this is going to be a video about chess openings and how you should approach them it does not
matter what your level is you will absolutely learn something from this video if you're
beginner intermediate or advanced i've split it into three parts in the first part we'll talk
about different openings like theoretical and setup based ones and what things like theory and
novelty mean in the second part we are going to talk about databases how do you use an openings
database how do you break down the branches how do you prepare for opponents and so on
and in the third part we're gonna look at how to analyze your own games you can feel
free to jump around i've put timestamps on the video player let's go okay what is the opening
in the opening stage of the game we obviously develop our pieces and we give the uni the the
game its unique flair it means that sometimes we already on the first move decide are we playing
the king's pawn or the queen's pawn theory in openings is a position that's already been
explored by grandmasters by computers it's in a database somewhere it is recorded a novelty
then is the first move out of theory novelties can be good and bad if you hang a queen it's bad
make a new move new idea could be good and then people start to kind of flock in that direction
the opening for many beginners let's say after e4 and then black you know plays e5
it's it's it's a time to just develop your pieces safely and make sure that everybody's getting a
turn and that's good that is a very good way to start learning chess to keep your pieces
safe follow the rules but then you need to start realizing that chess is a competitive game i mean
for some it's war you know um and you you're already making decisions immediately move by
move of what your opponent is doing so for example against e5 we can play very traditional knight f3
knight c6 both targeting this pawn and then play four knights right and then develop our
bishop because this is what the golden rules of chess say two knights two bishops fight for the
center but you can also play something like f4 which is called the king's gambit and a gambit
in chess is when you sacrifice a pawn or two in the beginning and you get all your pieces out
faster and you get better control of the center because that's where the game flows through
this weakens the king but now black has doubled pawns and you're gonna get two pawns in the center
and a gambit there's many types of gambits can throw your opponent off because they're
not very popular right you also can play one of my favorites the vienna which is non-traditional
this is not something that people learn and then there's like things like cheesing you know like
going for the scholars mate the wayward queen attack and these are things that you have to know
what to do against the difference in openings between theory and setup is that in a theory
based opening when you play e4 you cannot play the same way against everything that black does
what does that mean so if black plays a sicilian defense for example you can't really play the same
way as you would against the the kara khan like the kara khan defense right so you've gotta know
different things against different things that's the best way to put it but a setup based opening
is like for example the london where after d4 it really doesn't matter what black plays as long as
they don't target this pawn with like you know a wing attack they play d5 you'll play bishop to f4
they play knight f6 you'll play e3 and you'll go for a setup that pretty much always resembles this
i'll say this a little pyramid structure the two knights like this the bishop and this bishop
black has a lot of different things that they can do and you'll kind of always go for this
and it's good because it's easy to learn as a beginner you don't really need to think about
what black is doing but then you're not really always putting pressure on black right if that
makes sense like what i always tell london players is that if they're gonna play d4
they gotta they gotta look what is black doing knight f6 bishop f4 they go for g6 now the g6
lines here are called king's indian positions when the bishop goes to g7 and d6 and castles
right that's called the king's indian there are ways for london players to mix it up to
not go the same way and maybe put their knight out here remember last time they put the knight on d2
and then i'm going to put my queen there and castle the other way which is non-standard but
you're observing what your opponent is doing on a move by move basis and then you are adapting to it
kind of the advanced beginners and intermediate players need to start understanding that they
can't just pre-move the opening it's it's also about what the opponent is doing they need weapons
they need a way to challenge each thing that their opponent plays okay and you could study openings
in videos books courses i have many openings courses and i get this question all the time
how do i study like what do i do how do i look at databases how do i know what's the best thing
well i mean hopefully that was a pretty good introduction because uh we are about to jump in
to uh to database study okay i've pulled up the chess.com database now i personally
at the master level have always used the program called chess base right
chess base is very expensive uh it's the most extensive program uh that uh that exists uh for
for like master level players and it's not very pretty it looks like this this is chess base
um it's got all these things down here and i will show you how to read them in a second
um now if you want to use chess.com and obviously leaches has their own database and they oftentimes
compile what's known as master games and even like amateur games games that are 1600 1800 2000 rating
of course it's better to learn from masters right so when we look at the database we see the first
move second move so let's play e4 and then we see sicilian has been played half a million times and
most databases will have some sort of percentages you know 34 black wins 37 white wins 29 uh is a
draw you know the further you go down let's say we go for a vienna and then we go for a vienna gambit
look how little games are remaining right because we've gone deeper and deeper
and the way you study this is you really should choose the one that's played the most or second
most and is significant i mean if a move has been played two times in a position that's been reached
1400 times it's probably not the best move but you would combine this with a computer evaluation
which i will show you all afterward now chess base is a little bit more extensive and as i
said leaches has one of their own but you got to be careful because things that are being played a
lot at 15 1600 level will not always be played a lot at the advanced level so if we look at one of
eric rosen's favorite openings the stafford gambit look how few games this gets featured in right
that's because the truth is masters kind of know how to deal with it a little bit better at least
in longer games in blitz and and blitzen bullet not not really i mean you've seen eric's streams
uh he beats many many good players but in classical the stafford gambit at master level
is rarely seen but you you at home should be doing things practically just because
grandmasters don't play this in the world championship doesn't mean it won't work for you
so always remember that simple fact now for the next portion of this database study um i was
gonna pull up some subscribers who volunteered to be in this video and i'm doing this for a reason
because i want to show you the power of playing things that are not considered the top move
like the second most popular move for example so here's an example i pulled up steven0396 his most
popular move that he plays according to chess.com explorer feature is the move e4 he plays it a lot
and he gets e5 450 times then he plays knight f3 and then knight c6 is the most popular but look
at how many times he's faced the stafford gambit knight f6 knight e5 and knight c6 just 20 games
of how many games of e4 e5 450 right so it shows you the power of taking someone out of what
they're comfortable in into a position that they might not know so it's good to play these things
that are non-standard right because if we just follow his most popular move every single time
looks like he plays the scotch i'll give you another example in the scotch
take take there's a tricky move here queen h4 how many times has he faced it once
queen h4 is not a great move according to computer but it's a very tricky move in the scotch and he's
only faced it one time ever according to his database right and he blundered he actually
blundered queen takes e4 check which is the whole point so it shows you the value right of playing
these tricks and if we go to the masters database let's let's go back to this master's database and
pull up that same position all right just to show you kind of the effect look at queen h4
here it's the fifth most popular move according to the masters database right it does get played
it does get played according to the masters database but this gentleman had never faced
it ever before which is quite interesting and if you play the kara khan against e4 um then c6
right how many games of c6 has he had fifth most 41 out of like 700 right so again kara khan is a
is a great thing that i recommend for many players against e4 rather than just playing standard stuff
with e5 that's in my opinion what i think is the best i think gambit's kara khan is the way
to go challenging the opponent early on in the game um now another person this person is 1500
kind of pink jig so jake is uh he's a long long longtime supporter of the stream he's also
uh enjoyed my youtube content since i only had like 200 subscribers so i got to feature him he
always used to play e5 against e4 over a thousand one hundred games if you play the vienna against
jake look at where that takes you 82 out of thousand games and then against knight f6
one vienna gambit three three vienna gambits ever to his credit he did play two wins but one of them
this is a bad move but he still won the game so vienna gambit takes a person who's played
a position a thousand times into three three times ever that's huge that is the benefit
of of playing things that are not just copying your opponent to actually learning
something specific like a caracon defense or a vienna system uh so that's one thing that i wanted
to pull up another person this one's interesting because this person is 1900 this next person uh gm
uh 500. i've played this person many times and this person plays d4 i wanted to look at
it from white's perspective this person plays d4 a lot it's their most popular move of almost 2
000 games now look at this if you play the dutch defense against this person
that takes you down 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 35 games out of nearly 2 000 that this person has to deal with
the dutch defense another idea for some of you dutch defense go check it out right um dutch
defense is event is a great defense i mean it's it's wonderful and you see that it can take even
the strongest of players out of positions that they've seen one more the budapest gambit look c4
400 games here how many games of e5 which is the budapest game but 25 25 out of like five or 600
games that is how you would apply the usage of an openings database right to scan against certain
players or just explore positions that are not so theoretical you know things that i recommend
for example in my uh in my kara con course uh sorry in my in not in my course with the
white pieces so just one thing that i wanted to show in my course for the white pieces
against the karakan i recommend the advanced karo khan which is very trendy now second most popular
move and against bishop f5 i recommend not knight f3 which has 7 500 games and probably even more
but the second most popular move right which has only three thousand and now when players go h6
right we go g4 and now we're down to about two three hundred games out of a position which has
been reached how many thousands of times right so we go lower and lower and this position will
appear later in the next part of this video we are going to show how to analyze the games you play
okay the games you yourself play uh and uh how to learn from those games and how to incorporate the
use of a computer to analyze games after they're done we'll go all the way back to the beginning
and for this next portion we will go back and start to analyze games that i played against
subscribers so we'll start with this one okay this is a game i played actually in the most recent
video i uploaded on youtube which is how to win a chess it's a playlist i started to play 10 minute
games against my subscribers and i was black i was playing against um a 1059 rated player uh and
he played the vienna gambit against me i played d5 which is the main line he took i took he went here
i took he took so far so good this is all known and here i played the move c5 which i believe is
the most popular move in this position and here my opponent played d4 which is not correct and a few
moves later actually ended up losing his bishop by virtue of a fork so let's say you have a game like
this with white let's say you play this with white you blunder a piece how do you learn from a game
like this okay uh well here you go we're gonna have to go back to our handy dandy database right
and we say well what happened you know i was playing my vienna gambit what did i do wrong
how did it go so wrong for me so far so good take take and here my opponent played c5 right
oh i mean i played a move that's that's basically not in the database at all uh and if we go to the
even more uh robust uh chess-based database right uh what whatever it is that you are
using i'll pull up the chess-based database just for instructional purposes um watch this
so look take take right and black play c5 which is one of the main lines look at this how many games
of d4 in this position like 13 and the score is 34 which means that 34 of the time white wins and
66 or 65.4 percent of the time it is black who is winning and there are no gm games if we see if we
sort the database by white who's got the higher rating with the white pieces not a single gm all
2000 2100 and some of these people down here who last played in 1889 so you know we're not in very
good territory so then what you do is you go back and you incorporate engine analysis and you say
all right well that wasn't right right that that wasn't good i i i have to do better than that um
another example that i can give in the vienna gambit is you know just if we flip it to white's
perspective real quick uh on this big board um if they play something that's not in your in your
analysis at all like for example in this position people uh will sometimes play the move knight
to g5 which attacks the queen and here people just freak out they go i don't know what to do
so now i'm going to kind of incorporate the the last layer uh of study that i wanted to to
demonstrate which is the computer see this thing that i've popped up on the screen you have to
use the computer after the game not before and what does it say the top line it says the move
that gives plus 1.3 advantage which is a pawn and three tenths of a pawn is queen takes d5
queen takes d5 because you've blundered the pawn knight g5 is not a theoretical
move it's a novelty and it's not a good one because you just lose this pawn that is how
you learn openings right if there's only one move in a position in an opening that's good
you still have to find it because otherwise like for example it's like walking through fire right
if you can walk through fire but get across okay that's that's fine but if you walk through fire
and get burned all over the place you're not gonna do it again right you're not gonna right and here
white is just it's just much better so that is how you incorporate the computer into your opening
study you go move by move is this something i know is this bad is this good what does the
computer say uh i will give you another example i had this game against the subscriber okay
this was a kara khan an advanced car con with this move h4 my opponent played h6 bishop h7 and i know
that when the bishop goes off of this square the most critical move is this pawn sacrifice
it doubles black's pawns and it weakens the light squares and i played bishop d3 take take and queen
a5 check the point here is you go here now this game didn't go very well for my opponent and from
the opening i i had a quite a big advantage actually so again if we pull up the computer
what does it say here it says plus two it's the eighth move and white already has basically a two
pawn advantage and think about that white is down upon white sacked upon so white is down a point of
material but is up plus 2.4 and growing that's huge that's a full piece and more compensation
so what did my opponent do wrong then right that's the thing how do you learn from a game like this
what did my opponent do wrong uh should we go check our our handy dandy database maybe we pull
up old chess base or whatever it is that you want to use um whatever website you want to go on we
can uh we can go and explore if we pull up the chess based screen again we we have the vienna
gambit here but let's take a look now at uh at the position that we got from the opening so g4
ah we see the problem bishop to d7 is the move here theoretically and bishop e4 is a move bishop
h7 has a 73 win rate with white if they play this move and after e6 look at that 76 percent of the
games are won and that is why you will not find many top level games here and if you do white
is winning white is winning a lot of them now sometimes in raiding mismatch situations look at
this here black won this game 01 but black is 2408 and white is 2066 right so that's yeah that's kind
of the point that that is how you explore your openings and that is what my opponent did wrong he
went into a variation where 75 of the time white is winning so you got to fix that you can't just
repeat that mistake right i'll give you one more example a final example here against jordan 2197
jordan uh sub of mine uh also on twitch uh we played and i played a london and he kind of
londoned my london and i i know here that there's a critical move which is c4 right which is c4
uh e6 and queen b3 this is kind of the point in london positions when your opponent moves the
bishop off this there is c4 and queen b3 and you go for this and uh he played queen to b6
queen b6 is very standard move now here if you don't know your theory uh you will not
know that the most critical and challenging move uh for the black position is the move c5 say why
why why why is that the case like why is that the most popular and challenging move that
exists because if you trade the queens you've now given me a brand new open file and in doing that
you've also given me a b pawn which i can push to chip away at your position supported by my bishop
now again just one final scan if we go to our handy dandy database right we will take
a look here and we'll see that c4 look at the bottom left of your screen c4 scores 62
right c4 e6 queen b3 queen b6 c5 look at this move in this position c5 43 games 70
after c5 70 ha that's a nice number that's a that is a nice percentage
that's a nice percentage and then we go like this right so from here we have to develop an
advantage and and that is that is how the game goes like that this is how openings are studied
whatever database on whatever website or whatever program you're using i'm showing you chess based
it's for profit you know it's a paid program um obviously you know we all know that the leeches
database it's a free one but it also is for 16 18 2000 and it's it's tough to filter all of
this it's tough to kind of balance um the the desire to to see whatever while your peers are
playing uh and also not all databases cover uh moves for people who are like 1200 they are a bit
uh rating discriminate rating discriminatory i hate to tell you uh but that that is how it works
what wherever it is that you study this it could be on opening tree which is another resource
that is how you start learning and exploring opening so what do you do from here if you're
a beginner if you're a beginner don't just play standard developing stuff look to practice look
to practice uh certain things that are maybe the second and third most theoretical incorporate a
gambit with whiter with black into your into your openings because gambits are very tricky
and people aren't ready for them if you're an intermediate player uh add a layer to the opening
that you play right try to get ahead of the theory for example so what does that mean adding a layer
to your opening means if you play e4 and they play karo khan go play that h4 line i just talked about
in this video add that if you're playing something else and it's not working find what in your own
database is causing you to struggle if you lose 60 of the time against a certain opening you need to
learn a certain line that is how that is literally how i became a master in chess from 2000 to 2200
i just deep dove openings and i learned the theory i learned things and i got myself easy positions
against strong players and i got my game to the next level so hopefully this was helpful if you
have any other questions feel free to discuss them in the comments um i think i covered just
about everything i set out to cover when i hit the record button we're like 22 minutes in and
you know the usual stuff if you're enjoying my content feel free to check out my other playlists
i have things on openings middle games tactics uh recap videos of tournaments and so on if
you're not yet subscribed consider doing that uh and much love i'll see you in the next video