The Hidden Tricks & Traps of the London Opening | Chess Lesson with Andrea Botez

hello hey andrea how's it going well london it has like this weird reputation it has like this kind of boring dry reputation but i think it's very fun there are a few drawish lines but yeah well there's different ways to approach it you can kind of just play the general setup where you put your pieces in the same place every time but then there's a higher level approach where you you react to what your opponent is doing and at the higher levels players don't treat the london as just one system they treat it as like a few dozen different uh different like mini openings that you kind of have to learn the nuances exactly it is higher level stuff yeah so i wanted to ask you maybe just to start off what are the the lines that are giving you troubles or opponents that are giving you troubles um okay yeah because that's usually nothing the queen v6 line alex was playing honestly even going over what you played against us in the our most recent match is also good but i don't know if you even have stuff for that yeah i've i looked at the one game i think i know what you're referring to but also when you say queen v6 stuff there's different move orders black can go for queen b6 so do you know do you play bishop f4 or bishop or knight f3 first uh so this is another thing i was going to ask you because i usually play bishop f4 on move two and there's very specific reasons why i do that yeah i know you play knight f3 usually on move too well lately i've been mixing it up i now i went back to bishop f4 on move two but when i would play knight f3 was to combat the queen b6 line to do like take c5 line queen takes i see um yeah that that line from the fed lack book but but now i don't really like it as much because i don't really understand it so i just played bishop and then if they do queen b6 i play queen c2 and allow the bishop f5 because you can take but that's the only line i know against can you show me do you know like the exact move order um because it would be helpful too for the queen b6 yeah so like when you mention the queen c2 yeah i think it's let me see if i can just take a guess it's probably just um do they push e3 first um so c5 you're probably referring to c5 yeah and then this is like what most players do and then they'll either play queen b6 here yeah one move later one move later after c3 is because i know if they play now we play knight b knight c3 right yeah and that line's okay but let's say they would play so um yeah and then i would play either knight d2 or c3 and then that's i only play c3 queen b6 and then queen here when i started playing so i don't recommend that um okay how do you recognize that so if you play c3 this is already like very pleasant for black yeah yeah it is so annoying to play uh a lot of players will walk into this because they're they just learn the basic setup and then like after queen b3 this is a very powerful line for black c4 of course queen i'm sure you've seen this before yeah exactly that's why that's why what i learned or just temporarily was just to play queen c2 right away because if they play here you take but then even after once they defend it or like okay maybe not like this but then it's still a very annoying threat so it's very passive lines so yes what what do you play instead of so there's a big difference between c3 and knight bd2 okay and i saw based on some of your games you you play this more often actually which is great and when you start approaching the london from like a higher level this is one of like the most important positions to understand how things can branch out um because black has a lot of options here there's queen b6 which we can get to but then there's also e6 which is maybe one of the main lines there's bishop f5 bishop g4 uh there's other weird moves g6 knight h5 which are a bit less common of course he takes d4 so this is kind of one of the the key positions at least to get to initially and then as you start expanding your repertoire you want to kind of know what to do against each black response yeah yeah and i'm actually yeah that's great because a lot of these main lines have stuff that i've been playing for really long but i'm curious if even the main lines you might have different stuff so let's follow your lead here yeah and one of the reasons why i was so attracted to london like years ago was because from this position there's so many tricky lines and traps that black can pen potentially fall into if the players i only know like one i only know one london trap so maybe we'll warm up a little bit with just some some simple traps just to get you uh yeah yeah um one um which is one of my favorites is bishop g4 here very natural move uh white play c3 i think i saw you had one game maybe a few games in this where you were playing bishop e2 yeah which i knew when i studied it i learned you should go like queen b3 but then i never ended up playing it okay i'm gonna show you an even more venomous move awesome awesome okay and this is thank you lord this is really tricky maybe for a few reasons because not only you're pinning the knight you're putting pressure along the fourth rank against the bishop oh okay i see so maybe future ideas to take here or so there's ideas of taking here there's a lot of resources already between taking 95 bishop e5 but then there's also a really hidden resource which a lot of players will walk into um on the next move let's imagine bishop d6 like very natural developing move this is already losing for black interesting and it's white to move so this is kind of a puzzle right to move and find the move together winning position okay great i'll give you i mean yeah go ahead it seems right away if you take queen takes oh no actually i was thinking i wanted i want to come here to attack the bishop and try to win a pawn here um but i didn't want to do it right now because they could take um and then i thought i could take but queen takes would also be defending the night so then maybe my move order is messed up thing oh it's good you're looking at the very like concrete options okay so it's a little bit trickier than that it is trickier i was going to give you a small clue that the the arrows that we drew earlier like this move this move this move oh wait nice move they're they're not going to be played here there's a interesting a more hidden much okay so i'm not used to this idea so it's gonna be a little you have to think out of the box here yeah okay but still look for really aggressive forcing kind of creative moves okay i like the challenge let's see hmm i mean i feel like in a position like this there's not even that many abnormal moves so let's see um i mean all my forcing moves something like this something like this something like this i don't think any of these are working keep going just look for any any move that attacks something that may be undefended and trying okay no this yeah this is bishop i can't tell if this is a threat this is an interesting idea actually bishop a6 looks ridiculous but as you dig into it further um you'll realize black just doesn't have a good response to it aha so we got it bishop bishop a6 kind of out of nowhere yeah nice i think cat got it too i saw a few people yeah a few people yeah that's okay though i'm glad so i've had this uh several times in like online blitz and players just kind of stumble into it it's crazy i've never seen this line where did you even discover this track so actually i discovered this just by kind of playing through the natural moves for black having you came up with it um i mean that's how i discovered it i think maybe when i've discovered that there was maybe one or two games in the database but it was a pretty fresh idea um at the time and that's awesome sometimes like the way i study openings is not necessarily from books but i just kind of i'll play through variations on my own and then try and just play logical looking moves for black have the engine on and see like where yeah potential mistakes are makes sense i don't have enough confidence for that i always stick to the reference to the other the gm games it's good to use a variety of tools like you you can use the reference database you can use the engine you can kind of base it off your own games too um i do want to explain like what's going on here because we just put it together yeah go ahead and explain the tactics of the chat yeah but the threat we just want to take this pawn and destroy blacks full queen side if pawn takes bishop we take on c6 and black is really really suffering here um if king e7 i had a game recently um king e7 queen here queen d7 takes takes takes king got to c5 and after check here i'm triple fork win everything very nice tactic so that's just one potential line a lot of players will take on f4 and then rather than taking back the bishop you can play the in between move take on b7 and you're temporarily down a piece but black has too many things hanging and um like every line after bishop a6 is gonna be uh like plus two for whites at least and just to go over so fake castle here we would take this bishop first so that they're fourth here right oh that's a good point yeah yeah you take the bishop and then you leave the fourth so then you win the fourth nice okay bishop basics makes sense yeah so if you remember bishop a6 and you can probably figure out the lines from here um i'm curious if oh i guess like if they didn't play bishop d6 yeah i was going to show uh just one other like variation to the trap because some players will take here um understanding that the bishop is sometimes a target like they don't want to deal with knight e5 or the queen alignment and then after you take back then they'll play bishop d6 and the great thing about this is bishop a6 is still winning for white oh wow um you're winning at least upon uh there's queen i guess queen c7 but even this you take and then take and uh it just gets really bad for black and yeah and then you have a fork don't you after you're waiting more than a pawn right yeah actually queen c7 is not a good move maybe queen b6 is a better way to go but then you can still uh you can still take here and then like this is probably the best case scenario yeah this is a killer end game so um so there's basically two variations where bishop a6 works both of which involve black developing this bishop to the most natural square um there's some other lines here which of course don't lose material um knight g7 is probably one of the more common moves but then you're playing in a more active style you have bishop b5 you still have 95 on the horizon um i think it's much easier to play this is white like we we could go into more specifics but if you just remember the ideas yeah yeah i have a common idea just one more question about this position and then i think like the main idea is pretty clear because i've tried these positions before in my issue like with this bishop e5 plan is that often i just trade off my light squared bishop and i don't really get that much compensation so well you're playing bishop b5 not necessarily for positional reasons but more for tactical reasons like you want to you want to try and win material on the queen side okay and when you play this you're threatening the knights yeah so let's say like black i guess there's not many ways they did oh rook here i don't think this the oh does this defense work yeah roxy it's a candidate move um i'll just say i'm not i'm not using the engine here but as black if they have to if they want to play rook c8 they do have to be aware of takes and takes on these seven you might just win after white yeah i think this position is actually very difficult to play for for black so i don't ask too many questions here the plan looks pretty clear if you bring the knight here yeah yeah 95 casting bust open the center like your pieces are all happy so okay i like it yeah i like it so queen a5 and bishop a6 i won't forget this okay awesome yeah it's it's just one example of where you stray away from the traditional london setup like your bishop didn't go to d3 you brought out your queen early but you did it because black put some their pieces on more kind of vulnerable squares yeah that's very funny because the bishop g4 line was so annoying and uh i don't know how it's like a one one move threat but i've never seen this before so that's that's great another move i would look forward to here like whenever black plays bishop g4 i'm really excited to actually get the trap i'm also excited when black plays bishop f5 interesting i don't like the setup because it's so symmetrical i get so annoyed oh yeah and then it's harder to maybe develop your bishop yeah i saw you you had a lot of games where black like plays in early bishop f5 then you just trade and it gets really yeah i always do that just because it's like yeah it is a really repetitive and dry position i just play because it's like oh the most comfortable thing gotcha so in this specific position you can you can play in a much different style and you play a move here which you very often don't play in the london is pawn takes e5 yeah i never take that pawn i never know when the right moment is too so i never do it ah so this is one of the right moments because the bishop is on a square where it's exploitable because now you're threatening knight d4 okay so i think actually i did look at this before and then i completely forgot about it so i'm glad you're bringing it up again it's good to do a refresher and like continually kind of yeah it's definitely been a long time but yeah the point after e6 of course black wants to win back the pawn you play knight d4 and now you're threatening to get the bishop pair destroy black's pawn structure and then black has to kind of make a decision do they take the pawn and and allow you to take on f5 or do they try and save the bishop after which you're going to get a lot of a lot of initiative so just to show you a few ways black can like lose material really quickly imagine bishop g6 i'm pretty sure you're already winning the exchange by force you're winning an exchange yes you have a nice tactical sequence from this position and it starts with a very natural kind of developing attacking um i mean first instinct would be here vision b5 and develop with tempo okay black would play queen d7 ah queen g7 is actually maybe a bit more challenging we'll address queen g7 i want to look at rook c8 first okay because then from this position uh how do you win the rook by force oh oh we trap it we take pawn takes and bishop a6 very nice yeah takes takes bishop he's here to find out because i i remember bishop a6 as an idea already yeah it's a very typical like london tactic where the bishops work together if rookie you you feed caddo in black's territory nice the rook is trapped um so yeah rook c8 doesn't quite work if queen g7 i'll admit i don't remember actually studying this move but i i'm pretty sure we just played knight f3 and 95 is really hard to deal with oh yeah that's true and yeah black is can't castle no matter what yet so yeah it looks like a lot of we're ahead in development here yeah i'm checking with engine knight f3 it's already plus one um oh the best try for black is bishop h5 but then you can play b4 and just hold on to your pawn yeah and this is very comfortable i mean all your pieces are developed yeah this is a great position yep yeah it's like a very good version of a queen's gambit accepted where you you won the pawn and you have a lot of initiative too very nice so um so more people will probably take but then you take and um this is considered like slightly better for whites because you have the bishop okay good i was gonna ask if you bring this bishop to d3 which seems but i mean it can get i mean i guess you'll have time for a3 right so you don't so when you play bishop d3 you are threatening the pawn yeah and then you have time for a move like c3 or a3 yeah there's different ways to play this okay yeah i don't often play positions where we are missing the d-pawn so i never know if we still want to go for the d3 setup or we're just waiting maybe go for c4 gotcha yeah i usually like to play so there's there's pros and cons with c3 and c4 when black has isolated pawn it can be a very good strategy to control the square in front of the pawn so control the d4 square so then the pawn can never move forward and then you can potentially target later on with like queen f3 with d1 yeah and that's the most like natural set up here anyway so yeah it's very natural it's hard for black to get like like very active play and then you just kind of want to play positionally and this pawn is going to be a long-term target okay great yeah i'm trying to think if there's like a different move order where they can play bishop f5 there is i guess when they don't push c5 right yeah and that that will go so i guess we were looking from kind of this key position after knight d2 yeah um but there's of course other move orders where black will play bishop f5 let's say here yeah yeah then in that case you would play with the bishop d3 idea so there's actually a couple ideas i can i can give you here um but the one i usually enjoy playing let's say they just keep copying is you can go for c4 um with a slightly different setup because usually in london you play c3 but with c4 the planets will play queen b3 target the b pawn which is not defended and then also knight c3 and pressure the center all these lines are all lines that i did study and i said i'd play i totally forgot about this one i'm glad you're bringing these up i i love when you get the queen b3 as a white so that's good we're recovering some suppressed memories of your opening practice exactly they are suppressed memories um yeah so it's so important especially when like as a london player if if you do forget what what to do like or you forget your preparation that when you play games you go back and like look afterwards what your preparation actually was because that's the way you'll you'll continue to grow for sure um a lot of players will play c6 here i'm kind of playing this what we can call reverse london and then what you can do is queen b3 let's say queen b6 and you get kind of a reverse version yeah of the line that we saw earlier but now you're the one dropping i played this line a good amount of time normally black doesn't go into this and they'd play like queen c8 or something it's another option yeah but i couldn't see it then you just continue developing normally yeah queen c8 you uh you'll have a slight space advantage um where yeah knight c3 bishop e2 castling black doesn't have the d6 square for the bishop yeah oh man i remember i did i had this line in so many tournaments and then when i got into streaming and i never looked at my repertoire i never played it online but i remember this like i've had these this in tournament games so oh interesting okay yeah it's it's slightly better for white and it's usually something like black is just not super comfortable with um just one more idea to play h3 dealing with potential knight h5 give the bishop a square to to go back and okay you can you can go for like the long term positional squeeze from the sort of position um so yeah like one way to kind of kind of remember the strategy is when they develop the bishop you recognize that b-pawn's not defended and then you switch things up with c4 queen b3 okay got it um of course in the other line in the c5 line you recognize that the c5 is not defended so you just look at which which pawn is their weakness exactly i'm trying to find uh yeah so with bishop f5 here then you can take and you have knight d4 so okay perfect i'll remember this i'll never forget okay i'm i'm holding you to that promise um maybe we can look at queen b6 in this position oh okay yeah yeah this was the main yeah this was the line i had no idea what to do but i'm glad you went over bishop bishop f5 because that's also an important one okay yeah that was nice we covered that do you take on c5 uh yes you take on c5 also thank you yeah for the giant raid i appreciate that i gotta let me grab something give me two seconds oh yeah this is another line i'm i'm super excited to show because there's some really cool ideas there's some some nice traps and it's super venomous i studied this and then there was a point to where like i i even following with the computer lines like i didn't really like my position so i'm really glad that you brought this one up so this is another line i checked your games i saw it was clear that you studied this at some point yeah yeah yeah you went into like i know what to do after some point yeah this this took me a long time to like fully understand it's it's a process with like learning especially a shark variation yeah not only you have to study it but you have to get experience and um actually get in in games but the point in this variation you do give away the b-pawn very often you give away the c-pawn and then you play it as kind of a gambit where you you play very aggressively and then you get a lot of active play so this is the main line bishop yes i remember this and the thing to point out right away is you've developed all your minor pieces it's a relatively open position you have the half open b file black's a bit underdeveloped the queen's a target so a lot of players like won't be so booked up here as black and if you can if you can do like a little bit of preparation from here as white you should hopefully get like a position that you you know what's going on yeah i'll i'll show you the line we're we're getting into it almost there so i never know play against first of all if queen takes c5 which is a natural looking move you have c4 and i don't know if i want to go too much beyond this because most people don't actually take on c5 yeah and uh it's pleasant like the queen's still at target might be three ideas c file opening potentially you're gonna castle soon um more people will play e6 yeah e6 is the line that i have troubles with because eventually black just gets to castle and like your your advantage and development is doesn't make a huge difference anymore okay i'm going to show you a really cool a few years ago is novelty and it's a relatively new here ah so i saw you have a game with with knight e5 uh oh okay so you don't want yourself that was what i okay cool because this yeah 95 here's the line that i studied from sedlak's book which was like oh this is now what you must play against queen v6 and and then i just not really like the positions i got into i'm pretty sure zedlock's book came out before this novelty was interesting it was introduced uh there's a move here which i'm pretty sure it was a novelty in this famous alpha zero versus stockfish match where alpha zero just came up with a move that if you travel yeah i think like they were programmed to try to go into like very topical openings so this is one line they went into and alpha zero just came up with uh a room i love all the history so it's such a refined culture this is a novelty of the london yeah yeah it was um it was a sort of thing like if you turned on stockfish a few years ago it wouldn't come up with this move but alpha zero came up with it and it's super super venomous um so i'll just show the move and then then we'll we'll analyze because it is sharp is to play point four okay it's another sort of pawn sacrifice because you're your pawn's attack twice obviously it's only defended once but if black takes it either way you're gonna get very close to winning position actually i'm pretty sure it's winning no matter which way black takes crazy i have no idea how that is winning yeah so with with variations like this it's not enough to just memorize the moves you you really have to understand yeah what's going on i don't understand the main idea one of the points is that there's there's variations where the queen just gets trapped that's what i was thinking imagine pawn takes pawn there's a crazy crazy move here i'm debating to i'll give it as a puzzle but maybe i'll give you a chance so it's late to move okay yeah i was thinking this is what i was calculating as soon as you push b4 like nice some idea to to come here to try to pin the queen and you could even sack your knights the only issue you guys think of this move is if they would castle but and knight c4 would control this square and this square and the queen can't run anywhere here and if they oh yeah and then if they take this should be winning the queen you have absolutely the right idea um knight c4 is is brilliant yeah that's what i was thinking and then they could castle those so they don't have to take so the one thing the one thing to spot is not only is bishop e5 a threat but also bishop d2 so you don't even have to worry about the square being covered by the knife okay um and actually after knight c4 it's pretty much impossible for black to stop bishop d2 and you're just winning the queen oh yeah so if a castle you would just play bishop d2 uh yeah okay yeah i mean most people will take the knight and realize that their queen is hopeless but same thing castlings castling bishop d2 sorry mel slipping here play like um rookie eighth so rook diet you're still gonna win material and sometimes this will happen like when you trap a queen you won't actually win a full queen you'll win like some material for it so in this case i guess after all said and done you're up extreme so even after the night you're up material i thought yeah you can throw in this move too but okay um yeah knight c4 is is really nice most people will take and then oh actually in this position sorry bishop d2 you don't want to play here because queen d4 oh i see yes think oh but you have rook b3 rook b3 is the line does bishop e5 uh so okay this is important and i'm actually learning something new here too so just turn on the engine to check uh rook b3 is the only winning move if you play bishop e5 you do trap the queen the problem is black's getting a lot of material for the queen after queen takes c4 you take back oh i see n the yeah three minor pieces for the queen okay make sure box probably for choice here yeah okay with rook b3 keep in mind you you did give away a knight but the most black can get for the queen now is a rook and then you'll have queen for rook and minor piece okay um so i've trapped a few people in this and and online blitz and bullets yeah no this is this is a great line because i have to remember rook b3 so yeah remember i guess to understand this so you you even if you forget hopefully you can figure thing things out yeah is you play e4 to the yeah yeah you deflect the pawn from c4 so to get knight c4 and then you have either rook b3 or bishop d2 okay um now there's another line here involving knight takes e4 which is also really really beautiful for this one i think i'll just show you okay go for it i i will say it's it's not so practical to memorize because most people won't go into this but it's nice to know is after takes takes you have another like really surprising move again and this is something new or sorry um you're gonna take your first so you play a few forcing moves this position you have a really surprising move um you can show me how to yeah i'm just going to show you because you're going to leave the knight undefended or uh leave the knight attacked and play bishop d6 interesting and this is kind of engine inspired but uh computer will say white's running here this definitely looks like a computer line but it is the whole point is your you're taking advantage of the fact that king is still in the center so black just doesn't have time to castle if black takes on f3 you're quick enough to take on e7 okay threatening maiden one king e7 and then you just keep throwing punches queen g6 oh yeah and then you get the king f6 rook b3 it's absolutely crushing wow yeah this is a this is a crazy line this is awesome so when we think like when most people think london opening they don't envision like this craziness but tactical lines but it's so fun like once you you start playing this and you remember the lines and a lot of players yeah i really like the e4 line it's way better than the positions i would get into from this line and the reason i couldn't find a good position was the reason i stopped playing that line and then just get really bad positions from queen v6 so e4 here is fantastic yeah e4 it's nice to um to go into a sharp line where there's a lot of landmines for the opponent to fall into and like the best move here is castling but then it still leads to a playable position um and then the stockfish alpha zero game it went uh chad said that you make the london look fun oh that's a that's a nice compliment and and someone asked who came up with it i'm assuming that both of those traps you discovered by analyzing with the computer right uh yeah so openings are not necessarily invented but they're they're discovered um so some some lines i i see just from analyzing with engine sometimes it's like looking at high level games and then then still using the engine sometimes it's like videos or books so it was a discovery chat better appreciated exactly a novelty yeah so here i don't want to spend too much more time on this yeah but uh i'll share one more just nice trick knight g7 you play knight p3 and after knight b3 black has one move not to lose a queen because you're threatening bishop d2 oh okay only move that doesn't matter if this is hanging here yeah black takes on e5 then yeah you don't have to follow then then takes takes bishop d2 traps the queen oh so you don't do it right away uh there is some knight f3 queen f6 oh gosh yeah okay good good good to know so the only move not to lose for black is queen b4 uh sorry in this position queen b4 which is hard to play because it aligns the queen with the rook um but then okay this uh this is the alpha zero stockfish game the play went on i think um like knight d4 was played and white got some eventual attack on the king side um so people want to like analyze that game it's there's some videos covering it on youtube so one thing another difference between night off three on move two and bishop f4 is a way in which you can handle king's indian setups from black yeah i was i i was gonna ask you why you play against king's indian and this is yeah this is kind of going into another branch of london because we were looking at lines where black plays d5 early but there's lines where black will play g6 or g6 or sometimes c5 here oh c5 oh i mean i guess i'm not gonna be playing knight f3 on on move one so it's c5 on move two is totally fine actually because you can just push e3 so this is actually one of the benefits with playing vision f4 on move two is if your knight was here and black plays this you you can't play bishop f4 yeah exactly actually i'll show you a funny trap if you play bishop f4 here there's takes takes and then e5 wins a piece yeah i've had this done against me yeah yeah i don't think i'm gonna play knight f3 on move today i've fallen for this a few times you learn the hardest terrible yes definitely gonna stick to bishop f4 now one move two so after bishop f4 c5 you get an e3 some players will play queen b6 here actually there is a very popular video released not too long ago from again mater and he was okay he was sharing his anti-london and recommending this move and what do you have in rebuttal so there's a move in this position which he didn't cover in the video we should make a rebuttal to his video yeah um actually levy levy made a rebuttal to the video where he shows he showed knight a3 i think he showed some some other lines too but um 93 is actually a nice idea here i was just i always get so tilted when there's a video it's like the best line against the london it'll crush it but okay to explain what's going on here because whenever the queen comes to b6 in london it's so typical to move the knight to c3 to respond to queen b2 with knight b5 yeah yeah oh this is typical but it's probably not what you play if you play knight c3 in this position there's a6 and then it gets weird because then you don't have knight b5 reason for playing knight a3 is you're also looking to go to c4 so you're gonna get one of these moves okay it takes a transposes this is this is a sharp line i don't think i want to get into most players yeah yeah you don't need to um actually one funny thing though i i played hikaru in this with this line as white he played knight t5 i played rook b1 he took i played rook a1 and white can force a draw by just perpetually attacking the queen yeah so in my game he sacked his queen for the rook and ended up losing oh wow you you beat hikaru with this london line actually so the video is on youtube i called it beating hikaru's botest gambit because he sat he said awesome oh i'm gonna i'm gonna find that video after that that's crazy he actually he almost came back to beat me but then i i dirty flattered and that's very impressive so if you play this against a really high rated player you can force a draw if you play this against akaro he might go insane and then you you beat him yeah i mean i think he car would just stack his queen and beat me but that's okay yeah i think he's learned his lesson not to go into this line against like a much lower yeah probably won't play knight d5 well that's very impressive that's awesome oh thank you so the other thing because most players won't take on on b2 yeah uh they'll play a move like d6 or a6 after which you play knight c4 hating the queen and defending the pawn that i was thinking and and then from there you would go with normal so from here the queen has to retreat and you go for normal london development exactly that makes a lot of sense and it's like your knight is just stronger than typical and they wasted two moves with their queen yep yeah it's still playable for black but it's still very very solid would um white play like an a4 to prevent something here yeah a4 is very typical to discourage the b5 push and okay um makes sense yeah i've had my fair share of games here but a lot of players won't be prepared for knight a3 because they'll have watched again mater's video they'll they'll go into this and they they just knock their surprises on i can't wait till yeah because i haven't had like you know really top level theory games and i'm just playing blitz against 1900s but i can't wait to tell i'm in a tournament and like you can finally use these lines yeah it's super fun and it's also fun to like prepare for specific players and see what they play against the london and then then try and target like their their weaknesses in whatever variation they go to which maybe can transition we can segue to how you would play against your sister because she plays king's indian yes she says she didn't play it in our match because she was trying your lines but what she was playing wasn't good so we'll definitely prepare against kane's indian yeah like a pet lion that i would play but okay what's your what's your pet line i'm assuming i think do you play king's indian or no i don't know if we played it in as black i usually don't i like to play against it though okay okay i think it's dania who would always play it but i mean i just go like typical eat i always play bishop e2 and then most of the time i go for c4 and that's kind of gotcha i've seen yeah i checked your games and what you do it's very solid there's nothing wrong with it yeah but there's definitely probably more exciting lines if you want to have more fun in life you can start with knight c3 here oh i had a coach who tried to take and i'm pretty sure and then i i just never wanted to do it because it just it seems so different yeah yeah but it's really not a huge difference but is it like are you gonna go for e4 queen d2 the whole point is to trick a king's indian player into a pierce where if they play bishop g7 which i see you you play as black yeah i do play this is more of a pierce defense where white didn't commit to c4 true that's true yeah so there's lines with queen d2 casting queen side and just destroying black on the king side yeah my i did look at this my coach did recommend it before and then i i think i just also forgot about it but yeah with the h4 idea and it's honestly it's not too uncomfortable to play at all with queenside castle yeah it takes some upfront work to like get experience but i think it's well worth the time yeah i agree so many players play the king's indian and a lot of them just aren't so well prepared for this idea because king's indian like usually it's black the one attacking on the king side yeah but then they have to switch up their entire style so even if you're like a little bit prepared here you can usually be more prepared than most of your opponents great i definitely i do want to try some new lines so that aren't like the typical structures i like the 93 idea and when i play king's indian as black the h4 attack is always the most annoying that is what alex crushes me with as well i was gonna say like this this could be something you might have trouble with is black because yeah i struggle with it for sure with things in the end yeah it's like it's so direct for white and um like one of the best ways to kind of learn this deeper how to deal with it with with black is is to start playing it with white yeah i know this is awesome um so i i actually i checked your black games like what you do from this position yeah i saw some different things once in a while i always yeah i think most of the time you play d6 but in some games you castled which is already a mistake because white has e5 yeah the idea is i learned that i think it has to be not against the london but it must be when they have like a pawn here or a pawn here that sometimes i want to provoke it to go into some sort of line like this but definitely not against the london that's just me being sloppy with my openings as black yeah a lot of players will actually do this in bullet like they'll just kind of mix up the move order allow yeah it's good in this position because if black plays knight h5 it's actually a typical move to attack the bishop yes you can very calmly move back to d2 now threatening g4 to trap the knights right this is already much much better for whites yeah i mean d6 doesn't work bishop h8 is so sad ugly yeah it's terrible you probably started the e8 yeah yeah you play g4 and laugh at box pieces yeah no the e5 line is a killer for sure yeah and if 98 then you play you can start with knight f3 and this knight's going to be restricted by the pawn pawn is very well supported and then you still go for the h4 queen d2 idea right you could still go for that you can play positionally in the center too there's different approaches here but uh okay here you go we don't need to spend too much time on this one because once you get e5 you have some more space it makes sense yeah yeah i think time is better spent with d6 yeah because most players will kind of walk into this and then let's say castling castling and if this is kind of new to you it takes it takes a lot of experience to fully understand um yeah i definitely want to try it though so but the first step is kind of trying and you're going to be in kind of new situations early on but if you can take away lessons from every game that you play um yeah analyze them you can be very i will try this slide and learn 100 so maybe i can show you just like one kind of common sequence a lot of players will kind of just stumble into even like very strong players let's imagine c6 here good as a common move i'm actually gonna see so uh last night i actually i made a file on like a kind of annotated pgn file on london versus king's indiana i'm gonna paste it in here and i'll be happy to like send this to you afterwards oh thank you so much i really appreciate that you took so much time to prepare this this is so helpful this is awesome oh yeah it was like i realized yesterday i didn't have like a clear like prep file on on this exact line so it was uh it was definitely nice to have the motivation to actually make it that's great eric's fantastic coach ever oh well thank you i'm trying anyway i want to show you just a nice sequence it's actually a game that i played a few years ago against a pretty strong grand master was over the board blitz tournament where i kind of used all the thematic ideas he is playing that this is like the main line oh it's with queen a5 but he finds another move yeah actually recommended but i even when i play that line as black because right i play king's indian it's still so tough so i'll show you just one thing with queen a5 okay there's a really important defensive sequence white should use here um starting with king b1 this is kind of the ben feingold rule like always play king b1 okay and the point is that very often you can maneuver the knight to c1 where it's super super safe so if if before you play knight e2 bishop e60 c1 okay yeah this is very solid it makes sense if you don't do this and um like sometimes it's easy to get carried away on the king side and then it's easy to run into trouble but if you get the knight to c1 it's really hard for black to crack white's position okay um and we'll see something similar in the main line that i have here so if we imagine black storms with the pawns always play king b1 as soon as after you've castled pretty much yeah there's usually not a like if you're considering playing it it's usually not a bad move yeah yeah you always have time for the king move i'll remember that that's something i didn't know that i never castle queenside yeah it's one of those things like usually you castle kingside and then you don't have to worry about so from here like white's already accomplished the first step of the plan getting the bishop here the next step is to just push the h pawn open the h file and then get the checkmating attack and this is from your game right so this is a game yeah i was against fidel corrales uh two years ago and like he he's a really like dangerous attacking player so he was trying to destroy me yeah this is so bold i've never seen this where you just go all the way for the queen side push yeah he just wanted to open up the the fight so a nice response here is to take and then keep things closed play a3 yeah i just leave the pawn on b3 and it kind of slows down black's attack makes sense he played queen a5 trying to trade queens i just brought the knight back to c3 still having ideas of this played knight h5 going for this move i cover the square and then we traded and the common theme for like these sort of positions it's just really hard to stop the incoming attack yeah so he tried some stuff but i'm already yeah it's crazy you have like no pieces by your king side but black can't do anything yeah as long as like the pawns stay stable then uh yeah then it's hard for black to do much so you really try like he tried to get my queen stuck because the queen defends but uh the problem with g5 it leaves h7 as a target and i went for this and e5 and then this was hard to stop wow this is a this is a beautiful line this is a great game here oh thank you yeah like after i played the game i immediately went to my my laptop to like put in them yes before i it's a great instructional game so one more one more variation from this position after d6 queen d2 uh i think it's it's already in the file that i loaded in um but i looked at alexandra's games and she plays a really weird move here like her most played move is it's strange looking there's some logic to it i'm wondering if neriditsky showed it to her is this maybe oh no i don't think i don't think they came up with this he did a little bit of prep but not this one okay alexandra's weird move of choice oh man i'm so motivated to just challenge her after this without even know yeah um well i'll show you what i i kind of discovered because i found a cool line which it's very easy for black to stumble into okay and first of all there is some logic like i've i've encountered this move from some strong players in blue yes i don't really know like i think i've analyzed it before defending as black and i don't actually really know how we white can still break through the pawn structure otherwise then like use the g5 square for their knights so the point of h5 is to slow down lights attack like there's no bishop h6 it's harder to play g4 so if you go for the typical plan very often black can leave the king in the center and then do things on the queen side and if you don't know what you're doing you could get into trouble yeah yeah i have looked at this a little bit before for black i think so this is one example of where you should switch things up and rather than put the pawn on f3 in castle right away you're going to focus in the center play knight f3 okay wait so in but in the previous game we didn't have f3 right but f3 is just kind of like the movie is like a typical move yeah usually reinforcing this if your night life goes up oh yeah that is what alex was playing against me f3 oh okay yeah it's a typical move and mostly i think she got it from you probably because she's analyzed your play against pizza if you play f3 that's why you're playing it yesterday uh interesting um so after h5 you play knight f3 first of all you do i the g5 square because black never has h6 but you also prepare this move e5 right and i saw alex had one game in this position she played knight d7 very natural looking move but knight g7 is practically losing it it leads to like really really nice position for for white after pawn e5 yeah because the knight has nowhere to go the knight yeah the knight no longer has h5 and there's many lines where you play e6 if we look at one example line let's say trade trade knight g4 very natural hitting the pawn yeah you can you can basically paralyze lack just by castling and now you create the pin along the d-file so like black can't take the pawn because uh the queen is gonna be lost in the end yeah no this is great i was thinking a3 but i mean it was kind of pointless after knight h6 so castling makes so this is another point if if black castles you play h3 the knights trapped nice again still black can't take without losing a piece because of the pin if not here you the um the bishop just takes okay so i looked further here it gets better because let's imagine like black plays a natural move like c6 and this is usually how i study like i was i had the engine turned on but i was still trying to play through like what what the human would do from this position yeah i mean it's really already really tough to play as black um yeah so c6 looks like a logical attempt to like move the queen maybe so here you you keep developing bishop c4 now let's say queen a5 natural trying to escape the pin now threatening the pawn four times um i discovered this all last night here the engine spits out like a really brilliant variation bishop takes f7 king takes f7 e6 check dragging the king into the open king takes e6 yeah brutal i have to be sure don't don't share this with alexandra before you you play her kingdom these are fantastic lines yeah these the the two chops that you showed winning the queen they're very cool um yeah so it's like another like there's all these hidden gems if black plays something offbeat or slightly obvious where you can yeah i mean this line is just killing for white even the queenside castle it's over yeah even after like after e5 engine gives like plus 1.87 right so um i mean and i feel like most ideas for black if they don't castle right away couldn't you go oh i guess there's always the knight h5 so that's why you can't use this idea more often uh yeah there's very specific cases where you should should play e5 and should keep your pawn back but this is one case where black just didn't have a great square for the night and black was underdeveloped this is great um maybe i i can share like one more i'm just trying to convince you to start playing this so i'm trying to give you as much information as possible i'm so motivated after this so i'm gonna just go play blitz and just wait for my games as white and i'm gonna try out every line here oh that's exciting very motivated so i want to share one more trap like from this position just a very natural way that can end up losing material very early and the way i discovered this trap and it's just another way sometimes i'll study openings is i played i played out this position against stockfish but i played the black side oh and i had stockfish play white and i was just trying to play like natural human moves and stockfish completely obliterated me found like a nice looking tactic um and it still played like very kind of thematic ideas so i played knight d7 here yeah very very common yeah always going for e5 yeah e5 c5 typical ideas yeah um here you don't have to waste any time play bishop h6 and this is where i um i went for c5 like trying to challenge this oh this makes sense so far yep um and here the engine came up with like very concrete idea now actually every move white will play for the rest of the game is either a capture or a threat so it's pure initiative starting with bishop takes g7 king g7 another case where e5 is uh is very timely aha because the queen is going to be hanging again so again this x-ray vision yeah if black takes takes there's a pin and it's already really bad for black so another thing to point out black can't take with a counter attack because you take with check okay nice so i realized okay i'm under pressure move the knight back trying to hold on to the pawns and now white keeps initiative takes talk of knight takes took with knight white to move and force resignation one more move and then i just resigned against uh against stockfish okay well i mean obviously there's a fork but yep simple enough you're just cool oh that's yeah okay okay that was like more complicated because i was like oh it wasn't like a may 4th maiden no very this was a more like simple tactic but i wanted to show the sequence just as another another source of inspiration oh yeah let me go over it just so i can so i know e4 okay e40 was if they only the only defending move of the pawn and then you just have a fourth fork okay makes sense gotcha yeah and here if they don't take then you're just up a pawn and you still have a lot of pressure too like that yeah it gets kicked around wow so okay so they're both e4 ideas gotcha i mean yeah e5 yeah yeah and if you're ever unsure like it's something you can calculate because it's usually a concrete line yeah but uh like variations like this the lines kind of flow very nicely where you you keep throwing punch after punch even starting with bishop h6 it was uh pretty crazy because all of black's moves are completely natural from main ideas in the king's indian so this is definitely a strong line exactly and just another reason why i love the london is because if if black is playing naturally like they can just walk into landmines i actually need to figure out what to do as as black against this yeah i was thinking that too because you you would probably stumble into like some of these positions why can't you play e5 instead of c5 i mean it's still really passive but oh it's true so here and here so with e5 you typically will have the same attacking ideas on the king side um you probably want to start by taking here because your queen is a bit overworked right um yeah yeah those are the threads and you start by taking whatever black takes back with i'd probably include f3 and still go for this sort of kings okay so that's the typical plan for white yeah i'm just checking with the engine to verify but um yeah engine engine is giving white close to plus one here yeah i mean that makes sense because the natural move is pawn takes but then you have to worry about how to develop your bishop because your knights and your queen is black black is really slow to develop and really slow to attack yeah like eventually oh i think in this i i definitely had positions like this and then like eventually i survived trying to move my queen and then slowly take out my bishop but it is really slow the the problem here because it's obsolete castling these positions usually come down to who can attack quicker yeah and because black's play is so slow and white white can just launch forward with h4 um yeah computer is giving a very solid plus one okay um ideas of h5 let's just say i'll play as black you play as white yep um okay i'm sorry i had the engine turned on it was suggesting h5 for a moment which it leads to like kind of more difficult lines to understand i would be more inclined to play f3 here preparing g4 h5 okay yeah i just yeah you don't even have to give like the best computer lines just to see like your main ideas as white because you play this set up a lot with f3 absolutely yeah so then once you come in with h5 yeah yeah h5 i mean this this thread is huge because then you're trying to checkmate me um yeah it's hard to resolve for luck we do have the night defending for now right but then you're throwing let's see i'm curious how you'll play okay let's continue actually maybe takes on well let's play h5 immediately okay so here i was thinking if you take and you go for g5 i have knight here so i thought let's say let's just say i did something normal like this i don't think there's a mate probably want to take yeah that's actually true if i take on g6 or takes queen h6 the king goes back it's hard to oh you think with the s not the h pawn oh yeah so if it takes one yeah yeah so just curious here what would so one plan is to still go for this and queen h6 king g8 and go for knight h3 to g5 okay um and then just continue adding pressure uh if the light can come to g5 and you can remove this bishop then maybe you can get your bishop to the the diagonal yeah yeah that makes sense because like queen g7 then you have at least this double attack so okay so you still have this nagging pressure king is very safe um but again this is this would be something i would check with the engine yeah um it's actually so in this position engine gives like another kind of weird-looking idea but it's giving plus two after queen g5 because this is oh this yes is engine move but which i definitely you have a really good habit by looking by doing your openings with stock fish i always go only like human moves books i never think outside of the box and i always stick to the same ideas so it's nice like using the engine when studying openings it it's a really good tool if you use it appropriately like you you can't just kind of get lazy and look at all the engine yeah not make an effort to understand the position of course but sometimes if you dig deeper and then realize like oh it's kind of hard for black to defend the pawn you're pinning the knight uh okay there's still the pressure of of doing the stuff so yeah yeah yeah i mean white could play black could have played like bishop d7 said but i'll i'll definitely analyze these but these are all this is very helpful i will try this setup i like the f3 idea it seems very solid yeah it's just another thematic idea in the opening and i don't want to overwhelm you with like too many words but this has all been so great that's good yeah yeah i think the whole point was to give you some inspiration and trying you definitely did the weak spot yeah i just like i gave up on studying the london for so long and the fact that most of these lines are better than what i would even study in the book is so helpful you can't find them anywhere so this is great thank you so much eric and i'd love to do this again and we should also have another rematch soon yeah i don't know what you're gonna do now when i have your lines i don't know you'll play against us but i'm sure you'll come up you'll come up with something i'm sure of it

Channel: Eric Rosen

Views: 394,256

Keywords: chess, imrosen, Eric Rosen, Chess Openings, Chess Tactics, Chess Strategy, Twitch Chess, Chess Stream, lichess, IM Rosen, IM Eric Rosen, Eric Rosen Chess, Best YouTube Chess Channel, Best Chess Channel, YouTube Chess, Chess Commentary, International Master, Chess Tutorial, Chess.com, chess game, chess explained, Checkmate, chess 2021, london opening, eric rosen london, opening traps, london system, andrea botez, botezlive, chess lesson, alexandra botez, botez gambit, traps

Id: VIIpCCsqePk

Length: 64min 9sec (3849 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021