in this video you're gonna learn how to play the Stonewall setup now the nice thing about
the Stonewall is you can play it with both white and with black I'll show you how let's jump into
it so the Stonewall with white starts with the Queen's pawn d4 now your next few moves will
look something like this let's say black just develops naturally and doesn't play things like
c5 which immediately challenge your Center let's say black plays d5 you play III and I know this
blocks in your bishop but bear with me for a second your next move is going to be Bishop to
d3 and the setup with Bishop d3 is to prevent the bishop from developing naturally out to a5
now normally you're gonna get something like e six at this point I recommend you actually play
Knight d2 this move is strange but you're trying to prevent black from ever getting control of
the e4 square black develops with their Bishop you now play f4 so all of these pawns will end
up on the same color square in the center of the board let's say castles Knight f3 and now if black
plays round random move let's say knight c6 you continue can conclude I should say your setup and
you're ready to castle now the the next step of a perfect Stonewall will look something like this
you're gonna put the knight into the center of the board where it is supported by both of the pawns
that you pushed and then you have this very nice attacking idea rook up and over with pressure on
h7 and the Queen will come there in the future and you have a devastating King side attack brewing
this is the perfect Stonewall and I figured that I would start out with this so you just see the true
nature and devastating effect of this opening has now let's start filling in the gaps ok let's let's
have black challenge our setup just a little bit beginning with right around even here let's say
after Bishop d3 your opponent plays knight c6 at this point you do not need to play Knight d2 when
you see knight c6 or 97 or any move that prepares a 5 that will be a detriment - your Stonewall
so you need to play f4 right now otherwise your opponent's gonna go a 5 and we're not gonna get
our Stonewall this is just not a good position right so you see any move preparing me five you
need to go f4 ok so first order of business f4 now let's say e6 again 92 needs to be played to
control the e4 square because if you just continue with Knight f3 then this happens and then maybe
they play f5 now you're getting sewn walled don't want that alright so let's back this thing up you
need to play a 92 night before sometimes happens if you don't have a moment where you can save the
bishop that's ok you can reinforce it with the Queen because ultimately we need the Queen on
that long diagonal but even this is not always necessary you can go for a setup like this one
where you fully control this square and then after 95 castles you'll start some sort of
active operations on that side of the board okay now let me give you one more layer in in just
regular Stonewall play the second that you see c5 c5 c3 even on move one c5 c3 you need to play C
3 you're not taking you need to reinforce that side of the board so that this is available to
you now if you have to take with the C pawn when they do this just take with the C pawn but if it
happens a little bit later let's say 92 Bishop d6 like right here c5 c3 they take maybe like this
again you should lean toward capturing with the e pawn but if you can't because for example there's
this problem and you would have to capture with the C pawn but in a perfect world you get the e
pawn capture back in the center and you continue your development so for example if the bishop is
on e7 then c5 c3 this is considered advantageous because you control the full efile the knight is
covered from coming to b4 and this is the perfect setup Knight f3 castles Knight e5 alright we're
only four minutes into the video hopefully you're still with me not a super complicated opening
however not everybody plays d5 some people don't play any beef I move okay some people will play
a Kings Indian and against those people what I recommend that you do since you're not going to be
able to play Knight to e5 and in just in general the whole attack is gonna be a little bit harder
hassel against the Kings Indian reinforce the center with something like c3 and then try to
play e4 e5 generally the rule in the Stonewall is that if they don't take the center with a deep on
like they don't play d5 you can go through with a 45 all right by the way notice how I didn't
play a 92 that's because there's no threat to play 94 all right that should kind of give you
close to everything with the white side there's like also some tricks you know nigera splay Abul
with pressure here and obviously you don't want to blunder this so don't go here like little tactical
things like that I've seen also some disasters like like this and here students played Bishop
d3 and that's a disaster because this every move has a purpose so for example against but should be
7 just go f4 and Knight f3 and then Bishop d3 alright if you want to play the Stonewall now
let's flip this over to the black side okay let's flip this over to the black pieces the Stonewall
with black is on a completely different set of colors because that's just how the chessboard
works so you can only play it against d4 c4 Knight f3 and those setups if your opponent plays a
King's pawn there is no Stonewall you can go check out my caro-kann video in 10 minutes or less but
what I recommend you do the Stonewall with black is d4 d5 and now the exact same setup so quit if
they play Queens gambit east 6 9 f3 c6 and f5 now with black I recommend you do the four pawns first
if you wait alright if you wait they have efore you're never going to get your Stonewall so with
black I recommend trying to play a5 as quickly as possible if you really want to you can get exotic
and play it as early as move 3 and then after you finish all of that you play Knight f6 and
Bishop d6 and then get castled with black you the night out first it's better for the protection of
your king you know if your opponent gets really aggressive and even tries to attack your King on
with the Queen you need to have the night out on f6 so but in general the Stonewall defense is very
interesting with the black side you can get some very nice aggressive positions so for example for
instance f5 and if your opponent plays like very passively like apple 97 I've had some students
get positions like this with white so this is the perfect stone wall with the black side you've got
the knight on e4 you've got the bishop and then what you try to do from here is rook up and over
you'd know this from the first few minutes of the video rook up and over with some Kings side
attacking ideas on h2 and if not on h2 then you maybe launch the Jeep on super super aggressive
system obviously there are some drawbacks from a positional standpoint with black your c8 Bishop
isn't happy all right when you play the white side of a stone wall uh well your this bishops
not happy but that bishop can maybe develop to the queen side all right that bishop has a little bit
of a of a slow start but can get involved in the game at a later time when obviously things settle
down and you know maybe your attack doesn't completely destroy your opponent right away
but this is how you play the Stonewall setup and you play it again with the black side against just
about anything if you want to play it against c4 you just need to play e6 and then d5 we've
only done about eight minutes of this video but go give it a shot and once again if you enjoyed
yourself you've watched some of the other videos like this video let me know in the comments below
what other video you think would be useful for a ten minute clip or I don't know let me know
what uh what your favorite kind of smoothie is alright I'll see you in the next video