Chess: Learn to Play the Spanish (Aka Ruy Lopez) Opening

1. Spanish Opening Promo: the Spanish opening, also known as the Real Lopez, is one of the most popular openings and chest or good reason. One of the main reasons is that it's super flexible. So if you like to have it attacking sort of game and attacked the king and let's attack things that you can use opening to do that if you like to steer the game towards something is more passive and mawr closed in your positions you can also use is opening to do that. And it's still in opening that is used on all levels of the game. So in this course, I'm gonna teach you guys how to attack with the Spanish had a defendant of Spanish and generally how to play the opening and all different types of situations and positions so that no matter what happens in the very beginning, you get a really good position in the opening and maybe even get a dominant position if your opponent is gonna play it very well and end up with a huge advantage of material or early checkmate. So it's really fun open to play. There's a lot to know a word and cover as much as we possibly can. In this course. I hope you join us. You in the class 2. Lesson 1 Intro to the Spanish: welcome to the course. This course is all about the Spanish opening of chess. It's also known as the Rudy Lopez, named after the famous grandmaster who use it the most and kind of perfected it and developed most of the theory in the early days of the opening. This is one of the most important openings to know in chefs. If you aspire to be a strong player, even just if you're an average cup player that wants toe play well and have a decent repertoire, because this opening is probably the most used opening and all of chess. And we'll get into various reasons why it's still used at the very highest levels by the top players in the world by the world champions. And there is a ton of theory, and there are dozens and dozens of lines that we can learn that we need to know. And this course I'm gonna go over a few of the most important book lines and the reasons behind, and the ideas behind all of the moves at position so that if your opponent varies from the opening, which will often happen, especially at the lower levels of chest skill you can capitalize on that. You can take advantage of that. A lot of beginner players, they get confused about openings because they go well, what if my opponent doesn't make that move? That you're showing me the highlights of chest with? Your opponent knows the opening. They're gonna make a lot of the best news. But if your plane doesn't make the best moves of the book moves, then you should be able to capitalize on. That means they're creating weaknesses in their position and they're not doing the best thing. The strongest thing. So what you can do is is immediately capitalize in some cases and get a huge advantage. We have to know how to do that. If you understand the position, if you understand the he is behind the opening, then you can easily take advantage of that. So this position that you're looking at on your screen after about three moves of the game is the Spanish opening it just slightly different from the Italian opening. Italian is if we go back basically by one move and we, uh, move this this bishop back to a starting position if instead of going to here and putting this pressure on the night we went to see four. This seems like a relatively minor change, but this changes the entire makeup of the position going into much more aggressive fighting stance by Amy F. Seven and Black Walls were playing more aggressively. This is also a very, very well known opening, but this horse, we're not gonna look at the Italian. It's something that we'll look at a different time looking at dispatch, which is much more strategic. And it is, um, geared towards players that want to have a more strategic type of game. We don't want immediate fireworks, and you'll quick check May at a huge fight. And exchange of material at the beginning of this kind of with the Italian tends to go into each opening, had his own personality, and it will result in certain types of positions. Most of the time. Now, a Spanish opening can be quite aggressive. It depends on what your opponent does. It depends on the variation that they choose in their reaction to you, but in general, the Spanish, the reason it's so popular is it's very, very solid as very, very flexible, so you can use it in many different situations that gets all other kinds of opponents. And you will have a lot of different options to go into, depending on how black chooses to react to your choice of this move here, Bishop. To be five. Now we're gonna look at the very classical book lines first, and the reasons why they developed by the early grandmasters, why they were the ones that are used are still used today sometimes. And of course, there have been lots of what we call novelties, where grandmasters have research, study and introduced new moves in order to surprise their opponents in tournaments and have them hopefully be un prepared for some new idea in the opening. And then, of course, that idea gets analyzed and is determined by, you know, the chest community to be either a sound novelty of really strong who that could be added to the repertoire of the Spanish or but something that was used as may be surprised opened , but they find some reputation for it, and it's not something that you want to necessarily use the high level of the game or whatever, but with anything in chest. The key idea is to learn the reasons behind the moves, learn what we can get out of the position we want to avoid in terms of what your opponent could do to you in the position. And if you understand the principles and you can make a lot of your own decisions while you play and if you just learn you know some of the news and memorized some of the moves, it's not gonna help you that much because your opponents could do whatever they want. And then all of a sudden you go off script, you don't know what to do. You know why those with the best moves in the first place? So Maria jump right into it, We're gonna go through the classical lines, they're gonna go through some more modern lines, and we're gonna look at what tends to happen in the Spanish and what you need to do in each given situation. So the time you guys have done with this course, you're gonna be a really, really good player in the Spanish for both white and black because, of course, will be looking at both sides of this course is gonna focus Premier Li on how to play it as white And I didn't get really, really strong position no matter what your opponent 3. Lesson 2 Bobby Fischer Style: so we jump right into it normally. What black will do after you make this moves, they will play the pawn out to a six. This Emilie put the question to the bishop and make swipe aside whether or not they want to trade up the night or to back him up. And you know, Bobby Fischer has chose sometimes to trade this off for this night, which is kind of surprised because the theory of the opening basically says that we want to hang on to the bishop pair. Having to bishops is usually a strength and chest we don't want throughout this night, even though if we choose to trade off the night, it will double blacks Pollens right here in a lot of beginning players think, Oh, double poems. Always bad. And that's not that's the case. It depends on the position and chest. You're always making a trade off in exchange for giving away one of your bishops and no longer having a bishop. All life squares, you're getting what may be a weakness in the future, something to target blacks. Vision of black will have the mobility of the bishop hair and a strength of having a light sport. Bishop or White does so it's not necessarily a good thing to do. It's not a very popular lie anymore. But it's interesting to know that Bobby Fischer, the great Bobby Fischer, used to do that. And I think part of the reason he did it was it was a surprise. And so the owners were as comfortable playing the Spanish as Black with his double on. They're used to playing the main lines. And so it was kind of a way to get his opponents off balance and then also provided clear objective. Bobby Fischer was a very, very solid, fundamental chess player that like to have very clear objectives, is very clear thinker when it came to chest, and so he did a lot of times didn't do anything dazzling, although, of course, some of his games were absolutely brilliant. Aziz, one of my other courses of analyzes his immortal game, where, at the age of 14 he sacrifices Queen in this stunning Siris of tactics. Any ends up check mating his grandmaster opponent and just a really, really amazing game. But most of the time he uses fundamental basic chest principles and then just execute really, really well. So in his case, he would take his ninth often times and then having a clear target of this double pond who folks all of his resources, I'm trying to exploit that week. It's very, very simple strategy, but often times it works. Simple strategies work as long as you execute well, follow that. Whereas other times we kind of get distracted and we're kind of all over the place. We're attacking this side of the border, attacked, and that's how the board and we're not coordinating our pieces in an effective manner. So that's just a little aside. I'm kind of going off on a lot of tangents here in this course, because in order to get a lot of knowledge about chess, you know, you can look at a position of it could be studying Spanish, but through the Spanish, hoping we could learn about all the other principles of chefs. And so that's what I see. My job, a zoo, a teacher in this course for you is not only to show you how to play the Spanish, but to give you all the reasons why we want to make all of these different moves in this opening 4. Lesson 3 The Classical Spanish: but what most people dio and considered to be the stronger option is black will play a six , and we will simply back this bishop up to a four. We want to keep the bishop air and just inefficient way to coordinate our pieces. We are immediately getting out the night of the bill so that we can castle that we want to , although, as you'll see in the Rue Lopez right, this is going to the Spanish or the rule Lopez. We delay Castellane because it's not that important due to the fact that there's no immediate danger or attack coming from black usually and so you can delay casting in order to set up the strongest position and chest the move order in the opening matters of great do you? It may not seem like it, and oftentimes the position will transpose into the exact same opening that you're going for, despite a different move order. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the move order is really, really important, and we want to make sure that we execute something exactly because taking an extra move to get a particular piece out may make the difference between you having an advantage or disadvantage, and we'll see a lot of examples of that as, of course continues. So we just we back the bishop up. This is usually a good habit toe have. When someone puts the pawn out instead of trading off of the knife and looking to stack responds, we we keep attention. As I say, we keep the peace on the board and again, by moving this bishop out, trading off right away, it may seem that you created this was weaknesses. Receive Bobby Fischer. Do sometimes, but you're also you're taking two moves. Teoh trade off a piece that is a good pizza. This is a good bishop. It's a light sport, bishop, and we'll see it is opening in the Spanish, your bishops, and to be really important pieces. So it's not very smart, you know, I think that usually due to think, I'm gonna get my bishop out here and I'm gonna traded for this night and stack the ponds at Bobby Fischer's level. He was kind of so advanced, you know that It was a surprising thing for his opponents to have that movement, so they just weren't quite as prepared for that position. as he was. Of course. Not only did he try to exploit the weakness or the double ponds, you would have a very, very strong prepared game plan in terms of what he knew was a bones would probably do etcetera, etcetera. So normally, the next move or black in this position is to take their nine out over here. Now they could immediately play this pond, Teoh be five and make us so we can no longer trade the night off and back us up. But the classical move order is to take a nine out first. And then an interesting thing happens here. We can castle immediately in this case and leave our pawn hanging and I'll show you why we can do that. Because a lot of players, especially at the club level, they're not very familiar with all of the different lines. And they think, Oh, look at this free poem. And even if they calculate correctly and see that actually weaken gain upon back, they think, Well, at the very least, I'm getting the pawn first. I'm not taking any risk you, but what ends up happening is white. It's a better position, usually, and so in black takes pawn is a couple of things. Do I prefer to play this? Brooke E One is very direct. We attack the night and he has to move. And then we noticed we have the night and the RUC attacking this pond, and he only has one defender. Now he could do something like this and try to defend that night. But, I mean, we can just make it move by playing upon toe d three and setting the night. He'll have to move. And either way, we will get this pond back. Only we're going to getting upon back while he has not yet castled. And it's quite dangerous to just show you. So it makes us bad move here. But when I computed that he chooses to move his night even say who he could choose to move it here if he wants to attack is Bishop. Obviously we know that we just take a Steiner's back it up. Mec adopt. You might think Well, Mitt traded disrepair. Now it's not a big deal for us, and then we just take it back. Um, the thing is, he's now in danger. Now we have a rook and right across from King. And although the material is still equal, this is not a good position at all for black. I mean, you can now try to develop pieces and we're gonna get this pawn or you can try to devise a way, you know, doing a little thinking like this. And then, you know, I take it, he takes it, we're still gonna get a pawn or, if he takes it, weaken, trade off the queen and then take upon and his kings. Mobilises is bad for Black, so it's not a good thing for Black do. White gets a lot of really good options there. However, if you simply just decides toe move his night back by either pretty here. If he puts his knight on d six, he's blocking in his bishop. He's blocking in this pond, so he's he's hurting his development. That's not a very good place to put the night either. And the other thing, you could do it simply go back to the original position. But then we're gonna take this on here. And if he chooses Teoh Teik the night with his night, then now we're going to take it with check and you know, he could just cover up. But now now his bishop has pinned. We have our picture and his king of heating Castle. But White starting to get initiative and black is under developed his bonds and which appear, haven't moved much. And our pieces are better position and we're already in attacking posture. So it's not like Black wants to achieve from this opening. And after castles begin with the queen. So somewhere like on E two and double up on this bishop, he's gonna be all of a sudden defending his pieces, and we're gonna be bringing all of our pieces into an attack and having the pressure. And so it's just a really easy way from white to maintain the initiative if he chooses to go ahead and take that upon and some blacks not gaining anything from it and he's not going Teoh want to be, uh, doing doing that. Okay, so, um, basically what normally happens is we will castle here, and a smart black player will refuse to take that upon, and he will simply continue Teoh develop now, due to the threat of us taking this night and then taking this pawn afterwards. Normally, the black side will now move this pawn. Former No, Bishop, obviously we have no choice but to go here. No, I was not going to take that on his defended. And we will just back up and continue to develop black and do various things, especially might immediately put his bishop here in the Fionn Keto position, which is kind of a natural place to put it in the Spanish. But often times black will simply get his bishop out in this sort of ah, defensive posture here and get ready to castle, which is a pretty smart thing to do. Or you can move his pawn forward. It was pretty common in the classical line And get ready. Teoh, put a pin on this night. Notice that if he puts his bitch appear, this is a very common theme. And chess he will Pinar night, we knew no longer could move it. And it's kind of could be uncomfortable for the pin piece in many scenarios. However, in the Spanish, we're not gonna waste a move to go. H three here with upon and stop this Bishop coming down. We have Ah two or three different ways where we can relieve the pressure of this in. We're not going to worry about it at all. So this case is a couple things we could do. We could move the recall right away and defend this pond because now, upon is once you defends this pawn on E five with his other bond. Now we no longer have the option of him taking this pond and that's moving out. Look out and getting upon back his defense, we got defense pond, and we can either defendant with on the perp was the perfect thing to do that would give us symmetry. Or we need me with a look out I often times for And this is one of the classic book lines is to move the lookout. Why on defendant? Because having this rook moved over is where we end up wanting to have this piece anyway. And across from the King. And we're gonna need this square on F one. When we reroute our night later this night, I'll be one is gonna be moved. We're gonna take several news to get it over to the King side because due to the theory and experience of grandmasters playing the Spanish. It is very, very useful toe have both your nights over on the King side for a potential attack on blacks King after they castles. We're gonna move this night over here. To get into an awful position would end up in a position where both bishops are on this side of the board. End of the King and Bull nights are on the king side of the board. Been striking distance of the king. And if Black doesn't play very, very carefully, they could find themselves in a lot, Trump. So we'll get the RUC out, and we're gonna go ahead and show what Black often does, especially at the lower levels of the game. You know, 14 to 1600. Play over, lo and behold and make this pain here. We're not worried about it all when I'm gonna put upon up or try to get rid of it, we just have to remember that the night is you know, the night can't be moved yet because obviously we lose our queen. So we just continue to develop. This pollen is offended and we're not in any rush to get into a skirmish here. That's one of the reasons we choose to play the Spanish and not the Italian. We're not going for some immediate fights and try to get the Attackers change. Pieces were playing a strategic long term game over, looking for an advantage that we can exploit. That's we want to do in chest, some weakest, the opponent's position. We will take advantage of that and then eventually open up a second. Weakness and chest is the principle of two weaknesses. Usually the the defense can defend one weakness and you may not be able to make any headway . The game may end in a draw. You can't exploit that weakness properly in your opponent plays good defense. But if you take advantage of the principle to weaknesses and you create a second weakness, usually what will happen is that position will crumble and you will end up with a decisive advantage and win the game. I think that's a good place to stop for now, and we will continue here in the next lesson. 5. Lesson 4 A Strong Knight Maneuver: So after the pain comes down, there's a couple of things we could do. One of the moves you play pawn to G three immediately, and we defend this pond and we get our bishop ready to come out. However, usually one of the things that we wanted Teoh in the Rue Lopez for white before we do that is to play on a C three. And the reason we do. There's a couple of reasons. A lot of times black would fit. Trade off this night here for our good white bishop pieces aimed on the direction of the king and take a bishop Peric. So we moved to see three, and then black goes here and weaken. Tuck this bishop down here, which is a very natural place for to be. It's still aimed at the king's side, and it's also defending this E three pond. It is an exchange in the middle ponds. Later on in his Pontus moved, then the vision has a lot of mobility, and it's just in a good position here. So that's one of the reasons that we do that. And another reason we play C three is it restricts the night from coming down to before or two D for and trying to put pressure on our right. So this is a really good move for multiple reasons. And chest were always trying to find moves that do multiple things, maybe their defensive partially offense impartially. And maybe they help to support one of our pieces as an outpost. Or maybe they prepare square for one of our pieces to go. Like in this case, we're creating a square for the Bishop upon is defending against the night and also repairs for us to at some point which we're probably gonna want. Teoh play either D to two d four, strike a center dishpan or play D three and then later on, played before, and it will support that as well. Everything in chess is about efficiency. Each move matters a great deal. You get the most out of that move. You don't be wasting any moves. We call them tempos and chest one moves a temple. And oftentimes, when you move a piece out and you force your opponent to move back and you also achieve something else with that move, you say you make a move with tempo and This is one of the main reasons why, in the early part of the game, we usually don't want to take our cleans out because they're easily attacked. And usually those attacks from the influence peace will come with Temple because obviously they're gonna have to move. That's being attacked by any peace, a knight or bishop or river, whatever. So that when the queen comes out early on, even though it's really aggressive and can sometimes, you know in a blitz, game me to ah, lightning attack on your opponent is kind of fun to do. It's really bad principle chest because oftentimes we will simply attack. Queen will make the queen move multiple times using multiple 10 tempi. As we say on Ben, we will be developing our pieces while that queens move around and not developing their side of the poor. So that's just another principle in chest. We always want to keep in mind. It's a principle of time making the best use of time, so we've gone to see three with AARP on notice. Black hasn't castled yet, and they need to continue to develop, so we're ahead of black and development. And since they chose to make this pen move here with the bishop They have neglected. These episode develops this. Actually, it's not the best move. A better room for Grandmaster would be either. Teoh developed this other patient Castle or two feet and head of the bishop is actually doesn't achieve anything. But it's really common. You will. You will see it a lot. And therefore, I want to show you the positions that you're going to see the most. So what? Blackwood now usually look at the fish about Great Castle, and then we're going to start a maneuver here, is gonna take several moves, but it's going to set us up for a really good long term position. So while we can play Defour here immediately and striking center and look to get ourselves a strong center, if they trade, we trade quickly, quickly. Actually, what might happen if they decided trade here and we trade here. Then later on to the castle. We're gonna put our night on a C three, and when you trade this C pawn off into the center like this, it can be a really good set up because you got both your nights in the belly of both or ponds in middle and this seep on. Being gone allows for more mobility of your piece of the queen can more easily come out. The Michigan were easily come out, and this is like a nice set up. But I'm not gonna go into that right now because we're gonna look at is this really common and very strong maneuver in this patch, which is to play 83 1st just put upon here and defend this pawn. Don't look to mix it up quite yet. We're looking to be patient. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna move this night from B one to D two F 12 g three. Now it may seem that's a lot of moves. 123 moves into the night over there. We're gonna see that in the Spanish having both bishops aimed at the King having both nights on the King side. It provides a lot of opportunities in 11 options. We call of Optionality. So depending on what your opponent does, you have multiple live in pieces that can put pressure on the king and can launch an attack . So it's a patient way to play. It's up very effective. Wait, play and chest. We always want to be playing, forcing chest everything we do considering our own our own signing the very, very best moves and the best reactions to our moves. We don't play what we call whole checks where we think well, hopefully are. But it does this or that. No, we want to be calculating the best possible responses that we could find for opponents and thinking Okay, if they do that, what's our best moving? Of course, we want to think many news. I had as possible the great grandmaster Ready, who has an opening in African for the ready opening which I have covered a different course one time he was asked by the press back in the day of the 19 twenties. Is that how many moves ahead you can see? Because a lot of non chess players are always fascinated by how deeply, uh, strong players to analyze aboard. They think that chess is all about is calculated coming. Who's the head you can see? Of course, it's not what it's about. Part chest being able to copulate clearly looking to the future is part of chest. But he said what? And of course I was that he couldn't see ahead far, far further than one move. His point was, you need to find the next best moving and go from there and oftentimes understand principles chest, and we're trying to accomplish it means that we don't need to calculate in every position. Sometimes we're just setting up pieces up and putting them in on effective, spot, efficient way that we know will be affected on. And then there are other times when there may be a big exchange happening where you will need to copulate very, very deeply indeed. So it just depends. Were not copulating. Deeply trying to look 10 moves ahead on every turn in this case for the setting up pieces up. So we're gonna play D three here and blast in a castle, finding his king tucked away. And we're gonna start that night, so we'll start moving on night over black. It's either going to move his roll over. You can move either one of his roots over and you're ready to pawn. Storm was gonna happen in the Spanish is that White is gonna play on the King side or the center and black is gonna play on the Queen Side or the centre at any point in the game. It's a logical or one side or the other to push on forward here and striking a center to get a space and mix it up. Um, and those hot moves could be very, very consequential. Have a big impact on the game, but you want to make sure that you're ready to do it and you're not forcing it. So one thing that will often happen at this stage for black is that black wool attacked. This bishop is their invention. We want to go ahead and keep this bishop, and we took it away. And so that's why one of the reasons why we move this pond to see three there are multiple different reasons. Why move this here? But now we've got a nice tucked away, Bishop, we've got both bishops and in this direction, and even though we have it moved this seat one mission yet once we move this night over the next few of its already an active piece because and out of the Stagno it could easily be activated. So sometimes, when we move our pieces out officially, we're activating pieces that haven't even been move yet. And so it's always a good thing to keep in mind a good thing to do what blacks trying to achieve here by making that move. He knows that. You know, White could just move his bishop. So we're not necessarily going. He's not gonna get trade. But he's moved this night out of the way so that he can expand on the Queen side and started pawn storm and support that pawn store with his piece. He didn't removing his pieces down towards being cited. Started created. Weakness are inside, and we're going to be moving our pieces or to the king size resulting Has we'll see a chest . One side will move on the king Queen side and one side when we've got that on the king side . Not with the natural thing to do is we're gonna go and make that move. And we don't want to help him by meeting that bond. Like a lot of bad players. Well, I think all the plans coming. I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna put this part or here and admit to see if you just chose to do that. I mean, he's got to fund here and he's breaking up in the center. So he takes, we take, he takes in this case, we would simply lose upon. You can't take that because the night is pinned. So not just be an obvious blunder. Getting a job calls for no reason and he would have a better position. So we didn't. We just do nothing. We're not worried about that. If you want Sto push is on now. We still ignore the trade betrayed. We don't worry about everything that our own does. We know that he's trying to get his pieces rolling, but he's not coordinated yet. We still have a leading development, as White always does at the very beginning. It's why White has a slight advantage in chess and the strong players will have a better record always with White. Because you have that first move and you have an initiative on the objective for Black and the opening is always to try to take the issue back from White with really strong play and then go into equal or better, better middle game that could be pushed for you with And so we're gonna move our knight to F one and another reason to do this Besides the fact that it's a good thing to do to have the night on G three is it helps us to break this pin that the black side has on our night and the queen. So when we are not to be too, we already wrecked pen and allow me to move. It was so wish about taking the night and causing this nasty dumb upon an open King scenario where sometimes, why his bishop move is put here in the first place. Um what? We're gonna move it again? There's no there's no reason. I mean, if Black just takes night right now, we get a queen out and Black got rid of their most active piece and activated our queens. He's That's the reason why doing trade that don't make sense. There's a really, really important things. Chest. We think it was just a trade, but in this case, the black would just be helping quite a great deal. Whereas when they keep the peace pinned and at least is a little bit of pressure on us and it restricts us So what? Okay, so in this case, overnight back down here that blacks gonna start looking to, um, get their pieces behind these ponds. They could help their ponds. Or in some cases, what a strong player, for example, Palm or P two. Great Palm or from the 19th century. He would just put his night back where it was and put it behind the ponds so that he could more effectively push those palms forward or black and move the lookout. Or blocking this before is all kinds of things that Black knew that a lot of choices here. And so at this stage, you know, both sides would be calculating a lot. Even though we have a plan, there's a lot of options now. There's a lot of things that happen. So they're gonna be capital oftentimes black, something the ruk over and activated for when the center is opened up. It's a good idea to have the Brooks in the center. And then now, if we want to, we can put the question to this bishop and we could make it back. Or we can move our night here first and then make this poem, actually what happens to be pushed his body forward. Like I think. Well, I'm gonna keep his pin on. The queen is going back up, but then now, when with the night out were threatening to trade off this bishop. Now, we didn't move our our night three times in order to trade off this bishop. But it black allows us to do that. For example, if they do something like, move the rover and prepare toe, push these pond down and we take this bishop. Now, we've taken their most active piece, and we relieve that tension. The night is also for now, undefended piece with our queen aimed at it so that we can do something like take it upon. He takes our night and we take a night we would win upon. So that would be a pretty big thing to gain so early on in this game so we can force the trade of this bishop and win upon in this case. So blacks going to want to, uh, come back here and put his bishop in a much more passive position. And then we've achieved exactly what we wanted to achieve. We have two bishops covering both the light and dark squares over here. About two nights ready, Teoh jumped into action and attacked the King at a moments notice. And we're developing our pieces very well. So this night maneuver is a strong thing to do in the Rouleau best. For multiple reasons, the C three pawn move is he moved in the Rue Lopez for multiple reasons. And then when we let our on hang, we're not protecting it when we castle early on and allowed black. If they so choose to take that upon, we give them a chance to make a mistake there and put ourselves in the driver's seat. We have lots of different ways to get a strong position and gain an advantage, whereas Black has lots of other ways to easily make a mistake and get a bad decisions. That's what it's all about. A chest. We're not trying you immediately with material or hope their opponent just makes a blunder . You know, try to get up early. Checkmate. All those. All those things would be great outcomes. You're playing into good chess players, but that's not gonna happen 99% of time. You're both making good moves. You're both gonna have. You have some knowledge of the opening eso Whoever has the most knowledge of chest. Whoever calculates the best plays well is going to win. And so, by taking courses like this one and understanding the ideas behind three Lopez and what each side is trying to get out of each position, you are able to out think your opponent out, play your opponent and have more ways to win in your opponent. And that's really what it's all about. Having Optionality just is and it's hard, it's a game of optionality because every single move you have, like an unlimited number of options. Maybe. Look, right now white, we could do so many things. We play this part into the middle. We can moving night up here and threatened to make a trade for one other bishops and get a bit repair. We can develop between now and develop our bishop out. We can, but look over. We can do many things in each thing we do. Each move changes the entire game. It opens up a whole new probability tree about what can happen. So gay. So So Jesse is at its far at the game of Optionality and we want to play such a way that we have multiple ways toe 6. Lesson 5 Strong Central Play: so we want to simply continue to develop our pieces on the King side and make things happen on the King side. However, one thing that we can do right away that helps develop our peace and get a Rick out as we can move our fish appear Teoh e three. And what that does is it helps to support this d foursquare. It moves the peace out of the way so we could either move our queen to see one and support create a skewer. Or we could move, are over or under the saner if you want to, and it helps us to just develop this piece. We don't want to necessarily move our worship Teoh G five, because we don't want to trade pieces in chess for no reason. We only want to do it. If we have a reason for us, that's that's one possible move so we can continue our development and also supports us to play D for because in this case, once you played before noticed, Black only has two defenders. So let's say, for example, black is something normal like they move the RUC over and they forces beep on down and we go ahead and play D four now, if they take it, we take it and they take it. Now we can use something like this and take upon. And now we have a really, really active bishop. There's an open board. Black has ah, week upon right here. That is a clear, clear weakness. And we have this pond defended by multiple pieces. Our position is much better than blast position. So by supporting before here with his bishop move, we are We're preparing to play d four and then black. Want to look for a way to support Defour again. So unnatural things like this Parliament move the night back, Teoh a three and then be prepared for us to play before, In which case, if he does take it now, we can still make this trade. But this is still good for us because now we have centralized our queen and chess. The center of the board is the most important area of the board over. Dominates the centre, usually dominate the game or have better prospects in the game. And having a centralized clean in one of these center four squares. The board is it really our goal thing to have, especially if your opponent has no easy way to make it move. And so from here we can go in any direction that can target many different things. It's very mobile because our position is is the semi open position where we have a lot of mobility, right positions close, the problems are all locked up and you can't get your pieces out. Vision is open when a lot of palms have been traded and there is lots, lots of mobility for all sides. This is a semi open position we're still have on the board, but we have a lot of ability. This is how most chest changeable enough. You'll be semi open positions, so we need to be comfortable and used to playing in semi open positions. But see, every time you look at a possible fail like this, you want to look at the conclusion. What have we just trade off those pieces? What will happen that the position will be equal in terms of material, we have the same amount of material both sides. Black still has six bonds white sauce, six ponds. No one's gain, a material advantage. But white has a much better position here due to its centralized queen are leading development. And actually, this is a really big weakness here, having this pawn like this with no the palm supporting it. We have a very, very clear target too, because we say so. We can light up a piece very moving over to the one, and we can target this piece of you Those defended right now, like couple pieces Black will have to use a lot of resource to defend it, which I have pushed forward and traded off. And that will give us a white A lot of options so that I wouldn't want to do that either. Another thing that black do if the play ended up this way, is that if we play Defour is they do nothing, and this is oftentimes the strongest move in chess is to do nothing. And it's looking OK, well, if I ignore that on right there and I just continue to develop nine bases or maybe even push my pieces forward here and put pressure then what can, uh, white do now? This is it's really complicated, but you have a lot of different upon trades possible. This is the time and chest. But you want to calculate very, very carefully because what you do here can change the outcome of the game. Obviously, in this case, we don't want to take this pawn on before because Black has two pieces defending it and it would activate their night. So, for example, doing this, he could either take his palm down and put in a good position. Or you could take his night down and threaten our bishop, and we're activating his piece. It doesn't mean that you're still going to get an advantage and the game is gonna be lost. But if you notice now, Black is getting counter play. He's getting activation of his pieces. And that is of course, that's not what we want to. So we would simply ignore this if he chooses on his next move to take here on C three, we just take back and keep our central pollen structure. We always only thinking about how do we maintain strength in the center and so blasting the same thing. So glasses thinking of it. If I ignore that, I moved down here. What happens then? If White now choose to make a trade here. For example, If we take this pond and he takes back now, we can trade queens. Now I think if you're black, that's a pretty good outcome because, um, like we have an initiative. And by giving the queen's off the board of neutralizing our initiative a little bit notice both of blacks rooks are now centralized, which is a good thing to have and what we can, you know, centralize our ruk as well. This becomes a very dry brush position that will very easily lead Teoh draw are equal position. It's over black who, in theory, being the side that moves second, this would be a good outcome from the Opens. This is not something that white we want, so we probably wouldn't want to take this. Although we don't have to trade queens here he takes back here we can simply move or queen over and prepare to in a tempo and living a look over to the one which actually might be a very good thing to dio. But notice that black Tickets pond and now we have isolated pause. So each of these different upon trades you'll notice that I've shown leads to a very, very different game and a very, very different AL close. You need to look at each possibility carefully and decide what is best for you. What is it the right thing to do? So in both cases here, it appears that by not capturing you are better off full black as well as white. It ends up being better off, not trading. This is a really, really important thing to learn and chest. Just because your opponent threatens a piece for threatens a trade does not mean that you should make the trade. We don't want to make any assumptions in chess, oftentimes by ignoring their threat. If it's not a true threat, we're making the best move. Maybe we should just continue to focus on our game plan and ignore our opponents game. But of course you have to calculate like we've just been doing. But we're not to work. We have multiple pieces defending this pond. Its simplest thing to do is to count How many Attackers do they have having offended to be have so they've got one night one on 1123323 Attackers on this pond and we have four defenders we got with this night. Bishop, This pond, this queen all defending it. I remember that they trade their phone on before for our C three point. He said to take back and still have a defender here. So we're not worried at all about white thing you're upon and blacks not really worried up all our studio. We're not We're not black taking upon a black slightly worried right now about white taking right now. So we're gonna leave the tension in the center as it is. And this is you know, this is interesting checks. This is fun. Good checks were both playing well. We've got sort of equal position with White, probably having slight advantage due to our slightly more efficiency of pieces And also due to the fact that our attack is going to be on the king side all over a piece of payment King site. So we're successful last. Gotta worry about worry about getting checkmated, whereas blacks attacks coming on Queen side. That's where they have space. And that's the natural way for the play. And while that may lead Teoh advantage in a victory for Black, I mean, the worst thing is gonna happen is that maybe they're gonna get some active pieces over here. Maybe they can win material, which would not be good for us, but it's not gonna be like imminent defeat. So oftentimes, when you're playing on two sides of board beside that is attacking the king has a little advantage because our attack is gonna be more decisive if it is successful. So we just kind of covered a lot of ground in that lesson. We'll leave it there and pick up where we left off. 7. Lesson 6 Creating Multiple Ways to Win: now I'm sure you guys another way to play this instead of playing what is probably to be expected by playing D for having a fight with center. Another way too often. Attack in this sort of a position is to move your F poem for, and it might be less expected by your opponent. And it also might be more effective because you're opening potentially. You're opening up this file aimed at the King, and you're opening up lines to attack the things. For example, a move you consider there is move night to H two, preparing to play F for now. Oftentimes, we don't want to be moving this pawn right in front of the King. Usually bad because it can create a weakness and a threat from your opponent coming down and checks on the King and things like that. But due to our position of our bishop here on E three, once you move this year, we're not worried about that because our our bishop has defended that so presented to the queen can't come down and make a checks everything. There's no there's no weakness here for the cake, so I get stronger as a chess player, you've yield identify when the king is really in danger and when it's not. In some cases, you don't even need to castle because, as you see, like in the King's India defense instead of the world offering is locked up on. In that case, there's no rule. Easy way to attack King, and you don't wanna waste a move by castling. But you're perfectly state with a sense of. Someone will see Grandmasters Leader King in the open and make more efficient moves because the position says it's fine. So first you wanna fall the general. But the rules of Castle earlier off thinking you keep safe and then it to get better, Better chest. You could start to ignore some of the rules. It's like a public also quote, he said. They're the rules, like a master, so you could break them like an artist. Well, chest, definitely Example. Situation work. You want to learn the fundamentals so that you can improve and become a really good player , and then as you start to become a great player, you get to you, read the board, read the situation and start breaking some of those rules with a lot working with you. Start doing that. At any rate. My movie night over here, getting out of with on we're looking at alternative way to Attack on the King side As slightly work presses itself is fighting for the center, which is not exactly passive it It's a strong thing to do. Gain space and fight for the center. We're gonna be fighting for an attack on the king side. Which makes sense to this position is all of our pieces are geared towards an attack on the king side. Now, blacks smart, they will figure out that's probably did this. But there's not much they could do in this situation about this thing at four. Can't stop. Do you know how their pieces are set up? We're gonna be able to play that no matter what. Only they want to put some peace like appalling here on G five or some of the peace to defend, um four. But they can't lead us. There is going to keep looking to push their position on the, uh, queen inside here. At some point, this night is kind of in a weird spot. They may simply just move back and then prepare to play before is a lot of the thing for black do because they've got multiple pieces supporting upon and they're gonna push to gain space as we saw before. We're not gonna want to trade for that bond because it opens a position for them and activates the pieces. And they're just gonna gain space and start moving their pieces over the Queen Side. An attacker Queen side. It's a logical thing to do in chest to push your phones for we called upon Storm and then support them with the pieces behind. It's like if you think about an Army sending its infantry, the front lines forward, and then all the commanders and all the artillery, everything is behind supporting them. You have air power and things like that. Chess is a game that is model of war, actually, and so that's a strategy day. What? Okay, so they just something like that. We're gonna go ahead and play F four and again we will see that if your opponent chooses to make the trade, which a lot of weaker players would do. This helps us. It activates our bishop. Now we have opened up this F file so we can go back over here, become queen, appear to f three if we want to. And all of a sudden we're going to start aiming things that their king and gets a lot of really good aggressive choices here. We can move our night back to F three if you want to you and get prepared. Teoh, push this pawn forward and advance our army gains space. So this is a really good option if we have the opportunity to do it in this case, we do. And Black shouldn't take that. If they if they do, then it will help us. Still, a good player will ignore it. The problem is, if you start making really good moves and Jessica good position, they can't ignore you forever. For example, now were threatening to play F five and trapped this bishop, for example, if Black wasn't careful, I said, It's something like this, which is actually more like a pretty strong move because you're moving your bishop out of the way of your book. So you look could be aimed on the board and you're also defending this pawn and so oftentimes pulling you push it back into a position here after the King's castle. This would be a good place for the bishop to be. But this case fails to f I. Because, you know, there's nowhere for the bishop to go, is trapped. He goes here. We have the night and the queen, and better so he would lose peace. So he is now starting to get a lot of pressure put on him. I mean, what did she do? Well, one thing you could do it. Simply say Okay. Well, all those definitions that by playing h six and now if we play at five, he can touch a special way. But look what has happened now. We've gained a lot of space on the King side. It's on. Is it a dangerously advanced position that is restricting blacks moving? They can't put a piece on e six or on G six, and we now can we move this pond board? We have space to move our pieces over so I can I can maneuver my night, go back up, for example. On Pluto is I could threaten this night, and now he still just want to take that because now they will leave my queen to be directly across his king. And I'm threatening to take this Bishop. I mean, his partner here, for example, is that he moves. It was in pieces somewhere. No se goes here, I could take spot because his paws pinned. And so now he's in great, great danger and this happened rapidly. You know, this happened quickly. It's all the sudden, no matter what it is that we do, Black is having to make a choice between a lot of bad decisions. And not only is this you know what we want from our point of view of the position, but Black's gonna have to spend a lot of time on the clock thinking because he doesn't want to make a big mistake. We're not having to think as much once we get into position like this, because every trade that has made basically will help us at all of this is flowing out of black, not making any big mistakes. But it's kind of making slightly more passive moves, not arranging his pieces as efficiently and as effectively as we have done. And that's what leads to a big advantage. And this is a big advantage for White and we're in position to win the game already. Now, obviously, Black doesn't want to trade this night and bring our queen to such a powerful spot. But we have a lot of threats here now and now we can start looking at things like sacrificing one of our pieces on this pond, for example. In sacrifice, a bitch appear, he takes back, we can take back check and then our queen can follow up. I would want to calculate to see whether or not a sacrifice like that would be worth it. But now it's becoming a possibility. Or we could remember Queen two D two here in preparation for that sacrifice. And maybe then it would be much more dangerous. Let me just give you an example of something that we might want to be thinking about. Now Black is now in a very, very defensive posture. So you this move here makes a lot of sense to defend. But we could do something between you two finally and connect our rooks, which is usually that usually signals the end of the opening. But we connect our roots and all the pieces are developed were definitely in the middle game phase right now and we've completed the opening. I want to see you as example of something dangerous that we could do here or at least consider doing once we get ourselves into such an aggressive posture. So now black and just thinking about defense, don't put his rook, um, on the seventh rank here to look to defend these pieces. He's looking to play defense, and of course, that's good for us. Even though we haven't accomplished a victory yet, we are in the driver's seat and of course, it's just much more fun to play chess with. You are the aggressor when you're the one with the attack is just fun. Even if you don't have a winning ends up being a droppings, your point on some really key defensive moves and it is able to effectively trade off some of your attacking pieces with good play. It's still more fun, usually to play as the attacker and so that's what we get to do in this position. But now we can look at things like okay, what if we we attack takes pawn? Is it worth it for us to make a sacrifice or not. What happens? OK, now it looks like maybe it wasn't. We have only a queen here, and we don't have much support. So it looks like there are attack. Kind of failed. Now he can't. Trader cleanup project is now. This night is threatened, and so he's gonna have to put a night some sort of a passive position, like maybe he goes here. Then we gotta think, OK, that nice moved. Now we have things we could do, like you put his pawn forward. He's got a new his rook somewhere. And now this pause is attacked by two pieces. So this night forward and now I'm still getting It's pretty dicey for Black because his plan is a really, really dangerous piece. See, but not trading here. Back when we had our opponent f four, he allowed us to push his pawn forward. And that created a whole bunch of dangerous scenarios or blacks king that they showed you. You know, if you would have traded it, he would just be helping us to activate our pieces. And our position would have been really, really strong. So it was win win for us and This is the position we always want to be in in chest. Now Black may be able to defend in this situation, but it's getting real dicey. I mean, his night here is having to defend T seven, which would be checkmate if it wasn't there and weaken at a leisurely pace being broke up. We call Brooke lift and move it over, and we can do lots of dangerous things. So there's no need to actually look at every possible combination and how this game could end. But notice All Blacks pieces are over the side there passively place. It's hard for him to even get his queen over. Teoh play defense, and White's gonna win this game quite handling. So that kind of concludes this section of the course, that variation of the opening. And now we're gonna go back to the beginning and look this evil. What have we look at some other moves of black? What is then likely to happen 8. Lesson 7 Attacking the King: and I was going to get a couple other variation things that especially a lot of club level players. My club, without anything from L a rating of 1200 all way up to about 18 1900 might make some of these moves. Once you get up to around 2000 and I look and explore expert level chest, you're not gonna be seeing week play. You're going to see a lot of really, really strong moves, deep understanding of the openings and all the different positions. So club play is this huge range, sort of in the center of skill level, anywhere from about 1200 to about 1800 or so. And that's where 99% of all chess players are actually 2000 up. Even though there's a huge, huge gap between super grandmasters like Magnus Carlsen and Kaspar off, you know, the great retired cast Broth and many others between them rated 2700 or 2800 and even other grandmasters rated like 2520 side. There's a huge huge gap and skill level, actually, at those higher levels on Lee, about 1% of all active chess players are rated above 2000. So all of the feet in Masters, National Masters and master level players, they are still in extremely elite group of players. And so just show you how hard it is to get up to that level once you are. And we're not talking about like Internet Eagle ratings, because on the Internet all the elevators are usually inflated because it's based on the pool of players, all relative to the other players that you're playing against us, how they calculate the total scores. So, you know, if you got like a 1516 100 rating on the Internet, that probably means in real life you're only probably 13 or 1400 feet a low or you've got a 1800 online. You know, you're probably well, like a 1600 maybe 1700. Maybe strength. Evil player in real life is a competition in real life in tournaments that are gonna be people that will be playing um, and active tournaments. And actually competing is getting much stiffer, so the your ratings are going to be lower. But any case for most players, you're going to see a lot of these similar moves, especially in blitz, where most people now we don't have time to sit down for our chess game or even a one hour chest game. So most people, they lips. That means anything from five minutes aside, up until about 15 minutes per side is considered bliss and we don't have that much time to think. And that means the better. We know our openings and the better we know Our theory there were easily is going to be toe win because we're going to think less and moves. Our bones will have trouble oclock what were often than us. And while our goals is still win on time, it's nice to have time pressure on our opponents where they're making mistakes because they don't have enough time to really think that moves. And we're making fewer mistakes because we are. You know exactly where game plan is and we still have to think long each movie. We're making really strong move. So that's one of the great advantages of knowing the openings really well. In this era of blitz online chess, it helps us probably more than anything else. I mean, the end game theory is really important. You're gonna buy some serious long game suggests We need to know your endgames and you're gonna convert your winds a lot better but knowing your endgames, But it takes a long time to calculate. Think about moves in the end because the end game is really complicated and the opening we want to be able to make our moves pretty quickly and know what the best options are we're gonna be seeing, you know, are we seeing are opening every single game and games don't come all the time because there could be a quick check mate. Or they could be a huge again of material at some point earlier in the game and then the end. Game play is not report. It's gonna be easy to convert that, so it's more efficient We were studying. No, the open Julie. Well, because you have to play the openings in every scene again. Chess. But you're not gonna get into those complicated endgame situations nearly as often. And therefore the study of the end game is something that, while may be important for you to become a stronger player, it's not as important as learning the openings, especially when you're just starting to become serious about chess. Okay, so that being said we was gonna go through a mystery has a variation that easily happening . You see, a lot of games where as they were, they were played a six. You back it up with the same first few moves, you take a night out, Castle. Now, of course, they're choosing not to take that, uh, upon because they know that it's using that a good thing to Dio. And then we'll say they immediately put pressure on this Bishop. And basically, they can force us to trade this bishop off now because there's no place for us to go with our bishop. That isn't going to force a trade. So in this case, what we're gonna want to do is we just move our on forward. Do you see three? We let him take the bishop, and then we take back with queen. Now, this is a good example of where one side thinks they're accomplishing something. So black moved his knight three times in order to trade off this light sport bishop of white, which is a dangerous piece. It is aimed at the king's side, and it is aimed at this important F seven square. But when they trade off that night for it, they activate our queen. And our queen is also out on a good square. It's not in danger of being attacked. Earlier I mentioned that's usually not a good idea to bring it between early, one of the main reasons being that it gets attack as your opponents pieces get activated and you lose several tempo tempo. And in this case, which is helping us to develop, noticed Black has not developed many pieces and we already have our queen out. We already are positioned to play before if you want to after defending this part, of course. And we're already castle too. So the Spanish is, Ah, very effective opening again because it gives you so much Optionality and almost no matter what happens if you play well, if you know what you're doing, you're gonna get a really good opening. And so a lot of grandmaster players, they try to avoid it. They like to put the Spanish and they will go to some either really, really aggressive lions to fight against it, or the various other things that were about later in the course. So in this case, black might want to be really aggressive and mixed things up. Any time that you're in a position where your vision is starting to get a little bit passive, or you recognize that your opponent is maybe slowly getting the upper hand, and usually when you need to do is be more aggressive, even though that is also risky, it might be the only way to, uh, win the game. Obviously, both sides have hang on Right now. We could take this pond. You take our pawn so black always simply just point out here and defended. You probably already know this, but it's almost never a good idea to put a bishop in this situation and depend upon like this, the point being that you're blocking in your development, blocking in this pond, which can be pushed into the center, which we know is the most important area of board. And so it's a very bad place of your bishop. In this case, um, it's less bad than normal. Let's say, for example, we use something move a roof over, and they can feel can another bishop and then castle. And so it's not as bad as it could be when we usually we intend to develop our bishop out of this Dag here. But even still, it's not good because it restricts his palm being able to fight for the center. So it's one of the first thing we need to learn and chest. Don't block into the bishop or excuse me, don't look in your poems with the Bishop by putting it on the sixth rank is black or the third ring as night. Okay, so it's pretty obvious thing, But this one make sure that you guys know that so obvious move here would be to play, uh, e three and defend this pond while also giving your bishop the option to come out on either , you know, Justice Complicated Game. It's, ah, sophisticated game, but oftentimes they feel the simple, fundamental move there. So the best thing this move kind of plays itself by defending the pod and developing the pieces. Not too much to think about. However, you might look at something like playing this bishop out to, uh, f CBC five right here, because now you prepared to castle everything. Only problem is, it gets really complicated because if we take this pawn and the black takes, Orban says Black and the castle. Yet now we can look to do things like go here and we can't do this because then that was very gators Move. It's very, very complicated. Very, very quickly in this situation, and this is not we're going for, um, in playing the Spanish, we're going for a more passive strategic position. We could play this move, though. And, like, probably took his bishop back. And then that night, the nights got to. Now, this is a very, very bad, dangerous position for Black. Since he hasn't castled yet, we have this discovered attack coming here. Black is actually gonna lose his queen. This situation, because we check and the king has to move. We could take the queen. You can't take the nineties and check. And obviously you can't block clean. He would lose his. Okay, so that's just a good example of how we got to make sure that you calculate carefully and don't think OK, well, if you just your calculation on Lee goes as far as move my bishop out and okay, What? He could take my pawn, but I can take his pawn to and then I'll be threatening maybe, um f to hear. Got Remember, you haven't castle yet. And this is why in general you want Castle your king as early as possible with the castle early enough. You want to get tucked away and in Spanish is really good for this because we move our night out, move our bishop out immediately, and then we can castle right away. And I told you that sometimes we delay castling in the Spanish. I'm gonna show you guys example of that in the next video. While we wouldn't want to castle right away. But in this case, Swire CEO is simply play fundamental chest. So all the black has to do in order to avoid all that trouble is moved their pawn forward, Teoh d six, and then prepare to develop their piece is probably what you're gonna want to Castle. We can simply go d three, defend this pawn and also allow us to get people are bishop as well as our night out. So that's a really logical move. We can't lady for just yet because they could then take his pond. So this move kind of plays itself as well. Blacks gonna wanna castle get their bishop out. And we're gonna look at how we can develop our pieces and fight for the center. Don't really want to put our bishop here. It's kind of annoying the night and come down, threaten, able to move it kind of a waste of the move. We don't want to let him trade His peace is night for our bishop and then also game space and activated pieces. So it's kind of annoying thing that we want to avoid. Um, we can't play Defour yet because this is hanging and we also probably don't want to go Bishop Teoh G five here because if the night moves somewhere and then or potentially trading off our good bishop for their bad bishop, the reason this is blacks weaker bishop or so called bad bishop is because of the same color as blacks plants. And so it's restricted. Whereas there lightsquared bishop here could be feeling Canada going along and Bagnall or it can go out on this desagneaux maybe even, you know, threaten our queen and put itself into a spot that supports this pond coming down in the center and then basically it's developing with tempo at the touch of the force that we have to move a queen back somewhere, and that's not really what we want. So we want to be looking at something better. Jess. You look at a bunch of candidate moves and then you think, OK, well, what's an even better move in that one? Develop our pieces in such a way that it is effective. We also looked at some point moving this night out of the way and then playing at four, which is a good idea. So this is another situation work, because kind of a good strategy by playing h three right here. We're not allowing the night or the bishop to come down to g four and we're preparing to move the night over and pushed this pawn for and making attacks. It was good. No, already showed you this movie. I think it's a good move for White to get tempo. We will simply in this case, we're gonna put our queen back to starting position because now we're going to prepare to be rounded. Never be worried to back their pieces up in chest as long as they're not going to stay in some backward, passive position for long. Just remember that you want to read about them, Teoh. A better spot. Now we're preparing again instead of fighting for the center, which is generally a good thing to do in chess in this case is Black Center is is pretty solid. We're going to fight for the King side. So blacks gonna want Castle and everybody to merely move on out of the way. And we're going to play it for again. There's not an easy way to defend that. Four for Black. It's not gonna move his pawn forward cause I'd be ludicrous, Right? Needs to keep his bones flush against the king. Can't move this night out and defend it. We're going to get to play at four. So probably will blasted views and you could play C five and again. You see a similar scenario as we saw before, or we are fighting for the King side and black is expanding on the Queen side. So it's a very similar type of game in terms of when our aims are. But the board is totally different or pieces are not develop the same. Black has the bishop hair in this case because we saw that he was able to effectively trade off our bishop. But we have the same general strength in the same quality of position as before, so we could play it for and we're gonna be looking to move all over peace out over here and again, just like before we see if he takes it could take it with the RUC. We're gonna wanna look at that as an option, but it's or logical taking the bishop. And now our ruk is aimed at the summit open file. Our bishop is aimed at this semi week on here, and it's been activated. And then we can later on we could bring a queen over maybe two f three and switched over to G three and aim it at the King. And once again, we have a very aggressive position taking place. Whereas Black is in a defensive posture and they're going to be looked at trying to gain some sort of advantage in the center, do something like, maybe go ahead and play d five, which we're going Teoh want to defend or ignore. See, in this case, though, once we get our pawn up here and Black has traded one of its ponds off, which you just did there taking her effort on again gives us the opportunity to do something like this. Just push this pawn forward. Ignore that. And now, Okay. The night can't go to H five of our queen. It can go to any of these other squares. It has to back up to a passive position. Whether it goes to do you one or d seven, it's kind of obstructing the play in the movement of its pieces. Black isn't a passive defensive position, and this pond is pretty salt here is defended by our our bishop and I moved out of the way . Now you something. I guess we can move our queen over to this very, very aggressive posture on h five and start forcing black to make concessions and, um, weaknesses. For example, black might think cable. The natural thing to do here is to go, uh, G six. Now it's creating air around the king. And this is what the attacker wants to want. Have a way to get in. But we could go here. You blasted try to, uh, move his rug over an attacker with Bishop. Now, when you start calculating and to see okay, is that the best move? Is black going to be able to get out of this? And what's the most effective way for us to attack here? But in case this is exactly the type of position that we want 9. Lesson 8 How to Make Your Knight a Beast: So this variation, when you look at something else, I can often happen. It black goes a little bit off script. They don't play the exact same moves that we are hoping for. So basically, if you see the first few starting moves here and then you hear certainly a little bit of a variation. So they put the same move on to a six. We back it up, put the night out. We pretty much always want to go ahead Castle when they play this night out for the reason I showed you guys in previews video that palms basically untouchable in black can take that upon and then allow us to take back. Just It's hard manipulated usually doesn't get as good a position you can do it if he wants to, is not necessarily gonna lose material, but he's gonna have a trickier position to play. And usually it works out better for White. And in the case of you saw in the lesson when he makes big mistake, it could be really bad indeed. So a lot of time Black will play this bishop out C five instead of playing more passes, Bishop T seven and then castling. Is this aimed at the F to pawn? And then I used to hear the night could jump down to G four and then Target is pawn. And then if I move my rook out, then they'd be able to take it now it's really used to defend against, but a lot of people play this more aggressive moves. That's one show you guys, what do in this situation, how we can defend against it and things like that. Also, let me just mention for those of you who don't know, sometimes a little confused about when to make certain types of trades, we call them imbalance trade. For example, we know that both the night and visual were three points, and we also know that the RUC is worth five points and opponents were one point. So you may think, OK, what's six point? So by trade up a night and a bishop, or we get stay two minor pieces because the the bishop are also also called minor pieces, and the look and queen, or called the heavy pieces for obvious reasons, is a more powerful if we trade a rook and pawn. In other words, if we are black and we trade a night and a bishop or our phones looking upon even though the points are the same, we're making a bad trade because the minor pieces of mine Bishop, they're much more active during the opening in the middle came than the RUC ISS. And so what? Seems like it's a fair trade or just trading off pieces. We need the minor pieces in the middle game there after pieces. We don't use the rocks that much, usually until the board opens up or until for the endgame. When you have open files and you can start putting groups behind your piece and you're pushing things forward, they become very, very strong piece in endgame. So it looks really good. Everything cases and they're not as strong will be speaking during the opening and the bill game. So if you think I'm gonna bring my night down here, I'm gonna take this bond, take a drug and exposed their king. You're here activating these two pieces have been trading him off. It doesn't make any sense. So just you know, it doesn't make sense to do that. However, if you are able, Teoh successfully with pressure on his effort to find and keep this room in place so we can move. There may be a benefit to doing something like that. You just don't want to make that trade. In any case, we still want to go ahead and make this, uh, c three Blue. It's just a national move in the Spanish for the reasons that we learned in the previous lesson investigation also helps us to play before and then fight against this bishop. And even though they have three pieces depending before on a night, and bishop, if they trade, are pieces can develop nicely. In this case, as we see so in this case, to I want to show you guys night, go ahead and take this on here. And I set up moving the RUC over by playing, um, Brooke to F one that would lose to now, having as I just mentioned these two pieces aimed at f to they would then be able to take it so our Brooke can't over half stand up in. But in this case, we just do something also, that's quite simple, because we were queen over and attacked the night And then our queen is now on the opposite side of the king. Remember, In the Spanish black, they choose not to castle right away. We see that it can go very badly for them. So smart black player in the Spanish will castle. A student can and develop their pieces as you saw from the previous examples. And they were better span of the Queen site and get some pressure is very dangerous for black and Spanish to delay tastic for white. It's not. We haven't seen an example yet where we have late actually white Each example. I've shown you each variation the night down here to F six and then we go ahead and castle and lever on hanging for reasons that we learn. But sometimes they don't f six example. The Nightline go out Teoh B seven instead, or they may make a different move. First, we could go ahead and delayed castling and continue to reroute this night here on B one over to the King site, as we did before. What a move like this is going to show you guys now threatening the night. And other than that, I have to move back allowing us to retake this pawn with a very, very dangerous situation where the Queen is aimed of the king or allows to trade our bishop off of this night staff their points and rethinking upon and just like before, a move like pawn to d five. It just doesn't lead to a very good position conceived in this case. OK, they defending the night. We have multiple ways on a way to make that night move. But we can simply take this night on C six, double their ponds and then take back this pawn on E five. Now, we haven't gained any material. But all of a sudden our position here is much, much better because we're not threatening this week on C six and they're going to have to defend it may be the one I'm afraid we now to be six or whatever, but then we can play before and forth the bishop back and they're gonna lose a piece probably if they do, if they're not very, very careful because they haven't cast, For example, let's say in this situation that tonight we will have to take a bond back and in between 86 I just said Now they're defending this pawn but not equate Defour. The business got back lost. The place would be to either be six or a seven. But on B six, in this case, depend this bond. But the problem is, now is I can make this this pawn here are giving this night move somewhere and that I have a really very dangerous discovered attack. So let's say the night. So there goes back to starting position now, since black hasn't castled, we have kind of threat. So we could simply we can take this palm check and you can't capsule at a check and can block with Queen. So you force to put his bishop in between and we just one upon and we broke their defense up and we're already putting themselves into a winning position. Now we may not win anymore until I going out night back, for example, looking back over here because now it's being threatened. It's no longer a check, but one material. And our position is still better than blacks and one castle and get out of the way. But now we're 19 is very, very strong outpost. Our pawn chain is better, black has broken up on chain and we have an extra pump. So we have already gotten basically anything you can really expect to get out a successful over the way we started that initiative game material. And we have an easier position play with you something nice, like being in a fishbowl. Threatened to take this night and break open their king further. So he's gonna have pretty much, uh, move the night because you can't defend with anything except queen, which gets you do putting his queen into a pin. So now I gotta move the night somewhere. There are many good places to go, so I gotta go. So for passive, probably the best for him in this case would be to go to the seven because he doesn't like having my night get outpost looking in trade off this night. That would be beneficial to black begins as we see around all these good openings, they are reacting to us. We're not reacting to them with words, but with pressure, where the one making it difficult to play. And I keep emphasizing that this is very, very useful in blitz, but it could make its really strong moves. We're very familiar with the position. We don't want to take time off. The clock are has been a lot. And in order to not get behind on the clock and lose on time, they're going to be making states. And then we're going to be a capitalizing on those mistakes. And simply by not making any big mistakes, we're gonna win a lot of our games. Well, think of the notice in this situation. No sense. Suspicion of am across for my king, and he's going to take this night. Wouldn't be able to take back on to be pin have taken between. And they could take your queens. In this case, this exact position, you simply move working over. And if he decides to go ahead and say I want to trade up this night, we take back. But now we've got this strong on and center. The queen has Teoh somewhere, maybe back or whatever, and we're still upon. We've got this nice on outpost here and we have a lot of space things we could do. This pollen is being built in Bar Queen so they can with the RUC over yet there. This is a little bit restricted right now so we can get our night out. Try to get a knife to a good position, start getting a looks out. Aim at this queen example. They may want to make our vicious move back or something like that. Which days begin this? They're not gonna want toe this formation here. When you make to bonds like this usually tell it looks very ugly. I see a lot of bliss. Players do this because they find it annoying. Have the bishop here, especially if it's making a pin. But this is weakens the king and makes a very bad defensive sometimes. Okay, Like in the news. Only needed my course in the news of any defense, Their position where it's actually quite natural. To do this, you have to know what it is. Okay, in this case, you definitely wouldn't want to do what you already have a week on position so you could make a bishop back wherever, but he's just fine and black and try to develop their pieces and improve their position presented by getting a rook. Somewhere came across from this part queen, but our position flows Nice weekend are aimed at this pawn and across from the Queen and notice that even though there's upon and our night between the room in the Queen, it's still dangerous if he chooses not to move this queen somewhere on this exact Let's say , for example, says OK, I think I wanna activate this planet is probably a pretty good move and get some space in the center here Now. By doing that, we can go here with the night and we can, in fact this. Bishop. You can't take the night because our work is across in the Queens. This is a good example. House generally a good idea, a lot of time to put your book not only in the center but aimed across your opponent's king . Of that very careful tactics, Dempsey realized very rapidly, and then all of a sudden it's tricky for the opponent, so you can take it and can't defend it this route, because this pawn is being threatened by the queen, you probably lose it. And he just moved this book over here, not really use ago. So he was a lot of brings with all way over here and defend the bishop. Probably they could do that because it also aims out our upon. But our post offended a couple ways, See? Either way, no matter what he does Now we're gonna get a night back to not only a good outpost. We have four or five even better outpost because this is something 11 we don't know. The night is almost always at its maximum strength on the sixth rank a night on the six ranks of mathematical thinking. The reason is because even reach into the background and reach of the defense doesn't go to either see a or even a they can attack this pawn here on F seven. You can go to F five, except you can see that you're gonna reach a lot of squares a full circle deep in the enemy camp. So getting a night to the sixth ranked maximizes once you get that 7th 8th grade is weaker . Actually, even though you're deep in enemy territory, you can no longer utilize the full range of the knights power. And then when it comes to the rooks, the brooks let the maximum power usually in your opponents seven. It is the root of the seventh rings of beasts. Because it's aimed at all these ponds that may be left in their original position, it's aimed at the front of the king. Often times a lot of our pieces will be on the seventh. Make sure you hold your ropes on the seventh rank. It's often devastating to your opponents. You want to not allow your point to do that. We want to be trying Teoh do that. So I think it's a good place to stop. And it's a good a good general chest. Knowledge to remember. Nights are most powerful. Get a post up sixth ring and roots are most powerful when you get them onto the seventh. 10. Lesson 9 Ne7 Variation: can I want to show you guys? What if Black does not put their night f sticks? So instead of playing, I have six. We have seen in all of the other examples, but say remove the mission back here before 84 and he goes night you seven instead. So we no longer necessarily want Castle right away this days, like or because we're not gonna do the same maneuver where it takes your body with the lookout and run any danger for black at all? We can play the C three move right away. It's very natural that said in the Spanish and almost always gonna play it. Not always, but it just helps us set up our position just as a reminder reason does that because Paris us to play defore and it's very strong. And since we're gonna be rerouting this night by a d two f one G three or even go to F one and then go to e three, also, can you get places with the night? Depending on your point does. We don't need to see three square for the night, usually the C three square and every square after the night along. So this is not always a great boot, but in open Spanish, it sometimes in the Italian and Ponds, Eonni and other Opens like that we play C three in stead. And that way, if now our opponent wants to go ahead and immediately play be five so that we can't take this night and this pawn, we can talk the bishop away down here and set up this position that we want and everything is fine. Now, in a lot of the opening variations that I've shown you guys black has paid, played relatively passively black can be much more aggressive and open up the game in the Spanish. But I'm gonna show you how we want to react to that. I want to do often times and chest. The aggressor will be the one that will lose because they will try a premature attack. And if we're not prepared or from panic and don't make clearheaded calm, defensive moves sometimes with material checkmated within later on. A look at our game realize Oh, I wasn't endangered. All All you need to do is make a couple defensive moves, maybe fenders up a little bit, and then your opponent will usually be overextended. They will move pieces before they were ready to be moved and not prepare their king. Not Catholic King and various other things like that. And then we can just simply counterattack and they will be weaker. So I'm gonna show you a situation where that would happen. So black must be really aggressive here. Black can immediately played C five and strike in the center. A lot of weaker players will go ahead and take that on because they think they will. I don't want this pawning it down further. And if I don't take upon by soup example you you move pawn to D three and then they just had to take it. You have to take back, and then they trade off Queens. Now you trade off Queens. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. If you like playing with Queens in the board, it's fine. But a lot of times you don't want to have a queen who traded up immediately. In this case, it wouldn't affect your casting ability because you could be captured their queen. You're bishop, but usually just for fun to play with the queen because you can attack more easily with Queen once it means drop aboard position will tend to be a lot more slower based and tamer , because the queen is just so powerful. And if you just do so much, usually game just more fun to play with Queen. But if you prefer to play Amore quiet, calm, strategic game and try to get into an end game and win in the end game or something that you may never get the queen's traded off and then try to win the game that way something you but just just know that a lot of players won't want that, and so they will go ahead and they'll choose to take here. But remember, when were the woman that is taking they captured back? And in this case, we're activating their pieces. Black has a very active situation here now, with a 19 the little board, both nights or out. The bishop has this nice diagonal boulder. Bishops have nice day admirals, and actually, our development doesn't look all that great. So this case is just good things know that, you know, don't freak out and do what they want you to dio you don't have to take a simple thing to do. Here is Well, there's two things you can do that are logical. One thing is you just go ahead and play D four on your own and you're gonna have a very, very aggressive game. The first has got a look at the simple queen to E to move. This does something to avoid having to equate trade queens if you do played before later. And it makes it so that you don't activate his pieces by taking. And if he decides to take, you can take either with your bishop or your queen, and you're going to be centralized. Now it may look like, um, Black has this move right here, but we can get out of it, actually can't get out taking this line this week because they can't. So they have. They would have this really good move right here in this case. And we have to move our queen and we would lose our bishop. So in this case, we simply to take back with our bishop. And now we have a nice spin on this night here. It's not can't move or they will lose their rook. Let's say they decide to go ahead and just defend it with their bishop. They wouldn't want to do it here because now the night's still pinned. Because if it moves in the bishop, we on the finish that you do something like this is Ben night. It's offending twice when they confronted with the RUC over and now we can play before we want to. Now he takes and we take We do have an isolated queen upon, but our pieces are gonna be very, very active in this situation and noticed that their king is in the center is gonna take your multiple moves to get castle, whereas we can castle in one even though we're not in any rush because we're not in any danger. Right now. We have a lot of threats. Are development come very naturally. We were fish about to either F four or G five became over night out to sea three. And also we have this threat here playing D five and making this night move Once the night moves, then we can play, uh d six and the probably simultaneously threatening this night and our visual we thought in the roof. So if black wasn't careful here and they decided you know what, this nice defended. I'm just going to try to find out of Bishop and get Castle. He's a little teary about force because he had to move tonight. You know, wherever and then we have this move here and threatening Bolt this rook where we went in exchange. And when you get a rook and you give up a bishop, you are getting the better of the deal. We call winning the exchange, and it's always better to lose. It's almost always better to lose the exchange, lose the whole piece so black and want to move this night somewhere, uh, safe here, actually. Can't go there. Seven. There's the hole. He'd lose the whole entire night. He had to go. In this case, you only have to go back to the original starting position or go here. Probably the best move. We wouldn't want to take it just a double his poems, because we better take this. Brooke, we're doing it with check. Do we get the whole room? That even noticed that? So this is really data. So you have to be a pretty big mistake for Black that I just want to show you what can happen when you have such a active position. And you have so many open dagos, active pieces. So you might look at this and say, Well, this white pawn here is a target, but we call it some isolated queens. Boehner I Q p. But you get a lot for communicates to get a lot of activity. So what Black would want to do here, instead of making this actually was an interview? Blunder 26 is simply move his recall. So he was look over and then it's out of danger. And then if we played D five on this move, you know he can simply it was night somewhere. And now we don't have any, uh, any tactics, and he's out of the woods. So just notice that a couple little tiny differences in jest makes a huge difference in the position. If we would have taken this pawn 25 all of a sudden, we're giving black and an issue by activating his pieces okay, by not doing it and my playing queen 82 you know you can choose to take if he wants to, But now he be activating our pieces. So just remember. So this is why you look a lot of grandmaster games up and the strongest movies to ignore when you're appointed done, Keep focused on your plan. You have a good plan, a long term strategy, and you follow it. Sometimes you have to get the Virginia points making good moves like, Well, you need to make sure prophylactic moves, which will be safe like a defensive move. Uh, you move your king over and get them upon up. Maybe you get a little distracted for me plan. But don't be afraid of every little threat. A lot of times we can players to be worried about your bones threats and make these traits that are beneficial and would be very calm and analyzed before our job and chess is that we're analysts for analyzing position for analyzing what will happen after you moves it. Our point is, this is that and making sure we always come out with a good position. Okay, so stronger move for Black would not be like this. It would be, since he already was playing an aggressive move, but it would be to leave it there and develop his piece of the same for us. So we might want to, in this case, um, as a black fungus bishop. Now, we can play before now. This is a really complicated situation. Whenever you have multiple plan trade possible, you have to calculate deep. But this would be a time in the game that you would want to stop and spend a few minutes, depending on how long your game is. I mean, you're likely intimidate game. You still don't want to stop and think for good a couple of minutes, which would be 20% of your whole time on this move, because depending on what happens next, they couldn't determine the way that the game goes. Whether you win or lose because really complicated. I mean, your opponent continue on before they can take on E four. Well, they did not take their They could leave it taken any other piece they want to you, which will allow you to either take on D five or to take on D five. So there's multiple options and multiple combinations here. Notice, though, that if they ignore this pond before we have told our night and on on on this d five we went upon here. And so they have to worry about that so they may send a Well, I don't want to lose upon. I'm gonna go ahead and take here long as to take back. But we're gonna get a really good position in this case, almost no matter what happens. Is this pawn here on before spent about tonight. Our queen is now across from their king. So would be dangerous for him to move If he takes his pawn, we could take back with the bishop and then being really similar situation till the example we should before or a bishop's aimed over here and our queens in here. So what? I'm showing you guys. The point of this lesson is that black banging playing overly aggressively, but playing defy has consequence. He made thing that I don't want to just be passive and play the solid way against the Spanish. But you have to be careful because we don't play what the position is calling for the natural thing to do. Maybe you're the nap natural. A few different options that you have you can get yourself into trouble. Very, uh, quickly. And so let's say it Once again, Black decides to, um I mean, if you kind of the bishops he's been now we can play key five. It is a nice move because now it is more space in the center. We're closing down these these pieces are bitches. And over here and this pawn is going to be blocking official. We know that suspicious gonna be in Quetta. That's like play G six and so going there. Say we just get a night out and aimed at this Ponant put into, ah, good spot and castles in the castle. Just genetic example. You also actually play G five year in that night. The nature of the board is much different than it waas when they play at night to F six. So if you're a beginner player, you're you're sort of intermediate player. This, remember, is noticed that one tiny difference in the beginning of the game during the opening and change The whole entire nature of the position contains the whole entire game. And so, actually it's usually better play of sick. You play seven input on seventh Ray and some openings in some situations that was called for. We have a specific reason for it to be better. Otherwise, the night on that six break or on the third ranking from the other side of the board is a stronger position because you can reach deeper into the board. And if there's a better set up, so just a man and this lesson with keeping in mind that every single move in the opening counts like a decision to your probability treat you change something, it changes everything else. So you will be very, very efficient, very, very careful and imports. You know, since you're taking this course, you're already are talking about how important the openings are. You know you're opening well. You don't have to spend a lot of time thinking every move, and you can make really good moves, especially inputs. Games 11. Lesson 10 Why Black Plays a6: so this. Listen, I just want to show you guys have one of the reasons behind some of these music theory behind it. And what happens if we Very so, for example, in every single game I've shown you so far after we play vision to be five black plays a six and you might be thinking of everything was examples. Well, what if they don't do that? Black doesn't happen. Played a six and I will show you The reason why I had become the classic client book is their example like that. Something totally normal is dead, and he's used to getting his fish about Teoh c five Replace Vicious five and we just play noble chest. We know the Spanish would want to have our on C three restrict the night and or so we go ahead and continue to do that. And then black plays the night out. We simply defend our honest being attacked by his night this time. Now it black as anything other than defend their pawn on E five or play age six. Forcing me, Teoh. Well, that is the basic announced late I take this night and then I would wait upon, I would take this. Probably have to depend upon it. They kind of forget about that. And they just something like they put its night down to G 4 13 Certainly F two. I get something Castle defendant, and they have to play de six or some other move that defends this point. Andy. Six is going natural thing to do. Vegas aside, Everything's fine. This home depended on the capsule. Now we can take this night when they think back. We well, when upon now the ones that should be defended by this night is making night back and we went a on imports. We also doubled their farms. We want a farm and we have a really good position. Years. I want to show you guys, That's pretty easy for Blackpool with, but that's the reason why it play this. A sticks move right away, and it forces are Richard back and in the end of a plane of the five and putting up here, and that way we can win. This pawn in the Senate's a lot moved to the opening. They seem kind of random or there have been subtle, but they go against you know something happening in the position and multiple moves. Maybe like that and on opening. So it's a good thing to know So Black does not have to play a six, but they don't do it. They need to do something else about on on the five. So, for example, you don't play six. They diminish about here. I mean, even right now we couldn't take the night wanted. Teoh. I think this part of the problem is a little premature Is after playing here black and get clean out and aim it across and take back. There's going back waken defended for a moment. Eventually he's gonna get the pond back, for example, back Castle, And now they can make them the night moving, for example, this point out that's gonna move and the queen and take back so we don't want breeding chest. We want Teoh be patient and wait for the right move. But this is a reason why they play a six. They play a move like bishops fine, which is a normal move. A lot of players they used to getting a bitch about whether the plain white or black to this square aimed at the king and something that they're used to do it. It doesn't work very well in every situation. So some habits you having chest things that you do pretty much every game. That something weighted plate checks and a lot of other layers that they really, really like to feeling head of their visions. They're always been peddling the bishop with their king. That's not the right thing to do. If your opponent is setting up a board in a way that combats, that's not natural. So the more we learn about chest work, general technology, getting more experience to get playing Lawson off the game more adaptable, you will become stronger player. You will become, you understand recently had moved. You understand the nature of the different positions. Then what happens is you learn how to make the right decisions about your moves. A lot of things. A good chess player is good. Attack takes or it's gonna calculating. And that's like most of what there is began. Obviously, if you're already me intermediate player or above, you know that's not true. But to get from, you know, on a low rating, 1502 in L. A rating of 2000. You have a ray deal of chest of Lauren's gonna take you many years to do that. Now you do need to obviously improve you calculating ability so you can see multiple moves ahead and see it very clearly. Also, being able to calculate quickly helps a lot obviously complain. Blood's been eating. You're not playing blitz because you to manage the clock. I need to look at lots of lots of different scenario. A lot of what makes really strong dressed players good is just their knowledge of the openings of the positions and having, like, all the different rules that I've been teaching you in their mind at all times knowing that getting a posted up night on the six write power going and getting a group of the century is our When you're considering making trade your opponent you doing okay, is this big trade ends? But then, in the end of it, I lodge a room on the seventh rate and they're slightly more passenger me. I'm gonna have a big advantage. Probably win that game. That helps direct your decisions, your chef decision making ability, also knowing the value of the fish impair knowing the value of the center of the board, especially if you can get your queen safely into for this is in the center of the poor, knowing the value, having more space for having advanced off center extended, you said. Blend all his knowledge together with having lots and lots of games under your belt. You automatically will become a stronger chess player, and you'll be able to see that move like vision to see five in the Spanish. While it's not a horrible movie, it's a playable move. You just got to be wary of this pawn situation here in the center and, for example, White immediately plays a three, and now our own is appended. Now this parliament think that because I can just remove the defender and take it, it's a very easy thing to overlook. You don't defend this phone right now. It's going to be lost because of the trade, so it's not a super advanced idea or anything. It's a basic thing, but if you always know that about Spanish, then you never make that steak and jump on in getting so you go ahead and continue playing little chests in this case I still like a play C three. So we took that last new toe. Defend this pawn. Excuse me. I just told you guys that you need to defend this part, that they didn't do it. So the national imperious to play, he says. And, you know, don't be worried about the bishop taking the night here. This white vision is strong patients. My fish repair if I take this night and then black double their on its potential weakness. But I've also given flat fish repair and strengthen this wine or so, for example. So you guys about a sudden take this night and they take back here? Well, it seems like a double dip on, and it's kind of ugly. This is not necessarily weakness. I helped them get their fishing activity. They want Teoh thinking this white mission. Today six people will be seven. And so, by moving that part of the way and activated exhibition piece, maybe kind of soul thing that is making a big deal. But I don't have a light sport which before so I can test this bishop very easily on the legs first, only do my nights. So it's not a very smart thing to do. And if you do choose to do that and create this weakness in your bonds position, and you need to be very, very mm aggressive and very, very single minded and trying to exploit it, if you just think OK, well, like I stacked his ponds, elitist ladies go about gaming in local fashion, trying to attack the king or attack center or something that you're wasting moves if you create something that you hope to be a weakness 90 to focus a lot of energy on helping exports wheat peace force the opponent to tie down their pieces to defend it or try to push forward and make a mistake. That's what bombing Fisher was really, really good at. He was sometimes make it fit, as I mentioned earlier, even though it's not something necessarily be strongest move. But it gave him very, very clear goal. I will tapas weakness, and he was amazing and figuring out a way to do that than ever seen before. The principal doing it says chess, once to exploit weakness and your own, it is tied down defending it. Then, if you're successful like creative second witness Usually you will win the game. That's a little military tactic as well is. It's an chest nose. There defender usually defend one point but don't have multiple witnesses to weaknesses. But a little more than usually they will break down and you can with something that Genghis Khan famously would do in his campaign's military campaign. She would attack front, and then you sent an army way around back when they least expected they using the climbing out there. Both assembly, dangerous Forester pass or no expected, become and having a classic misdirection. But you're creating a weakness in your opponent's camp. They're having to focus on one point. You hit them in the other point. So a lot of military sky you applies to chess for for obvious reasons, and so that people that in mind and basically that was really long way of explains you guys why we play a six is black in Spanish 12. Lesson 11 Anticipating Your Opponent's Plan: Yes, we're gonna take a look at a Spanish game where both sides play a bit more conventionally and conservatively and they're just developing their pieces until a little bit later. In the opening, you might see a lot of games like this. So basically, we're look at a game where Black chooses not to play a six, even though we just looked at all the reasons why Black will like to or oftentimes should play a six. Oftentimes they don't. And we need to see what type of a game my occurring just as we saw before with white shooting sometimes to make this pond push from the F two pon black and also play that way is actually an opening which will look out later. Called the Sleeman Dammit Gambit for Black was very, very aggressive Way to play against the Spanish and trying to take the initiative. We're not gonna look at the Sleeman exactly in this thing, this particular video, But we're gonna look at a similar type of play and I want you guys to be prepared for what to do against it. So this case we're going Teoh, have Black simply play a D six and defend this pond and get this bishop out, ready to make his pin on the night. We know that in Spanish we know what we're doing. We're not worried about the pen, but it's still a sort of a motif that black and play and still a natural move. So we go ahead and just defend our pawn as well. So make a service medical move and get our bishop out as well, and they will make that him. And then we will take our night out to break the pin. So the Spanish we aren't worried about his pin for a couple of different reasons. We have multiple ways to break it. Basically, Usually the main way to break up in, as we say is this night right here for the 92 or three black, it might be G seven or whatever, and that way you can move your queen. And if the opponent choose to take the 90 take back with the night and it is a message, your pond chain. Or as usually you don't want this pinto happen because the night can't move. It's evenly between somewhere. But then, if they take the night. The only peace we have to take back with is upon it could mess up our projects. This is the main way to break up in the other way. Oftentimes, in this case, we can't do it because our, uh, pawn chain is blocking our bishop out right now is a lot of hunt. You could just simply bring your bishop back and cover it and then potentially trade the bishops off. But the Spanish we have more than one way so we can put the night here. And then, as we saw before, we also could put the C pawn on C three and then that gives us a place for the queen to go . And it's a natural move. The queen, oftentimes to be on C two because it aims at a little part of the board and it allows your pieces to develops. But moving the queen over here, you are letting your book it out more easily. Getting official get up easily. You letting the roof connect more easily after castle. So a lot of different times Queen is very naturally placed on C two of the Spanish. That is also often the case, depending on what happens socially. Black now decides to kind of move the night out belatedly and chest as a general fund that you normally want to develop Your night before bishops doesn't always mean you should do that game. But in general, getting your nights out in the center is a good idea, just like in general. Not mean you're not really is a good idea. Castling early is a good idea. Maybe Generally follow these rules most of time. You're going to get a pretty good position. Just a good thing to do. And you get better at chess and you take more forces like this one. You will learn when you can't make exceptions at the Lake Astley or develop the Bishop for the Knights, etcetera, etcetera will have when we can break the rules of thumb become a better player. So we're gonna continue with a night maneuver that we already learned getting over 33. Black wants to prepare castling. We were night up. We don't put the bishop or we don't put the question of the bishop yet, but moving upon h three with the night first and get it ready, he thinks, Okay, I maintain his pants. Night is pinned, but it's really not effective at all. Let's say it does go ahead and castle Now we moved upon up. Basically, the black midget has to retreat to a square like e six because, as we learned before, if you decide now to try to back up Teoh H five, he's going to lose upon due to the same maneuver we saw before we could take it. And when he takes back with his night now, his nights defended, We have discovered Attack the queen and our night and go ahead and take this pawn because if they just take back our night that we can take their night with our queen, we're gonna gain upon in that trade. So there's another saying and chest loose pieces drop off. In this case of a night is hanging over here. It's not directly under threat, but it's under the threat of a discovered attack. It's always dangerous to leave any peace unprotected. This is why you watch grandmaster games. You noticed they set of their pieces so efficiently it almost never will leave a piece totally undefended. Everything they do supports everything else they do And so the pieces are ordinated there defended their aimed at some very specific goal as we learned earlier about how Bobby Fischer would find some specific goals and targets of weakest. And he was just focused maniacally on that one weakness, and he would never strayed from that. You wouldn't let himself be distracted by the opponent's moves. Unless, of course, sometimes we have to make a collect movies they already explained. Okay, so now the blackface basically has to move back. And eso that pin was basically useless move. The bishop had to move twice, moved out to make his pin, and then later on it had to move back here, which is an inefficient chest. So if you're gonna make this pin and later on, this have to back is generally not a very good idea. Unless supports, it creates some sort of weakness in in whites move. And, of course, having the upon hearing aid three. It's not a weakness is usually a pretty good place. More often times a very good place to have a bond is now a night of the bishop. Northern night can come down to this G four square and threaten anything. So let's say we go ahead and continue with our normal set up of the Spanish and we put upon Teoh C three and in this case since is no Pan and everything. The main point of this move as before. It's to restrict this night coming down and also to prepare to play D for some point in the Spanish. In most cases, we're gonna lady for some point. We want striking a center and a space for peace is it's just a very thematic move that makes sense. Let's say black, just something that I want to show you guys What we should be thinking of a black moves or night right here. Why would they do that? If we just think Well, there's rearranging their pieces that we don't think too much of it. This is a big mistake. And in chest, we always want to think very, very carefully. OK, why did my opponent do that? What is he hoping to gain if we do something naturally, Never is gonna Castle, We're going Teoh. I wouldn't call a blunder, but it would be a pretty big mistake. Black now can play this pawn move to f five and this is a really good moving all the sudden black has the initiative. Because if you will be learned, if I go ahead and just take that pawn being activating blacks pieces And now black will have very active pieces over here with this open file aimed down towards my king. So to see what would happen if we take here and choose take back with the bishop. I mean, yes, we can just trade off that Bishop would want to. We're helping black coordinate his pieces and we can say, Well, I'm gonna become a camp of the night here and make the move. We can't move the 19 where we can attack that ruk directly without making a bad move. Like, you know, something like G four, which we don't want to dio at any case, seeking this back up. But what he's able to do now, she was queen overheating, create a battery analysts and Black has initiative and we're on the defensive and his pieces are going Teoh, come out quickly. Okay, so that small seeming mistake of letting him play this F five move is leading basically to a change of the whole entire position to black having initiatives. So it's a really big mistake to let this happen. I'm also if we don't take it and we do some other move like let's say we want to move this night of the way hair because you know he's gonna play this next move or let's say we do something. He wants to trade this night off here and sack responses had gained something. But now, um, Black is threatening to play F five. So depending on what we choose to do next to, say, we move on out of the way something like this, he can play down here. And now we are kind of cramped. Are pieces are all cramped up, and blacks pieces have a lot of space to operate. An attack. Our king side, which we wanted to do against them. In a previous lecture, you saw we did this very thing to black and not white is now work round. Black has more space, and it was all because we didn't see this move here, this pond push and we should have seen it because once the night moves out of the way, the only logical reason for the night. To do that in this particular case is because he wants to play pawn to F I. Okay, so that would be something that would be a really big mistake. And we simply would want Teoh avoid it. However, I will say the best thing to Dio once once he does play, this is to strike in the center ourselves and play d for this would be the way to combat it , because now okay, he may push this down, but were threatening to push this up when a piece more threatening to take right here and open things up in the center. And so everything is still balanced. Okay, so let's just look a few sides to push this upon down. We could simply move the night over. You know, if he decides he needs to take this bond, which he is gonna need to do, because otherwise we're going to fork this night and it's Bishop with the next move, he pretty much gonna have to play this and we can take back here. And now we have a very strong center. We're still threatening to play d five and everything is ok, but still black would like to play that move. F five opened the board up. He could now do something like, maybe display this move d five. Jenna gained some space for his pieces. And even though, um, we probably have an advantage in this case by simply playing something like E five, everything is going pretty well. Friess, he he has lodges. Pawn right here. I'll actually take that. We have two pieces on it. So he would want to play this yet. He wants to defend this. You probably need to play something like Bishop here. He needs to defend this pond now, So he put his pond down here against in space. He needs to defend it. And if we decide to trade, you could bring his queen over, and he can continue to defendant. So basically, um, the point is, if he plays this move, we need to play before it's critical. Move for us to play in order to keep the game good for us. Okay, So you got lots of things you can do here. It's a good game, and we're gonna be struggling in the center, but white still gonna have the best of it. So just remember, you gotta play before. In that case, however, we can avoid the whole entire situation because once he plays Knight to D seven here instead of castling, which is see Okay, he's going to play, uh, f five. And so we should simply beat him to it. And we should play d for first. Don't worry about castling Kings on in any danger. In this case, we can delay it a little bit and display before our self. Now, if you plays that we can fork his night in Bishop and when a piece of he no longer has the option to play it immediately, he's going to have to react to what we use were beating him to it by recognising what his plan is. Okay, so in this case, he's more or less either forced to take his pawn or to move one of these pieces out of the way. It is not really a good way to do that. So you pretty much has to take upon, in which case. Now we're building a very strong center and we have more space. And of course, now this move doesn't leave. Work is kind of an awkward move. And, um, you know, we could do lots of different things here. We could ignore it. I just defend this pawn. You take it. So what happens if we should take it? Did we back up our bishop? That is really go back. Now we can pieces out. A man is king. He has to react to us. And we've got a pretty good game here. I would say more space, more active pieces. Let's go back and see. That's the best. The best play. Basically, if we do this, he plays five anyway. Yeah. Weaken, Go here. When a piece. So we can play a five yet? He takes it. We take any place f five like it has showed. We just saw that. We do take that. It actually makes blacks position. Not so bad. So we want to look at some alternatives. Actually, can't do that because we still have this. We still have this fork, so we can't play a five. We basically stopped him from playing that, And we have a really nice situation here also. Just know any time you're night and your bishop are set up to squares apartment like this, you're at risk of being fortify upon, so just something to be aware of. It's a pattern that strong players are always aware of not putting their pieces like this, or if they do have their pieces set up like this. You're very wary of any part of it was a lot of times beginning players and lower level players. They overlook this and then they lose a piece and then lose the game. You should know by now that if you lose a whole entire minor piece against any kind of a good player on begins virtually over, unless they blunder and lose a piece themselves, you're down a whole piece. All your opponent has to do is trade off all the pieces and then win in endgame. So it's It's really too much to be down a whole piece, which is like grandmasters. They dropped a piece for some reason. You know, awesome tactics or blender. They pretty much just resigned. At that point, there's no point in struggling on for hours in a game that has already lost. So just to be sure that the lesson here is that if you're pointing makes a mysterious night like this a lot of times because they want to move the pawn forward. That was behind it. And then we can react accordingly. If we react well, we're going Teoh outmaneuver our opponent, and we're going to get a really good game and legal position. And then secondly, be aware always of where you set up your knights and bishops in terms of spacing to each other so you don't fall victim to this home for. 13. Lesson 12 Finding Strong In Between Moves: so. All right, take a brief look at the Sleeman Gambit, which is a very aggressive opening of Black Shoot the place in time that is named after Grandmaster Niche Lehman. And everyone was still used at the highest levels of play. A lot of gambits aren't used anymore. They're still considered to be unsound because the level of play now about the great grandmasters so high that they understand that theory so deeply. A lot of those really aggressive Gammas, where you give up upon or weak infrastructure in some way. It only worked because the grand masked the other gun measures no place for solve fashion, that they just defend well and they're up upon and they end up winning or grinding out a win in the end game. But every once in a while, someone in a situation a tournament where they need a win, they will play sometimes the Evans gambit Still, which I have, of course, working on that one or this sleeve again. We saw this one upon on the world champion before the current world champion Magnus Carlsen . He uses Schliemann gamut from time to time in big tournaments, and he got the results of it, so we definitely want to know what to do against it. It's very aggressive, and if you're not familiar with it, it can easily take you by surprise. I mean, if you take a course like this one that I don't lose anything much, Lehman Gamut, all of a sudden you're point. It's gone off script and you have no idea what to do. It's not gonna help you very much. So they're Stephen Gamut signified by this move. Once we move, our bitch about to be five black immediately plays F. I looks kind of weird, but if we don't play well and we accept upon, we can easily get into trouble. If we don't know what we're doing, let's say we just go ahead and take the part Now. The reason black does is that it allows them usually to recoup that on. But even if we successfully defend it, we either have the weaken our position or we allow Black to have a very, very rapid development. For example, black now play pawn to D five and notice his bishop is attacking upon you got bolt his poems in the center. We don't have any ponds in the center. And while technically were up upon right now, it's gonna be hard to defend this pawn. They could easily get it back. I mean, we just something like played before, which seems like a reasonable thing to do, because if they take our pawn, we could take back on. This night is pin for now and can't take, Um, it's that's not very good. They can push their pond down again space and they can still threatened. Think upon back. Let's say we blocking our bishop, they take upon back and now blast like a really, really good position here. Everything is flowing nicely for them. We're all cramped and we didn't even gain upon, so that could easily happen if you're not repaired. Another thing that could happen once they play d five. Did you think? OK, well, I'm upon now. And so I want to control this part or actually this case. We can go ahead and take here because this night is pinned. But it's pretty dangerous because we can use something like this if you're queen out and pin the night itself. So now you know things get really messy. They can trade right here, but the night depend. It can't take anything. We can defend it. So if she'll even basically leads Teoh oftentimes very, very chaotic play and immediate threats for both sides. So it's a very chaotic opening. And black might like this because the point of the Spanish usually is going to a strategic battle. That's, Ah, relatively passive sometimes, and white usually will have an edge. So I playing the shell, even black, is going for chaos, and they're willing to give up upon in order to get this chaos and have lots of chances. So we pretty much don't want to take this pawn for White. We're gonna try to keep the board, you know, more solid, keep our defense more solid. But it's hard when Black has two ponds in the center here, and we don't really have a way to combat that. Now let's say we just want to keep our fondly and but then gives you something like maybe play this move where you play G four and now we don't We want a castle on this side, and black can do things like this plate speech for and undermine the pond we don't want to take that. And then they could take back with the RUC or they could take back over here with their bishop. If we do something like this having they making, just take the Flomax, we haven't gained anything. And so it's very messy and it's tough to play. So I recommend, as with most gambits, maybe a few exceptions. I recommend not taking the pawn. Okay, you take the pond, and then black is a lot of compensation, as we say for that phone. That's why they do it. And so we don't want to play into their hands. So a simple thing to do is usually just to play something like the three. Okay, then if they do choose to take the bond, we take back and everything is symmetrical. They haven't gained anything and, White maintains, are slight initiative of being the first person to move someone's black might do something like this, which seems kind of sneaky. They're attacking our bishop and it looks like this pollen is hanging, but you can just take the night and go like this if you want to, or you can move into the bishop back. Another thing, uh, that we can do here takes takes another thing. Excuse me? That black and do here is they can play for it is try to gain space on the King side on. And if they do that, then we're gonna need to gain space in the center. And we will do our regular C three move and look to play. See for. But either way, the Schliemann helps Black to get his pieces out here and play on the king side. So he gets his night out. And since this f, um, file, it's not some it open. But he has a lot of space because of this advanced upon, he gets his pieces out, and he's gonna be attacking our king. So it's a little bit, uh, dangerous. Okay, we might want to do something like this right now. Get our night out and defend its pond so that we can play our regular Defour move at the right time, and you're just gonna have a really interesting battle. It's gonna be a lot less passive than what we saw before at this point to if they want to, they could even play d five. I mean, you're gonna play this Lehman Blacks looking to be very aggressive either way. And so they're going to be playing this F five move. At some point, we have defied move. And the challenge for White here is to not make any mistakes and allow blacks pieces to get too active blacks pieces can easily get very active in this type of opening. But if we defend well and were patient, we don't overreact. Blacks gonna leave himself weakened with all these pawn moves, and he's to leave himself open to a counterattack. So that's kind of the rhythm of the Sleeman is that you know, white, we don't panic. We just played a defense. We develop our pieces as normal. And then once blacks attack kind of evaporates because we haven't made any mistakes. He's gonna be open, and we're going to have a better game, and we'll probably win. The games were looking for a lightning attack, is looking for surprise, and white can easily make a mistake and give black the upper hand and lose very quickly. So this is a really good thing to do. If you're a black playing blitz and you're playing its unsuspecting opponent. For some reason, a lot of Spanish players are not used to this really mean because people don't play that much. And it's considered to be kind of an obscure opening, actually. Right now, this black pawn is hanging. If you if he plays this move because this night is pinned but even still, go ahead, Black. Maybe let us take that. Nor to be aggressive. Takes takes. And he is setting himself up in a very aggressive posture. Castle. One of good things about the Sleeman for Black to is that when castles here his rook is now on this F file aimed down at our king supporting this pond or upon has been traded aiming down directly on our king. And so, in this case of Black has gone ahead and still gambit it off upon a moment ago. Now his pieces are going to be very active here. He's got bishops both with open diagonals. He's got the RUC came down here and he's going for broke. I mean, we're up upon and we could maybe even win another one. Like in this case, it doesn't shoes. Castle takes, takes, takes. Now we're up to ponds but blacks pieces are almost all active. Okay, so this night is out inactive. This bishop can easily be activated. Those ponds being missing are leaving a lot of diagonals and files open for blacks pieces. So this is basically the nature of a gambit. You give up one or two ponds in order for rapid mobilization activity for your pieces and playing aggressively, going for a checkmate or whatever. So that's the style of game you're gonna have with Sleeman. And it's very easy not to be put in a defensive posture. So again, the key idea here is that they play the Schliemann is to decline Teoh, except upon and try to play passively for a few. Black may not choose to play at five immediately. He may simply get his night out, and then we might have a few regular moves. Black might even put his bishop here say something like, See three black castles and he just mobilizing his pieces were still choosing not to take notice. This pond is still hanging here, but if we take it, black will play he five. And now he's got a really nice set up with his nights being out his pawns being in the center, his bishop being active. And this is basically what Black wants to have happen here. So again, we were up upon right now, but it's not good. And so in chess, you know, we want to be cognizant of material always. I mean, I just mentioned to you guys that if you're down a whole piece, the game may as well be lost. Play against a decent player, and if you don a whole pond, the same can also meet you want your palms get into an endgame, you know, could be the end because they get the point across straight up all the pieces get the point across and win the game. But in the early game, in the opening in the middle game, being down upon it, too, isn't that big of a deal that you get a lot of the position? So in this case, this is a good example of how you're getting a lot of this position as black strong center , rapid mobilization of pieces, and we're giving up a lot in order to keep that. So again, we want to refrain from taking it, and it's leave things as they are and try to develop our pieces. Well, for example, maybe instead we take our bishop out and we threatened to make a nice pond Are a nice pin here on the queen, and we just mobilize our pieces and try to play good chess. He decides to go here. In this case, we can't back it up because you get trapped and we would lose our bishop. So make sure, always aware of those kind of things, depending on the pond structure, basically, we'd be forced to take this night. We wouldn't want to treat it, although it couldn't retreat in this case and leave their pawn structure pretty weak. Um, this case would probably want to play for here. We have this nice. This is called in between. Who pushed this pulling forward and threatened? The queen's defended by the night. The queen is gonna move somewhere, and then he's like this. Take his night was defend, respond and then take this point forcibly ship back. And now why? It's got a really good game. Now it's us that has a strong center as opposed to black, and they don't really have much of an attack going, we mess of their pawn structure. We've got a strong center and we have maintained our initiative in the Spanish. So the key here, he lesson here is is nice in between. When you're calculating things, don't assume that when you go here last gonna take this pond, you're gonna take back. They're gonna take you're gonna take you. Always look for in the middle of an exchange, especially if it's an exchange of multiple pieces. Do you have what's called an intermediate move or in between who is one of the most overlooked things chest We start to get used to calculating a series of moves. We get kind of lazy, but you always will be very careful when you're calculating after one. Traders may look at any in between In between don't make any assumptions. So we see that if they take his pawn, if we play E five right now, then we can force that queen back or actually, what we want to dio take this night first. Because at night we had taken first, then we take back. Now we can play this because the night was actually defending that square. Now we can play this we moves. This is the most logical place of the queen of movies and other king. And then we can take back here, forces Bishop back and then do something simple, like overnight out. There were nights on the ultimate places, or problems are strong and blacks gonna be looked to maybe attacker King, or most likely, just attack are center or do something in the centre himself. Give this bishop out and we're playing, you know, we're playing chess, but our position is better Black House of weaknesses that we have a stronger center. Okay. And the reason that happened was because we didn't panic. A black chose to play the Schliemann gambit. We didn't accept the gambit. We play calmly, but thank you. Three black continue to play aggressively and mobilize earpieces quite rapidly. We just played a simple, fundamental chest. I think that, uh, Bobby Fischer would approve about. We've got are pieces out, made some, you know, it's one trade here and then played right moves. We would end up with the religion position and we would probably win this game. Okay, so, um, that's one way to play against Sleeman. I advise my students don't accept the gambit. Play solid chest and you'll end up with a better position and always, always look for good in between moves when. 14. Lesson 13 How to Read the Board: So in this example, we look to see if Black does something else. This is, Ah, standard trick and lower levels of the games number Trick is pretty easy to see, but if Black plays 92 d for it makes it look like he's leaving this pawn behind. And if you take the pond and you lose a piece, I mean, it's not very tricky anymore, but something about it it makes it easy to overlook that this bishop is hanging. And if you choose to do something like move the bishop back then the night can trade off the night and it just kind of trusted throw you off your game and lead you into a line, if not a standard Spanish opening. And so that's looking. To do here is to simply trade, trade the night off and then play G three and then we're gonna do this. Situation is we're going to because it's black On here is blocking the center. There's no real threat to our king if we move the F pawn remaining castle and we're gonna play on the King's that we're gonna play F four. So this is a team I really want you guys to get into your heads and chests. When the center is locked up with ponds, it's safe to move this f upon. And oftentimes it's the natural thing to do to play on that side. McKeen side and attack the opponent's king or king of state. If the center is open and that's no longer a safe thing to do, it can lead to a lot of tactics due to checks on your king. And faith can come quickly, so keep that in mind. Center is closed. We can either just avoid castling sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, or weaken Castle and play this f upon for so say they get their bishop out, defend upon we go ahead and play for the castle as well. We get our night out, look to improve our pieces. Okay, If this pawn move comes and we've moved this pond up then playing their bishop down Teoh G four and 30 or queen could be pretty knowing we gotta move clean over even though we could make that bishop move back afterwards, it made us react that made us put a queen on this square. We may not have wanted to go there on. And also we don't want this night come down on to G four either. So a national move here simply h three little prophylactic defensive move, and it stops any of that bad stuff from happening. And it will see later. It also could support a potential G four, which is very aggressive. Oftentimes we don't most of time. We don't want to move the ponds in front of our king. But at the San Epicenters closed and we have a new, hurtful bunch of our heavy pieces over here in front of our king, we may be able Teoh launched a very effective attack against the opponent. Our opponents King with a pawn storm, even on our king side. In this case, I'm gonna show you what could happen. So they move their bone, form a car, you should go back, and then we move our night over to the side. So we've moved our night over the King side because we're gonna play on this side. This is where space is. There's a ruling chest of the pawn pointing role which which says that whichever direction are pawns appointing in, that's usually the side of the board. You're going to want to play on? Yeah, that's a side of the board. They're going to have the most space, your peaceable flow in this direction. Because behind our ponds, we have more space. So we're gonna start moving our pieces over to the King side in preparation for an attack on our POTUS came. Say black is normal. Move like that. The ruc out, Um, this is another prophylactic moves of that. A lot of really strong chess players do. Does it take? They moved to move their king over. Even though we're not worried about this bishop here at any point. If there's a exchange of this pond for some reason that our king will be in check and also is this prepares us to later on played G four, as I already mentioned that are kings over in the corner. So moving your king to a slightly safer square, Sometimes a good thing to do The strongest move in chess is not always some aggressive moves that always even a move where you're developing a piece. Some of the strongest move is either defensive move or a prophylactic move or a subtle move that helps to prepare for your long term plan. Some of your king over is one of those moves in this case. Now, let's say whites tryingto strike in center. He wants to get some space and make something happen. In this case, we can just push this pawn forward and forces night over, so that wouldn't be a very good move for Black. But it's something that they could do of the hoping that we will trade off that piece and then in this case, we're gonna try to get our queen ready to move over here Now. We can't do it yet because of where this night is. Um, but if we move his pawn to G for it now, the night can put a four on our king and rook and take our wrote that be a blunder when moving our queen over were preparing or defending this square so the night can no longer do that. And we're preparing to play G for and we're gonna have a really, really big on a storm attack on our opponents and would be the queen over here is a move that does multiple things like we have seen we want to do in chess, and this night right here is a really important piece because it's stopping the Black Queen from coming down over to any of these squares as well. So blacks kind of aimless here in the situation. They're not really sure what to do against us. And by playing this style of playing F four with upon, they've basically given us a really big attacking opportunity. It was all because they played a sort of immature week move by playing that night earlier on attacking our bishop. It seems like it gets us out of our Spanish repertoire standard game plan. But as long as we understand chess and we understand the positions, we can adapt and chest we basically we always have a plan. We always know the openings. But then we also have to be flexible and adept in the way that we can effectively be flexible and adapt is to know the fundamental principles and follow those fundamental principles. And there's also a misconception of, um, weaker players. Let's say you're in a tournament and you're playing It's play. That's what Strong has a two or 300 rating point advantage. A lot of times there's a misconception of the way to play against that stronger player is to try to vary and get out of the book moves and do something that will take them out of the preparation. That's actually the opposite is true. You want to be the one staying in The classical book moves the moves that we know to be grand master level moves once you vary from that play. Obviously, that's stronger. Player. Who knows more than you should have an advantage. It should be able to beat you more easily. So whenever you're playing, it's a stronger player. You want to play a more standard basic chest. You don't want to make it, you know, chaotic board and some sort of a strange position or vary from standard moves. That star player will have an easier time beating you in that case. So this is kind of an example in this game where reacted well to our opponent and now we're in the midst of developing a pretty strong attack here. It's kind of hard to see how blacks going to stop us from playing G four, and by the way, if we played before right now, this night is going to be trapped. Can't go back. Teoh F six and can't take his punk has defended and he can't go to G three because it's a pen about clean. So basically, he's gonna have to play a move like this, something like a G six, so that he's got somewhere for his night to go. And all that does is it allows us to play before he can move his night back. And now we're gonna put ourselves in a very threatening posture. We do loss of things We could put our queen care. We can prepare at the right moment to play F five attack. We can even play h four and we're gonna get these ponds rolling. And since we forced our opponent to play G six, our pawn storm is going to reach his king even more rapidly than if his ponds were flush. This is why, and defense. Usually the best idea is a keeper ponds flush and from the King and simply defend them with your pieces. Oftentimes we think it's better to maybe move the pawn forward and stop their funds were coming, but actually, all that does is it opens up the files to the king and the diagnosis King even faster for the attacking sides pieces to reach the king. So this is a very difficult situation all of a sudden for black to defend. And White has lots of different choices in terms of how he is going to attack. You could really take his time here. He can take his time, he can move his rooks over, and he can, uh, move his pieces out of the way. And he doesn't need to rush into going for a lightning attack here. There's not much that black do it. Black decided to do something, move his pawn forward. You know, he thinks he's gonna be stopping things. Um, it's probably not going to work very well. He's just weakening his position. We don't need to take that this case. We we wouldn't want to because he'd be able to take back and make our queen move, and it gives him a little bit of activity. So if he does something like that, we might just want to overnight over. It's defended, um, him doing things like this doesn't help him trading off those bonds and help him because we could not move a rook up and over. And we're just getting evermore threatening with our attacks. So we get more night over and just basically just helps us get another piece into the attack. And he has weakened his king even further. So basically, in this case, Black would kind of be panicking and not knowing what to do. And the move is coming now. The threat from us is Villa play F five. Although he has 123 pieces defending F five we Right now we have three pieces also defending it, and we're gonna be opening up the board in front of the Okay, um, let's see. Something that black men wanted to hear is attack this night and we can't immediately do anything. Let's just look at some different combinations. So we sacrifices night and we play. This takes takes, and now you know something like this could happen, and we would probably get checkmate by moving a rook over and blacks in really big trouble . So there's this. There's a lot of sacrifice possibilities once the king's ponds get into a weaker position. And, of course, if he doesn't take this night he chooses to do something else. Notices. Nice defending this square So black can't move his picture down and threaten the queen. The nice defending it, He just loses upon right in front of King. So I mean, it takes it. He's gonna lose. And if he doesn't take it, he's going Teoh booze as well. Maybe he'll look for some sort of in between move. You can take right here, something like that. But basically, he's he's in trouble. We have a lot of threats. And, um, it all came because he veered from the book line at the beginning. He allowed us to play f four. Okay, so the main thing I want you guys to take away from this lesson is that the centers closed we could play out for and we can attack on the King side. Okay, So, basically, by taking this night and seeing the bongo here and playing, beat three, our plans immediately to at some point, playoff for it, bring all of our peace to the King side. That's what the board is telling us to do. That's a natural thing to do. We don't want to try to attack this pond. He can defend it or he could trade it off. It's helping us by being right there and says he is a little bit advanced. He's in our half the board. It just tells us that we're gonna want to play on the other side of the boards of being able to read the board and chest and follow the signs that is giving us is a very, very big part of being a strong chess player and being able to adapt to what your point is . 15. Lesson 14 When Your Opponent Tries to Surprise You: Sometimes in a blitz game, you will see another aggressive way to play against the Spanish that is considered to be unsound. There's a reason why this is not one of the main book moves, and White has many different ways to play against it for a big advantage. But you want to be prepared for that. So that is it. Opponent plays D five here. Okay, so you have to be careful. In this case, if you do the simple thing, which is to play a d three, then your opponent can take this pond forcing to take back. And then they can trade queens and forced you to take back with your king. And now you can't. Castle Neck is black and advantage. So you don't want to do the passive thing that I advocated during the Schliemann gambit lesson and play D three here because we don't trade off Queens and lose the ability to castle. And, um, if you take this pawn says the nights, uh, pin can't take back and they take this pawn actually don't want do that because you could take the night went upon for the game. The game gets, uh, complicated biggest go here, Bishop. And it just complicated and messy and annoy a lot of trades could happen. And this is not why we play the Spanish, so we don't want to do that either. So the best thing to Dio when they played before is actually in this case is to take upon because if they take upon if we take upon and they really, really aggressively go here, we'll have a better night. We just take their night and they take ours. Well, now we're taking upon check. We're gonna get there, Brooke. And so that's not going to work out well for them. Also, as we threaten this night here, basically, they're gonna have to take back with their queen. They will be bringing their queen out. The best thing for us to do is take the night. He can't take that bishop back with this queen, because then we'll take his pawn with tempo on his queen. So I want to take back the is your and double his paws. In this case, that's a pretty big, clear weakness, having double poems right there with nothing to support them and the ponds or double in the center. But you have some other ponds still making a chain that's different. This is a pretty clear we just something for us to focus on. And so let's say we simply castle here to get our king's safe whenever the queen's out to begin the game. It's a good idea, just a castle and get it safe because I really think we not early. Your point is being very aggressive, but it's going against the principle of chest. It's allowing us to threaten that queen and we have a really good game here. We already have a weakness in our bonus position. If they try to just develop normally we could do something like develop our night with tempo because we're attacking the queen. He's gotta moves queen somewhere and we can simply get peace. In this case, we would be able to take on No, he's defended, um, making with Rickover across from the king and um perhaps black. We'll just developed normally here, but we've got a better position with a clear target and a clear weakness. And Black had to move his queen now multiple times. So we also have a leading development. Actually, black wouldn't be ableto do either one. These last two moves because we have two pieces on this pond he has to defend upon. So we have do something like this. And so now he's having to defend this pond in the middle and he has the weekends here. So it's gonna be pretty easy for us to exploit these two different weaknesses in the game where we talked about the principle of two weaknesses. Right, Here we go here. You can't take it because opponents penned. And now we're threatening to take this pawn and black. This has all kinds of problems because again, we didn't panic when he made the aggressive move here at the very beginning and he played d five. It is easy to make a mistake if you're playing Blitz and you're not familiar with this move . And Teoh do something rash like just defend and then let the queen trade happened Lose the ability to castle or Teoh take the pond. But then once they take this, if they play the four Teoh not realize that after we take the night they take our night are our capture here will be with check is easy to miscalculate here. I think this is all the trade and it gets really complicated. So the thing to do is remember that we do take this pawn, we take it and then he's gonna have to take back with his queen. And then we take this night with the bishop, causing this weakness. That's the right way to play again. If he takes back here with the queen, well, we just get on with tempo. You might try to do something like in or nights. We can just move the queen here. They tried to force or night to move. Well, then now in trade, Queen's with us if he really wants to, and we do lose the ability to Castle. In this case, it's not a big deal because we are up a pawn and we could just get our pieces out, Tucker King away. And even if you know something like this happens, we're up upon, and that's a big advantage on the Queen's are off the board, and we've already traded off a lot of pieces. This should be a winning game for White as they go into the endgame. We just want o basically exploit our one pawn advantage. Coordinate our pieces well and trade them off and get that pawn across. We have a big advantage here, and this is just one example of how to win the game. Basically, Black is giving us lots of different ways. Toe win this game by playing this way, but he's doing it because he wants to be aggressive and surprises. So once again, don't panic. Um, we need Teoh. Calculate carefully, but also, by having taken this lesson and knowing what's do specifically, we're gonna get a good game no matter what. 16. Lesson 15 Spanish Opening Conclusion: So this final lesson we're gonna kind of recap what we've learned in the course how to play the Spanish, and I'm gonna go through once again review of one of the main book lines that you would see if you're playing against a master grandmaster player. A lot of the games you watch online if you go through old tournament games and stuff well, look like this. They're not gonna look like the last few lessons that we've gone through. Those were games showing what to do if your opponent doesn't really know how by the Spanish . And if they vary from the book lines, which obviously will happen when you're playing on the Internet, you blink lives. And how to deal with that virtually guarantee yourself an advantage in the game out of the opening. But just remember the main way of play. The Spanish is that both sides would usually end up playing a long, slow strategic struggle with themes of fighting for the center or y playing on the King side and black playing on the Queen side so they'll play a six, usually black it up. Open Bill night out to F six, Will Castle and leave our pawn hanging on e four because we know what to do. Now they take that they'll go ahead and push our our bishop back with a pond so we can't capture that night on C six and then when they're pawn on E five will back it up. Look at their bishop ready to come out, we'll create a little space for our bishop. The night will often attack our bishop and force it to move back this sort of temple gaining moves so that they can move their pawn on C seven forward. Right, as we learned before they were playing out the game space, we continue to develop also, by moving their bond to see five. They are helping to take control of center by having two ponds on this d four square. Remember, White? One of those procedures things we want to do is eventually play defore. And so black is fighting against that. Like playing See five. So we're having a very sort of equal position in the game of chest. Is both sides know what they're doing? They're both playing good chest here, and what you have basically is a high level struggle on whoever is going to win in the N will be whoever is plays best and probably gets the most out of their middle game. An endgame maybe calculates the best and find some tactics. And basically, you just gonna have a really good game of chess when both players know what they're doing. So we're gonna be making our our night maneuver that we know how to make. And they're gonna be getting ready to pawn storm on the queen side. Um, get a night into our position on G three. They're gonna move there night back and prepare Teoh, support the on push and support the center. Oftentimes, it's a good idea to move our nights out of the way so we can push up on board and then lineup are pieces behind our pods, just like I mentioned before. The way to think about chest is like a war, and your soldiers or foot soldiers or your infantry are the poems. You want them to go in first within the weekend, your opponents, the defenses and then the more powerful pieces the cavalry and the cannons. What have you will so four from behind? Maybe we'll use something like a betting to gain the bishop here on black. Maybe black will ignore that and push there on forward here, trying job for blood. If we take that, it will activate their night. So we're gonna leave that there. If we take this Bishop, we get the official pair. But it wasn't Blacks, Bishop. They're good. Bishop is the white vision because the bishop on the opposite color of most of their ponds , and we're just gonna have a good struggle here. This game is going to be focused a lot on this d four square. We want to push that. They want to defend it, and we're gonna have a classic struggle for the center. Whoever wins that struggle for the center will probably win the game. And that's what a really typical high level, Spanish style game might look like. Obviously, there's so much variation and chess literally have millions and millions, even billions of combinations, even in one opening. So it's really hard to cover entire opening it everything they're going to see. Which is why it's really important for us to understand the themes of the opening, the reasons why we make the moves that we do The reasons why the standard book lines of the classical games follow a certain line. There's reasoning behind all those moves, and there's reasoning behind each position. We need to know what to do in each situation. So I hope that this course helped you guys learn a lot about the Spanish, especially if you never really studied it before and go out there, practice stating your games. And I hope you guys win a lot of those games and have a lot of fun. Thanks a lot for joining my.