if you've ever watched any of my videos then you've probably heard me use the term
danger levels and if you've never watched any of my videos then welcome to my channel so nice to
meet you in this video i'm gonna take you through what danger levels are show you seven examples
some with white some with black and then at the end i will show you how to not apply the concept
of danger levels and things to be careful about basically danger levels are when you are put in
danger and you can ignore the threat by creating one equal or exceeding in value to your opponent
let's go in this position we have the white pieces we're losing by a little bit and our opponent now
plays the move knight to a5 attacking our rook under normal circumstances here you look around
for moves with the rook maybe this to attack the knight can't go here you get out of the way but
what is worth more than a rook a queen or a king is there any way for us to attack this king on e8
it doesn't mean you have to play it but you have to see it and the answer is yes we can go check
and actually in this position if we give a check we also attack the knight and we win the night
it's a double attack on the king in the night it doesn't really matter what black does here
we will take the knight and now we've won a piece for free the whole point of this video is going
to be drawing your mind and attention to these small details and positions it'll change how you
perceive tactics and puzzles and just kind of general flow of the game now we go to this one
and again for all of these if you want to pause you're more than welcome to try to solve them on
your own but i'm going to help you in visualizing each and every one these are all from examples
actually of real games so this was a game and here black played the move knight to b3 attacking the
rook on a1 now you cannot take this knight because it is protected by the queen you would have to
move the rook over or do something like this so here if you use again the concept of danger
levels if you want to try to solve it once again go ahead and pause this is a danger level but
that's just i mean they just take it and you haven't really solved anything
you can also play the move bishop to e4 which does attack the queen but then they just stick
with the knight and again you haven't solved anything because if you take back there is this
so you start looking around you start going i don't think i have anything here i just got to
move my rook but you do you can attack this queen with a very non-standard move to move rook to e5
and this is pretty crazy because now if they take you would get a queen they would take back like
this for example and now i mean your bishop is under attack and so is this knight but if you just
move the bishop out of the way which is exactly what happened in the game now the knight is
trapped and so a move later white won the knight now white has queen and knight for two rooks
which is an advantage we go a couple of moves back if rookie five hadn't happened the game would have
just proceeded as is and the queen can't really move and stay guarding the knight you notice if
the queen moves then like this and you've just won a knight for free so that is kind of the
super like this is like a a much more advanced example because rookie five is such a strange
move but again it's to mold your thought process of how to understand these positions uh and find
these these ideas and evaluate if they're good or not so for this next one and this was uh kind of
like a mix between a puzzle and an analysis from a real game decision is completely equal and black
plays the move rook to c3 the point is that the queen is under attack the bishop is protected uh
protecting the rook so of course naturally you move the queen away but you have to move it so
that at least you stay defending the bishop but the thing that's worth more than a queen is a king
or equivalent would be a queen and you have to visualize whether or not this move is good it
opens up the queen seeing the queen if the queen takes the bishop the queen will take the rook
we've won material if the king takes we take the queen and we now break in win and that's it and
bishop takes f7 in this position is the best move you don't move the queen even though it's under
attack uh you give the the opponent the check and that's it you are winning i mean it's again it's
going to be a lot of these you know repetitions so this is uh this is taken from a game here white is
up a pawn black plays the move bishop h5 pinning the rook to the queen looks very bad for white
i mean looks like white really messed this up and uh it's really bad i mean this is actually
a little bit of a trickier one so here we can use danger levels two ways you look around you go well
what's worth more than uh than a rook oh i know a king boom i'm done no because what happens if this
you haven't dealt with this at all you say levy queen e4 i'm mating
yeah not really because the bishop actually protects this diagonal and then black is
completely fine black is just one you're rook and there's nothing so it's not so it's not so simple
it's not just oh you you do it and it's good it has to have an actual reason behind why it's good
well what's worth more than a rook not just the king also a queen and this is good because this is
uh winning the queen if the bishop takes the rook and we take the queen they cannot take our queen
they are in check oops they are in check so they have to address that and then we would take and
now we are winning so again bishop h5 you go oh my god i'm so stupid all right i'll give a check
no no no no evaluate look around there's other options the queen is also worth more than a rook
so that is why in this case danger levels works uh in our favor and now we will look at a few from
the black perspective uh this is a straight from a chess.com puzzle in this position white plays
bishop takes g7 trapping our rook looks pretty bad you look around you go look at this i can play
knight takes f2 oh my goodness what's worth more than a rook i can give a check oh i'm so smart
check i can also go here oh look at that i'm forking them well this one's actually kind of
challenging because the way you should think about it is you should look at the moves that
you can threaten your opponent and they have the minimum number of responses what does that mean
if you go bishop b4 check the opponent can block block block block block and move the king up
one square right but if you play bishop takes f2 check the opponent cannot take cannot go here the
opponent has one move and it's this and it makes calculating this before you play it a lot easier
because they can only do one thing it makes it a lot easier sometimes the opponent can do seven
different things and now we have mate it's just made it's check only move and queen e3 is made
if you play bishop you know knight takes f2 you're threatening the queen and the rook but you are not
threatening the peace worth even more than those two and that is the concept of danger
levels and now we are adding layers to this we're making it a bit more complicated you
have options in this position you can attack the most valuable piece and cut down the options or
you can attack the queen in the rook but the king is the one that you should start with
there might be another position where bishop takes f2 is not the right move like for example
had we gone here the opponent would have blocked we might not have anything right so there you go
uh for this next one uh this is actually this was funny this was from uh from a sub battle
uh white is completely winning here you know the rook can see the rook but here white plays
a great move white plays the move c5 fantastic move it's basically almost mate king cannot take
king cannot go here king cannot come back it's check black has to play knight takes c5 and
well this is sometimes what happens at the lower end of the rating ladder you know white should
obviously just take this back you know but white during the game it was a blitz game just thought
oh the king just takes and then i'm going to lose my rook like you know not realizing that
here it's white's move and white takes the rook and white is just winning right so in the game
white was like oh wait a second i'm gonna take the piece worth more first even though the knight
is it's worth less but it comes with checks so the rook is not going anywhere
white decided to take the rook first thinking okay well this is going to happen and then
i'll take the knight and i'm good but in this position black used the concept of danger levels
black used this one moment the knight is hanging and so is the rook who's worth
more than everybody the king check sneaking the knight out of danger attacking the king
forcing it to move now picking this up and black is just up two pawns and black went on to win this
game just a move order mistake there by white and black uses the concept of danger levels making the
knight escape from danger and now the king takes the rook uh and that's and that's that this next
one is insanely complicated so i saved the best for last if you've made it this far it's like
it's not it's not a not a super long video uh but you know this one will kind of explain more about
uh danger levels so here's one for you right it's an opening looks pretty balanced uh and here just
a normal move like rook to e1 or queen up a square bringing the rooks to the middle files is good
but white begins fighting white plays the move knight b to d4 now black doesn't have to take
black could just castle here and be completely fine and happy but black in the game does take
and you'll notice that this move opens up the bishops now the bishops see each other and white
immediately did something about that with the check if white just took back with the knight the
knight would have been protecting the bishop and this would have been okay but now bishop takes d7
and if you take with the queen right the knight is still hanging so this still has two attackers
maybe we have some sort of big trade but there is another way to take this not with the king
it's not that fancy it's with the knight you take with knight and now this bishop sees this bishop
if white just takes back this knight we take the bishop this is protected
and we are up a piece i mean we're just straight up up a piece we have an extra bishop
or an extra night right we'll be up at night we've won this trade so this move makes everything a
lot more complicated now white cannot take back the knight because the bishop sees the bishop so
that's easy right we just take the bishop no problem you take back i take okay fair trade
danger levels is where now this comes into play we do not have to take the bishop back
because the knight can take the knight it is a check it is more on the hierarchy than the queen
the white has to do something about it and now we will take this back and white ended
up losing um a bishop in this position this was not from a real game um although it was uh
rather i should say it was from a real game but it was a puzzle so so sometimes puzzles are based on
positions that happen in real games and i believe this puzzle was like 1800 it was a game between
two 1800s and uh black did not find knight takes d7 black did not find this idea because i didn't
see it i mean sometimes that happens in in blitz games but this is kind of a much deeper example of
this and now uh hopefully you've made it this far we're going to look at a few kind of ways to avoid
playing the concept of danger levels uh one thing i want to just point out just like i put like a
totally random position like this danger levels don't always have to win you material they can
be used to just improve the positioning of your pieces i'll give you an example in a just a very
simple way the bishop is under attack but here we can play knight to the middle attacking the queen
and when the queen retreats then we you know guard our bishop and we've just basically used one move
to improve the position of our knight right in every example i showed you we're winning something
a rook a knight a queen a checkmate but you can also use danger levels to just slightly improve
your position you don't need to use danger levels to always win you just have to be on the lookout
again that's the point of this video to get you thinking the right way and now i will warn you
of the things that might happen of danger levels there there's basically two ways you have to avoid
playing this concept number one is just a very very simple example it can you know happen in an
opening like oh sorry like this so here here's like the most basic of examples white creates
a threat on the night right black says i watched the gotham chess youtube video i can give a check
i'm so smart my knight doesn't have to move i can give a check you need to be careful when
you leave something under attack because if you go attack me with something else that something
else can also be put under danger now you have the original problem and the new problem and you can't
deal with both you're going to lose something so this sometimes happens you just play a move you
just ignore the threat you go play a move and now you're you're in trouble all the same and
you you haven't really improved your position at all right so that is something to keep in mind
especially if like a pawn is attacking you pawns are the the hardest i mean you can't do anything
when a pawn attacks you you oftentimes have to move out of danger because they're worth so little
um and for the last one i actually wanted to go back several examples ago to this position
and change a very small thing okay a very small thing the positioning of the king here
why because if bishop h5 now and bishop to e6 this still works because bishop takes f3 is a check
and we cannot take the queen but if we take this back this is still maintained as a pin
but there are going to be instances where this doesn't always work this is only working because
it's a pin on the king but for example what if in the original position i changed the positioning of
the king but i also changed the positioning of black's king okay and now it's white's move or
for example if we want to go back to the all the way to the original version where it's black's
move now bishop h5 is working because bishop e6 bishop f3 is a check so we cannot take the queen
right and now the queen moves so here the concept of danger levels
was very temporary it wasn't actually forcing that we win any material it was a very temporary move
a little trick black saw through it and we didn't win anything right so those are the kind of two
uh exceptions to the rule when it comes to danger levels be careful attacking two different things
you might have to deal with two different problems uh and something like this where it's like it
looks like you're creating a threat of a danger level but you're not because their move comes with
a more forcing nature right it attacks the thing that's worth the most in general though as i said
uh the point of all these exercises is to get you thinking the right way about this concept now
hopefully this clarifies if you ever hear me say danger levels in any of my videos when i'm doing
rating climbs or or sub games or something along those lines thank you once again for watching
relatively brief video but one that i hope is informative as always give the video a thumbs up
leave a comment i love to go through the comments and uh read your you know banter with me and also
banter with each other and if i haven't covered a topic in my videos yet that you want covered
uh please do leave it in the comments and if you see a comment that you agree with on one
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much love take care thanks so much for watching and i will see you in the next video