when you're playing against openings like this is instead of learning a specific line like okay if they go here I have to go here and if they go here I have to go here you learn a system you learn a setup where it's like okay normally I'm gonna put my pieces on these squares and regardless of what my opponent does I'm gonna have a solid setup that's what you're going to learn in this video now one of the previous um videos that I've done on the channel I've talked about the move Bishop B4 this is actually one of my favorite ways to respond to the English the point is we're going to give up our Bishop put all our pawns on dark squares and and White's Bishop doesn't really have a good outlook for the rest of the game I'll link that video below if you want to check that out by all means that's one option however sometimes white will play the move G3 and then we're out of luck okay we don't want to play Bishop B4 now because white just simply attacks us and if we go back we actually get Noah's Ark trapped sorry Noah's Arc trapped we lose our Bishop and that's not how you want to start the game so when they play this you know variation of the English you have to have another response so the Great Snake variation you can play against pretty much anything okay now the main setup for the Great Snake variation is this G6 Bishop G7 E5 and then you put your pawns on F5 and D6 okay this is kind of the starting point for the Great Snake variation and you can kind of see how it's sort of almost starting to look like a snake right yet the way we have our pawns set up but this is a pretty nice setup you have nice central control you have lots of space in the center so you have options of pushing this Pawn at some point unleashing your bishop and putting pressure on the Knight you can also push here and potentially try to attack on the king side even pushing these pawns later is an option so there's a lot of ways you can approach it but it's a nice system and regardless of what your opponent does most of the time you can play this okay now I do want to mention something and this is just my recommendation it's totally up to you guys but when they play C4 I recommend you play E5 and then you start going into the setup with G6 Bishop G7 F5 you know and D6 Okay the reason that I recommend that is because when you start with G6 if your opponent wants they can play D4 and now you can't really play E5 or you're into some crazy England Gambit type of opening which is not going to be good for you with with the pawn on G6 it's not going to make any sense so you're out of luck right if they do that so because of that that's why I recommend playing E5 right away and now if they ever play D4 you just take it right and we're happy about this because we gain the tempo on the queen and then I don't know where the queen goes if they go here we don't really care we're going to gain another Tempo this is great for us we're pretty happy about this right so I that's my recommendation like I said you don't have to but I recommend you start with E5 and then you go for the following setup okay and usually the game is going to go something like this a lot of players playing the English are going to go for this setup and then either bring their Knight out maybe play E3 or D3 let's just take D3 for an example and we're gonna play D6 okay so this is kind of the starting point for the game right to have three Knight to F6 let's just say the castle and we're gonna Castle okay this is your setup and there's a couple of things that you need to be aware of number one when you play an early F5 you always have to keep an eye on this diagonal because there are tactics that might pop up during the game and you could get into trouble okay so Queen to B3 is a move you have to watch out for Bishop to D5 is a move or if they play Knight to D5 but it's defended by the bishop and you take maybe the bishop comes in later right these are the things you want to keep an eye out and also Knight to G5 okay and this is another move that you have to be careful especially when this gets paired with like Queen to B3 it can get very dangerous okay so I'm going to show you a couple of ways that you can deal with that number one to get off of this diagonal is the simple King to h8 so let's just say for example I don't know why it does this King to h8 it's a move that you can play you don't have to worry about any more checks okay now the downside to King to h8 let's take a different example for white here let's say they play Rook to B1 which is pretty common let's say we play King h8 the downside to this move is that if Knight G5 ever happens Knight to F7 check is a more serious threat now in this case we've got it covered with our Rook but if we made a mistake and moved our Rook look out we're going to get fork and we're gonna lose our Queen okay now as long as you're aware of this and you don't let this happen you're going to be just fine but I just want to point this out to make sure you don't fall into these traps okay so keep this in mind King to h8 is one idea and the other thing actually after King to h8 sometimes you'll bring your Bishop here let's just say uh White plays B4 we play Bishop E6 now this is not a good move in this position because of the thread over here so let me actually back up I would recommend C6 you want to blunt this bishop and we'll say I don't know why it continues doing something over here Bishop to E6 one thing that you can do when they bring the knight in is you can actually drop your Bishop back to G8 okay and the bishop is doing a great job job of Defending all of these squares and probably next move we're going to play H6 and kick that Knight away let's say rookie1 H6 the Knight goes back and now we're ready to continue if we want to bring our Bishop out we can uh or we can start pushing the pawns to you know attack on the king side or uh we can push in the center and attack uh in more in the center after we finish our development maybe something like this and and then we could play like D5 okay we had to defend this but now that it's defended we're good to go here with something like this notice we have one two three pieces defending so we've got lots of Defense we have a nice strong Center okay this is kind of the idea of the Great Snake variation okay this is kind of the idea behind this setup now I'm not going to go into every single line that your opponent might play in this video I want to give you this setup I want to give you kind of some of the key points and details um and then you can go and have fun and play chess and it's it's a system that you can play against English now a couple of things and I can already mention this but um Rook to B1 is a pretty common plan for white they like to expand on the queen side and they don't want their Rook to fall into any tactics by sitting there should they bring it over and they're gonna push on the queen side one thing that I like to do when I see Rook to be one is the move A5 and it's like okay if we know they're gonna play B4 why do we play A5 well the point is we would like to be able to capture this and now they have an isolated pawn and we actually have a rook attacking which is really nice for us now most people when they see A5 what they're gonna do is play A3 and we don't care we keep doing our our plan let's say C6 this is a pretty like I said pretty common setup of the pawns and when they played before we take it and notice what happened by playing A5 and A3 we have activated our Rook along the a file we didn't even have to move this rook and it's already lined up and being you know very active and making a lot of threats that White's gonna have to watch out for right so that's a really good even in a different opening this is a good idea to keep in your mind especially when you Castle your King on the other side of the board and you're trying to figure out what to do with that Rook maybe you want to just play A5 and slow down what your opponent is trying to do okay so keep that one in mind and then the other thing is after we play C6 if they're kind of just playing real passively which a lot of English players will do right um your main setup is going to be Bishop to B6 and you can play King h8 first or you can just play it right away and if they hit you with the Knight you just come back you just come back and you might say well didn't we lose a move well not really and here's why because whatever white does next we're going to follow that up with H6 and now they lose a move and have to go back and so it kind of evens out and then we can actually go back to E6 and the game basically goes on as if nothing really happened except you know we got this move in and they got this move in right it's kind of the same thing this is a pretty useful move actually a lot of times we can tuck our King here or use this to help push these pawns and attack on the king side okay speaking of attacking on the king side um generally speaking I would finish your development first the knight's probably gonna go to D7 here and you're probably gonna either bring your queen maybe here or here or say e you know E7 or or C7 um let's say E7 and now if you want to start attacking on the king side here is how I would do it okay this is just me but let's say white I don't know does this maybe we take that um I would put my king on H7 and I would think about bringing my Rooks over now uh this is an interesting situation because we do have control of the a file with this Rook so maybe I wouldn't do that but let's actually go back and let's say white didn't do that why it's I don't know doing some other stuff we put our King here and White's just kind of chilling you know playing B3 this is how I would go about attacking bring my Rook over here and get ready to push these forward now notice how the Queen's lined up on the king maybe instead of King to H uh seven we go King to h8 maybe we feel like this is a safer option you have to be careful because look at this one two three it's a triple Fork if the Knight were to come and attack it however that's a pretty easy threat to do with we can maybe play Queen F7 and then next move we'll play G5 and we can win another Tempo on the night so I know I'm saying a lot of random stuff but I want you to be thinking in terms of this when you play right this is not memorize these moves and hope for the best this is think about the ideas think about the concepts and play a good game in chess right so that's what it is this is the Great Snake variation it's like I said it's very simple um that's your setup E5 G6 Bishop G7 push that pawn up and then D6 okay I kind of talked through um you know some of the ideas of course your opponent might do any number of things and you'll have to figure that out when you play but it's a very solid option against the English and it's not played very often you will be taking your opponents by surprise when you go for that setup let me know what you guys think how this works out for you and if you have follow-up questions I'd be happy to answer those but as always stay sharp play smart and take care [Music]

Channel: Chess Vibes

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Keywords: chess, chess vibes, vibes, nelson lopez, nelson, nelsi, checkmate, how to play chess, chest, how to play chest, beginner chess, chess for beginners, how to learn chess, chess tutorial, chess openings, chess endgames, chess endings, chess strategy, chess tactics, chess tricks, chess traps, how to checkmate, how to win at chess, learning chess, board game, chess coach, youtube chess, chess on youtube, chess channel, youtube chess channel, chess for kids, easy chess

Id: Ox8UsAMy5yY

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023