Lecture on London Opening Traps

i used to think that the london was a boring opening that people played to try to put you to sleep and just avoid all types of exciting positions until i started preparing for this video and found 17 different opening traps three of them are with black that's the ones you see here in blue the rest are with white and some of these are quite frankly pretty amazing including this one 31 508 people have fallen for so what i'm going to do in this video is show you all 17 of these traps starting with the one that the least amount of people have fallen for working our way up to the one that the most people have fallen for and for those of you who are about to jump to the end of the video just to see this one don't do that because then you're going to miss out on all of the other 16 amazing traps so be patient i promise you it'll be worth your while let's take a look oh and i almost forgot this really nice dark themed excel version it's only available to chessvibe's subscribers so if you were on the fence about that you should probably go ahead and do that alright i'm obviously kidding but you should still subscribe and the other thing i wanted to mention some of these traps i found from watching other people's youtube videos so there's some links down in the description below i wanted to give credit to those other creators who put videos out talking about some of these traps so if you want to check those out they're down in the description let's get started all right first trap on our list only 14 people have fallen for in the lead chess database when i checked but it's a good idea to keep in mind because sometimes it comes up in other situations as well when you're playing the london if black decides to go for this e6 c5 right away setup delaying d5 and then brings the queen to b6 to attack your b2 pawn you want to keep this one in mind this is kind of a common idea a lot of players will try to do this from time to time because one of the disadvantages of the london is that you don't have a defender of your b2 pawn but check out how this works knight to c3 queen to b6 and now you can play the amazing move a3 and it looks like you're just blundering upon like what what are you even doing but if black takes this pawn you've got an amazing move knight to a4 and the queen is trapped it would like to escape back here somewhere but of course everything is covered now we see the idea behind a3 it also takes away the the a3 square from the queen because the rook is covering the pawn and so black's queen is just gone it's not gonna happen all the time but when it does happen it's going to make you smile all right the next trap 355 players have fallen forward and this one you're going to notice pretty much all of black's moves are very natural logical looking moves and yet they still end up getting trapped let's take a look d4 d5 knight f3 knight f6 very common opening moves bishop f4 c5 e3 this is very standard stuff knight to d2 so one thing i want to point out you'll notice that some of these traps happen in different ways sometimes you put the knight on d2 sometimes you put the knight on c3 so you want to pay attention to that little detail and and make a note of that and keep you know keep an eye out for which traps you really like and see if they come about from the knight c3 or the knight d2 lines and you can kind of build your own repertoire based on that so bishop to f5 i mean all of these moves are looking very natural for black developing their pieces we take the pawn e6 again pretty natural trying to recapture it here with the bishop knight to d4 and it looks like we are trying to trade this bishop off which we are and so what do a lot of players playing black do you play bishop g6 just to get away from the knight and now they've basically fallen for the trap at this point you play bishop to b5 pinning the knight attacking the knight you have a big threat to simply take here and fork these pieces and so what is black gonna do most likely rook to c8 and they have to do something to defend this right and now you can simply take take and can you find the killer move here well if you said bishop to a6 you are correct and black's problem is that because of the way our bishops are set up there are no squares for the rook yes it can go into the corner but then we just play bishop to b7 and it's completely trapped and you're basically just winning the exchange just like that alright the next trap 426 players have fallen for and again you're gonna notice that most of black's moves are very logical and make a lot of sense and it's kind of hard to see where they went wrong so check this out again standard main moves here and this time we're playing c3 so remember the last time the knight came here right away this is a little bit different bishop to d3 we're bringing the knight into e5 right away castles knight to d2 now so you can transpose to this position a lot of different ways and black has made mostly logical moves right developing all their pieces castling and now they play captures getting rid of that knight and i should mention that if they try to take it with the knight well you're going to take back here and fork the pieces they can't do that it was actually better to take with the bishop but then we take with the pawn and this knight needs to move and when it goes back to d7 we simply play knight f3 it looks like the game is just going along very normally and now queen to c7 a very natural looking let's just move the queen somewhere but we actually were creating a very strong threat when we played knight to f3 if you'd like to pause and think through what are we threatening in this position well if you had a chance to do that the move is bishop takes h7 check this is a greek gift sacrifice and the basically the idea is you sacrifice the bishop to lure the king out so that you can follow up usually with a queen and a knight it doesn't always have to be that sometimes it's just the queen but queen and knight is very common we bring the knight to g5 and really black has to come up to g6 because if they go back to g8 queen h5 and they're going to be getting checkmated there's not really much that black can do and it's basically over and so if even if they do go to g6 we still play queen to c2 and black's completely losing here all right the next trap 488 players have fallen for and it's when black tries to go for this e6 b6 setup and fiance this bishop over here so keep this one in mind if you see that system so c5 e3 b6 this is what i was talking about they're gonna put the bishop over here you can play knight c3 and after bishop b7 you play knight to b5 and the idea is we're creating a couple of threats here number one you're going for this fork on the king and the rook you've got the bishop supporting it so black has to watch out for that but you're also threatening to go here check which forks these guys and even though black has a bishop that can take then your bishop can take and you're going to have this really annoying bishop on d6 stopping black's d-pawn preventing black from castling and it looks like d6 actually prevents both of these threats because it blocks our bishop from going to covering the c7 square also adds support to the square with the queen but we have a really nice move d takes c5 and we're just renewing the thread here and even if black let's say takes well now you can simply take here with your bishop and black's in a really bad way they don't really want to take this because then you can take either way is good i guess queen is a little bit better you're preventing them from castling they can't actually take your queen because you've got this annoying fork and so blacks basically stuck in the center not able to take your queen not good news at all and you're just completely winning all right the next trap 551 players have fallen for and again this one is super logical all of black's moves like it looks like what could they have possibly done wrong and yet they are getting trapped check it out d4 d5 standard opening moves here and notice how white plays bishop to g3 this is an idea that you'll see from time to time rather than trading this bishop or rather than playing e3 and defending it this way you just drop it back and if the point is that if black takes you you're going to take this way and open up your rook on the h file so yeah just keep that in mind e3 castles bishop d3 knight b to d2 knight goes into e5 this is another common theme that we've seen in quite a few of these sinking the knight into the e5 square and c5 looks like a very natural looking move the problem is that it does not defend the bishop any longer so on c7 that bishop was defended the fact that that bishop is not defended gives you a really nice opportunity if you want to pause and think through what's the move here that white can play well if you had a chance to look at that the move is knight takes f7 you're forking these pieces attacking the queen so black has to deal with your knight they can't do anything else but after they take it you're simply going to take that bishop now because it's undefended and it's you just basically won the f pawn for free and you got black's king to a weird square that they don't really want to go to so it's that simple it's very difficult for black to see that because in this position you're thinking yeah my bishop's fine even if i move this i don't really care i'll just trade it if i need to and a lot of people overlook the fact that you can play knight takes f7 alright the next trap 689 players have fallen for and this one is pretty special so you get to play a move in this one that just looks absurd and so i like this one a lot let's go d4 standard stuff here and then we're going for this one we're going with knight b to d2 okay and bishop to g4 so keep this in mind if your opponent's played the bishop g4 lines here we go c3 e6 queen to a4 and it looks like okay what are we doing i mean i guess we're getting out of the pin i guess we're pinning black's knight but black's position looks very solid but most people will play bishop d6 and then you hit him with the move and if you want to pause and think through what's the crazy move that we can play here to get a really nice position well if you had a chance to look at that the move is bishop to a6 and it's a wild looking move just looks like we're just hey what are we doing blundering a piece the idea is first of all if black takes the bishop well then the knights undefended not only do we take it it puts black in a weird spot because the bishop is being attacked the rook is being attacked the only way that they can save the bishop is by playing king to e7 and now they can't castle queen to b7 check and it's it's not a good position for black at all and then the other idea is if black tries to ignore this like let's just say queen d7 maybe to defend their pawn we're going to just take it anyway because we also have this attack here if the queen moves we're taking this and so this combination of the attack on the bishop along with the attack here along with the attack here it's too much for black to deal with right and so really nice move very very shocking for your opponents uh not a type of move that most people are going to see coming all right the next trap 860 players have fallen for and it's another version of the greek gift sacrifice but a different position so check this out again we get some standard opening moves here drops the bishop back to g3 bishop d3 c3 normal stuff the knight goes into e5 and now we play the move f4 and one of the things that black will sometimes try to do when they you know when they see this knight being so strongly supported is they want to get more pressure on it and so they'll move their knight back like this with the idea of potentially playing f6 maybe to play e5 and kind of bust open the center this is actually the big mistake and now we can repeat the idea that we saw before even though the position is different the idea still works bishop takes h7 check and after king takes h7 you can follow up with queen h5 check the king has to go back and now we have this um you know we take this and i mean black is completely losing plus nine according to stockfish you've got all sorts of threats and things happening so yeah really good one to be aware of also like i said a greek gift sacrifice all right the next trap 898 players have fallen for and again it's when black plays the move bishop to g4 just in a little bit of a different way so keep this in mind but here we go standard stuff here and notice how black trades this off and then plays bishop g4 so it was a little bit different in the other trap we actually captured on c5 and this one we didn't obviously and queen to b3 okay it looks like we're just attacking the pawn and so what are most players playing with black going to do they're going to play the natural looking queen to d7 now if they're uh very advanced with the london they'll probably play queen c8 but most people aren't gonna play this if they don't know what they're doing they're gonna play queen d7 right we play knight to e5 looks like we're just kind of going after some stuff right a very annoying night move and so what is your opponent going to do they're going to take it we're going to take back and now do you see what the trap is they've already fallen for it but do you see what it is i'm going to give you a second to pause you had a chance to look at that the threat is number one obviously we're attacking the knight but number two and this is the tricky one to see we're also threatening bishop to b5 winning the queen because we're gonna pin it and black actually can't save both of those you can't deal with both of those threats so they can save this knight by moving it somewhere and then we're just going to play bishop b5 and black's queen is gone or they can save the queen by playing something like a6 and then we just simply take the knight either way we're happy we're waiting at least a piece or in most cases the queen and that's a good one to remember all right next trap 901 people have fallen forward and it has to do with what happens if black goes immediately for your b2 pawn so check this one out d4 d5 bishop to f4 and black says oh they're playing the london i'm going for the b2 pawn e3 here we go and now what you can do of course we don't want to play a move like queen c1 very defensive you can play the move knight to c3 saying go ahead take my pawn 900 people like i said have fallen for this and after they take it you simply play knight takes d5 and the first point is that you're going for this fork and black really doesn't have a good way to deal with it because if they try to play 96 guess what you're just taking it you still have the fork if they i mean what else can they do i think they can't really do anything right they can't do any good moves that are going to stop the stock versus the best move is just to develop and pretend like it didn't even happen and then what you can do is play rook to b1 get a little temple on the queen and then follow it up with knight to c7 check take the rook and you're completely crushing black already all right next trap 984 players have fallen for and this one's kind of a weird one but it's a really good one because it's really difficult to see this one coming so let me show you this and again it's going to be against the e6 b6 setups okay so when they go for the c5 b6 idea right i already showed you i think one and here's another version of this so i think the other one we looked at we played knight to c3 this one we're playing knight b to d2 and the point is that we want to locate our knight like this what a knight to go here to threaten to play knight to d6 check so most people when they see this are going to be like okay well let's play d5 because it allows the queen to support that square and it looks like black is totally fine this is a common idea a common way to to deal with threats on that square you just push the pawn forward to bring the queen to support but now we're going to play knight to e5 and this looks like a very normal position it looks very subtle it doesn't really look like there's much going on right actually we have a huge threat and if they play the sort of natural looking night here they just fell for the trap so if you want to pause and think through try to find the next move that we play here this one's not easy to see the entire idea with the attitudes to look at that the winning move is bishop to b5 and we are pinning the knight but we're also threatening something else and it's really not easy for black to deal with it so a normal looking move here from black is something like a6 just like what are you doing with your bishop go away if you want to trade it off takes take stakes take you know it's just a big trade right at least that's what black thinks and now we play the shocking move wait for it knight to g5 ignoring the bishop because if they take our bishop we're hopping in here with our knight and we're forking these guys after the queen moves we're taking this and it's i mean black's position is a mess like we get not only did we get the rook black's not going to be able to castle they could castle this way but that looks super risky with this expose and our bishop aiming here black's position's a total mess and yeah they're already in trouble and if we go back let's just say that they somehow saw this coming and played the move h6 to try to stop us well now we can kind of see the other threat in this position and that's that we're going to take here with the knight when they retake we're going to bring this knight in and again black is having some serious problems if they go back we've got bishop to c6 which attacks this guy and after rook to b8 we simply let's see there's a couple ways you can do it i'm trying to just check the best way looks like it's queen h5 um you could also just trade takes take takes and you have the bishop hitting the rook but stockfish is saying queen h5 is just even more crushing going for the uh the checkmate on g6 you've got knight takes g6 the king is coming out this is just nasty uh let's see e4 is a good move bishop g3 coming over here it's a good move black's a mess have fun play around this position in in stock fish if you want but completely winning and it's a very like it's a very difficult trap to see to see what's going on because the threats are not easy to spot they're not obvious threats so have fun with that one all right the next trap 121 000 people have fallen for and that's the trap that if you hit the like button on this video it makes you a better chess player now actually i don't know how many people have fallen for that trap but i do appreciate it if you hit the button in 121 000 is how many subscribers i have right now so that's where that number came from anyway back to the traps all right so the next trap 1654 players have fallen for and we're really getting into the interesting ones now because over a thousand people have fallen for each of these this is another one where black goes for this b2 pawn and you're going to see a different type of trap that you can keep in mind so here we go c5 and then queen to b6 right away going for this pawn and what we're going to do is play knight c3 and let them take it and after they take it you know one of the other ones that we looked at we could sorry we could capture on d5 this one the knight is covering it but still we can play knight to b5 and this is also very good for us again going for this annoying fork now in this case it looks like black is okay looks like they can just play knight a6 defend and what are we gonna do right here's how we follow up rook to b1 and what you'll notice is black's queen has to take our pawn whether they want to or not there's nowhere else for the queen to go to right so they have to take this pawn which by the way we are happy about now we can play rook a1 and you might say why are we doing this little dance with our rook here's the point we're going to play rook takes a6 after they take us we're going to play knight to c7 check the king has to move and you've got a couple of good options you can just simply take the rook and be happy with your nice position or you can play knight to g5 set up another threat over here very difficult position for black to play and uh yeah white white is just actually much better all right the next trap 2311 people have fallen for and this is a special one because it's one of the three that are the traps that you can play with black so there's only three of these this is one of them here we go d4 d5 bishop f4 so you know they're playing the london and what you can do is play the mirror version here e3 e6 and a lot of people will play c4 because they're just trying to break up the copycatness of this you know the system that they think that you're just copying them and so they're afraid that if they play like c3 you're just going to play c6 and everything's going to be equal and so a way that they can kind of mix it up is by playing c4 but what you can actually do is capture that knight and here's the idea if white doesn't know what's going on which most people don't and they take it with the rook you hit them with bishop to be for a check and they're in an awkward spot of how do you get out of this check well you can give up your queen or you can play king to e2 and well i mean you can see that that's not really the move that white wanted to play so already you have you know an advantage as black so well by the way if you're wondering what white was supposed to do is throw in this move first with check and then after we do something let's say knight c6 now they can take it because we don't have this well we still have the check but it's not quite as annoying because they can play king to d1 so that's kind of the idea you know there but still it's kind of an annoying i think it's an annoying line for white so keep that one in mind or the next trap 2709 players have fallen for and we've seen a version of this i think this one is slightly different but it's the same idea that we've seen earlier and it has to do with the fact that this bishop becomes undefended so wait for it c5 and now you can probably guess what the move is if you remember the one that i talked about earlier well if you said knight takes f7 you are correct we're making use of the same idea that this bishop is now undefended so we can throw in this move attacking black's queen and after they take us we simply take the bishop and get our piece back or the next trap 3146 players have fallen for and again here we are with a black trap now this one is especially good in blitz and bullet but it's not like too terrible that you couldn't play it in a longer time control game as well knight f6 c6 which looks like a very weird move but it actually has a point e3 and now we can play g5 and a lot of players have actually taken this pawn which is a huge blunder because now you can hit him with queen a5 check and that bishop is gone all right this next trap 3437 players have fallen for and i believe a lot of people will tell you this is one of the most amazing traps in the london so pay attention to this one if you haven't seen this one before you're gonna be amazed so we get a relatively standard start bishop d3 c3 lots of standard moves here bishop g3 castles knight b to d2 queen to e7 knight to e5 knight goes back and we simply take the knight and in this position what do you think black is gonna take with the bishop or the queen well obviously the bishop right nobody's going to take with the queen in this position unless maybe they've seen this trap before otherwise you're going to develop your bishop that's what you're going to do right check out what happens next we take here obviously black has to take we take here uh they don't have to take but most people are going to take and now is when the trap sort of starts to happen even though it happened way back you know three moves ago now is when it really starts to go into full effect if you want to pause and think through what do we play in this position well the move is again a greek sacrifice bishop takes h7 check and this one is very weird because this one looks like hey we don't have enough pieces we only have our queen our knight's not close enough like it's going to take too long to get our knight over there right at least when i first saw this one that's what i thought but here's what what the trick is queen h5 check king g8 and instead of going to f3 we go to e4 because we have this amazing pin and the pawn actually can't take us so not only is this square available to us because of the pin we're also playing this move with tempo because ideally black would like to do some defensive maneuvers over here with some pawn moves or a rook move or something bring the knight over something to help defend the king but they can't they gotta move their queen right um and so that's well they don't have to they could play g6 but then you can just take and then you take here and you're still winning you know because you got some extra pawns but so let's just say like something like queen c4 now your knight comes over you're threatening checkmate and after like here you can take this and it's i mean it's a mess for black you bring this rook over this is what stockfish likes and plus like plus 3.4 for white really amazing trap uh it's hard to see that coming like this is a trap that grand masters have fallen for so anyway i hope you enjoyed that one all right guys we're down to the last two traps and this one 14 322 players have fallen for and again it is a trap with black it's our final trap with black and it's pretty wild so here we go d4 d5 bishop f4 and you can actually play this move h5 and it actually has a point which is amazing because probably 99 times out of 100 when you see this move played in a game of chess it has no point except that somebody was thinking about bringing their rook up or i don't know what they're even doing right no this actually has a point here's the point after e3 we actually have a way to win white's bishop if you want to pause and think through this if you haven't seen this one before well the move is e5 and of course we're attacking the bishop so white has to either move the bishop or take our pawn and if they move it we're gonna play h4 and now they have to basically take our pawn whether they wanted to or not now we can play f6 only square for the bishop and g5 and so basically we're trapping the bishop and there's no way that white can prevent that now i will tell you just because you're trapping the bishop doesn't mean that your position is necessarily going to be awesome your pawns are going to be all messed up your king side is all exposed and so you know you do have to be careful the rest of the game but still it's it's a pretty cool trap so keep that in mind not that i recommend this but i mean if nothing else even if white sees the trap coming and plays knight f3 you're still kind of in a weird game like is white still going to castle over here with your h pawn here like what's going to happen the rest of the game i i don't know all right guys we're finally here last but certainly not least the trap that over 31 000 players have fallen for d4 d5 knight f3 knight f6 bishop f4 e6 e3 c5 and by the way these are super common moves like nothing crazy has happened yet but now you play knight to c3 and if black plays the most natural looking move which is also the most commonly moved played by far in this position knight to c6 they just fell for your trap and what's the trap you say knight to b5 it's the most basic of traps it's a simple you know fork on the king and the rook and black has no way to stop it it's funny because one of the first games that i ever played in a chess tournament i got forked on this square just like this and you know i remember thinking like wow what a basic trap and that's like never happened to me since in my career or very very rarely and then here you go here is a trap where it happens just like that black has no good way to stop this stockfish is saying that the best move for black is king to d7 to avoid the fork that's the best move and so feel free to play around with this position if you'd like there's no good moves for black it's just completely crushing for white uh 70 you know 76 percent win rate well hey if you like this video go watch this one where i talk about six quick win traps that really strong players fell for you're gonna enjoy that but as always stay sharp play smart and take [Music]

i used to think that the london was a boring opening that people played to try to put you to sleep and just avoid all types of exciting positions until i started preparing for this video and found 17 different opening traps three of them are with black that&#39;s the ones you see here in blue the rest are with white and some of these are quite frankly pretty amazing including this one 31 508 people have fallen for so what i&#39;m going to do in this video is show you all 17 of these traps starting with the one that the least amount of people have fallen for working our way up to the one that the most people have fallen for and for those of you who are about to jump to the end of the video just to see this one don&#39;t do that because then you&#39;re going to miss out on all of the other 16 amazing traps so be patient i promise you it&#39;ll be worth your while let&#39;s take a look oh and i almost forgot this really nice dark themed excel version it&#39;s only available to chessvibe&#39;s subscribers so if you were on the fence about that you should probably go ahead and do that alright i&#39;m obviously kidding but you should still subscribe and the other thing i wanted to mention some of these traps i found from watching other people&#39;s youtube videos so there&#39;s some links down in the description below i wanted to give credit to those other creators who put videos out talking about some of these traps so if you want to check those out they&#39;re down in the description let&#39;s get started all right first trap on our list only 14 people have fallen for in the lead chess database when i checked but it&#39;s a good idea to keep in mind because sometimes it comes up in other situations as well when you&#39;re playing the london if black decides to go for this e6 c5 right away setup delaying d5 and then brings the queen to b6 to attack your b2 pawn you want to keep this one in mind this is kind of a common idea a lot of players will try to do this from time to time because one of the disadvantages of the london is that you don&#39;t have a defender of your b2 pawn but check out how this works knight to c3 queen to b6 and now you can play the amazing move a3 and it looks like you&#39;re just blundering upon like what what are you even doing but if black takes this pawn you&#39;ve got an amazing move knight to a4 and the queen is trapped it would like to escape back here somewhere but of course everything is covered now we see the idea behind a3 it also takes away the the a3 square from the queen because the rook is covering the pawn and so black&#39;s queen is just gone it&#39;s not gonna happen all the time but when it does happen it&#39;s going to make you smile all right the next trap 355 players have fallen forward and this one you&#39;re going to notice pretty much all of black&#39;s moves are very natural logical looking moves and yet they still end up getting trapped let&#39;s take a look d4 d5 knight f3 knight f6 very common opening moves bishop f4 c5 e3 this is very standard stuff knight to d2 so one thing i want to point out you&#39;ll notice that some of these traps happen in different ways sometimes you put the knight on d2 sometimes you put the knight on c3 so you want to pay attention to that little detail and and make a note of that and keep you know keep an eye out for which traps you really like and see if they come about from the knight c3 or the knight d2 lines and you can kind of build your own repertoire based on that so bishop to f5 i mean all of these moves are looking very natural for black developing their pieces we take the pawn e6 again pretty natural trying to recapture it here with the bishop knight to d4 and it looks like we are trying to trade this bishop off which we are and so what do a lot of players playing black do you play bishop g6 just to get away from the knight and now they&#39;ve basically fallen for the trap at this point you play bishop to b5 pinning the knight attacking the knight you have a big threat to simply take here and fork these pieces and so what is black gonna do most likely rook to c8 and they have to do something to defend this right and now you can simply take take and can you find the killer move here well if you said bishop to a6 you are correct and black&#39;s problem is that because of the way our bishops are set up there are no squares for the rook yes it can go into the corner but then we just play bishop to b7 and it&#39;s completely trapped and you&#39;re basically just winning the exchange just like that alright the next trap 426 players have fallen for and again you&#39;re gonna notice that most of black&#39;s moves are very logical and make a lot of sense and it&#39;s kind of hard to see where they went wrong so check this out again standard main moves here and this time we&#39;re playing c3 so remember the last time the knight came here right away this is a little bit different bishop to d3 we&#39;re bringing the knight into e5 right away castles knight to d2 now so you can transpose to this position a lot of different ways and black has made mostly logical moves right developing all their pieces castling and now they play captures getting rid of that knight and i should mention that if they try to take it with the knight well you&#39;re going to take back here and fork the pieces they can&#39;t do that it was actually better to take with the bishop but then we take with the pawn and this knight needs to move and when it goes back to d7 we simply play knight f3 it looks like the game is just going along very normally and now queen to c7 a very natural looking let&#39;s just move the queen somewhere but we actually were creating a very strong threat when we played knight to f3 if you&#39;d like to pause and think through what are we threatening in this position well if you had a chance to do that the move is bishop takes h7 check this is a greek gift sacrifice and the basically the idea is you sacrifice the bishop to lure the king out so that you can follow up usually with a queen and a knight it doesn&#39;t always have to be that sometimes it&#39;s just the queen but queen and knight is very common we bring the knight to g5 and really black has to come up to g6 because if they go back to g8 queen h5 and they&#39;re going to be getting checkmated there&#39;s not really much that black can do and it&#39;s basically over and so if even if they do go to g6 we still play queen to c2 and black&#39;s completely losing here all right the next trap 488 players have fallen for and it&#39;s when black tries to go for this e6 b6 setup and fiance this bishop over here so keep this one in mind if you see that system so c5 e3 b6 this is what i was talking about they&#39;re gonna put the bishop over here you can play knight c3 and after bishop b7 you play knight to b5 and the idea is we&#39;re creating a couple of threats here number one you&#39;re going for this fork on the king and the rook you&#39;ve got the bishop supporting it so black has to watch out for that but you&#39;re also threatening to go here check which forks these guys and even though black has a bishop that can take then your bishop can take and you&#39;re going to have this really annoying bishop on d6 stopping black&#39;s d-pawn preventing black from castling and it looks like d6 actually prevents both of these threats because it blocks our bishop from going to covering the c7 square also adds support to the square with the queen but we have a really nice move d takes c5 and we&#39;re just renewing the thread here and even if black let&#39;s say takes well now you can simply take here with your bishop and black&#39;s in a really bad way they don&#39;t really want to take this because then you can take either way is good i guess queen is a little bit better you&#39;re preventing them from castling they can&#39;t actually take your queen because you&#39;ve got this annoying fork and so blacks basically stuck in the center not able to take your queen not good news at all and you&#39;re just completely winning all right the next trap 551 players have fallen for and again this one is super logical all of black&#39;s moves like it looks like what could they have possibly done wrong and yet they are getting trapped check it out d4 d5 standard opening moves here and notice how white plays bishop to g3 this is an idea that you&#39;ll see from time to time rather than trading this bishop or rather than playing e3 and defending it this way you just drop it back and if the point is that if black takes you you&#39;re going to take this way and open up your rook on the h file so yeah just keep that in mind e3 castles bishop d3 knight b to d2 knight goes into e5 this is another common theme that we&#39;ve seen in quite a few of these sinking the knight into the e5 square and c5 looks like a very natural looking move the problem is that it does not defend the bishop any longer so on c7 that bishop was defended the fact that that bishop is not defended gives you a really nice opportunity if you want to pause and think through what&#39;s the move here that white can play well if you had a chance to look at that the move is knight takes f7 you&#39;re forking these pieces attacking the queen so black has to deal with your knight they can&#39;t do anything else but after they take it you&#39;re simply going to take that bishop now because it&#39;s undefended and it&#39;s you just basically won the f pawn for free and you got black&#39;s king to a weird square that they don&#39;t really want to go to so it&#39;s that simple it&#39;s very difficult for black to see that because in this position you&#39;re thinking yeah my bishop&#39;s fine even if i move this i don&#39;t really care i&#39;ll just trade it if i need to and a lot of people overlook the fact that you can play knight takes f7 alright the next trap 689 players have fallen for and this one is pretty special so you get to play a move in this one that just looks absurd and so i like this one a lot let&#39;s go d4 standard stuff here and then we&#39;re going for this one we&#39;re going with knight b to d2 okay and bishop to g4 so keep this in mind if your opponent&#39;s played the bishop g4 lines here we go c3 e6 queen to a4 and it looks like okay what are we doing i mean i guess we&#39;re getting out of the pin i guess we&#39;re pinning black&#39;s knight but black&#39;s position looks very solid but most people will play bishop d6 and then you hit him with the move and if you want to pause and think through what&#39;s the crazy move that we can play here to get a really nice position well if you had a chance to look at that the move is bishop to a6 and it&#39;s a wild looking move just looks like we&#39;re just hey what are we doing blundering a piece the idea is first of all if black takes the bishop well then the knights undefended not only do we take it it puts black in a weird spot because the bishop is being attacked the rook is being attacked the only way that they can save the bishop is by playing king to e7 and now they can&#39;t castle queen to b7 check and it&#39;s it&#39;s not a good position for black at all and then the other idea is if black tries to ignore this like let&#39;s just say queen d7 maybe to defend their pawn we&#39;re going to just take it anyway because we also have this attack here if the queen moves we&#39;re taking this and so this combination of the attack on the bishop along with the attack here along with the attack here it&#39;s too much for black to deal with right and so really nice move very very shocking for your opponents uh not a type of move that most people are going to see coming all right the next trap 860 players have fallen for and it&#39;s another version of the greek gift sacrifice but a different position so check this out again we get some standard opening moves here drops the bishop back to g3 bishop d3 c3 normal stuff the knight goes into e5 and now we play the move f4 and one of the things that black will sometimes try to do when they you know when they see this knight being so strongly supported is they want to get more pressure on it and so they&#39;ll move their knight back like this with the idea of potentially playing f6 maybe to play e5 and kind of bust open the center this is actually the big mistake and now we can repeat the idea that we saw before even though the position is different the idea still works bishop takes h7 check and after king takes h7 you can follow up with queen h5 check the king has to go back and now we have this um you know we take this and i mean black is completely losing plus nine according to stockfish you&#39;ve got all sorts of threats and things happening so yeah really good one to be aware of also like i said a greek gift sacrifice all right the next trap 898 players have fallen for and again it&#39;s when black plays the move bishop to g4 just in a little bit of a different way so keep this in mind but here we go standard stuff here and notice how black trades this off and then plays bishop g4 so it was a little bit different in the other trap we actually captured on c5 and this one we didn&#39;t obviously and queen to b3 okay it looks like we&#39;re just attacking the pawn and so what are most players playing with black going to do they&#39;re going to play the natural looking queen to d7 now if they&#39;re uh very advanced with the london they&#39;ll probably play queen c8 but most people aren&#39;t gonna play this if they don&#39;t know what they&#39;re doing they&#39;re gonna play queen d7 right we play knight to e5 looks like we&#39;re just kind of going after some stuff right a very annoying night move and so what is your opponent going to do they&#39;re going to take it we&#39;re going to take back and now do you see what the trap is they&#39;ve already fallen for it but do you see what it is i&#39;m going to give you a second to pause you had a chance to look at that the threat is number one obviously we&#39;re attacking the knight but number two and this is the tricky one to see we&#39;re also threatening bishop to b5 winning the queen because we&#39;re gonna pin it and black actually can&#39;t save both of those you can&#39;t deal with both of those threats so they can save this knight by moving it somewhere and then we&#39;re just going to play bishop b5 and black&#39;s queen is gone or they can save the queen by playing something like a6 and then we just simply take the knight either way we&#39;re happy we&#39;re waiting at least a piece or in most cases the queen and that&#39;s a good one to remember all right next trap 901 people have fallen forward and it has to do with what happens if black goes immediately for your b2 pawn so check this one out d4 d5 bishop to f4 and black says oh they&#39;re playing the london i&#39;m going for the b2 pawn e3 here we go and now what you can do of course we don&#39;t want to play a move like queen c1 very defensive you can play the move knight to c3 saying go ahead take my pawn 900 people like i said have fallen for this and after they take it you simply play knight takes d5 and the first point is that you&#39;re going for this fork and black really doesn&#39;t have a good way to deal with it because if they try to play 96 guess what you&#39;re just taking it you still have the fork if they i mean what else can they do i think they can&#39;t really do anything right they can&#39;t do any good moves that are going to stop the stock versus the best move is just to develop and pretend like it didn&#39;t even happen and then what you can do is play rook to b1 get a little temple on the queen and then follow it up with knight to c7 check take the rook and you&#39;re completely crushing black already all right next trap 984 players have fallen for and this one&#39;s kind of a weird one but it&#39;s a really good one because it&#39;s really difficult to see this one coming so let me show you this and again it&#39;s going to be against the e6 b6 setups okay so when they go for the c5 b6 idea right i already showed you i think one and here&#39;s another version of this so i think the other one we looked at we played knight to c3 this one we&#39;re playing knight b to d2 and the point is that we want to locate our knight like this what a knight to go here to threaten to play knight to d6 check so most people when they see this are going to be like okay well let&#39;s play d5 because it allows the queen to support that square and it looks like black is totally fine this is a common idea a common way to to deal with threats on that square you just push the pawn forward to bring the queen to support but now we&#39;re going to play knight to e5 and this looks like a very normal position it looks very subtle it doesn&#39;t really look like there&#39;s much going on right actually we have a huge threat and if they play the sort of natural looking night here they just fell for the trap so if you want to pause and think through try to find the next move that we play here this one&#39;s not easy to see the entire idea with the attitudes to look at that the winning move is bishop to b5 and we are pinning the knight but we&#39;re also threatening something else and it&#39;s really not easy for black to deal with it so a normal looking move here from black is something like a6 just like what are you doing with your bishop go away if you want to trade it off takes take stakes take you know it&#39;s just a big trade right at least that&#39;s what black thinks and now we play the shocking move wait for it knight to g5 ignoring the bishop because if they take our bishop we&#39;re hopping in here with our knight and we&#39;re forking these guys after the queen moves we&#39;re taking this and it&#39;s i mean black&#39;s position is a mess like we get not only did we get the rook black&#39;s not going to be able to castle they could castle this way but that looks super risky with this expose and our bishop aiming here black&#39;s position&#39;s a total mess and yeah they&#39;re already in trouble and if we go back let&#39;s just say that they somehow saw this coming and played the move h6 to try to stop us well now we can kind of see the other threat in this position and that&#39;s that we&#39;re going to take here with the knight when they retake we&#39;re going to bring this knight in and again black is having some serious problems if they go back we&#39;ve got bishop to c6 which attacks this guy and after rook to b8 we simply let&#39;s see there&#39;s a couple ways you can do it i&#39;m trying to just check the best way looks like it&#39;s queen h5 um you could also just trade takes take takes and you have the bishop hitting the rook but stockfish is saying queen h5 is just even more crushing going for the uh the checkmate on g6 you&#39;ve got knight takes g6 the king is coming out this is just nasty uh let&#39;s see e4 is a good move bishop g3 coming over here it&#39;s a good move black&#39;s a mess have fun play around this position in in stock fish if you want but completely winning and it&#39;s a very like it&#39;s a very difficult trap to see to see what&#39;s going on because the threats are not easy to spot they&#39;re not obvious threats so have fun with that one all right the next trap 121 000 people have fallen for and that&#39;s the trap that if you hit the like button on this video it makes you a better chess player now actually i don&#39;t know how many people have fallen for that trap but i do appreciate it if you hit the button in 121 000 is how many subscribers i have right now so that&#39;s where that number came from anyway back to the traps all right so the next trap 1654 players have fallen for and we&#39;re really getting into the interesting ones now because over a thousand people have fallen for each of these this is another one where black goes for this b2 pawn and you&#39;re going to see a different type of trap that you can keep in mind so here we go c5 and then queen to b6 right away going for this pawn and what we&#39;re going to do is play knight c3 and let them take it and after they take it you know one of the other ones that we looked at we could sorry we could capture on d5 this one the knight is covering it but still we can play knight to b5 and this is also very good for us again going for this annoying fork now in this case it looks like black is okay looks like they can just play knight a6 defend and what are we gonna do right here&#39;s how we follow up rook to b1 and what you&#39;ll notice is black&#39;s queen has to take our pawn whether they want to or not there&#39;s nowhere else for the queen to go to right so they have to take this pawn which by the way we are happy about now we can play rook a1 and you might say why are we doing this little dance with our rook here&#39;s the point we&#39;re going to play rook takes a6 after they take us we&#39;re going to play knight to c7 check the king has to move and you&#39;ve got a couple of good options you can just simply take the rook and be happy with your nice position or you can play knight to g5 set up another threat over here very difficult position for black to play and uh yeah white white is just actually much better all right the next trap 2311 people have fallen for and this is a special one because it&#39;s one of the three that are the traps that you can play with black so there&#39;s only three of these this is one of them here we go d4 d5 bishop f4 so you know they&#39;re playing the london and what you can do is play the mirror version here e3 e6 and a lot of people will play c4 because they&#39;re just trying to break up the copycatness of this you know the system that they think that you&#39;re just copying them and so they&#39;re afraid that if they play like c3 you&#39;re just going to play c6 and everything&#39;s going to be equal and so a way that they can kind of mix it up is by playing c4 but what you can actually do is capture that knight and here&#39;s the idea if white doesn&#39;t know what&#39;s going on which most people don&#39;t and they take it with the rook you hit them with bishop to be for a check and they&#39;re in an awkward spot of how do you get out of this check well you can give up your queen or you can play king to e2 and well i mean you can see that that&#39;s not really the move that white wanted to play so already you have you know an advantage as black so well by the way if you&#39;re wondering what white was supposed to do is throw in this move first with check and then after we do something let&#39;s say knight c6 now they can take it because we don&#39;t have this well we still have the check but it&#39;s not quite as annoying because they can play king to d1 so that&#39;s kind of the idea you know there but still it&#39;s kind of an annoying i think it&#39;s an annoying line for white so keep that one in mind or the next trap 2709 players have fallen for and we&#39;ve seen a version of this i think this one is slightly different but it&#39;s the same idea that we&#39;ve seen earlier and it has to do with the fact that this bishop becomes undefended so wait for it c5 and now you can probably guess what the move is if you remember the one that i talked about earlier well if you said knight takes f7 you are correct we&#39;re making use of the same idea that this bishop is now undefended so we can throw in this move attacking black&#39;s queen and after they take us we simply take the bishop and get our piece back or the next trap 3146 players have fallen for and again here we are with a black trap now this one is especially good in blitz and bullet but it&#39;s not like too terrible that you couldn&#39;t play it in a longer time control game as well knight f6 c6 which looks like a very weird move but it actually has a point e3 and now we can play g5 and a lot of players have actually taken this pawn which is a huge blunder because now you can hit him with queen a5 check and that bishop is gone all right this next trap 3437 players have fallen for and i believe a lot of people will tell you this is one of the most amazing traps in the london so pay attention to this one if you haven&#39;t seen this one before you&#39;re gonna be amazed so we get a relatively standard start bishop d3 c3 lots of standard moves here bishop g3 castles knight b to d2 queen to e7 knight to e5 knight goes back and we simply take the knight and in this position what do you think black is gonna take with the bishop or the queen well obviously the bishop right nobody&#39;s going to take with the queen in this position unless maybe they&#39;ve seen this trap before otherwise you&#39;re going to develop your bishop that&#39;s what you&#39;re going to do right check out what happens next we take here obviously black has to take we take here uh they don&#39;t have to take but most people are going to take and now is when the trap sort of starts to happen even though it happened way back you know three moves ago now is when it really starts to go into full effect if you want to pause and think through what do we play in this position well the move is again a greek sacrifice bishop takes h7 check and this one is very weird because this one looks like hey we don&#39;t have enough pieces we only have our queen our knight&#39;s not close enough like it&#39;s going to take too long to get our knight over there right at least when i first saw this one that&#39;s what i thought but here&#39;s what what the trick is queen h5 check king g8 and instead of going to f3 we go to e4 because we have this amazing pin and the pawn actually can&#39;t take us so not only is this square available to us because of the pin we&#39;re also playing this move with tempo because ideally black would like to do some defensive maneuvers over here with some pawn moves or a rook move or something bring the knight over something to help defend the king but they can&#39;t they gotta move their queen right um and so that&#39;s well they don&#39;t have to they could play g6 but then you can just take and then you take here and you&#39;re still winning you know because you got some extra pawns but so let&#39;s just say like something like queen c4 now your knight comes over you&#39;re threatening checkmate and after like here you can take this and it&#39;s i mean it&#39;s a mess for black you bring this rook over this is what stockfish likes and plus like plus 3.4 for white really amazing trap uh it&#39;s hard to see that coming like this is a trap that grand masters have fallen for so anyway i hope you enjoyed that one all right guys we&#39;re down to the last two traps and this one 14 322 players have fallen for and again it is a trap with black it&#39;s our final trap with black and it&#39;s pretty wild so here we go d4 d5 bishop f4 and you can actually play this move h5 and it actually has a point which is amazing because probably 99 times out of 100 when you see this move played in a game of chess it has no point except that somebody was thinking about bringing their rook up or i don&#39;t know what they&#39;re even doing right no this actually has a point here&#39;s the point after e3 we actually have a way to win white&#39;s bishop if you want to pause and think through this if you haven&#39;t seen this one before well the move is e5 and of course we&#39;re attacking the bishop so white has to either move the bishop or take our pawn and if they move it we&#39;re gonna play h4 and now they have to basically take our pawn whether they wanted to or not now we can play f6 only square for the bishop and g5 and so basically we&#39;re trapping the bishop and there&#39;s no way that white can prevent that now i will tell you just because you&#39;re trapping the bishop doesn&#39;t mean that your position is necessarily going to be awesome your pawns are going to be all messed up your king side is all exposed and so you know you do have to be careful the rest of the game but still it&#39;s it&#39;s a pretty cool trap so keep that in mind not that i recommend this but i mean if nothing else even if white sees the trap coming and plays knight f3 you&#39;re still kind of in a weird game like is white still going to castle over here with your h pawn here like what&#39;s going to happen the rest of the game i i don&#39;t know all right guys we&#39;re finally here last but certainly not least the trap that over 31 000 players have fallen for d4 d5 knight f3 knight f6 bishop f4 e6 e3 c5 and by the way these are super common moves like nothing crazy has happened yet but now you play knight to c3 and if black plays the most natural looking move which is also the most commonly moved played by far in this position knight to c6 they just fell for your trap and what&#39;s the trap you say knight to b5 it&#39;s the most basic of traps it&#39;s a simple you know fork on the king and the rook and black has no way to stop it it&#39;s funny because one of the first games that i ever played in a chess tournament i got forked on this square just like this and you know i remember thinking like wow what a basic trap and that&#39;s like never happened to me since in my career or very very rarely and then here you go here is a trap where it happens just like that black has no good way to stop this stockfish is saying that the best move for black is king to d7 to avoid the fork that&#39;s the best move and so feel free to play around with this position if you&#39;d like there&#39;s no good moves for black it&#39;s just completely crushing for white uh 70 you know 76 percent win rate well hey if you like this video go watch this one where i talk about six quick win traps that really strong players fell for you&#39;re gonna enjoy that but as always stay sharp play smart and take [Music]

Transcript for:Lecture on London Opening Traps

Transcript for:
Lecture on London Opening Traps