we all know that chess is a pretty complicated game in particular there are so many words to
describe so many elements of it so in this video i wanted to give you 30 of those words in an easy
digestible format with examples i've also included a link in the description for after you watch this
video it's a massive glossary over on wikipedia of so many other chess terms as well but before we
start i just want to apologize to you all there's actually 31 terms so you've been click baited but
i think you're going to enjoy the content we're going to kick things off in the opening the
opening is the earliest stage of the game and generally features a few things like putting
pawns into the center developing your pieces all fully and then getting your king castled
but the second term that we're going to learn in the opening is theory theory is predetermined best
moves either played by grand masters or computers an example of this is e4 c6 the car con defense
d4 d5 92 de 94 bishop f5 knight g3 bishop g6 h4 h6 knight of 397 h57 and so on the more you memorize
the better of an advantage that you have so the third term then of the opening is novelty novelty
is the first move out of an opening potentially that's never been played before novelties can
be good or bad depending on the position that we have here if for example uh white lost the
queen on the next move that might be a novelty but that's not a good novelty the grandmasters prepare
better novelties bring them to the table and use them to their advantage and the fourth
and final term for the opening is gambits if we start over at the beginning e4 e5 gambits
are openings where you sacrifice material early like this one which is known as the danish gambit
to get a lead in development faster development active open lines for your pieces and potentially
devastating effect that you can win very quickly with for our fifth term we're going to go
directly to the final stage of the game known as the end game end games are when pieces have
been cleared off the board there can be something like this which is known as a theoretical end game
king and queen vs king that you need to know how to win or potentially in another situation draw
the game but end games can also look like this and basically the thing about endgames is i would say
to gauge what an endgame is more than half of the pieces have been traded i'm talking queens rooks
if we look at this position both sides have traded a queen a bishop a knight and another
binder piece right so it's less than half of the pieces are remaining this is also considered maybe
an end game our next term for end games and our final term for endgames that i want you to know
is fortress a fortress is a kind of end game where potentially one side is trying to beat the other
and does have a material advantage but can't because the other side has an impenetrable
fortress this is a very common term used at top level when a player is trying to break through
and another player just has the right defensive schematic to completely repel the enemy forces
for this next part we're going to be talking about the middle game now there are a lot of terms
covered in the middle game the middle game is the bridge between the opening and the end game middle
games are split into more tactical positions and more strategic ones we're first going to focus on
the ones that are a little bit more tactical so our next term is peace activity activity
is how many squares you control on your opponent's side of the board and your future prospects of
your pieces just very quickly we can compare this bishop with this bishop this bishop has direct
vision to the other side of the board whereas this bishop is very restricted that is kind of in
a nutshell what activity is now for the next two terms i'm actually going to stay right here this
next term is advantage advantage in chess is who has a better position and who has future prospects
in that position it can be determined with four criteria number one is material number two is
king safety peace activity and who has more space if you look at this position white is winning on
a few of those fronts therefore white has the better position and i did just say a term space
space is going to be our next term in this video space is literally the amount of squares that you
control or can capture on on your opponent's side of the board if we look at this position
it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 and the rooks 14 15 16. black can only go 1 2 3 four five six
so here white has a pretty sizable space advantage for this next example i'm covering the subject of
attack an attack in chess is when you coordinate your pawns or your pieces to either go forward and
attack the king or attack the side of a board in this particular position black is launching an
attack on the king so if black is able to break through on the side of the board black will have
a direct line of assault and potentially deliver checkmate but white is also doing the other thing
the same thing on the other side of the board because both of their kings are on separate sides
this leads me to my next term which is the pawn storm pawn storms are very easy ways to send a
wave of pawns at your opponent's side and try to crack things open for your pieces to infiltrate
however not all pawn storms are the same here's an example from the king's indian defense where
black is launching a pawn storm at the king and white launches a pawn storm to infiltrate on this
side of the board and ultimately mow down this way white is going for a more long-term pawn storm and
black is just going straight for the throat this also leads to the next term which is counter play
counter play in chess is when you don't just sit back and get overwhelmed by your opponent
you actually directly fight back counter play can exist on the same side where you meet your
opponent head on or in this position we would consider this queen side counter play the next
thing that we're looking at is something called a sacrifice a sacrifice in chess is when you give
away material that is worth slightly more than what you're getting back but ideally you open up
your opponent's position and oftentimes that can lead to a checkmate if you look at the position
on the board white can play the move bishop takes h6 now normally a bishop is not worth two pawns
but in this case you've opened up all of the lines and you're going to deliver a checkmate very soon
when you blunder your queen for a bishop that's not a sacrifice you can tell yourself that but a
sacrifice has a an elegant feel and a purpose to it and usually it's deliberate one of the
most famous sacrifices in chess is known as the greek gift sacrifice and it's when you give away
your bishop on the h7 square the king takes and then you play the move knight to g5 check what
that does is it opens up the line for your queen and then when the king goes back your queen and
knight infiltrate and deliver mate definitely look that up greek gift sacrifice while we're
in this position i also want to tell you about the word threat a threat in chess can honestly happen
on move one it's basically any moment where you are making a move and well i'm sorry to use the
word in the definition but you are threatening or trying to take something either materialistic or
go to an empty square to infiltrate this is not a threat because even though the knight can see the
pawns it's not actually threatening to take them because you would just get a knight technically
you could then say that it's a sacrifice but in this case you get nothing for it so it's just
a bad move to introduce another term to you from the last position we're gonna talk about
weakness a weakness in chess is either a piece that is unguarded or in this case squares near
your opponent that you control better than they do that h7 square is a weakness in fact it was
a weakness all the way back here because only the king was covering it so that's how i want you to
think about the word weakness it can either be a piece like for example if we move this knight to
that square that knight could potentially be weak but a weakness can also be a set of empty squares
or even an entire side of the board this next term relatively simple but you should know it
battery and it's not the thing that you put into an electronic device a battery in chess is when
you team up two pieces on the same diagonal or on the same straightaway so the three pieces that can
work together in a battery or i apologize the two pieces queen and bishop rook and rook queen and
rook a rook and a bishop cannot work in a battery together because they don't look the same way but
a queen and a bishop can look down this way and that's what a battery is while we stay on the
subject of attacking chests the next one is known as a rook lift a rook lift is when you bring the
rook to help with the attack you might know notice in this position we can get a battery with the
queen and the bishop but a rook lift here would go like this up and over and rook lifts are very
useful actually if you've been watching podcamps recently you know that ludwig had a rook lift in
his game that he could have used to his advantage to beat moist critical but rook lifts are really
kind of important details when you're trying to deliver attacks and bring more help this next
term tactics is going to be included in the video tactics are forcing sequences of moves oftentimes
used in puzzles that you can practice that you can then incorporate in your games examples are forks
skewers discovered attacks and so on i haven't included every single one in this video but
tactics big picture are how most chess games are decided you should absolutely know the different
types of tactics you should know the tactical patterns and you should practice them on your
own wherever you'd like for our next two terms i'm going to look at a blizz game that i played
yesterday on stream against the grandmaster the first of which is called tempo tempo in
chess is when you make improving moves that also win time against your opponent so generally they
need to be creating threats so in this position i played the move rook to g8 because i developed my
rook with tempo and my opponent had to respond to my thread by moving generally in this case
you would say black got the better of this kind of exchange because i activated my rook and my
opponent just had to respond to me and move out of the way but i'm actually going to stay right
here for this next term which is dynamic dynamic is a really abstract term for chess but generally
what it means is a position that's wacky looks wacky looks really non-traditional there's all
sorts of different piece interactions going on and there's multiple ways for both sides to play that
the computer can't even fully evaluate correctly it just means that it's position very tactical
full of life and probably both players have to be very accurate or they could lose very quickly
for the next part of the video we are switching to something known as positional or strategic play
which generally is a little bit more long-term and features a bit more abstract of a concept
especially for beginners and intermediate players so having said that our next term is going to be
closed position the way i want you to think about closed and open positions which we will get to
in a second it's generally determined by the pawns the pawns are like defense of a position
and in this case both players have eight of them that means that the pawns are generally locked the
pawn breaks in the position become very crucial where you can offer a trait to open things up and
maneuvering your pieces is going to be the most important part of this game but having said that
open positions well you guessed it look at this half of the pawns have been traded there's a
lot more open lines and you've got to be really vigilant especially with the bishops the queens
and the rooks the long range pieces see down the board a lot better so be careful or you might
blunder something this next one is a bit more advanced of a term but i'm still going to use it
it's called a blockade a blockade in chess is very often when you plop a piece down or a pawn
to completely shut down the movement of enemy pawns generally blockades are only describing
when you've blockaded sets of pawns and this is a very useful maneuver or a situation i should say
because once you move away after you've stockpiled the pressure you can win those pawns and actually
this is straight from a game i played not even yesterday i played this earlier today and i
ended up super blockading both of the pawns and then winning one ultimately winning the other so
that's why blockades are super useful even though they're pretty advanced in chance we can say that
a position is complex but actually there's a different way to use the word complex and you
pronounce it differently as well a complex is when you've set up your position in such a way that you
control a certain set of squares you'll notice that since i have six pawns on light squares
i have what's called a light squared complex and i'm counteracting the light squared bishop that my
opponent has you can think of complexes in this way if you trade your light squared bishop but
you still have a dark squared bishop replace your light squared bishop with light squared
pawns but in general if you have both bishops you probably want a fair balance between the pawns
another positional term is outpost an outpost is a square usually in your opponent's side of
the board that you control and they really can't control especially with pawns because a pawn would
kick out your piece but since you have such a firm grasp on this even if the opponent were to trade
you can take and replace and your knight can never be kicked out the only thing that can kick it out
is a rook or a queen and as long as you protect it your knight will exert pressure on this territory
and oftentimes you'll be able to take something and by the way this is also a blockade and then
you'll try to win the d6 pawn this next term is super super important so pay attention hopefully
you've been paying attention but now really really pay attention this is called initiative
initiative is a set of attacking moves where you create threats once twice three four five times
but in doing so you don't overextend you don't do anything insane you just improve your position
we're actually going to take a look at a game that gary kasparov one of the greatest players of all
time if not the greatest player of all time played in this position gary played the move knight to f5
if pawn takes you take this gary's also threatening knight to e7 black responded
with rookie 8 gary mobilized the knight to d6 attacking the rook when the rook came up gary
played rook f4 threatening to transfer the rook over here but also threatening to move e4 which
attacks the bishop now the bishop has to go when this came up here this file opened up or this rank
i should say opened up now white plays bishop h4 attacking the rook the rook has to move in rook c3
and gary uses the knight the pawn the rook the bishop and the other rook and ultimately the
queen as well to triple stack on this side and he went on to win a very nice game this this
example is the greatest example that i can give you of what an initiative is in your own games
you can look for two or three move initiatives in this case we see as part of well fittingly
making like a seven move initiative and getting a dominant overwhelming advantage for this next
example we go back a little bit more generally to what a trade or an exchange is in chess a
trade is generally something of fair value so you would say that here you are trading a bishop
for a knight but it's much harder to evaluate what kind of a trade is a good trade versus a bad trade
that is why you use some of the other terms if you've traded your light squad bishop for example
you now create a light squared pawn complex right so trades in chess or exchanges in chess generally
work like that you can make pawn trades queen trades or a rook and a pawn for a bishop and a
knight that is a fair trade that is six six right in terms of material account but not
all trades as you improve at the game you'll realize not all trades are the same always
there's a winner and a loser and sometimes you get something good and sometimes you get something bad
out of it i will in the future make a full video on how to evaluate whether a trade is good or not
but at the time of recording this in february of 2021 that's not out yet this next term is
called compensation you will oftentimes hear title players especially during commentaries
say things like that compensation is when one side is down material that could be a pawn that could
be two or in this case actually going back to an earlier example it's a night i am currently down
a knight i have one extra pawn i have five my opponent has four but my compensation here for
the knight is the fact that my opponent is very passive both of their rooks are out of the game
my bishop is preventing the king from castling in either direction so i'm counterbalancing the fact
or i'm compensating for the fact that i'm down material with intense activity and creation of
threats having said that compensation doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to win or
anything it just means that you're down but you are offsetting that with activity or an
opportunity to win despite that disadvantage and our last term of the video is something known as
pawn structure pawn structure in chess is the way your pawns are arranged there are many many terms
summarizing this and many opening pawn structures that ultimately can appear on the board in fact i
have a video on the subject where i could only fit in a few but i am going to try to give you a few
examples of pawn structure and help you understand what the heck pawn structure even means so here we
go this is an example of pawn structure this is something known as the isolated pawn it can arise
from certain positions and certain openings an isolated pawn should try to be blockaded by the
opponent but the benefit for the person that has it is the fact that there's more open lines around
it so you can set up around it and generally use it as a shield to generate attacks the
person who's playing against the isolated pawn in this case the person with the black pieces
wants to trade more pieces that way you mitigate and kind of cut out any attacks that are possible
and in all end games that pawn's just gonna be a target and the more pieces that are traded
the weaker it's gonna be here's an example from a different opening where one of the players has
doubled pawns that's another term now you could also triple them that's yet another term now the
way you learn about pawn structure is you can watch videos and generally you need to use the
pawn structures that arise from your own openings in a way that helps you formulate better plans in
the middle game maybe formulate attacks maybe go for more positional play but i figured i would end
this video with pawn structure because a lot of us could benefit from this term wow so that was
a lot of information and that doesn't even cover a ton of other words that i thought about including
in this video if you enjoy this kind of content which doesn't really feature like a game or
something like that and is much more general let me know in the comments below some other ideas
and i will guarantee you that i'll put something out there for you and if you're new to the channel
welcome i've got tons of other playlists on openings middle games and a lot of the
things that were actually covered in this video alright my friends i'll see you in the next one