welcome to the world of chess my name is levi rosman i'm an international master from new york
city hence the name gotham and in this video i want to give you all the tools you'll need
to learn chess and navigate it as a beginner i'm covering five major concepts that i've picked out
they're right here we'll talk about the board and the setup and obviously all of the pieces
how they move and how many points they're worth then we'll talk about their interactions that
means what pieces have what vision attacking capturing creating threats and defending them
that will flow into number three which is checks and checkmate that's talking specifically about
the king because checkmate is the goal of the game in the fourth category i will show you some basic
opening ideas how to start a game with white and with black certain traps to avoid falling into
the middle game will be tactics and strategy the two major branches and talk a little bit
about end games as well what are the most important end games for beginners to know
and last but not least we'll just talk a little bit about a study plan all right
sounds good let's go first things first a chessboard is an 8x8 square which has files
which are the a file the b file the c file and so on and ranks the first rank the second rank etc
boards with coordinates as you see here have a1 b1 and so on white starts on one and two and if
you don't have those coordinates the bottom right hand corner should be a light square
okay each side has eight pawns they go on the second and seventh rank respectively
then the back rank of pieces you can put the rooks or the castle-like structures in the corners
followed by the knights or the horses however you want to call them the bishops go next the ones
with the pointed hats and in the middle you've got the royalty the king and the queen the easiest way
to remember how to put the king in the queen is that the white queen likes to uh have a white
dress with white shoes she likes to stand on the same color square the black queen likes a black
dress with black shoes so the black queen will stand under the dark square and the light screen
a light queen white queen will stand on a light square the kings will obviously stand adjacent now
kings you can also remember are on the e file and the queens are on the d file that's one more way
to remember it now this is a lot of pieces so what i'm gonna do when i'm teaching you about
peace movements is i'm gonna cut back a lot now hopefully all of the games that you play
look like this well you will be playing with the white pieces hopefully in this position you're up
35 points of material let's start with the pawns pawns are worth one point they only move forward
they do not move backwards on their first move pawns can go up two in one go like this however
after that they can only move forward one square if a pawn makes it all the way to the end
of the board you can promote it to a queen a rook a bishop or a knight even if you already
have the two you know the two knights for example that you start with you can have a third one
one thing about pawns the way they capture is not forward it's diagonally one square so for example
in this position the white pawn would oh sorry wrong arrow the white pawn would capture the
black pawn like this that would be the capture of a pawn okay um now there's one other bonus rule
of pawns that i'll include here just for the sake of including it it will confuse you and you might
be tempted to leave this video but that rule is called on passant there is this special rule i did
not invent it so please don't hate me which looks something like a software glitch and it goes like
this if an enemy pawn moves two squares okay two squares and stands side by side with your pawn
you can take that pawn via something called on poissant in passing only on this move if you
wait one turn you can't do it and it looks like this you say levy i'm only like five minutes into
this video you're already confusing me i don't feel safe i listen it's just my rule it's just
my job to report the rules okay that's the only special rule about pawns okay all good terrific
now let's move to knights and bishops together because those are called the minor pieces and
they're worth three points okay bishops are very simple they can go forward and backward
diagonally on their own color so a light squared bishop that's how it moves
a dark square bishop in this case would go all the way down here if it could but it can go to
any of these squares you can go one square three squares whatever nice knights are the most unique
they move in little l's so that would mean up two over one okay or up one over two so what does that
look like well that looks like this one two turn or one two turn or one two turn or one two turn
knights can also go backwards and the cool thing about knights is they can jump over other pieces
so this knight doesn't have to ask permission it can just directly move to this square
with no issues now of course you can't take your own pieces so don't try to do that but it could go
two and one now obviously knights are a little bit slower right it would take a very different amount
of time for these two pieces to get to the other side of the board uh they're each worth three
rooks and queens are actually quite simple no more fancy l's rooks go up down left right and they're
worth five points in any direction that they want so like this like this like this sorry not in any
direction that they want i should say however much distance that they want to cover queens
are like a rook and a bishop combined queens are worth nine points and they can go all the way here
here here here here all the way this way and this way whatever one of those squares that that queen
chooses to go to it can go to it is super powered you want to keep the queen it's your most powerful
attacking piece but it shouldn't do damage early you will be fighting against the fully loaded
position last but not least we have the kings kings are like queens except they're kind of
not at all uh they can go in any direction that they want but only one square so queen can go as
much as it wants a king can only move one one more bonus rule for you which is castling okay i said
i might confuse you a little bit uh castling is a is a move in chess is when you move two
pieces at the same time it's your king and your rook okay and what that looks like is let's say
in this kind of a position so it's white's move the king will go two and the rook will hop right
over next to the king you can obviously only do that when the king and rook can see each other
and one more thing about that you can only play the move castles as long as you haven't moved
the king or the rook that you're trying to use for castling you'll learn later in the opening section
why castling is important it's an important move because it gets the king out of the middle hiding
it in a little vacation home on the side for now don't be confused if you're confused it's okay
all things will be explained later let's talk a little bit about how the pieces
interact on the chessboard the way i want you to think about this okay is vision of a piece
what does that mean well let's start with the queen this queen sees all the way down here but
it's all empty squares the board is split into emptiness empty squares and physical pieces
a piece that is there that is that we can see it okay so first things first the queen sees the pawn
who else is the pawn for black not for white but for black you look around the rook sees the pawn
so taking this pawn would be a terrible move because the rook would respond with a capture
that's a capture of a pawn that's what that's called taking upon capturing a pawn the rook
would take back we lose nine points in that trade that's how i want you to think about it we get one
one for nine is not a good trade what else can we see our bishop can see this night who else
this bishop sees this knight the bishops don't see each other because the knight is in the way
so if white in this position play the move bishop takes knight and bishop takes bishop
that's a fair trade that's three for three that's not a bad deal
okay that's how i want you to think about it when you're first starting out three for three that's
fine that's more than okay now what does this bishop see bonus question uh-oh uh oh losing five
would not be good unless we got more than that in return or close like four four points now our rook
here defends that that's what that's called that's called defense same way that rook is
protecting that pawn or defending that pawn we're defending but that's not a fair trade
so in this position let's move this rook here for example on this square look who we see oh
and the queen cannot come down and take us that's a very important thing
because the rook is protecting the rook right now here how about this what if
let's say black plays a move queen f6 the queen sees the knight is it attacking the knight
no it's not because we're protecting it that would not be a good decision for black to take and one
more thing let's say in this position black plays this move can we capture that bishop that bishop
is trying to win our queen and many beginners go oh god oh oh god oh my queen's in danger
but hold on a second can't we just take is that protected by anything no that's how i want you
to start thinking about the game as you play it is anything protecting that am i attacking it
the point value system okay because this queen is not attacking this pawn because it's protected but
if no one was protecting that pawn then it would be hopefully that kind of begins to cultivate the
thought process of how pieces interact in a chess game one thing hidden in all this is the fact that
white can play a move queen c4 and that hits the king that's called a check this next part will
cover just checks and checkmate so we'll move ahead to this position here it's white to move
white has a million ways to attack this king a check is an attack on the king
it threatens to capture the king and chess there is no capturing of the king the king has to escape
danger so for example let's say the white queen goes here check well the king would slide out of
danger otherwise we would take the king and so on but what if we put the queen here that's a check
the king anywhere it moves remains in check which means that we have put the enemy king in a check
that is unavoidable nothing that black can do that is check mate and we would win
the game checkmate happens at the beginning of the game sometimes sometimes all the way
at the end okay sometimes in the middle but checkmate will ultimately decide the game
one little more i've got to include a little bonus here this position is a little bit different let's
say it's black's move here black's move not white's move it's white's move we give a check
but if it's black's move can black move legally no because black cannot put the king in danger that's
not allowed you can't give up your your king but is black in check is the queen threatening the
king right now to take it no because the queen doesn't actually see the king it just doesn't
there the queen does not see the king this is called stalemate stalemate is when one side has
no legal moves but is not in check the king is not in danger that is a draw not a win for one side
but a draw a tie you say levy that's stupid what if i'm up 37 000 points of material i accidentally
stalemate tough luck it's a draw we're working on it it's december 1st 2 2020. if the rules
change in the future i'll make an update video but as far as it goes this is still it
i'm very sorry now as i said checkmate can happen at the beginning of the game
right so the fastest checkmate known to well chess is called the two move checkmate
and essentially it's it's it's this i mean i'm just going to show it to you so you know it
but on the second move black can play queen here if white starts out with
pawn to f3 and pawn to g4 and now you're in check and check is unavoidable you don't always
have to move your king when you are in check okay you can also block the check if it's possible
you can also capture whatever is attacking your king but in this particular case you can't
now i promised you that we would look at openings and we're going to do that now how do you start
the game of chess here you are you're sitting there you studied this video all right levy
let's do something let's go in the beginning of the game you want to take control of the center
of the board this area for advanced beginners maybe a little rectangle
best way to do that is to put pawns in the center so that might mean something like e4
or d4 both are okay all right now just for instructive purposes i'm going to do nothing
with black i'm going to move the knight back and forth to give us the most perfect setup possible
if you can put a second pawn in the center you should do that without it getting captured if
you can do it make sure you can do it okay i'm gonna continue to do these things over here
next come the knights again to the center of the board better because from there they control more
squares knights on the side they don't really do that okay no i'm still doing my thing over
here two nights that's usually the best way to go if you can the bishops will go next
all right and one thing that you have to remember bishop can go to c4 or to d3 or even to e2
as long as you're getting out the bishop you want to give everybody a turn in the opening before you
start repeating moves you don't want to move the same piece four or five times that's not how chess
works you don't need to reinvent the wheel at the beginning of a chess game because we already
kind of know how to do that i'm these are the secrets so again black is just doing goofy stuff
and i'll show you obviously a legitimate game after this now i'll put the second bishop just
don't want the bishop to feel left out remember that castling rule
get the king out of the center of the board two squares with the king
and the rook will jump right over and be adjacent okay i want you to remember to do this if you try
to do it at home on a computer you can just kind of drag this over here and it will happen
or on a tablet or a mobile phone but uh over the board you have to know how to do this then
you can bring the queen up and connect the rooks that's kind of called the golden moves of chess
now here's the problem uh if you have a strong opponent and they just do the same thing which is
probably what will happen you can't quite just go put two pawns in the center because they will take
oops and it's not a good idea to bring your queen out very early because the queen can be attacked
right black just has way too much going on both sides have too many pieces to bring in your most
powerful piece your most powerful piece will get taken everything in the position is protected very
well so if they play e5 you can delay this move for now you don't have to always go two squares
you can still get the night out attacking this pawn let's say they go knight c6 this is very
classical they defend now bishop to c4 or the second night the second night bishop
to c4 would be another way castling night out on out and so on the difficult thing about openings
is that when you're first learning you're very tentative you're thinking about your own moves
all right i got to get all these pieces to their right squares i better not lose any of the pieces
and also beginners do all sorts of wild stuff in the opening they don't always follow the rules
you know uh i will teach you the four move checkmate momentarily but beginners do crazy
things in the opening so if your opponent is out here doing things like bringing the queen out
you're like wait can't i just take that yes of course you can a free queen is very good
even if it's not free queen is good take a queen if you can in the beginning of the game
be vigilant you're already in battle it's not just about positioning in the beginning of the game
your pieces are coming out and they're fighting for squares as much as they are also targeting the
opponent's pieces so as soon as move one already be vigilant what can you capture what's a fair
trade what's a free piece what's hanging material and so on there's certain openings that you can
look up the biggest difference between openings in chess are openings that are called theoretical
and openings that are called setups setup openings for example like the london system with the white
pieces you play d4 i don't know why this is here you play d4 and then you play the bishop out and
you kind of play the same way every time d4 and bishop f4 the london system is something that you
can do the same every game basically every game unless black like does something totally crazy
uh and loses a bunch of pieces early on with with the king's pawn you can't really because
when you play the king's pawn here there is a lot of different ways that black can play i
mean i know it doesn't seem like it if you're just starting out but black can play the french defense
black can play king spawn black and played the sicilian defense shout out to beth harmon
kara khan defense so you have to know what to do a little bit about everyone and you add your
knowledge incrementally but one thing i'll flip this to black is uh this the early queen attacks
and in particular something called the scholars mate if you're not careful with the black pieces
you will immediately misunderstand what this move is all about white wants to play bishop c4
and checkmate you that would look something like this the ship c4 queen h5 why does this work
this is the only square near the king which is only protected by the king yes only protected
by the king which means if white is able to land the queen on f7 or f2 if you're playing with black
and the queen is protected by the bishop it's mate you lose four moves done game is over so
how do you avoid this happening every beginner has fallen for this at some point something on f7 okay
how do you avoid this happening well let's say you play you know play e4 e5 and they play queen
h5 first things first this is not an attack here it is an attack on this pawn though so don't go
g6 because they will take they will take and that will be a double attack of your king and your rook
very common trap what i recommend if you play pawn e5 is to always develop your queen's knight next
whatever white plays unless of course white offers you a pawn capture in the center of the board
that's why you put the pawn there is to capture so bring out the queen's knight that defends the pawn
and if they go to mate you make sure they can't take this defend it with the queen for example
with the queen for example now you can block because your knight protects your central pawn
okay there's a lot of ways to not fall into this so fast uh at the same time if they you
know bring out their bishop on the second move uh then you can also play knight f6
now the queen cannot go here because your knight covers that little tricks to avoid
losing very quickly otherwise the standard game of chess might look something like this
this is what a lot of beginner games look like and this will flow into something called the
middle game which is the ocean in which chess players try to swim but it's not so simple to do
the middle game is split into two things strategic play
and tactical play beginners games are decided 95 of the time with tactics i will give you a
very simple example of what a tactic is a tactic is a forcing move or sequence of them
that guarantees gain of material so look at the position that you have in front of you
how do we get this knight with the king that would be a three-step process one two three
that's a bit more strategic in nature in positions with many more pieces on the board strategic plans
take two or three moves often times it means re-rounding a piece to the other side of
the board to make it more active gaining very good control of a square tactics are immediate
they are the most forcing moves in the game they make they make your opponent react so for example
here there's something called a double attack or a fork the queen can go here attacking the
king and the knight that will guarantee that you win the night guaranteed because the king
has to move and then we would take the knight there's one other way to do this
and that would be here because that's all the same that's how powerful the queen is
another kind of pin sorry another kind of tactic i should say is a pin and a pin means a diagonal
or a vertical or horizontal attack on a piece that can't move it just can't move this knight cannot
move because we would win the king and we cannot capture a king look it literally won't let me move
this is a pin on the knight to the king this can also happen in reverse there is some debate as
the skewer x-ray pin but the concept is all the same and by the way if it was black's move in this
position black can fork or double attack the queen and the king themselves tactics are so important
you should do as many of them as possible there are workbooks my favorite one is 1001 chess
exercises for beginners they did not sponsor this video i just recommended that book
that book goes chapter by chapter every single kind of tactic deflection pin you know discovered
attack there's a lot of different tactics a lot of different ways to solve these tactics
um that's what you should do chess is so much about pattern recognition and puzzle solving
because you don't need to reinvent the wheel when you play the game of chess uh for end games you
know i i as we move to end games end games are uh a series of positions toward the end obviously of
chess games which you should know how to win so for example king and one pawn versus king endgames
that's something that without any knowledge you would not be able to figure out yourself that's
something that you can pick up and learn there's a book a hundred end games you must know for example
it's a great book um but more importantly for beginners is how to checkmate for example with
a queen and a king versus king like that is something you should be able to do like that
or a ladder checkmate a ladder checkmate is even easier so when you have a queen and another queen
or a queen and a rook for example or two rooks and that's useful for positions like this like
let's say you get a position like this in a game with queen and pawn you go wait remember that rule
i can go make a second queen it's much easier to win with two queens versus a king and a latter
checkmate uh would uh would look for example like like this let's say uh we promote a second queen
just you know you do a drill on ladder checkmate it's when you use both of your pieces
to cut the enemy king laterally and walk it to the other side of the board so for example
that might look something like this queen b5 cuts the king laterally
and now your your queens alternate which row they're going to control
or rank right there you go that's something that you just pick up as a beginner you go practice
some ladder checkmates you go practice how to checkmate with king and queen
i will give you kind of the the two minute rundown i don't know if it will be useful for you
on please disappear thank you the easiest way to checkmate with just the queen
is to put the queen in what's called knight opposition what does that mean that means
if this piece was a knight it would be attacking the king now you copy everything black does
if black moves one square to the left you move one square to the left if black moves one square
diagonally backwards you go the same way and you get this king to one of the final rows
if the king gets locked on one of those final rows you make sure the king cannot
escape so like i said one square this way one square this way this way this way
this way this way oh the king's on the back row now it's time to bring our king
so for example here here here here here here the king will prevent the enemy king from escaping
the king cannot put itself in danger obviously with our king there because we would capture it
so for example now we deliver either this checkmate or the checkmate i like to call
in your face this is a check and the king is protecting the queen otherwise if our king
was back here the king can just take the king can capture things for free of course
but in this case the king would be defending the queen so that's the use of end games as a beginner
you learn how to checkmate for example with just a queen you learn how to checkmate with just
the rook there's all sorts of resources on the internet for things like that but the point of
this video is to point you in the right direction you need to learn basic checkmates and ultimately
just how to win a position where you have like a huge lead okay hugely in in material
trade the pieces down get it to an end game get a ladder checkmate checkmate somebody with a queen
i told you that at the end of all this i would recommend what i think uh is the best and kind of
most reliable study plan i get asked this question all the time especially now with so many more
chess fans around the world because of the queen's gambit it was december 1st like i said 2020 so
whenever you're watching in the future if you've made it this far in the video you want to know
how do you get better at chess there's a ton of books there's a ton of resources a few days after
recording this i will have a beginner's course it will be linked in the comments um you want
to learn a few openings with white and with black you want to be confident in how you start the game
personally i don't recommend playing computers or bots i recommend going to play people
online or how you know over the board i recommend longer games 10 minute games 15 minute games
i recommend playing just a few games a day and then analyzing and when you analyze with a
computer it won't always be so easy to understand and frankly there's no clear advice i can give on
how to understand certain engine recommendations the because it doesn't speak to you frankly
when you look at a game with an engine you need to look for your one move mistakes
you need to like oh i blundered that piece that's what i did i just literally left the piece hanging
okay how did my opening go did i fall for a trap try not to fall for the same mistake two times
have your end games down and start slowly adding a little bit of information to your
end games learn how to checkmate with a rook okay learn a king and pawn end game for example
keep adding information there and for the puzzle solving quality over quantity do 10 puzzles in
one day spend as much time on them as you need get them all correct when you solve puzzles
you should look to solve them with the process of checks captures attacks
those are the most forcing moves in chess moves that they have to respond to
i have videos on puzzle solving so if you ever want to watch videos on puzzle solving and how to
improve at that that there's content out out there for you as well but that's how you get better so
you want to do 10 puzzles get 10 correct don't do 30 puzzles and only get 10 correct go for 100 that
way you understand the pattern kind of immerse yourself in it and that's how you would improve
many people who start the game as adults gain hundreds of rating points on chess.com or wherever
they play just playing like that i don't really have much else to add i think i've given you just
about enough we're 30 minutes into this video this is already a lot of information to intake
if any of you have questions start conversations in the comments i'm sure people would be more than
happy to jump in and answer about books training regimens and so on and so forth
that's basically it welcome once again to chess and if there's any other content that
you'd like to see on my channel besides the playlist that i have on these subjects
let me know like i said in the comments below enjoy welcome to the 64 squares