These 8 Chess Tricks Will BLOW YOUR MIND

ladies and gentlemen i have a difficult question for you are you familiar with the rules of chess are you sure you're familiar with the rules of chess all right fantastic now that that checkpoint has been reached you know what happens when a pawn gets to the end of the board right yes correct you get to punch your opponent in the face no just kidding you get to turn your pawn into a queen of course or a rook a bishop or a knight but why would they grant us these privileges right why would they allow us to promote our weakest peace into our most powerful one but who needs all the others that's the point of this video today that's actually the entire thing that we're going to be looking at when do you not make a queen does some of you might have answered that question you're like well duh when it's stalemate and with that we're going to get into the examples this for example is the best situation to explain why you would not promote a queen if white goes here the game ends in what is called a stalemate it is a draw this is the simplest example to show you where what happens if you promote a queen the black king simply has no moves and the game does not end in a victory for white instead of that you promote to a rook and because there is no diagonal control the king actually just walks into a checkmate now that might be the entire video right there but then that would be on my clips channel we are on my main channel and i'm going to show you a handful of examples from real games in this video why you should promote to a rook bishop knight and also things to be careful about and there's a couple of different examples like for example uh in bishop sounds crazy because the queen has all the same powers so that wouldn't make any sense right a knight you can kind of imagine can give some checks here and there but let's for now stick to a practical example of when to promote a rook and we are following the game the black pieces all right black's pawns are going this way white's pawns are going down to our side of the board the protagonists are juan manuel bayon lopez versus jose garcia padron now uh actually the person playing with the black pieces is the father some of you may know of uh anna kremling some of you might have seen her twitch or youtube channel uh yeah that that's that's actually her pops uh and black is winning here black is winning a three on two end game this king will probably just eat this pawn and you just have to make sure this king does not get to these pawns first so what's gonna happen here is king c5 good job of getting closer to both targets a4 now g5 and h5 black doesn't yet have to get to this a pawn because the king is extremely close now that the white pawn sneaks away uh black will be in fact losing the race um with the h pawn uh right uh because this pawn is two scores away from promotion so the black king has only really one way to go and it's back to stop the pawn now that that pawn has been stopped it is time for white to begin to begin the journey uh over to capturing the pawns over here right so we have this this and it looks like a grim situation uh for black because well what what can you do right i mean you're gonna push something and uh all your pawns are gonna get caught but there is one and only one winning variation here for black if you'd like to by the way train your pawn end game calculation skills now is the time to do it pause the video uh this king will not be involved actually the funny thing is if this king tries to get involved uh you're gonna actually lose the game so you'll lose all three pawns so you you you basically leave it up to these pawns to either win you the game or draw you the game so that's it right one of them will probably end up being traded and you either lose both pawns or you don't so black begins with h4 okay you have to begin with this because now white has to move the pawn otherwise you promote here so oh wait what whoa whoa whoa i don't understand didn't i just say this has to happen well if that were to happen white can now no longer take on f5 white has to go here and actually white is stuck white cannot take the pawn because this pawn would go and then by the time white gets around to attacking this pawn this king either arrives or both pawns just bully the king to death uh this is a very well-known endgame when pawns defend like this like an in a knight formation right one uh one the king cannot take one of the pawns because the other one will go and the king cannot get closer to the other pawn at all because that pawn will just run by the time the king does this whole dance the other pawn also walks forward as well that's not what happened in the game i just said that the pawn would have to move so what's this what's that move all about king takes f5 well uh jose garcia padron thought that he came up with a defensive strategy and it was to run the king to a stalemate situation and at this point if the only legal move was this it's just a draw if you move the king it's a draw if you move the pawn you have to take the right pawn but it's also a draw uh but you can promote to something else now if you promote to a bishop here you're still winning okay this is still a winning end game because there is this and uh this is defended right uh but uh if you promote to a knight there's this and actually the pawn is lost so one of the pawns would have to survive and uh beyond lopez just made a rook and now there is one free getaway square and white decided that he was uh happy to resign in this position because he believed that his opponent would uh successfully be able to checkmate with king and rook but rook is rook is not the most exciting right i mean a rook at the end of the day it's simple as long as the square that the king is trying to escape to is not a diagonal you know kind of in the diagonal position then okay you're just gonna make a rook that's that's no problem at all but in our next three examples we are going to talk about knights and the first game we're going to look at is a real game this happened in the olympiad between hikaru nakamura and vladimir kramner when i was looking at under promotion games hikaru was all over the place um and we're going to begin right here this is like nearing kind of the end game and what happens now is the players begin a race c5 f5 e5 c6 e4 right i mean both sides just avalanche of pawns right bishop h3 trying to attack the pawn over there trying to win the pawn white says no rook back to f8 defending his own pawn trying to win the pawn the pawn comes forward all right king f1 e3 i mean this is just this is nail biter right at the end of the day we have e2 on the way we have f3 on the way bishop f2 on the way all these pawns are coming and that pawn is going as well and probably uh black will have to sacrifice his entire rook for it so hikaru plays king e2 and develops a little bit of a blockade all right and now after rook a7 check and uh we have a little just uh just a little bit of a dance here what ends up happening is the pawn goes okay c7 and the king cannot get close because this bishop covers and that is covered as well however there is a tactic here and the tactic for black would be the move e2 and the movie two is incredible because if white takes it then there is f3 check and you lose your pawn this is a draw so if if the king takes on e2 uh then that doesn't work right e2 king 2 that doesn't work if you make a queen then this is check and black wins it's not a draw black wins because white is stuck in a mating net and white will get checkmated in a few moves so what's going on after e2 this is incredible you're threatening this well hikaru does take the pawn but first hikaru creates a night check this is incredible and by winning some time on vladimir kramnik he adds a piece he now has a full piece that he did not have in this position to the board and because of that this no longer comes with a discovered attack on anything and after kikaro is able to kind of re-reconfigure uh the setup to his position he just has two extra knights knights and a bishop will defeat uh just a lone bishop a night and a bishop on their own will not but two nights will and this takes a little bit of time i mean hikaru does in fact have to take some time does in fact win the pawn and uh slowly but surely uh tries to either win this one as well or act or use it as a shield uh to to get this king completely stranded on the edge of the board now you might you may notice uh in this position hikaru could have played knight takes f4 um i'm actually not exactly sure what the evaluation of the position is after knight takes f4 like i would imagine that there are winning chances uh but if you notice black actually kind of doesn't have a move here sort of a weird situation like with the king uh the king cannot move at all and in many ways you almost want to preserve a pawn on the board for black uh because uh you you the pawn can be used as a as a a problem like the best example i can give you is it's well known that in the end game of two knights versus king it's a draw but sometimes two knights versus pawn is a win because there's like a trick where you put the king in a stalemate but there's still a legal move with the pawn very complicated stuff and hicaro masterfully dances around the pawn and creates a mating net for the king and uh basically checkmates kramnik like completely barricades his king and kramnik resigned because there is nothing and the threat is basically to give a check and made him like this so incredible tactical sequence all the way back to in the in the in the early 60s of the game promoting to a night with check i mean just wonderful stuff wonderful stuff a piece on the board with the tempo and the uh i have another example actually from a gotham sub game this is one of the games that inspired this entire video uh of promoting to a knight uh this was amazing like this is one of the one of the coolest ones that i've seen and this is a game between two like 14 1500s um white here plays the move uh e6 now e6 is a mistake on its own but we're not here to analyze all the best moves it's a mistake because the king can go up this way but in the game the king went back this way to naturally prevent the pawn from queening right and also to unpin uh from certain situations now one of the reasons why the king had to go here and not here is because after e7 this pawn cannot be stopped okay there is no king f7 because after king f7 i take your rook and you have to choose which one you're going to take but after e7 rook d6 i think you see where we're going with this i think you see that in this position there is e8 knight which is a savage move that is brilliant and black loses the rook and will lose this end game most likely i mean you don't know right 14 1500s are capable of many many things i feel like there's seven possible results of this game white winning black winning uh someone having you know a heart attack god forbid at the board i mean just really like someone losing on time someone walking into a pool with their phone in their pocket i've done that before you know what i mean like there's a lot of different results but that doesn't happen unfortunately and somehow in this position gotham sub just promoted to a queen which naturally seems like something you would want to do here right a full queen you say levy why don't i just make a queen cause you're mated you're mated if you make a queen you say let me know i'm not just sack my queen that's what happened in the game but it's minus 51 here if white finds black finds bishop takes g4 rook g4 and you're still pinned and when the dust settles one person's pawn advances we just saw this kind of typical end game stuff in the beyond lopez game right the pawn just runs so black is winning if e8 queen happens black actually has a winning position but what ends up happening in the game is well typical 1400 stuff the queen gets taken and this is just an equal end game and they went on to draw so blunder's galore but incredible that making a full queen here loses you the game with rook h6 but promoting to a knight with a check and then taking wins you the game amazing just super there is one though very famous example of when promoting to a knight went super wrong uh and i and i remember this game this is actually a very very famous uh kind of game it was a blizz game between mamitjarv and actually hikaru again and hikaru has a lot of these under promotion things also he's part of being a streamer right he has a lot of like very cool and interesting games um there was this game that hikaro had black and he was well on his way to a draw against mamidyarov i mean rook and two rook into but you just play right i mean you just play you see what happens maybe you have an opportunity to trick your opponent um rook a2 king f3 and it looks like you know black is creating some actual substantial threats here and i think hikaru actually did build up a winning advantage uh he took on a7 took on g5 and here he has a winning position actually in this end game uh king f2 all winning and the reason this is winning is black is three squares away from queening white is a lot of squares away five all right that's a lot more than three in a game of chess time is very important in a chess game but then kikora started going astray so here he can win with f3 for example if we have h5 rook h1 is a winning idea because white doesn't have a whole lot of moves uh black will play king f1 on the next move then for example if king e3 you play f2 you deflect the king and probably you just win but it's blitz crazy stuff is gonna happen right so instead of that hikaru plays rook a3 okay this allows mamijarov to play h5 which loses the game uh what mommy jerome should have played was rook g4 first or rook f5 first and now there is no time to go here and if you go here you've blocked the path so he had to do that first instead of that we get it this way and black is winning again okay king d3 now we have king e1 rook here king f1 we have king g2 waikikaru did not play f2 uh with check i don't know it happens it's just just i mean it's just winning right king d2 for example uh king g1 wins the game i mean if you if you if you do this uh actually no that does not win the game because actually in fact there is check king g2 would uh probably still would king ju2 in the game wait a minute king g2 king e2 where is the win where is the win where is the win rook h2 this wins the game preemptively defending your pawn and preparing king ji won rook g2 that's the win for example if king here now the king can move yes so the reason you cannot rush with king g1 or king depending on there's a defense right rook h2 first very tough to see with seconds on the clock even i just got stumped in the middle of my own video um that's the only winning idea you have to preemptively guard your pawn that doesn't happen because they're playing a blitz game right king g2 f2 king e2 and now hikar was probably frustrated he's like oh my god he's going to make a queen and then it's going to be takes takes and the players agree to a draw or he can make a rook it's going to be takes takes the players agree to a draw or he can make a bishop check it's gonna be takes takes draw instead of that hikaru makes a knight because it's he can make anything right now check this out check that move was not possible if any other piece had promoted bishop and queen would have been checked and a rook would have covered that square now mamidyarov is taking the knight with check and he's checking again and now we have this position now kikaru's losing potentially it's equal it's equal and actually the craziest thing is it's equal and hikaru can just keep his king here the the white king cannot get close he cannot cross so technically this is tsuksman i mean there's a couple of moments here that are a bit scary but this is tucson like if hikaru plays king h2 king h3 white cannot do anything like you can give checks you can go here you can gift like there's no way for white to cross if you play rook g further for h6 so the craziest thing is hikaru is still drawing but he must have been so rattled by being winning and then blundering with f1 knight and giving mamijarov winning chances that he allows mamijarov to walk the king to f7 and win oh my goodness insane i don't know what i would have done after a game like it's probably throwing my phone at something i mean if i was playing over the board i wouldn't throw my phone at something um but uh yeah i mean so that's uh that's what happens there tragic i mean just absolutely yeah i mean crazy like you go all the way back right i mean rook and one versus rook and one and then you just promote a knight like absent-mindedly you know he's going to take and then momijaro finds rook f2 rook i mean it's just crazy absolutely crazy you got to be very careful with these promotions um we're now going to take a look at three examples of the rarest promotion in chess the bishop promotion now the bishop promotion is extremely rare because if you think about it it doesn't make any sense the queen has the power of the bishop but if you're not gonna make a queen you might as well make a rook if you're not gonna make a rook you probably are in a situation you need a knight there is literally no situation where you would need a bishop or is there that's why we're here this was a game between anton guiharo and vladislav kavalav this was played in uh or kovalev kovalev kovalev kovalev probably not kavalio because there is a cavalier anton kovalev he's from canada is this kovalev i don't know what i do know is that this was played in the rapid chess championship and for a long time in this game kovalev was putting some pressure right he has two past pawns and he is trying to promote them but white is somehow staying very close to both and the draw here is this this is a draw because the king is the wrong color corner of the enemy bishop it's a well-known theoretical draw you say levy i didn't know that this was well known don't worry about it i don't know a lot of things in chess eater i just happen to know this one it's like my uh trivia party trick so king d4 king e4 and now you know you're gonna see a little problem that arises here by the time black gets to this position white still has this move somehow this cannot be taken with anything because it's stalemate but there is this right but now white goes here now you fork me and you can't make a queen because it's stalemate you also cannot make a rook because it's stalemate you cannot make a knight because i'm just gonna take on h2 right now actually i think table base finds a way to win this with black table base the solved chess program of seven pieces or less many many terabytes of space if not more says that this is winning in by black in like 40 moves that's like impossible to see as a human and the game actually ended with d1 queen i don't know if he didn't have under promotion on but you just think it's a draw because white is going to win on the h2 pawn but the most insane thing about this position is d1 bishop is the only winning move because after knight h2 there is king g3 king g1 runs into check you would have to lose your knight so here and king f2 and the white knight is just out of moves the whole position is out of moves but there is never a threat of stalemate for example white would go knight f3 or knight of one like if the position was one where let's say uh this was that was was the situation maybe like bishop back to b8 well in this position there is still knight g4 check because if you take it's a draw it's stalemate but the way it would happen in the game is that white would need to surrender the control of his knight in a move and then get mated so in a crazy turn of events d1 bishop losing your last pawn is the only move that actually practically wins this game that is ludicrous that is that is insane that like almost never happens uh but i got two more examples for you this example is a missed opportunity this happened in the reykjavik open 2022 between johann harterson hope i'm pronouncing that correctly or uh here tarsan uh versus maz anderson that name is a little bit easier to pronounce danish name i believe johan is icelandic name uh and this was the position after something like 50 moves and here white is up two pawns uh this is hanging so he pushed it forward and tried to go on and attack the black king but black actually got very quick counter play and after a long period of harassment managed to win one pawn and actually managed to draw the game despite being uh two pawns down well in this position there is the absolutely incredible you can pause by the way if you'd like to find it there is an absolutely incredible move by white which is the sacrifice of a queen that move on its own is findable but it's this position that's the problem because if you take and promote to a queen black sacrifices his queen and makes a stalemate draw black is down 18 points of material which i'm sure you're familiar with that situation but black forces the draw masterfully black can also play this move which is amazing uh and actually knight takes is still a draw the king cannot move the pawn cannot move so that's the issue and you can't make a rook because if you make a rook then you're goofy you lose this if you make a knight you lose the rook also which is why you have to make a bishop insane and now the king can go back there you get more material and white now has a rook pawn bishop and a knight for a queen so white does have three points of material but it's worse than that white is threatening rook g7 and if you give a check and i go to like h2 for example i'm also threatening bishop g6 and rook d8 it's just mate you can go back i'll give you a check king e7 and then i'll go here and that's it the game is over white wins this is not a game that black can never win or fight back or draw or anything f takes e8 bishop is the critical move and it was missed i mean if you find that you don't have to play any chess again like honestly if you sack a queen and then have the foresight to envision the fact that promoting to a bishop wins you the game i think fide just gives you some title like just chess god and that's it like that you don't have to ever play another tournament again i'm honestly just hoping they do that because i probably won't be a gm anytime soon so um i'm just hoping they gave me some title incredible i mean i've never seen something like that in my life i've never seen something like the last thing in my life i never saw something like this in my life the next one is just bad manners i mean if you made it 22 minutes into the video i gotta you know i gotta reward you a little bit because you know i try to make my videos compelling are they compelling mr beast once told me you have to make every second of your video compelling i hope i make them compelling with you know various jokes funny things on the board uh vocal inflections uh and so on but um yeah so this is a funny position because uh this happened in the u.s championship and if fabiano caruana had promoted a queen here he would have thrown the game away with knight c7 check um instead of that he wants to promote a queen when this is check so of course this move wins and then he makes this there is no fork and he would win the game but instead of doing either of those things he bm'd his opponent over the board live and promoted to a bishop with check which is one of the most savage final moves of any game i've ever seen i mean you need a little bit of fun right as well in in in chess right so he took his pawn he put it on g8 and he promoted to a bishop and ray robson resigned because rare robson was like this sob like because if you take now it's the same situation and the crazy thing is there's no tricks here i mean the trick is that you're just gonna lose all your pieces so yeah brutal i mean absolutely brutal and for a final game i wanted to show you uh a game played in the mid 20th century uh in the soviet union i believe this game was played um and this game is like a monster final boss uh of uh of of of under promotion so we have an end game where white has a lot of pawns and black has three and they're very immobile okay and white will slowly try to walk the king into here eat a couple pawns take a couple of pawns to go and try to use the overwhelming pawn majority that white will have on every side of the board white will have one on zero two on one and two on one uh black tries to fight back here okay uh zurak of you know trying to just use this pawn as a permanent decoy that pawn will permanently make black uh immobile and just advancing on both sides of the board now stockfish might show a way to hold this but this looks incredibly difficult to hold with black black trying to dance around and find some defenses there you go right so now this pawn is still anchoring the knight you can go king g5 but then i take and promote so uh we have king a5 but the beep the pawn has fallen but now two pawns have fallen over there right so it's everything i mentioned we have one one and two on one there is no way a knight can stop all these pieces just no way that's it just looks like a game that's going to be very easily decided by the fact if you make a queen there is a fork if you make a rook there is a fork and the worst part is you cannot do nothing because i'm attacking your pawn you have to move but you're an experienced watcher of this video already you know what white played here white played g8 knight right that's what white did white made a knight but this is hardly over every night promotion we've seen so far has ended the game virtually this is still knight versus two pawns and those two pawns are very close to being lost black can sacrifice for one of them for example like how easy this is to draw accidentally look knight e3 king d4 knight f5 suddenly i'm harassing your pawn you get too close i go we just literally are making a draw right i'm going to win your pawn we're going to make a draw it's so easy to screw this up so white begins the winning process all over again alright white needs to trade knights to win which is what white is trying to do black is just not letting the pawns go forward and white has the luxury of potentially trading one of the pawns and winning the king and pawn end game so slowly white begins making progress the pawns are moving up the board once again and the next thing that queens will decide the game next thing that promotes next thing that queen's right will just become a rook or a queen or oh my goodness four knights in one game can you believe this now white could have probably like played king c5 here and white probably could have played a lot of moves and tried to make a queen but in this position if you had played queen there would have been this and if you had played rook there would have been this but he promotes to another oops he promotes to another knight two under promotions in one game both of them tonight i've never seen anything like this and that's why i wanted to share it with you and the game ended in 80 moves as the last pawn was going to go and i think black just did not want to be the recipient of another knight under promotion although obviously that one wouldn't have worked because if you promote to a knight here to draw uh but the existence of one more pawn for example like here you know uh well i guess that's made in one so let's just make a hypothetical situation i think three knights beat one but you really don't want to have this battle all right so yeah black got to this position and decided that they had had enough uh but uh yeah zurakov as far as i know becomes the only person to have ever promoted twice in one game and both times tonight's the only person that has had four nights in one game i hope you enjoyed this video folks a very fun one uh now you know when to not promote to a queen sometimes when to promote to a rook sometimes when to promote to a knight and if you accidentally manage to promote to a bishop successfully in a game you're just the chess god i don't know what else to tell you on that note i will see you in the next video get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 307,056

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

Id: Zs8AxmYlw90

Length: 27min 37sec (1657 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022