Hi and welcome! :)
This is Igor Smirnov.
In this lesson, I'll show you one simple yet, very powerful and simply must-know rule about
middlegame plan.
Also, I'll show you my complete middlegame play system.
And before that, let me just say a few words of why this topic is so important.
Not long ago, I made a survey in my website where I asked YOU and the other students to
share your main questions and main troubles with chess with me.
And do you know what was the MOST COMMON issue that chess players experience?
It's about how to play the middlegame!
In the opening, it is somewhat easier - you can pick the opening that you like, study
an opening book about this opening and just go and play these moves that you learnt.
But once your opening knowledge has finished, you appear in a complexed middlegame situation
with a plenty of possibilities and then, it's really not easy to figure out WHAT TO DO next.
Let's go and check some examples.
Here is a relatively standard middlegame situation.
The opening stage has just finished.
Both sides have developed their pieces and now it's time to start realizing the certain
middlegame plan.
It is White to move and please think about this.
How would you play here as White?
What do you think?
In fact, there are many of the options that White has.
White can move the bishop somewhere to make it more active or the other bishop can go
to g3 or maybe to h4.
The e2-knight maybe transferred to a more active square, maybe to c3 or g3.
The rooks can be placed somewhere on the central files.
To conclude, basically, we can play almost whatever move you wish.
:) And that's exactly where the problem is.
It's not that you don't know what to do.
This is rather that we've been taught SO MANY ideas about chess - that you need to fight
for the centre, or occupy weak squares, or put a rook in an open file and so forth and
so on, that in a practical situation, you have a HARD time choosing exactly what you
need to do.
That kind of reminds me of this analogy - if you come to a door and you want to open it,
you don't have a key, so you ask another person "Do you have a key?" and he answers you "Sure,
I have plenty of them.
:)" And he gives you a bunch of a hundred keys with the words "Try them out, something
should work out!"
Well, in a way, he is helping you but it is not exactly kind of a help you would prefer
to get.
Instead, you need something SIMPLE, something that you can follow, just take and use it.
I'll tell you the solution later but first, let's check what happened in the actual game.
White played Bh4, pinning the knight.
Black played g5 to get rid of the pin.
And then White noticed the new weakness in the Black's position, so he played f4 to take
advantage of that weakness.
Black replied with Qf6.
Now the d4 pawn is hanging, and White needs to do something about that.
He played Bb5 to protect the pawn and at the same time, put pressure on Black's rook.
Black removed it and White kicked away the knight which pressurizes his central pawn,
then retreat back with the bishop.
Black played Ne8.
Okay, let's stop here.
Let me ask YOUR OPINION.
What do you think about these moves of White?
Were they good or bad or just normal/average?
Well, one of the things that I would really like to highlight here is that, for now, this
is a really a middle of the game.
It is 25th move of the game.
Well, White still has his a1-rook there in the corner doing nothing - not taking part
in the action.
And that's a big problem because you are, somewhat like, playing handicap chess - you
are giving away your rook, playing without it.
Now let's come back to the starting position of this example and think what White should
have done there.
Here is the original position of this example.
And by the way, this game is a game between two players of about 2000 in rating.
So, not for nothing, I took the game not between two of the World's top grandmasters but between
two average level players so that you can see what happens in the games of mere mortals,
not Carlsen, Topalov and the other top players.
And you see that, well, White did some moves which was seemingly logical but they were
all in different directions and pursuing different goals.
Like originally, it seemed like White started to create some troubles for Black on the kingside
and then White pushed f4 to pressurize there.
it seems like White wants to open up on the kingside - it does make sense.
However, after that, White, all of a sudden, played a move on the queenside, removing this
bishop from the kingside direction.
Then instead of opening the kingside, he just closed it and as we discussed earlier, on
the top of that, throughout these all moves, throughout the whole game, the White's a1-rook
did not take part into action.
Now we're coming back to the original position once again.
So the main thing you need to learn here is that, at the beginning of the middlegame,
you really need to UNDERSTAND that not all of your pieces are developed.
Usually, you still have that rook on a1 which did not make any moves in this game, and is
totally passive.
Also, you have the rook on f1 which did make a move because it was involved in castling.
Still right now, it's doing nothing.
Therefore, these two pieces, you still need to develop.
Usually, the best squares for them are the central squares: c, d or e lines.
And you just need to move it there, ideally on an open file.
With this knowledge in mind, what should be the White's next two moves in this position?
It should be Rac1 and Rfe1.
By doing so, you will activate all of your pieces and you will make sure that you don't
forget about that in the further complications.
Here is another example, as you can see the pawn structure, the opening is very different.
Still, it is White to move and please think about this and tell me what are the two next
moves White needs to play.
Hopefully, you can notice an analogy with the previous example.
White needs to bring his rooks into play.
Therefore, he needs to play Re1 and Rc1 - very simple, is that right?
Seems to be right.
However, now let's take a look at what happened in the actual game and you will see that it
was something very different.
:) White played Re1, then Ne5, Bb1.
I don't even analyze these moves too much.
I just want that you pay attention to the fact that the White's rook is always standing
on a1, out of game, even though it was so easy for White to develop it.
And you see that so many things happening..the knight is maneuvering, the rook is coming
to the attack and during all of those moves, it's already the 25th move of the game, still
the rook stands in the corner doing NOTHING.
Once again, this example is taken from the game of players about 1900-2000 ratings.
Probably, you never heard about these names so I don't even tell you them.
However, rest assured that it's not only for this level of players.
Whenever a new student comes to me, very often, I see the same pattern in the games of FIDE
Masters and even International Masters (IM) sometimes.
They lose a game and still their rook is on its original place which should never happen
to you.
This time it is Black to play.
As always, please think about the position and tell me what do you think Black should
do.
Of course, you may take into account of things you already learnt from the previous examples.
Now before we move on to the right things, let's check what happened in the actual game.
Black played a6, then after the exchange and c4, he got destroyed within a few moves.
:) So the game didn't last long.
Let's go back and think what Black should have done here.
As always, you need to think how to bring your rooks into play.
Currently, they are inactive.
And you need to activate them somehow.
Usually, in the middlegame, we need to castle.
This time, it's more difficult to do that for Black because the knight is pinned and
the king cannot go away, the knight will be lost.
Anyway, Black still needs to find a way to bring his rooks into play.
And there are a number of possibilities how this may be done.
For example.
Black can play Rd8 to bring this rook into play and also to support the knight.
And after that, Black may either castle kingside or the kingside rook may be activated though
the g-file because after an eventual exchange of pawns, this rook can be activated along
the g-file.
Anyway, the moves that Black really needs to play are the moves Rd8 and probably, Rg8
or maybe castling.
For instance, you can start by Rd8 and on the next move, you can decide what to do next.
For example, you can trade the pawns and put the rook on the g-file to make it active and even start
attacking White's king.
And in this case, Black would have an absolutely normal position with mutual
chances for both sides.
You see, it seems very easy when you know how to play but in the actual game, Black
just got destroyed very quickly and again, this is a player of about 2000 rated, so it's
not a beginner player.
Still, he makes these obvious, hopefully now, obvious-for-you mistake.
Bottom line is you need to put your rooks on the central lines at the beginning of the
middlegame.
You need to make two moves to activate your rooks by placing them on one of the central
lines preferably, on an open file.
And usually, you need to choose from the c, d, and e-files.
This may seem like a simple rule but as we have seen, by a couple of examples, even relatively
strong players violated very often and got crushed.
So you need to make sure that you never fall into this trap yourself.
And also, it gives you a simple hint of what you should be doing at the beginning of the
middlegame so at least two moves, you can make almost unthinkingly just by following
this simple rule.
Okay, I hope you will follow it and win a lot of games.
At the same time, of course, it was only one rule.
And, middlegame is a relatively complex thing, so I cannot explain the whole middlegame strategy
within one short video lesson.
And also I noticed that based on the results of the survey, I noticed that students really
have a lot of questions about how to play there and what to do there and how to evaluate
positions and so forth.
And that's why to address them, I decided to share with you my own SYSTEM OF MIDDLEGAME
play and I call this new course "Winning the Middlegame".
It contains a SINGLE SYSTEM of how you should be playing while in the middlegame, how you
should find the right plan and right moves.
This is the system I use myself and I was also present to need to my students.
Therefore, I'm sure this is something PRACTICAL that you can apply in YOUR games.
And the main thing here is that instead of a bunch of various theoretical knowledge that
you can get from different tutorials, I wanted to share with you a SINGLE SYSTEM that you
can just take and use.
I hope you will like it and I'm pretty sure it will help you win much more games.
This is a paid product and of course, it depends on you, on whether you need this or not.
Some players don't have any goals in chess and they don't care if they win or lose.
Sure, that sort of players, of course, you don't need to pay money for this course.
At the same time, if you like to study chess to improve and to win more games, then I would
definitely recommend that you study this course "Winning the Middlegame" and relatively convenient
you will like it and I'm absolutely sure it will give you a lot of new victories and a
lot of progress.
As always, I provide a money-back guarantee for this course.
And therefore, you can try it out and just decide if this is something suitable for your
needs.
You can find a link here in the video and you can check all the descriptions of the
course there.
Thanks for your attention, I'll talk to you in the following videos! :)