welcome everybody to another gotham chess
openings video in this one i'm going to show you how to beat one of black's most famous
defenses the sicilian with just one pawn push now that might sound a little bit clickbaity but i
promise you once you discover what's in this video you will see what i mean so as always i've
split it into the theory we will show you how to play the opening specifically and i've
also put the moves in the description for you to copy paste into any pgn reader you'd like
or any sort of other software and then i'm going to take on two of my subscribers in actual
live action games time stamps on the video player let's just jump right into it so we begin with
e4 uh if you're a d4 player sorry it's time to convert uh and black has to play c5 because that's
what the sicilian defense is now why this opening is so useful well black plays e5 and c5 probably
80 of the time like if you're an e4 player you're gonna face one of these two things uh unless
you're like in a tournament of gotham subscribers then you're going to get a you know kara khan a
scandinavian and there's a lot of ways to play the sicilian there's ways to avoid d4 like knight
c3 g3 bishop g2 that's called the closed sicilian we are going to play c3 so we're not gonna play
knight f3 and d4 we are going to try to play c3 and put a second pawn in the center so the two and
only two moves in this position for black that are any good are immediately striking back with d5 and
immediately striking this pawn with knight to f6 now i would say and i don't know you guys can tell
me in the comments your experience after you know you play this opening i would be willing to
bet very few people below the rating of about 1400 if i had to just throw out a number are going
to consistently play this against you if you're like 1100 there's a much higher chance people just
go here because they play the dragon sicilian or they're just gonna go d6 and against everything
that's not that like for example knight c6 d4 takes takes like black has to play d5
because if black does not if black plays like g6 you can lose that knight right away d5 and if
the knight goes to the middle you just trap it in fact ludwig beat moist critical just like
this recently in pogchamps so f4 attacks tonight and the knight is just gone and i mean you know
you're gonna get other games where something like this happens and this is still considered
the best move but for example if you know if black plays like d6 and you go here well
now this is less good you don't want to do that because they just take you but you just develop
knight c3 and white is already a lot better this is not what a sicilian player wants their
goal was not to give you two center pawns maybe even a third you know like you want to get real
aggressive and then prepare e5 knight f3 bishop d3 bishop e3 remember the name of this video is how
to crush people right so crush them don't you know don't play all passively like go attack them right
that is supposed to give you the confidence right so if they don't play one of those two moves you
put your second pawn in the center you put the knights out you put the bishops out you you get
in you attack with your center pawns and life is good but what happens if they do strike back so
we're gonna start with d5 you take this bad boy you just take it and now they take back with the
queen now at this point your game plan is actually very simple first things first you're going to
play knight f3 so you cannot really play knight c3 you can't eat your own pawn even if you could bad
move so you're gonna play knight f3 i don't know how they're going to develop you will see later
because i'm actually recording this part after i already played my subscribers because sorcery
but then i can edit this part first uh you're gonna see that you know in general black will
probably put the knights out and pin you that's probably what you're going to get the most um your
setup will involve a bishop on e2 more more likely than not because it's just easy to stop this
pin and this knight is going to jump out to a3 this is a more modern way to play this and then
your knight might try to sneak into b5 and to c7 or your knight is going to go to c4 or c2 and then
to e3 also we delay the move d4 we we delay this move in this variation okay cool sounds good
so it might look like this we play knight a3 they play knight c6 and we play
bishop to c4 this is the one version we can actually play the bishop to c4 and then if
queen goes back to d8 for example we can castle and here it's already very dangerous for black you
say how's it dangerous i just pin your knight i say well you just lost the game queen b3 oops and
now there's this and there's this you take on f3 i play check king d7 and uh i'm destroying you so
be very careful if black doesn't play quickly with bishop g4 and you can play night out bishop out
hitting the queen and then castle it can be very dangerous and if black gets a little bit you know
too hasty knight g5 bye bye that's why it's useful to also know the fried liver that f7 pawn is very
vulnerable the black play z6 well that's good for us because now black's bishop is stuck now we can
play knight c2 and d4 when we prepare that move d4 and just so you all know in many positions you're
going to end up with a 3 on 2 abc versus a b considering that both of you are going to castle
short that is called a queenside pawn majority in all end games that's going to be an advantage for
white why because uh you're you have more likely a chance to promote a pawn on that side of the board
you just have three on two and yes they have four on three here but your king is there and generally
most of the game is gonna be played on that side the most challenging way to play this uh
and you'll see this uh later is you know if they play bishop g4 and you play bishop
to e2 and then they just develop like this knight two a3 is a perfectly good move they might
play knight c6 uh and there's a couple of ways to play this so first of all you can just castle and
then black really decides what to do like again black might play e6 that's actually exactly how
my game looked i played h3 bishop h5 and then went for d4 there's another way to play this without
going for d4 you can play some very tricky move like queen a4 the idea of queen a4 is to rotate
this knight to e3 from where it hits the queen and the bishop that's like the whole idea here
is your queen hits this and you know black also has to be very careful not to lock away their
queen what i mean by that is let's say you play knight b5 attacking c7 and black plays bishop d6
thinking like this you have c4 oops the queen is actually stuck like the queen needs to get out and
in many situations the queen will go back in fact you'll see later my opponent does that so there's
a little trick in these positions with the move d4 uh the point is that when they take you don't
take back yet you play knight b5 you threaten to go there they go back and then you take okay this
is the transformation of position that you want bishop takes queen takes knight takes and knight
takes and we've got that three on two and for example just as a to show you how you would play
this you can develop the bishop out to f4 let's say black castles and now you're like now you're
like well now what i mean now what indeed rook d1 b3 c4 put that queen on the long diagonal rook c1
play chess try to expand on this side and remember this is if black survives the land mine of the
opening so that's one way and i already showed you the other way which is you don't have to play
for d4 you can play like queen a4 or knight c2 trying to go to e3 for example if they take take
and then they drop battle that's a very different story now we have a bishop so we can play like
you know g3 and bring the bishop back and delay the move d4 and ultimately we will play it but
with some preparation so that's how d5 works in general an opponent that's not too prepared
with a queen out like this can really succumb to pressure as i already showed you
if they don't play this bishop g4 idea and by the way just in case anyone's
confused why this doesn't win a piece uh they just go back okay i don't just
in case you were watching it like levy does not just hang a piece it doesn't now i should
show you about knight f6 personally i think knight f6 is more fun because i think it's much more of a
land mine people play knight f6 either by accident because they like just play it and they're like
oh it attacks the pawn and if there then i take or they play this because they have a little bit
of preparation like they have a book or they have a course but we're going to throw that out the
window so first things first you have to push you have to attack the knight and now the knight
has to go here because if it goes here you trap it and you tell your opponent they're stupid or
don't do that because you'll probably get muted on it on a chess website but and don't
blame it on me just tell them it was a tell them eric rosen told you to do that okay so
knight to d5 and now d4 right away is generally the best move just now you you just play this
right away so black will probably take uh because to be honest they really can't do much else uh
if they play knight c6 here you you can already just overwhelm them in the center of the board
uh by taking and then their knight is hanging and then you can play like you know if
they try to go like here you can play c4 it's just a mess i mean you know you finish
your development that it's just bad chaos okay they're going to take on d4 you are not going
to take back you're going to play knight f3 and in fact you can pre-move knight f3 when
you play d4 uh maybe maybe not because they might play here but like who's gonna play that
pre-move this move because then they're gonna be like oh they're so bad and then you're gonna
take their knight on a very elementary level and on a more advanced level at this point
uh you're just developing a piece and you're making you're asking them a question so
black can play a few different moves here uh more often you're than not you will
get knight c6 uh black might play d6 also and black might also play uh you know like
e6 just e6 and d6 so black can play e6 d6 rather than knight c6 if they do that the position
might look something like this so for example d6 you will go bishop to c4 this is a very common
move they might rotate back and when they rotate back we'll look at that but for now if they
just keep their knight in the middle like this what i recommend is taking back on d4 keeping this
pressure and so for instance knight c6 castles bishop e7 and now very important maneuver
you're never taking queen e2 why queen e2 because you want to play rook d1 you
want to have that pressure on the d-file you're not worried about that trade that trade
just activates your rook and then later what you'll do is you want to prepare knight c3 and to
prepare knight c3 you're gonna play bishop d2 and you say levy why am i not taking on d5 not worth
it uh well at least it's not worth to do this if you play rook takes black can play like
knight b4 for example now they're attacking your rook your bishop and they're threatening
to trap your other rook so be very careful not developing your queen side in these lines it's
much more about restricting the enemy play you could wait a moment and play knight c3 that's
very that's a very different story and generally if you get a position like this and you win that
pawn you're probably just going to win the game because at the intermediate and beginner
level just having a pawn doesn't like upon disadvantage but active play for compensation
is just not enough pawn is a pawn uh so white is going to have the advantage black is like oh
i'm down a pawn but i got all these active pieces yeah at the grand master level that means
something below that it doesn't really mean that much you're just down a pawn so the other thing
after knight f3 like if they don't attack your center if they play knight c6 and you're gonna see
this in the practice game later we have bishop c4 okay the difference in all of these lines
when they drop the knight back to b6 is that we go here and we just pause it for
a moment now at this point black has one and only one way to try to equalize and
it's pushing the d pawn and wherever they go we're gonna take it you say how can we take
it on basant if you don't know what that means you probably shouldn't be studying theory in a
sicilian video but it's a rule of chess so we take they have to take with the queen that's the best
move if they take with the pawn ugly doubled pawns probably just snap that keep that three on
two right keep that three on two then castle but queen d6 this has been played thousands
of times and now i'm giving you grandmaster level preparation castles at this point black
cannot take i mean black can't take but it's extremely dangerous black's best move is bishop
to e6 played by many grandmasters and at this point you go back to playing the move knight
to a3 uh one line that i just want to show you here which is completely insane and if you get it
you are either playing a cheater as i always say uh or you're playing someone who has the openings
database right next to them and they're just looking at it or you're playing a grandmaster in
disguise so the prep here goes pawn takes queen to e2 moving the queen out of the way because you
don't want to queen trade knight to b5 so you don't take either of these two pieces you hit
the queen queen's got only one move back here now you take the bishop and then after e6 you play
the move g3 because you're trying to go bishop f4 and then knight g5 the point of knight
g5 is that you want to go bang and bang or you want to go queen h5 and queen f7 now
ladies and gentlemen at this point black's only move to not lose is the computer move c2
which i i mean like i said if you get this then god bless your opponent but how do you
memorize 15 moves of theory that seems insane you don't have to if you're stronger you can
like i said i put the moves in the description that line might straight up just win you the game
this is very dangerous for black this variation knight c6 bishop c4 and when they play d5 or d6
you take and you castle there's a lot of things that black can do we only looked at bishop e6
if they take on c3 there's a really aggressive move here knight g5 trying to go bishop takes
f7 check even if they take our queen bishop f7 and then rook takes is going to be a check
so black has to go uh e6 here and now we play queen h5 again and we're just going for it and if
they kick us out we drop back so there's a lot of different attacking ideas here for white in all
these variations that's why i said this one is my favorite because i think that this is a landmine
of an opening for your opponent to walk through and these are the lines that you incorporate uh
and you should be well on your way to victory that was about 15 minutes of theory now the way
you study this is you put the moves into some sort of reader or on a physical board and
you play through it you know the two best moves for black are d5 and knight f6 study the
moves there the most that you need to memorize play it out with a computer play different
moves build your experience go play some games see what works and what doesn't what you're
getting played against you more than anything else learn those lines and you'll be crushing the
sicilian defense let's play some subscribers one is rated about 1100 blitz and then the next
one is rated uh 1500 actually the second one is my chair literally well not literally because
that would be oh and let me just turn on it's funny i was recording another video
and i didn't have highlight last move on so uh not literally it's a person so c3 um now my
subscribers let me know ahead of time what they were going to play normally your opponents
will not do that but i basically just didn't want them to be playing the exact same variation
so this subscriber said that they were going to play d5 uh the next one will be playing knight
f6 although like i said in the earlier part i'm not really sure how frequently you're going to get
that now as i also said in the uh earlier part um this variation is kind of dangerous because you
have your queen out and okay so the opponent's just flying off with moves here bishop g4 is of
course a move uh trying to pressure the knight we put our bishop on e2 and now one way i really like
to play this position was is with the knight to a3 as you saw first of all when the bishop comes
out to g4 uh you can play knight c four and then knight to e3 and that will just get you the
bishop pair there are also some positions where you can play knight b5 so a lot of people
here just castle because it's available this subscriber seems to just be playing e6
and being solid now this particular variation i'm just gonna throw in the move h3 i don't
actually know if my opponent wants to take my knight if they do that i'm very happy
just get this bit okay so far very solid play let's go knight b5 we're trying to get into
c7 we already know that bishop d6 is a mistake because bishop c4 and uh
maybe there's bishop f3 there there's definitely c4 and i don't even have to
get involved so for example bishop d6 to cover that uh there is c4 okay opponent just drops back
perfectly reasonable move uh now i'm thinking to just go d4 maybe d3 but i'm i'm just gonna go
d4 uh a6 i think is actually the best move now but my opponent does that which is very standard
i'm even thinking bishop f4 but uh let's not do anything insane let's play knight d4 roping
opening up this as well there it is uh knight tastes sh should i can i i probably shouldn't
let's just take back on d4 and as i said in the earlier part we get this three on two so worst
comes to worst and oh my opponent blunders a piece ah well that's one thing that's uh
and by the way i did have bishop to b5 there pinning the queen to the king
but then bishop takes d1 so don't forget so bishop takes h5 my opponent ended up
forgetting and now i can bring back the bishop uh and i have a i have a piece up i mean
it's not really what i wanted but ultimately you know it kind of shows you that maybe
at 1100 my opponent by the way is uh 1400 rapid rated players so definitely not
like you know i'm not like a like a boxer all right i didn't cherry-pick an opponent that
i knew i was gonna beat uh let me just take that i guess to be honest if it was like cherry-picking
i if it was not cherry-picking you might make the argument what you could have played against the
grand master yeah but i'm trying to teach y'all i'm not trying to you know get y'all to be
gms or something oh man i have no more water i really want water so i'm just going to develop
now that we have the extra piece uh maybe a4 a5 to try to get at that bishop to kind of kick it
off of this diagonal it is pretty powerful here bishop takes b7 is a free pawn because
ultimately the rook will have to move also bishop e3 just simply trading the
bishop completely is reasonable it damages my structure ever so slightly like my f2 pawn
will then go to e3 but that's life you know that's okay opponent is uh is thinking here oh
no bishop takes rook it it kind of went downhill when they blundered and and and that's you know
that's to be expected that's to be expected but uh it shows you you know the the trickiness and the
power of the opening and then obviously we will uh we will analyze this in a second let me also
ping the next person that they are going to play so h6 like i said a5 and then probably will just
double stack on the d file at the same time i can also play a6 but i have to be careful because a6
will open up the rook so i'll probably play knight c5 by the way just small bit of information it's
good to realize that sometimes when you have a fort uh you can't actually get out like sometimes
we forget that just because we've made that little fort for our king our back rank is not protected
okay this is easy we're just gonna take that i'm just gonna try to simplify now with my extra
rook we'll get into the back rank activate this rook maybe defend everything with the three pawns
i'm gonna play knight a6 now it's the easiest just jump in there hit both not not difficult
to defend but i'm not really worried about you know whether or not my opponent can defend
ultimately i have a rook up in an end game which uh you should win just make
sure your back rank is covered i guess i'll go rook b6 trying to just win this
pawn and then i'm just going to promote here now i know that my next subscriber is going to
play knight f6 i am uh i am looking forward to that let's go rook c1 so now i've got this
covered and i and i and i put my rook as a jetpack booster okay there it is c4 and i'm
just gonna roll these pawns down the board now credit to my opponent for actually playing a
pretty challenging and obscure move order in the opening it's i've got to double check
that line with the very early bishop g4 and maybe i was supposed to play it slightly
differently i feel like i did play it the right way but i don't think it should have of
course there was a blunder but such as life now we push this pawn and ultimately uh we will
kind of extract that rook from the back there it's it's okay opponent does this now the easiest
thing to do is to cut the king off check and mate so just ladder mate super seamless uh let me
just oh i don't have it i don't have chat enabled i have to turn it off but before i play uh the
next one i'm just gonna quickly review here okay knight a3 it is also of course possible to
just play d4 be very direct rather than playing this knight a3 but of course that kind of goes
back to something that we already know so i played knight a3 knight c6 i played castles
e6 okay h3 bishop h5 and i'm very curious knight b5 okay so knight b5 is incorrect
actually d4 first is better because when i played knight b5 queen d7 d4 my opponent
could have played a6 right exactly that's what i said so a6 there would have forced me back it's
actually better to start with uh d4 immediately uh cd4 and knight b5 hits this and then i will you
know come in and and take okay so small move order mistake there uh on my part but for the most part
after that relatively seamless and we know that this position is always a little bit more pleasant
for white because white just puts a rook on this line you know a bishop and then just kind of
expands on the queen side puts the queen active or b3 c4 bishop b2 and like like that a little
bit and with this bishop on the long range but ultimately my opponent blundered and that's
life you know okay gotham chess levy's chair no clue what to expect here we go e4 now my chair is
rated a 1600 blitz doesn't play a lot of rapid so there we go knight to f6 uh of course e5 i mean
it's this is this is considered the main line my subscribers told me they were
going to play like this against me uh which i mean i'm gonna go d4
now so cd4 uh and then knight to f3 and we know that of course taking loses the
knight the best move here for black is knight c6 my opponent i don't know will they go knight c6
or will they move one of the pawns i feel like it's a little bit more human okay all right
i like it very nice uh now bishop c4 as we know from from earlier hitting the knight now
black can go e6 i should have double checked e6 um yeah knight b6 is significantly more common
at the top level uh at lower level e6 does get played and now you know it might be
very practical for you to just take just take and then castle as i said in the intro
because now black has tripled pawns this is really unpleasant like it's just really unpleasant that
there's no way to sugarcoat it uh black has to really know what they're doing here and it's
really not easy to play a position like this because it's it's it's kind of a fine balance
you have to strike between trying to take and sort of break out of this and uh kind of accept
your your your worst structure so i'm just gonna take back and my opponents really got no way
out here i mean these pawns will be taken uh they've got to develop
bishop to e7 right exactly good my chair is doing a good job so bishop f4 or
knight takes d5 anticipating that d6 is on the way probably so i'm going to take with the knight just
to have a little bit more pressure on that bishop and make sure that d6 is unplayable so
i'm going to play bishop to f4 so now d6 can't be played because i'm going to take the
bishop which removes the guard of the pawn okay next is going to be bringing the queen up now
at this point my opponent obviously realizes d6 is impossible so i anticipate b6 bishop
b7 or even bishop a6 oh chair blunders oh no that was the whole idea there trying to prevent
that and now ed6 and now now now we are just we're in cruise control because okay the bishop is
hit we just back up this pawn is forever guarded now forever uh yeah bishop g4 is of course not an
unexpected move uh i can move my queen out of the pin in a variety of ways i don't know which one is
better i kind of like this one a bit more active maybe queen b3 was better i don't know but my
idea is that if my opponent were to take i want to take with the queen i don't want to take with
the pawn so i'm gonna go queen d5 which is out of the pin but still defending that's why all the
moves that i wanted to play maintain that vision um now i'm not sure i mean i can throw an h3 i
don't really want to trade these like the knights opposite colored bishops and all that could be a
little bit more draw so i'm going to just move my knight out of the way and maybe even drop it into
c6 like i said i mean once my opponent loses that pawn it's a past protected pawn too it's it's bad
news and now this bishop also doesn't have any squares except d7 so if opponent goes okay right
so just retreats voluntarily i'm going to activate my rook now i have the entire length of that board
i didn't go knight c6 because i mean i can play that move in the future now we are going to do
something very instructive you have rooks facing each other on the same straightaway or on the same
file you don't really want to be the one taking unless you have to you would love to just move the
rook up and keep the pressure and make them take you and in this case i have this and this with a
little bit of stockpiling so if my opponent does take i move even closer to promotion and i'm still
protected and that pressure is still kind of up up at the same time i also have h4h5 in the
future okay rook to e8 uh h4 actually can just be taken right now so i'm not gonna do
that uh maybe i go here do i have knight c6 knight c6 now looks very annoying it looks like
bishop takes his force than i take with the queen yeah that doesn't look pleasant in the
slightest so i've now ex i've removed the knight from the defense of the position
uh sorry i've removed the bishop from the defense of the position this knight can't
move anywhere i mean it's it's dominated and uh uh right now i think i'm threatening
d7 which is just straight up a fork of rooks couldn't play it last move because the bishop was
still there and the bishop was attacking my queen if rook takes i have pawn takes it's just this
bad news for the chair sorry chair sorry can we give some credit to chair though uh cheers cheers
have been a supporter of the channel since 2018 so super og trying to get into college right now
or maybe already committed to a good school but smart kid strong chess player uh and now
i think i i mean it's my chair and i got to be nice to it but the last bit is to
activate this rook and try to get to d8 queen takes rook and now rook d8 should win
it let me just double check queen takes here rook d8 king f8 bishop d6 ouch i'm gonna go
here wow wow and now rook d8 and the craziest thing is that this is actually protected
so this is bad but my threat is to take and if i take too quickly they go here but i
have a move here causing absolute paralysis and that's brutal because now you can't even move
the knight you had to spend that move defending and this is just over wow what a finish we
just kind of paralyzed black completely the threat right now is to just make the queen it's
actually not even to take it's to make the queen because now there's this pin if a move like f6
we take with check they take we take the queen and then we promote so this pawn ultimately the
hero the whole hero i mean the pawns making it all the way to the other side of the board
uh and promoting to uh to a queen wow that was very nice um that was that that was all the
prep that there was i mean literally that was um i did say that here you know we know that knight
b6 bishop b3 is a line it keeps that tension it makes black play d6 or d5 because we just
know that e6 is a little bit of a passive move um and when you play it like this early it's
actually not even best to take it's not considered best like there are ways for black to equalize but
they are so difficult to play if you're unprepared i mean objectively you know we know that we
can take like this and then black has to go d6 for example uh and we'll castle and
then we'll play queen e2 and everything but um yeah what ends up happening in this
game is my opponent just develops without that pawn break and by the time they're ready
to play it they're completely dominated so nice example here of two games in practice mode
of exactly what you do i mean you you transition from opening into that easy free-flowing middle
game and even if they play the two best moves which are knight f6 and d5 we get very playable
positions so people oh my god i was editing this video and in the original recording
right at this moment i took back like this and when i was analyzing this game afterward
levy's chair told me i missed mate i just had mate did you guys catch that did you guys
catch that during the live game oh my god i feel so embarrassed i showed you all how to
get a really good position from the opening and then and then i didn't play checkmate i just
took back see even i can learn from my own videos anyway let's go to the outro hope you enjoyed
the video uh incorporate this into your opening repertoire uh crush that sicilian defense and make
sure that if you are a new member new viewer i've got plenty of other playlists like this definitely
go check that out and i'll see you in the next one