hi everybody and welcome to another chest tips video where if you give me 10 minutes of your
time I will teach you or help you strengthen his chest concept and today we're gonna talk about
spotting weaknesses now a weakness and chest the way I like to describe it is either a physical
piece that's standing or an empty set of squares that are either not guarded at all or guarded by
just something like a king or a queen if you take a look at this position in front of you
white obviously has a pretty big advantage already double pawn but the Kings are castled on the same
side you start looking around the board you can actually pause the video and think where are the
weaknesses in this position and what should white play so in this game I pad against the subscriber
I actually played the move h6 in this position now the idea of this is that essentially if my
opponent takes this pawn they are weakening the dark squares near the King and given that I'm
the only person with the dark squared Bishop I will have some attacking possibilities first
of all I'll just very easily be able to go and get that pawn and my queen will have access to
the position at the same time if my opponent ignores my pawn and goes here again the dark
squares become significantly weaker and I have an opportunity to create a checkmating attack
now moves like h6 happen often when the King is the only piece defending pawns that are standing
around it sometimes if there's a knight or a bishop covering this sort of thing is not so easy
now you'll notice this kind of a pawn structure sometimes there's the dark squared bishop there
from like a Kings Indian or a different type of opening and you can trade that dark squared
bishop and you will have an advantage so that's kind of a weakness of an empty set of squares or
if your opponent takes that's not quite an empty set of squares considering there's a physical pawn
there but you will use this kind of weakness to attack the King okay so in the next example
we're going to take a look at the game that I had I was playing with the black pieces here
this was many many years ago and my opponent in this position had a very nice advantage from the
opening and began an attack on the dark squares how do you notice that the dark squares are weak
well if a person has a bunch of pawns on the light squares like this likely the opposite color square
will be weakened you know if this pawns even here that already is a little bit of a balance but if
there's a bunch of pawns on the same color square then the corresponding square set of squares I
should say will be a little bit weaker and so in this position to secure a really big grasp on e5
and potentially get a knight there to do a lot of damage Queen g3 was played now that move attacks
the knight in the corner if Knight d7 Knight f3 and that's exactly what my opponent is planning
to do so I tried to fight back here with the move Knight h5 but my opponent found a very
nice tactical continuation it's also important to note that when you have such a dominance over
like a set of squares like for example the dark squares which will lead to the king that will
ultimately result in you being too able to attack actual pawns or potentially change your game plan
entirely and attack the other you know color of square so if you're attacking on the dark squares
it's gonna be too hard to control and the light squared weakness is gonna pop out so 95 check
takes and now my opponent takes this because it was attacking his knight the dark square
control is still very significant he trades and again the King is wide open now the King can be
considered a weakness but it's you know the king is only considered weak if there is a direct way
to attack it right now it's not so obvious how you're gonna attack this King but you notice
it's stuck on the F file so if the King is stuck on the F file how are we gonna get to the King
correct you are going to play the move f3 and you have to open up this position and attack with your
rook or potentially short castles now that's a pawn play idea but we'll have a video on pomp lay
in and of itself but in the game you'll notice that I try to Castle by hand but notice what I
said about so many pawns on the same color square six LightSquared pawns it means that the dark
squares are really weak so what does my opponent do here well first he kind of baits my queen to
an awkward square and then he tries to open the position but right here he plays a very important
move my last defender of the dark squares is the dark squared Bishop and so he offers a trade and
using this dominance on the dark squares he will then bring in his queen and put pressure on all
of my other weaknesses so when you have such a dominance and the King is such a weakness you
need to try to find ways to trade off the pieces that cover those squares and then open up the
lines and get to the King I ended up losing this game in very very convincing fashion I would say
so just wanted to show a game where I was kind of on the the receiving end of a beatdown in the next
game I actually had the black pieces and this is another game against a subscriber it's just out
of the opening but here my opponent played to move a four and so a four tries to stop me from playing
the move b5 that's the direct idea of this move a four what does a four weaken and for the next
few examples we're not gonna be talking about a weak King but we will be talking about weak
squares and how they can damage something in the middle game so the move a4 weakens this square
now if I just go there and start attacking stuff he has a tactic because my King is still stuck in
the center of the board so that would not work so what I did in the game is that I castled and then
I set up this move so my opponent led would be one and I played rook c8 I could have just played
Queen before but I played rook c8 and on the next move I played Queen before so my queen stands on
that Square it's not it's a very firm grasp it would be much better for him if his pawn was
here and there is pressure on all three of these pawns I then use the C file to stack my pieces and
then right here another instructive moment my opponent played b3 that move puts three pawns
on light squares so they're all defending each other however when that pawn push happened he's
significantly weakened then I don't see three so black to move and pause the video here you
can try to find a tactic as a result of that move the knight has a lot less cushion and the Queen is
pressuring that rook is pressuring I mean takes d4 now Knight takes d4 is also possible and the idea
is basically this if this trade happens at the end of it that last pawn move weakened this and we get
in and we're doing damage the other examples we were taking advantage of weeked pieces or squares
and trying to get to a king in this example we are doing something more along the lines of a middle
game okay we are just trying to get to what well I should say we're not trying to get to the king
we're just trying to pick up a little bit of material in the next game I also had the black
pieces and I was playing against a very strong Grandmaster Lazaro bruising and I just played the
move g5 and then for the next seven or eight moves he made me look like an absolute amateur so first
things first this is a more advanced version of creating a weakness but he fights against
these pawns and makes me make my F pawn weak so watch what he plays f4 say I don't understand how
this is such a problem well I took he captures this way and now I have a bit of a difficult
situation because if I take like this he plays he takes with a knight and my point is isolated in a
weak and he's controlling the light squares in the territory so instead of doing that what I played
was efore so what is the weakness in this position the weakness is this pawn you say okay how is he
ever gonna attack that well first things first he chips away at d3 with d3 at my e4 pawn but
using pont like gets that defense out of the way i tried to reinforce and create some tactics on this
diagonal so he plays bishop here it's my rook and you might say well how does that make any sense
why would he make your rook come this way because that move allowed him to defend his queen with his
rook and then he takes another very natural move pawn takes e4 right because otherwise my pawn is
just collapsing he trades the Queens and offers me a trade of rooks and he's doing this because I'm
not very developed on this side of the board so I declined the trade now if you've been focusing in
this video you can very easily figure out where are the weaknesses where are the weaknesses in
the black position they are not really empty squares you could say that this is a weakness
it's kind of a weakness where are the physical weaknesses in this position for the black side
that's and that's now watch how simply he destroys me using the concept of positional weaknesses very
simple move Bishop h3 how am I going to defend against Knight to d4 well if I play Knight to c6
this weakness he Hobson and there's just simply no way for me to defend it and when he takes on
c7 I'm just going to lose let's not forget rookie 7 there is this so by playing Bishop h3 he puts
me in an extremely uncomfortable position so I played c6 to prevent Knight d5 but then he just
played Knight d4 I tried to get in the way of this Bishop and when he makes this trade he gives me
a new weakness which is very effortless play here from from bruise own he just trades the bishop for
the knight and in doing so dislodge as a defender and that's it there's just no way for me to guard
this pawn effortless play and he wins the pawn and then he went on to win a completely easy
game you can see this game I played it in 2016 millionaire opened here and on the easter east
coast of the United States it was not a very good game it was my worst game of the tournament and he
made me look like a fool and he did it with very simple play fixed my pawn and then chipped away
at my pawn structure and left me with a very tart you know a very easy target on f5 now let's say
you've gotten this far in the video and whether it's attacking the king or just attacking a
structure we're gonna use this as a test position take a look at this position it's a queenless
middle game with one set of minor pieces traded Bishop for night I had this position against a
good friend of mine and subscriber Kings Indian 2,200 blacks a move how would you take advantage
of the weaknesses in White's position and really where are the weaknesses how do you see through
all these pieces and and find them and find the weaknesses in the position the weaknesses are
going to be right here those two central pawns now I'll tell you what I played I took and a
regardless of how my opponent was going to capture I opened up this file and my next move was going
to be long castles with some pressure he went like this I traded and I figured that he wouldn't
take with the rook not that there's anything wrong with it but if I just Castle it's very awkward to
defend this pawn he actually doesn't really have a convenient way to do it because if he brings out
his king I'm pretty sure this rook is gonna get trapped just can't go back anymore so he took with
the pawn and obviously I long castled and here he attacked my bishop so you look around the position
and you go what's weak well I only see one thing that's weak and it's this so I attacked it
he defended I mean he can go rookie - he can go rook f1 in the game he chose 94 but this move
created a new weakness the e5 pawn and I played Bishop d4 and actually it's it's sort of rare
you have a central fork like this but black is simply winning upon here and after winning this
pawn everything else in the position collapsed that move pawn push weakens the bishop and so
if he had played something like h3 this is a weakness I told you at the very beginning right
very beginning just because something is only guarded by the king doesn't mean it's guarded
it can very well be a weakness and Bishop a6 here picks up this material because if rook e3 there's
more tactics so the bishops are just super super vicious in this position now I actually didn't
play the the right approach actually in this position there's a really really cool idea to
destroy my opponent on the dark squares he does not have a dark squared Bishop so check out this
I can make this trade and then in this position to attack the central pawns I have a very cool move
c5 so basically if he takes this I take this and I win the night because of the pin right
if he like pushes or something well then this this is just a free pun okay and if he takes
this way again the central pawns are falling so something like ninety five and there's a threat
of this and there's a threat of this and black is simply winning upon so Bishop takes f3 and
c5 is a way you combine the most advanced kind of weaknesses in chess which are like not even
empty square or physical weaknesses but color scheme weaknesses like you remove the knight
with Bishop takes f3 which is a very strange move because it opens up the rook but these
dark squared pawns in the center don't have a way of being well protected well that was
a lot of examples let me know your thoughts on weaknesses maybe what what you might think your
biggest weaknesses when it comes to chess in the comments below and I'll see you in the next video