ladies and gentlemen do you remember the good old days of being rated 300 at chess me neither actually the first tournament i ever played when i was 7 years old i got up to about 800 and i never really looked back but that's not the point the point is that we all start someplace some of us are 200 100 300 and you go up and up that rating ladder 300 is a very very fascinating battleground because there are people who know absolutely nothing about the game but they win literally by the sheer hands of the chess gods uh there are people who are actually studying openings putting in the work and just slowly working their way up people who just attack with the queen people who just play really fast and throw all their pieces people who play really slow and are winning but lose on time and everything in between uh so the game that we are about to look at was posted on reddit chess beginners it was a just unbelievable battle had everything twists turns like uh like soap operas so we're gonna watch the game uh shout out to our protagonist from canada uh who submitted this game blondie they both get honorary grandmaster titles as always they are separated by one rating point we will watch this game with the eval bar and before i get into the games it's kind of fitting i'm making this video on 420 uh because this game this game was out there so d4 uh and blondie plays the london so here we have an example of an individual who has consumed some some youtube content you know wants an easy to learn opening uh and uh and plays it black responds with knight f6 and blondie immediately uh throws into the waste bin all the hours that they have spent on uh on opening preparation watching youtube videos maybe buying a course because this is just not the move uh this opening is known as the joba london i have played it myself it has been played by good players including joe bava the person it's named after uh with the intention of knight b5 knight c7 uh but uh that's absolutely not what white is trying to do here white is basically just trying to move knights into the middle when you playing the london as a beginner you really want to build the pawn pyramid uh that and then put this knight here but you know what i don't really hate it both players move their knights out like this uh although this is almost a completely losing move because white can play knight b5 creating this attack on the c7 square and it's almost impossible to stop uh black has to find the only stockfish move here uh and if black doesn't find it black just loses the game and that move is e7 to e5 and yes that is a loss of a pawn absolutely so that you've got to give up a pawn in order not to lose a rook or a queen so uh yeah knight b5 would have been would have been devastating if you want to play knight in bishop london job style you can always keep in mind this knight b5 knight f3 and now you know it with 300 level videos uh you don't need to wait long uh for things to get real spicy and here they get spicy immediately as black tries to put a second pawn directly in the middle of the board uh i always say two pawns in the center if you can if you can't put this pawn two squares then you should put it one square but then it would block the bishop which is why in this position this is the best move or this and then you know e6 and you're fine you have a completely normal position um but this is just no good because this is just a counting mistake right but i think black is trying to play a gambit here uh black is trying to play something we call uh the shakkaloo gambit uh white now uh sees that the bishop is under attack and proceeds to retreat it which is really a very principled response if not for the fact that you can just absolutely win this with any one of these pieces uh however it is definitely better to take with pawn or knight you don't want to give up a bishop for no reason and this move just attacks this and also opens the door for the queen and the knight this way um bishop g3 is not a good move uh but that is just the beginning of the bad moves uh black here notices that this pawn can also take here but the mirror image was for some reason missed white here has a choice between queen takes and knight takes uh and considering that it is defended by a knight if you want to do a bow test impression you can play queen takes d4 however if you want to play the best move uh in this position you should play knight takes d4 inviting an exchange of knights here white plays an absolutely fascinating move a move that i cannot even begin to fathom uh the you know it's probably too strong for my understanding that move is e4 so in the span of like three moves we just go from normal book uh book opening to white being completely winning to black being better to black being completely winning minus seven it's minus seven for a couple of reasons uh first of all this is just the free night like you just let the pawn survive through fire take your center and now take your knight maybe it'll take the pawn and maybe maybe it'll go to the other side of the earth you know like when you used to dig in the backyard as a kid trying to dig as a hole to the center of the earth yeah that's what that pawn is gonna do um the other thing is this is also just completely free like i don't understand if you lost this center pawn this way what makes you think that you're like this can what do you got two hanging knights now and now you can't even take this because the queen is defending it so what i i i don't know but i think e4 is just one of these moves that's just beyond my understanding maybe blondie thought that ompassant was forced like maybe they didn't think that that's just the meme maybe they thought that well they have to go here it's like checkers so i i don't know i i really i cannot explain the logic of that move to you but i can explain that it did occur black proceeds to take the knight which is a fantastic move obviously and now white has the option between taking this and uh and doing something with this pawn white proceeds to go e5 really liking the game plan of black to just take the knight wanting to take the knight themselves here what black should do um is either move the knight out of the way or remember the pawn that just moved what's worth more than a knight you you're worth more than a night however the rook you might as well take another thing and attack the rook that's a five-point piece and now you actually did make it to the other side of the board all right let's speed run upon making it the whole the whole length of the board so c takes b2 here would be good then you could move your knight uh black here can move the knight or play pawn takes b2 and black here plays the move knight takes e5 the idea of knight takes e5 is that if for some reason white will not take your knight you will then proceed to play knight takes on f3 also i think knight takes e5 was played out of pity like i think black just is a fair competitor and doesn't want to see their opponent just suffer so much so instead they play knight takes e5 losing a piece in the center of the board the exact same way that white has okay great now black says all right i did a good all right i evened out the playing field let me continue to take and the rook moves out of the way at this point uh black should probably disregard the attack on this pawn and give this check on b4 uh and the reason for that is it's very rare that a king just has to move out of check like that's the only choice you have you can go here and then you have to move or you have to lose your queen so bishop b4 is definitely a good move here it's not a useless check at all however black plays a very principled move that stops stockfish's third choice and even though the evaluation only goes from minus nine to minus four black is still completely winning because the pawn on b2 is protected white plays the move bishop to e2 now this stockfish still says it's not too late to come back and force the king to move by the way uh but obviously black should be castling here uh that that is just generally a good rule of thumb if you can't make any more progress in the opening you don't want to just throw out all the pieces that you currently have you might as well get your king to save the kings of beta but this is not a bad move it's not a blunder it brings the knight in you're creating some threats and you'd like to go right here so white should obviously prevent that uh white does not prevent that at all and in fact sees the knight arrive offers it a route to c3 so i made a video called seven most common chest mistakes this is one of them attacking a piece and not even asking where it's gonna go like if you noticed that this move was gonna happen you would never allow this so black goes here this and this now you say levy what is going on black is playing a great game uh what you told me this was going to be a bad game i well i mean it's moved like what 10 yeah get ready now we have castles and now what black should do is rescue this knight get it out somehow and then proceed to promote so black does that right away by the way it's never too late to castle black really doesn't have to rush but although you would be losing the knight so knight d2 so knight d2 is just a bad move because you lose the knight in one move but you know black sees this and is very excited to at some point promote the pawn uh again never too late here to castle or develop a piece instead of that black goes oh man i don't wanna that i'm very upset i lost my knight let me attack their knight okay f6 is not a mistake you are obviously attacking the knight here um and white plays an absolutely brilliant move here uh white plays the move f4 so white defends the knight which is worth three points with a pawn which is worth one point uh effectively losing the trade completely however white's idea here is i i have no idea i'm just assuming this is the idea uh is to take and then take and now black cannot castle you cannot castle through check i have absolutely no idea if that's what they were planning or if white just straight up hung the knight forgetting that it's not worth as much as a pawn maybe forgetting the knight couldn't go backwards like maybe white looked at these moves by the night and was like well they all lose the knight and i can't go back so i'm gonna go f4 so i don't know f takes e5 and now in this position white takes on e5 that that was played by black white takes on e5 preventing the move short castles by playing the move rook to f3 which attacks a bishop not only does it attack a bishop it also allows promotion so the pawn that you allowed to travel from the other side of the board for absolutely no reason at all by the way if in this position you had played bishop takes you would have been able to take this and not have this headache anymore but because you took with the knight and clearly have a blind spot for pawns to the extent that you let it sit on your second rank as an imposter in among us and then allowed it an entry to b1 after losing your knight the idea of f4 was not to take it apparently was to move the rook and attack the bishop allowing promotion black here plays a move that is so illogical i cannot even like if i gave you 10 guesses you probably wouldn't even be able to guess black's move here uh black does not queen obviously not yet anyway black also completely doesn't see this black plays the move rook cafe rook f8 is shockingly illogical like like they would need to study the brain waves of an individual in an mri machine to figure this out because if you want the rook on f8 why wouldn't you just castle did black just forget that they have that i don't know i don't i don't know black can also play bishop g4 like you know some people get tunnel vision they see a piece they want to attack it i wouldn't even be upset about that move it's natural all right and then if you really want to be a a a super troll you can promote to a knight and fork the queen in the rook if you did that oh my god my my head would explode but rook f what is rook f8 like at least go bishop c5 check anyway at this point white plays rook takes a3 and the only reason i'm telling you the only reason black found the next move is because black's eyes went this way like you you know what i'm talking about my my my beginners who are watching this maybe 6 000 700 and lower your eyes just forget about a side of a board but the second you go oh man that's my bishop over there oh but i have this you just forgot about it you just forgot about but because the rook takes your eyes go that way you're like oh great yeah i'm up 13 points of material cool so bishop d1 now um the way you win a position like this is you have to use your material so you really got to get all the pieces into the game you got to get your queen bishop into the game your king should have been over here that's obviously your weakest link right now like for example pp on the pp all right put pressure on the pinned piece so bishop g4 here you're gonna take it with the queen next and you wanna use your material advantage to simplify the position down um two two to one where uh you you just win you have queen versus nothing right so queen b6 check is not a bad move um rookie three is now blocking like even here if you want to sack the queen i wouldn't even hate that all right but bishop e6 great move just great move bringing another piece to the battle um white here doesn't really have a whole lot of options if i'm being totally honest uh white should probably safeguard the king make sure that it can't get mated so just kind of hide it on h2 and then try to avoid queen trades and try to like create an attack like i would love if you could play this move you know but you have to unpin yourself and then rook e5 bishop g4 like something like this uh create an attack on the enemy king c4 you know c4 is not not the worst move in the world it's minus 21 according to stockfish but what does stockfish know c4 is a move you know pawn takes pawn here by black uh queen trade is coming uh opening the queen but black plays d4 so d4 blocks the pin so now you can actually play rook takes e5 however we see that the idea of the move c4 was actually nothing to do with the rook it was to open up the bishop checking the king okay okay i like that and now this there you go there you go black plays d3 which is a discovered check and white plays king f1 which is which is not good you really should hide the king somewhere and just make sure he the king should not be coming back toward the middle that is not where the king belongs uh or you can play bishop f2 attacking the queen or even c5 but that's very hard to see right you don't have to move your king when it's in check black plays queen d6 so in this position is one of the most absurd tactics i've ever seen it's upon forking two queens if white gets bonus points for any move of this game it's that move have you ever seen a pawn forking two queens i've never seen this now black here has to go full danger levels what's worth more than a queens the king so queen b1 check now white here should bring the rook back to attack one queen and the other okay one queen is hanging of course white does not do that but that's it is what it is now black has to look around and notice that the queen is hanging and move it and they do to their credit however you can take the rook and this is why you always have to look for captures you cannot take this because of this but you can take this because that rook on f8 the rook on f8 was a bad move but king to f1 made it a genius move right this is why we don't move our king into the middle of the battle because the rook on the opposite side negates the defense of the rook right here right so this is but okay queen d4 queen d4 is a is a mistake of continuity as now this is no longer defended and white proceeds to capture it king d7 and now white plays the move f5 defending the um the rook with the with the pawn if white here had just followed the yellow brick road to d6 this is a fork of the queen and the king and white is really really making a comeback here however white plays the move f5 uh and in a position where we went from minus uh minus 30 to four minus forty to minus nine i can't really complain but now it's made in five okay it's made in five because simply rook takes pawn right you just i mean again that's why your king should not be there black finds it and white has no more king moves or so you would think this move hangs made in one so you shouldn't play it you should probably block the check with something but king e1 is played and now if this queen had just followed the trail queen g1 is made this is how 300's win by mistake okay but black's idea was not to checkmate white black's idea was i attacked rook you defended it now me take rook now that's still not bad because black now has a 15 point material advantage has two queens on the board and has mate coming but if you know anything about the how to lose a chess playlist you you know for a fact this game did not end anytime soon so white plays queen f2 which hangs a mate uh sorry it hangs the queen obviously uh there's also d2 there's also like check and then mate this way i mean there's so many mates check check take the queen what does black do rook takes f2 the queen has been captured bishop takes now black has a 19 point material advantage this game can end in so many ways you just have to give a check or check like this force the king away from the bishop and get in okay okay d2 king e2 and now either queen is made on d3 okay either queen is made on d3 if you don't see that give this check if you don't see that give this check if you don't see that give this check sack the queen for two bishops leave it king in four pawns queen c3 this is how i know that we're still in for a long game because black doesn't realize what they're doing all right white plays bishop b3 check black sax actually correctly sacrifices and now can promote another queen instead of that for some unknown reason black loses the second queen for nothing and for the first time in about i don't know 10 moves the eval bar shows a little bit of hope for white alright it's like when you resuscitate at the at the hospital you know defibrillators i mean how long has it been since we've seen any eval in in white's favor like almost i mean it's been it's been so long right the eval's just been through the floor all right i mean there's been made all over the board constant made threats and suddenly a glimmer of hope now this position is still completely lost uh it's still completely lost for a couple of reasons um black should just defend this pawn but even if black can't defend it just bring the king bring the rook and then take the other pawns so you're just always going to be able to overwhelm rook d8 um white plays the move bishop h4 uh attacking the rook here uh and and and you know if if if just like rook d5 for example uh you can bring the king all the way and then checkmate you can break apart the pawns and then win the pawns and then promote your pawn rook will always beat a bishop rook will always beat a bishop the only thing you have to be careful about is the bishop moving and attacking your rook and you not doing anything about it the bishop is a dark squared bishop it literally can't see half the squares you just got to keep your rook away from it black fails to do that and white fails to capture g4 now black plays g5 because listen listen it's never too late to copy your opponent for no reason at all takes now b5 hanging the rook again and for the first time in nearly 40 moves 30 moves white is winning white is winning because after this this and something like b4 the endgame was winning for white the two pawns cancel out the three because they're totally frozen you can't go here and that's it what ends up happening now is uh white just has two pawns this is the end game two on one so at some point white is gonna bring the king over all right and uh if you try to defend i'm just gonna crack through use my pawn as a decoy and then go this way take your pawns and that's the end of the game but that would be far too sophisticated and that would not make for a good youtube video so obviously white plays h4 um and uh doesn't actually play the move b4 okay so you have to control the structure this is a king in pawn end game but pawn play is very important black has to play this move just for the constant threat of creating a past pawn if you let your structure be completely locked down you will never ever ever win and you will probably not draw either so we have a5 the final phase of the game begins now white should play king takes d2 white plays g5 getting a little bit too aggressive too close and the evaluation falls off a cliff one more time as black plays the move a4 blundering the draw right back to white the players have to bring their kings a4 now you have to do something called counting in the square right so uh pawn takes a4 pawn takes a4 and you have to take this pawn otherwise this pawn will promote right so white plays h5 and is completely lost once again completely miscounted you miscounted that after a3 g6 a2 g7 they're queening with check which is a very common endgame concept and they queen first and this is perhaps the most logical sequence of moves in the entire game as black promotes white has to take and black goes well one more check for good measure and then says all right let's go back let's take this pawn now white is defending the h1 to their credit uh but it's simply it's simply not good enough and this is why a long time ago white had to take the pawn on d2 but also white had to prevent the movement of the outside pass pawn here so keep this in mind for end games uh but now black is completely winning the way you win this game is you blockade the pawn and then you bring the king uh you can also bring the king go win this pawn and then make a second queen let's see this technique in action here we go look at this do you have time to take the pawn and stop here yes you do block the pawn all right don't block the pawn fine h.a queen he's trying to sneak one by oh okay all right all right fine we've waited a long time unfortunately uh now we have to watch the beautiful ladder checkmate technique as the pawn runs down the board and black makes two queens at this point to coordinate them what i always recommend here is to just give checks but in a situation like this when the king's out in the middle and not close to the edge of the board what you do is you play queen f1 cut the king off on one row and then you just start doing the the steps the ladder mate and white does exactly that uh white cuts the king off in the middle of the board with the move queen h5 plays queen f4 check plays queen h3 check plays king e2 sacrifices one queen and proceeds to lose the second queen and the game of two three hundreds ends in a king vs king draw