This pawn structure will boost your Caro-Kann win rate

everybody in this video we're gonna be discussing about one of the most common Pawn structures arising from the karokan defense which can appear on the board after the moves E4 C6 D4 D5 ed5 and now we simply take back with a pawn leading to the starting position of the so-called exchange variation uh in my games nobody plays Theory they just go for random stuff and nothing from these videos ever replies I unsubscribe you have no idea how many times I've heard this I mean everybody is complaining that it feels like their opponent drank water from the dog or something like that and the way they place makes completely no sense well first of all I see nothing wrong with that I mean come on let's not act like you're trying to be some kind of a superior human being when in fact you just haven't been thirsty enough anyways I might be getting a little bit sidetracked here and the main point that I'm trying to make is no matter whether they go for this exact move or or not this is such an important Pawn structure that you need to remember because let me just give you a few examples in which you can reach this so one of the most common in case you are below 1500 they can go for the hillbilly attack and after ed5 cd5 no matter whether they check or they go with the bishop wherever simply because of the fact that white has gone for this he takes on D5 move that transposes into the exchange variation it's simply just a better version for us another example they go Knight C3 D5 they take once again we take back we do have the same thing just another one that really comes to mind quickly they start with Knight F3 and then they take I've had all of these moves especially below 1500 so in today's video I'm gonna be walking you through my thinking process playing two games against low rated up one ends trying to highlight the super common mistakes that they make in this rating range all right everybody we don't get the black pieces and we are gonna be sticking with the Karo candy fans and for that I also got a little background for you and I know uh some people in the comments may be wondering uh you got the Eiffel Tower in the background but you're not playing the phrase defense how does that make any sense well first of all I don't know why would you be speaking like that and yes I do know that but then I was like wondering the first defense is like such a bad opening and it could have like such a cool reference for hamness and stuff like that I mean we need Justice for the karukan so then I was like screw this just gonna use the Eiffel Tower anyways for the background so uh there we go in case you were wondering and uh opponent just seems to be going funny typical exchange variation in the Karo Khan where he already made a mistake now can you guys try to spot what was the mistake since you know it's already uh for a moves that have been made and uh it is not actually that I had to guess it doesn't take a genius you know you can do this come on guys so uh yeah well first of all taking is kind of okay playing D4 is fine but the Knight on C3 is not an uh the best night of all time because this guy really belongs on like Knight F3 Bishop F4 and the guy goes to detail then play C3 and Bishop D3 and play like a whether you like it or not play like a reverse lamina system so funny thing about the exchange variation you can literally play the same against anything you just need to remember where the pieces belong which is one of the very nice things about the Cairo Khan you know like these kind of uh situation where you find an opening that you like and you have to learn like hundreds of variations just to be able to get like a playable position well karaoke is like the complete opposite you just basically need to know where your pieces belong and you can play like that whatever I mean even my Cactus can do that so just gonna go Knight C6 and uh where are the pieces developing so let's start going the natural squares that is like pretty easy to guess if possible life squared Bishop goes all the way to G4 if that is somehow taken by your opponent he plays H3 thinking that he's some kind of a 100 IQ genius you can just play Bishop by five anyways then go E6 and if you're below 1500 I recommend you play Bishop E7 all the time against the exchange simply because they're gonna be going for the Taekwondo Bishops pretty frequently I bet this is what you're gonna see because these people they just don't have other squares for their Bishop mens they're like oh let's just go Bishop G5 Bishop what do you want me to do for I'm just like celebrating these guys it's like so funny and you may be wondering okay right Alex that's like you got lucky with guessing that he's gonna do the Bishops but what is actually the point with the Bishops why are these Bishops bad they look like pretty active Bishops you may be wondering so the thing is that these Bishops could be good if they apply pressure and you could somehow take advantage of the PIN but uh there's a little but there uh generally they don't take advantage of any pins they just like give up the Bishops for the night and you get a bishop here so I would say when you learn chess you get thought okay both Knights and Bishops are equal worth three points but I would say the Bishops are worth like three and a quarter the Bishops are a little bit better therefore it's kind of like taekwondo Bishops are pretty bad so definitely 1100 vibes now how are we gonna deal with this he's threatening to do a bit of an unpleasant uh and plays a move doubling up the pawns is not a disaster but it's definitely a little bit odd there is definitely Bishop G4 hitting the coin I think I'm just gonna stick with that hitting the queen and is he gonna play F3 that is like the main thing that was kind of bothering me for a bit because if he goes F3 yeah if he plays 23 now I wasn't really caring about this too much because we just have time to play E6 and we can take but on F3 I think we can just like slide back um maybe F5 he takes take with a G Pawn that's like fine that's like okay really it's just much better we'll have to check it in the post analysis game but yeah I'm pretty sure that is very decent so it's gonna go E6 Bishop E7 castle look on the open file just like I promised okay I'm not gonna do any fancy place now he goes H3 typically you want to answer this with Bishop H5 now because his Queen is on D3 you can try to use your brain for a second and play Bishop F5 hitting that and gaining a Tempo so I'm just gonna be doing that and I'm just gonna go Bishop E7 Castle now you may be wondering oh there was a free board on C2 yeah kind of but this type of behavior is exactly what it's gonna get you in trouble in the long run so I prefer just to stick with finish development get castle and then we look for interesting things so Bishop D3 how are we dealing with this type of situation in the karokan in general so just a little bit of a protein for you right there you're not sleeping already in general we love trading in the Karo Khan we have a little bit of space that's kind of the like only issue with the opening but once you let's say you're able to trade a pair of pieces it just feels like you know from like one room apartment you move into like a penthouse you're like a god you just walk around the naked in the house and nobody can say anything I mean I'm not the kind of person who would do that I'm just just have a friend so uh trading pieces is great in the karokan and that's why you should be doing it more often you should be taking away that from the video so uh okay we got a position I've got 20 seconds you guys are freaking out watching this but we're gonna start with uh H6 in the G5 Bishop he's mainly gonna go back and uh what do you have to understand about this structure is that we just want to go for the minority attack you want to push I know a lot of you are like dude we have to play night before eating the queen that Queen is like so tasty no you don't do that I mean just because you see like a hanging Queen I mean not a hanging Queen but like a queen that can be attacked it doesn't mean like you go for it yeah I mean just imagine you see like you're crash on the street or like you see some random girl that you like are you actually gonna try and talk to her come on we both know you're not gonna do that so why why like play games and do it in game it's like not who we are so let's just stick to the basics well um yeah now it's a bit of a decent story since you may be wondering okay you just said we're not supposed to do that well point is if you go night before immediately then he can kick away your knight but now we just got uh monster Knight on C4 that he has no way to get rid of also setting up a little bit of a trap and I'm also explaining you guys in the post analysis game why this uh was not working so well in my opinion we'll have to check them now if opponent is not careful get a little bit of pressure on this file so he needs to watch out for Knight takes on E3 combined with Queen C3 and yeah winning a piece so is he gonna be able to find that also we've got a bit of a hidden threat perhaps there could be like 93 trick Rook takes Bishop B4 so he just goes Queen C1 but this guy is like dreaming about a sacrifice but he's gonna get a big reality check so you're like this is you you think you're like making a few moves and then you just take your queen exactly the same kind of vibe my opponent he's gonna have because the Knight is just remaining undefended and this is just like the whole strategy why you get the open file why you double up just wins you free games you're like struggling to win below 1400. take the open file and that in itself is just gonna be winning the game for you I'm telling you nothing fancy needs to be done so taking that now the rest should be generally pretty simple this is what I'm uh saying before I mess things up but as long as you stick with uh exchanging all the pieces you should have no problems winning this and I'm I think somebody should be saying this model of fun because a lot of people when they just get into chess uh they're like really freaking out about how to Checkmate or how to do any like amazing place to win games or stuff like that when in reality it hardly comes to Checkmate so uh you know just like in life you're like preparing to get a relationship but it almost never happens just like inches you never really get the checkmate are we actually win games we just need to take all of our opponent's pieces that's like what it's all going to come down to we win upon we trade everything he's gonna have to avoid trades we start collecting stuff and when he has the King Alone the Checkmate is gonna be like pretty intuitive you don't have to uh you know be like a Weezer that passes like having so thousands of tactical motives sure those won't hurt but what I'm saying big part of your chest Improvement will just uh stay in the fact that okay you need an opening like how to get your pieces developed um and then when a phone and then knowing how to offer trades okay you don't want to like go blind with trading because this is something that I hear my students do all the time and people have problems with us they're like okay I I listen to your advice I went for a trade was a bad move you're a bad coach you suck just as just as a hard game no I mean as long as you like respect some kind of Common Sense ideas it is going to apply so sure trades are like 80 fine but let's take this hypothetical example that happens in my students games a lot so you have a trade I mean your Apple phone you have trading opportunity you do that because you don't think you're just playing like an NPC I get it but uh you know it doesn't take a genius to realize that trading your most uh active piece for your opponent's most passive one is gonna be bad you know like it doesn't take a genius so uh you trade when it's kind of obvious what trades are good and what trades are not just you know don't trade literally everything that you can and you should be okay just trying to take away some kind of play for my opponent um yeah just gonna take gonna OfferUp trade uh yeah nothing special right there did I just blunder haters will say a blunder but uh it was actually a 500 IQ move so I'm just gonna defend and yeah planning to take his Rook trying to listen to my own advice here and uh exchange more stuff so anyways like making the mistake of trading the wrong piece it's not really what gets you in trouble in the long run so this is kind of like the best mistake you can do so trying to apply the uh right idea but doing it in let's say their own position like fine I mean trust me you're not like stagnating because because of that mainly you're stagnating because you're hanging your queen constantly and uh you just watch this channel too much instead of doing puzzles so those are like honestly the main reasons but um yeah okay you trade the wrong piece sure it's gonna kind of backfire a few times at first but generally you should be able to figure out in time why it was a mistake so couldn't worry about that much now as I was saying it doesn't come to Checkmate just take all of your opponent's pieces let him with the King Alone and yeah the job is gonna be easily doable just gonna go for the H3 Pawn I believe this is how you win most chess games if you are you're a beginner he literally walks into me I I don't want to meet him and he walks straight into it dude I don't want to meet you might be finding stalemate idea though so I'm just gonna go mate by the way funny thing here if you go King f8 it might be a draw this is actually hilarious but this might be a draw so look at this if you do this move let's actually jump into like the analysis scene this actually might be a draw despite having so much uh extra material in that white has like a pretty funny theme so I'm not sure if you guys can find this but they could go Rook d8 ego King E7 they have Rook D7 8 GG what do you want me to play yeah let's do this no moves so Rook D7 still computer finds like a winning sequence yeah but I mean okay I I get it it's it's not that clear you can easily unpaint though and why will I have moves but just look at this so you go King there he takes and uh yeah if you take this way it's tell me it again so the kind of so-called crazy Rook idea now fact of the matter is you can take with a knight and he has a move so it's not a drop but if you don't watch out this could have been a motive that you know can throw away some games so just gonna keep it simple there and in case you would have gone King G2 just go Rook H3 he goes there and just like moving The Rook over next step is Target this G4 pawn and move the Knight so that I can basically hit it gonna turn on the waves to find that out for the night and probably gonna do it this way and let's say he will try to somehow defend just to show you guys this it may not be the most uh instructive idea of all time but uh just to show you like uh let's say typical scenario uh yeah you get something like this we play Knight F6 he tries to desperately defend you trade all the pieces you get here that's how you win you don't need like hundreds of hours of puzzle rush to convey this position like push the pawns Queen and then it should be pretty easy just stick with the basics so what you need to do is you need to know how to mate with King alone and the queen or a rook by the way disclaimer a lot of the 1000s don't need to know how to check me with the Rook which really pisses me off but uh you want to take care of that too so uh yeah I hope this makes like a little bit of sense at least and uh there was something I wanted to maybe explain in the opening because we had to go a little bit uh fast forward on this and whenever we just did like 100 meters Dash he was like dude I'm gonna like play every single movie in a second and you're not gonna be able to do your goddamn crappy content am I fine I just gotta adjust what can I do I'm just like a poor cartoon Creator man like what can I do so he goes A3 now we were discussing about all right King he actually sack pretty sure uh most of you were trapping your pants because of Bishop takes on HX and some kind of ghosts that Whitey's gonna be able to Checkmate somehow well sure but on the other hand you make no move he still has no threat and you make a move simple move here by the way I know maybe a lot of you may be missing this I mean not trying to like shame you for that I'm just trying to like highlight a point from my experience of working with a lot of low rated players how many you have no idea so you can just do a backwards uh night mode which shocking you have no idea how often they miss this type of thing so you can use the Knight to H7 and the point is you can play Bishop G5 next get rid of the queen he has no way to bring other pieces you can do this it's like Ultra safe so um yeah Sac was not interesting also at this point there's no way for him to stop Knight C4 really I mean he could try 95 but I would play the same and whenever he does stuff like B3 we don't care yeah okay literally play Queen B6 Rook C8 and once again the game is simply one because we have a lot of pressure on the sieve also once again I cannot stress this enough make sure to bring your look into the game you have no idea how many players are simply gonna ignore that and play like the next 10 moves without utilizing their looks I mean just think about it trying to play chess without actually getting your Rook onto the open file is like I don't know you try to drive your car without having to use the mirrors I mean maybe some of you still don't if any money for that but you're gonna be yeah in trouble you're not gonna see a whole lot so um I think that's basically kind of uh it about the game the rest was kind of easy since we just want a piece like if he doesn't blunder here plays Bishop C1 doesn't matter move the Knight away because we should be to go like 94. trade stuff he's gonna have issues with the spawn if you want to go greedy you can take this way and collect anything Works anything wins so I hope we're pretty clear on that then we can just move on to the Halloween game all right everybody getting another game with the black pieces facing somebody that's rated 1100 so and I'll be sticking with the Karo Khan and uh we're gonna be of course moving to the karukan scene so are we going for D5 see this kind of Knight C3 idea he's probably gonna take when they play like this they could also go D4 they could go two knights they could also play E5 sometimes those are moves that I have faced in the past on the channel so by the way just uh small announcement I get a lot of these type of con uh comments uh like the video saying that uh dude can you please play the these Karo Khan like do the same format in like 99 1900 Games 2 000 maybe higher rated so uh well for those of you guys that are asking this doing a rating crime so you will have to uh have a little bit of patience until we get there because we you know improve gradually but I already have completed a rating climb with a karukan all the way up to 2500 so you can check that one out if you haven't so uh all right as I was expecting opponent takes is getting back into the um exchange just gonna play super simple Knights on the natural squares Bishop goes out to G4 okay ch3 when the B when they play H3 the bishop could go to F5 so um and then do that Bishop D3 is actually a mistake trying to stop Bishop F5 but what is the main issue with developing the bishop so early there it simply blocks the queen so on Bishop D3 we would have been able to oh choose.com please come on arrows okay there is back it would have had the move 90s before Knight F3 just gonna get the bishop out ideally you want to go G4 but when they stop this you want to go to F5 so then we can complete development I'm actually quite happy that uh we get this structure adding a small twist to The Exchange oh here it is guys uh yeah I don't really know what uh these pawns are called but uh yeah it is definitely a common mistake so what opponent is trying to do basically just developing this so he thinks stopping the bishop pins is smart which is not we explained it before but he's not but uh yeah fine I don't really care it's not like we're gonna be destroying him just because he hasn't made this moves but um we're gonna be getting a pretty easy opening so I'm just gonna try to finish development in the exchange I highly advise anyone that's like below 1500 to always play Bishop E7 you could make an argument that Bishop D6 is stronger but most of the times they will go for the Taekwondo Bishops I mean this is this is ridiculous so these pawns the Bishops that is like uh how to play uh yeah ultimate 1100 starter pack this guy must have uh downloaded his chest tutorials from Brazzers or something like that I mean I otherwise it's hard to understand it but anyways uh just Place 95 creating a bit of a threat so between me six rings a bell defending and putting pressure on the pawn there's nothing wrong with Rook seed but I feel like Queen B6 is just a little bit more useful here putting pressure on that why is 94 a bad move because it will no longer cover the bishop if there's just Queen B5 expecting a move like this perhaps 94 it's fine can with a queen back or something that should not be a problem so we may go Castle I mean we we both know that he will do this move sooner or later it's just a matter of time oh wow wow well we were that is unexpected pawns like this and no Taekwondo Bishops all right that was a little bit unexpected oh by the way 97 is not a problem because we can take so no Fork there maybe he has G4 and then G5 and he gets to Fork me huh that's something I should have perhaps traded with a bit more seriously that's what uh my chess coach used to say uh about my career all the time anyways uh we don't have to get into that now uh yeah game we got a position yeah fine this is the first time to think yes you can actually think in a chess game what a concept I know we finish development now how do we approach this he may be wondering okay I developed my Pieces Just Fine what should I do next just is so complex you can go for like hundreds of middle game plans and how am I even supposed to figure out what's the best move so first of all I'm gonna be honest there is something that's bothering me and uh the fact that he could go 97 in a lot of positions uh it is a little bit uh scary so I'm just gonna make sure that is not a thing by placing the rook and then we got open file you already guessed it good job Sherlock we're gonna play Rook ac8 getting the Rook okay then maybe hit the bishop just make useful improving moves just recap first move now this is maybe something he needs to be afraid of sometimes and opponent just placed before okay now opponent's position is not great however it's not very obvious yet now you may be wondering okay why are you saying your opponent's position is not really he's got a knight 25 what are we supposed to do so that is a good point he does have a pretty annoying night so what are we gonna do with opponents active pieces we're gonna try to exchange them immediately so just gonna play 97. look at this night that's an hour again yeah it's it's basically that's our you know parking lot somebody is there Just Gotta phone him and dude you gotta move the heck out of here or I'm gonna big so this is going to play 97 try to get rid of the knight from our camp and then position is going to become easier to play so he can either move the Knight or uh allow us to apply a Brute Force which is not something that I really recommend but sometimes it is required so we're gonna go 95 in case he allows it for him it may be interesting to play uh something like F4 trying to take back with a pawn Open up The Rook but I could also play a move maybe like F6 just trying to get rid of the Knight with a pawn so um there's also like Knight A4 that could be an idea just trying to go for like kind of on uh kind of a counter attack we just move the queen back okay he plays Knight E2 he's simply like entering defensive mode he was basically afraid of 95 and then the fact that I can play D4 and 4 game so he's basically just playing a defensive move now um and yeah with that you can notice that whenever he makes a move I'm kind of some consciously asking myself okay what is the point behind my opponent's last move which is definitely something you should try to do more often and I highly advise you if you're a beginner uh don't really care about the rating too much just try to have this kind of small ghost like first goal of the game should be okay let me try to get the opening properly and then let me play the whole game and constantly ask myself okay what's the point behind my opponent's last move sure whether you win or lose that's less than 11 at the beginning you just want to get into kind of like the writer thinking process okay 9ito maybe I could do other moves just gonna stick with the simplest getting rid of the night and uh he plays it this way inning my queen so uh that move is a little bit annoying but you can just move to C7 I could do C5 right away too if you like Queen C7 is what most of the viewers would have played uh so I'm gonna do it I think C5 was a little bit better but I'm gonna do it the very next move anyways so we need a pawn break you finish development always look for Pawn breaks so gold on the rule right there shouldn't go out and notice just because I don't have that much time now again just spawn breaks you develop it's all about the pawn base gotta open up some lines for the pieces Karo Khan is like a semi-closed opening so maybe a lot of you come from like very aggressive opening uh backgrounds so uh for you it may be it may just be used to very quick uh action and uh yeah going for the sort of like premature attacks but here you just have to be a little bit more started you gotta use the pawns you know you gotta go for the small talk first you gotta go for the opener you cannot just like brutally jump into the action like you were playing some kind of an even scammer or I don't know you name it so simple play avoid his threats and just win upon it is that simple beautiful part about this is that we're never actually like risking anything so I don't know how you guys feel about that but I would rather be safe than uh sorry and on Rook C1 hitting my queen just need to sidestep literally Queen anywhere is fine gonna go to A5 since it's the most active I guess and probably taking with the bishop is not a bad move what are we doing under K1 I think that is actually a blunder for opponent because it allows a powerful trade but you should really get uh used by the way there is Quinny one I know you tend to get pretty emotionally attached to your queen I mean that's understandable uh you know that's like how most of the guys are but uh you gotta learn how to let it go and sacrifice the queen so you get two Rooks the Rooks are pretty powerful so uh yeah that would have been a great trade we don't get to do any of that here but you get the point I'm pretty sure just gonna do Bishop C3 hitting the Knight uh probably will go back I assume I don't know could even take it okay so Knight B3 I'm just gonna avoid the attack and keep hitting the night he's almost getting trapped what's wrong with rugby one guys can you notice what's wrong with rugby one that is actually a really bad move but it's not like he's got a big Choice that's he's gonna play 91. that would be pretty funny that would be a pretty funny move hmm is he gonna do that but he's gonna I feel like he's more likely to go Ruby on which blanders because of Bishop takes but he kinda has to go 91 or queen D1 maybe even the problem with Queenie one is that it leaves something undefended so is that simply by you know look at the Bishops if you're still like wondering why is the bishop pair so important just uh notice how opponent literally has no squares because my Bishops are just like controlling literally every part of the board that is just like absolutely mind-blowing to me has no knife moves can only go to A1 we have even left the game wait it's opponent actually leaving the game die throwing the report for stalling let me report for stalling wait a second you may actually be genuinely looking for a night square but if the game actually ends in like 10 seconds it means he just left the game uh that's probably another case it's just like desperately looking for a square so you could do this report for stalling thing one uh let's say you win a queen and your opponent just makes the movie just like left the game or something this just kind of gives you a win and skips the five minutes wait so can be a pretty nice uh trick to be aware of I've recently found out about it it doesn't happen here because it's still like actively but this is just uh you know what following uh principled moves in the karukan will do to your chest we'll just make your opponent lose his mind spend two minutes when he has you know no squares and just blenders a piece so take the free piece just need to exchange everything from now on it doesn't really take a genius though uh win this position I mean it takes a genius to lose this I have to say it's pretty it's gonna be a pretty challenging job not to win this position but uh yeah I'm gonna force a trade using a little tactical motive called the pin I'm gonna make a Loof so we don't get mated some people ask me okay when am I supposed to do a Luft this is the kind of position okay there's nothing uh like obvious that wins and we have the time to pause um yeah we've got a pawn I can like try to activate the bishop even so I think starting without a sensible it was Queen G3 maybe it's got like F3 ideas we don't really care that much do we okay I've got a ball move here I'm just gonna go G5 which is trying to force the queen trade G5 is a very risky move but uh okay I'm even gonna take all the queen so I can show you like the key concept to like win these positions all the time yeah like sure you're gonna win the most times when I'm pretty sure some of you guys may just be blundering some kind of Perpetual and that is really bad okay he just takes the point was if he goes Queen H3 I was about to sack I was about to go Queen G2 and just get the winning King opponent game now this is of course uh walk in the park I'm just gonna yeah I'm gonna go gang I mean I don't need to defend oh this is a pretty funny picture guys pause the video like to play and win for those of you that said okay we got a queen shame on you you have made in one you cannot be missing that so it's a bishop made even so that clearly ends the game and uh yeah I think maybe highlight of the game like hottest move that I had to make was Rook FDA now I'm actually curious as you can see oh you cannot see that yet let me go to the main scene so you can see the analysis board um yeah actually second move the computer also I was like maybe look at it it's not best but it's like a human but even the computer feels that this would be problematic so I mean the main reason why this is problematic is like let's say even on the previous move in case it goes G4 and then G5 it would have gone like 94 and I think we're okay like 97 there's like 90 intermediate move and then we take the best shop black wins but simply This Thread that he can constantly jump into my camp and you know like go for this annoying Fork it's just I mean the guy can enter my house that's I don't want anybody like entering the house you know it's some people like that I don't okay that's fine so no need to allow this Rook FDA just a little preventive uh measures uh right there do not play uh like Knight E4 or stuff like that don't go for a premature attack relation because maybe you're gonna get for it so you don't want that and uh yeah once you do that the rest is pretty easy just play like Rook C8 A6 try to look for Pawn breaks just notice name of the game here we always go for Pawn break start with 97 first get rid of is annoying peace and yeah I'm just one break on break uh avoid double pawns because why would you those would be weaknesses that the opponent can attack avoid that and boom we just won what have we done to win this game we develop properly we made one profiling move not to allow the fork and we went for the pawn breaks just one opponent they should be pretty easy that's literally all you need to do in most of your games below 1500 so um yeah with that being said I think we can move on to the following game thanks again for making it this far into the video and in case you're looking for another very common structure that can arise from the Cairo can make sure to click on this video actually that video in order to learn the data core variation

Channel: IM Alex Banzea

Views: 64,953

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Id: EzMa4v8WbgA

Length: 39min 48sec (2388 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023