The Ponziani Opening

ladies and gentlemen in this video I am super excited to share with you a very easy to learn easy to practice and very tricky and potentially dangerous opening weapon that you can add to your toolbox that opening is known as the ponziani I am going to split this video into three parts first part I will show you the moves on the big board and all the moves are in the description if you want to play with them on any chess website and then I have two practice games that I played against my subscribers this opening is so so common and you will get it almost all the time if you are playing especially if you are around 1200 and Below but it works far beyond that trust me so we're going to be playing the ponziani opening uh you have the white pieces uh you are rated 3 500 in a grand master or maybe not because if you are then why are you listening to me and you're gonna open up the game with E4 now your opponent's gonna play E5 which is the most common move and you are going to play Knight to F3 now if you're ever if you're watching this and you're like my opponent doesn't play they didn't play this they didn't play that that's where you fill in the gaps on your own I cannot give you a full repertoire with the white pieces almost no video can do that but you have to add bits and pieces as you go along so we're gonna play Knight F3 opponent's gonna play Knight C6 this is the most common position that occurs after two moves in chess and now you're going to play the move C3 why what is the idea of the move C3 the idea of the move C3 is to sacrifice the natural developing Square for your knight and build for a big Pawn Center in and of itself that is the idea now the best move for black in this position is immediately striking the center with the move Pawn to D5 that move is like 50 to 60 percent less common than the next three or four moves the most common move in this position is Knight to F6 the second most common move in this position is Bishop C5 which is a horrible move and at all levels it is the second most popular move because you just played D4 this move makes no sense because you get a massive Center you get two active Pawns in the center and very quickly you can start shoving your opponent's pieces backwards finishing your development and castling your king the two Pawn ponziani Center maybe also spelled p-a-w-n ponziani is so vicious and the crazy thing is so many people play Bishop C5 and you're just gonna get this monster Center it doesn't really matter what like does black doesn't have to give you the check but I can go here folks look at this position you're already winning after like seven moves you attack the Knight you take you damage your opponent's structure you got two massive pawns on the center D5 is on the way Bishop C4 and queen B3 are on the way so many people are gonna play Bishop C5 and boom D4 you're already like much better if not winning crazy and the same can be said of a move like D6 D6 same exact thing and there's even a nice little trap here which is if your opponent does this you play H3 and the point is that if they ever take this Pawn you have attack on the Knight moves Queen A4 is a fork and that fork happens in a lot of places for example remember a few moves ago Bishop before Knight C3 Knight F6 look D6 oh check boom hit the king hit the bishop this is very very common in the ponziani it'll happen to you in many many of your games the second best move is the move Knight to F6 you will play D4 anyway and now black has a choice between which Pawn to capture taking this Pawn is a little bit dangerous because now you are going to play D5 and then you're gonna take this Pawn back so the Knight moves Knight takes E5 I'm allergic to how bad Black's position is Knight takes E5 and in this position there is another vicious trap so your idea here if you're playing with white develop Queen F3 hit the Knight hit mate there's a nasty trap in this position after the move D6 now you might think oh Gotham Queen A4 you just showed this to me no it's even worse than that in this position you play Bishop B5 check and there is no way for your opponent to get anything in the way here A variation might go C6 Pawn takes pawn and if they do this you have check and you're just clearing out the position and making a new Queen if they do this which I have seen or Pawn takes you have Knight takes Pawn takes and you're gonna be picking up which of these two pieces is better to capture you can take the Rook but taking a knight for nothing is even better and you are completely winning and last but not least you have one of the most disgusting tactics I have ever seen and probably you have ever seen either so if you've made it about four or five minutes in this video watch this queen B6 is a threat on your bishop and a thread of mate and in this position you will play Pawn takes discover check if your opponent takes you take the rook and make a queen but if they don't if they don't be very careful hear you play Knight takes F7 check the black king cannot move and now you play Pawn takes and you make a knight aren't you glad you clicked on this video if you take a rook promote to a knight and Fork a king in a queen you officially don't need to win another chess game for the rest of your life for three lifetimes that's it you you solve chess I mean you win your opponent moves you take this you go on to win the game some of you would still find a way to lose this game with white but you know while that is impressive that is something that we're going to try to avoid folks this is such a vicious trap in such a vicious opening Bishop B5 is game over completely game over so many people have fallen for this trap at so many levels the first ever ponziani game that I played was a Blitz game against a 2800 rated International master I'm not going to expose that person because fide might rescind their title of international master of that after that game and this is exactly what they fell for the first ever game I played a Blitz game against the 2800. and if that happens I don't even know what to tell you like I really my You're Gonna Catch so many people with this stuff and there are other lines of course like they can take like this and if Pawn takes D4 you're not gonna take back you're gonna shove the pawn forward attacking the Knight most commonly they play Knight to D5 I like Queen B3 and I like setting up like this oops like this on the diagonal but you can also Play Bishop C4 and then sliding back and doing this this is kind of more Gambit style trying to give up a pawn in general if you can get your pawns like this in the ponziani like that tight formation the second black allows themselves to get overwhelmed the game is over just absolutely over no questions asked and if they try to build a wedge that's fine you develop make sure to Castle and this will be Rock Solid if you keep those pawns together black is going to have a very difficult time trying to get rid of you um now there is also this move Queen E7 and it looks like here you can block the pin with Queen E2 you can't do that because there is a really ridiculous deflection move this is all included in the moves but you just do this and if they try to Target your Pawn you have to remember to move Bishop to B5 pinning the Knight to the king so sometimes you do have to remember an exact move if you just play it off you know random memory you might not remember you might get a terrible position uh but D4 is the most natural move and then you have to know what to do with this and what to do with this the best move against the ponziani is the move D5 and there are some very tricky lines here I really like Queen A4 and the idea is to pin the Knight to the king uh and if they take you do this and now you're threatening to capture here if Bishop D7 very simple grab the bishop take the pawn with check and you are just one Pawn up and uh you have the bishop pair and you have a plus two Advantage according to stockfish I had this in a title Tuesday game against like a 2500 rated player and there are other lines uh the best line is F6 that's a ridiculous looking move but and I've put these moves for you in the description this should be five putting pressure uh you can capture attack the center Castle do a little bit more work on this line on your own but uh very very aggressive stuff here the computer is gonna bounce back to equality very quickly it's just on a low depth don't be scared uh you might not even know what low depth means there's other lines Queen A4 Bishop D7 for example blocking the pin is an accidental loss of a pawn it's actually considered okay by stockfish but I think a lot of your opponents are going to blunder this and completely panic but this is also in the description you just bring the Knight back something like this and even here there's a very nasty trap where you can play check and sacrifice your queen and get the queen back and then get the bishop back and you're just doing well um D5 is the best move but it's the fourth most common so I think what you're far more likely to face is Knight F6 and Bishop C5 uh you have to know your D5 lines and in my opinion the ponziani is so slept on I mean get rid of that Italian get rid of the Rue Lopez this is such a fun opening to play and if you know your lines you're gonna vaporize people absolutely vaporize people hope you enjoyed this little intro let's check out these two games so I'm gonna be playing some Blitz Games the first one here is against uh Walter White hopefully not the actual one is that the one from the show so we have e45 and it's gonna be a Blitz game but obviously you can play rapid I just like to include these to speed up the video a little bit I'm gonna play Knight F3 and all my opponents know uh and I selected folks specifically who are going to play Knight F3 and Knight C6 and now I'm going for the ponziani my opponent doesn't know this opening is coming I just asked the two volunteers to observe I asked the second volunteer to observe this game and choose a different line so now the next person will not play Knight F6 just so we get some variety Knight F6 is a very natural move and it's probably the one you're gonna face the most their opponent takes and now we have to remember to go here this is a supernatural night jump this is the best move and if we take back like this the move D6 is possible and then we have Bishop to B5 uh I'm gonna see if my opponent how familiar they are uh with the position because obviously now now they really do have to play D6 uh they have to start cracking up my Center if they don't yeah right so if they play like that I can play this queen B3 thing that I showed in the intro this specific move order is a little bit odd I have to say um Bishop C4 is probably also fine uh I don't know I mean I'm trying to play something that I think will be useful for any level of Chess I will play Bishop C4 that check is important to look at with the bishop and the King under attack but then of course yeah so now we just come here this is not like a fortunate move it's just a byproduct of having a decent position uh and uh this is actually good resistance now the move Knight B6 is uh definitely playable I mean uh yeah and now I actually have some difficulties not like a huge difficulty but if I move my Bishop then my opponent can take my Pawn so this is one of the risks you run of of kind of putting your pieces out like this I think what I will do now is I will just simply attack my opponent's Queen I mean generally if a queen is that far in your territory it can be a target for your for your pieces but already we have a very very interesting game and this is kind of it's not something you can really prepare yourself for it's very easy to make mistakes so that's why it's good to build up your experience in the ponziani uh you're not always going to blow everybody off the board uh but uh this is uh you know this is a good start all right Queen A5 so that's still pinned if we play B4 my opponent can just take my Bishop is hanging so I need to do something about it or maybe not maybe I don't have to do anything about it uh maybe I can just Castle and so what I like about the ponziani is in in many cases you'll get that strong Pawn chain in the center and people are very baddest up until like 15 1600 they're very bad at understanding Pawn Dynamics and like when they should push how they should attack pawns and they're very kind of capture happy so my opponent might just play this move because they can but then I'm gonna take attacking the queen and then I'm gonna try to shove my second Pawn forward and if I can get two pawns like that on the fifth rank it's game over as I showed you in the intro okay my opponent doesn't take uh good for them that's actually pretty smart I'm still maybe looking at the possibility of this move um I'm anticipating that castles will happen uh at some point in the future maybe I drop my Bishop back to D3 so it can no longer be captured and I'm setting up bad intentions for when my opponent goes that way with the King will it happen have no idea honestly I have absolutely no idea uh and uh maybe in that last position I had Knight B3 I can like try to play around with trying to trap the queen with Rook B1 and B4 as well uh Queen E4 is a okay move but I I think I can continue to try to bully the queen a little bit like Bishop E4 Knight G5 um yeah I think I'm gonna do that now the queen has to go there it's just very unpleasant the whole position and for black it feels like um maybe I'm gonna put my rook in the middle now so if the if the center of ever opens up I'm ready uh Bishop H7 doesn't quite work that would be nice uh but it doesn't work yet Knight B3 looks nice also bringing my knight over that way looks very nice this opens up my Bishop so I can get my pieces over to that side I can always bring my Bishop back the immediate threat right now that just wins the game is Pawn to D5 because now my queen sees the d-pawn and can help escort it up the board and the good thing for me is that if my opponent ever plays the move D5 I don't actually have to take on poisson I mean oh oh that is very unpleasant yeah D5 and that is a queen blunder and all because I got my pieces connected my pawns connected literally and this is one of the ways you can win in the ponziani is you can get your pieces connected like that and it it's it's it's very difficult to deal with Knight C4 is not a bad move but unfortunately the attack is Swift and uh brutal it's very brutal and this is again like up to a certain level in chess if your opponents don't know how to deal with a lack of space they have no chance against you so I just want to quickly analyze this game it's another one of the reasons that I like to uh I like to play Blitz is I I can do a little bit of time analyzing Queen E7 is definitely a nice move it's nice that my opponent caught that move despite maybe never facing this before uh and as we discussed in the intro you know Queen E2 is not an unreasonable move to play if you don't know what you're doing but then D3 is a very unfortunate situation and you lose your Pawn so you have to know what you're doing here with Pawn takes D4 D6 and now this is very important Bishop B5 otherwise you can get caught otherwise your opening can can totally backfire I took back my opponent played Knight D5 um I played Bishop C4 it's not the most accurate move uh but here it was important for me to attack the queen I castled which is one of the better moves Bishop B7 and uh it turns out according to the computer I could have been a bit more aggressive I decided to come back which I thought was a little bit more human and rookie won and um yeah this idea to play D5 and it wasn't a perfect game but all I did was keep my Center together Castle kind of take the center uh with my pawns and and that led to a relatively straightforward Victory so uh I'm gonna play one more game now all right game two um now you may see that it says zero one that's because we recorded a game where my subscriber played a very strange third move uh in uh in the ponziani and I actually asked them to do a redo now you might say that I I just lost the game fair and square but after I played C3 uh in the first game uh my subscriber played B6 and I kind of was like all right look I basically asked the second person not to play the same move as the first person but that's a little bit on that's not really how chess works so maybe they were like well I can't play Knight F6 I have to do something else they played and I was like listen play D5 the best move right so we need a game where the best move is played uh and and there it is um B6 is not like a horrible mistake but I I did want to play a game that was a little bit more practical and since I asked to redo I ended up resigning so here we are I lost to a 1600. D5 now we know Queen A4 hitting the Knight and some people here might play Bishop D7 by accident as I told you in the intro because even though it's the best move it's actually really a blunder if you don't know that you have this situation so you have to be very well prepared to know this whole sequence and it loses you a pawn Knight F6 is actually not uh it's not a crazy move Knight F6 um to play it now it's not like uh it's not a complete mistake we will take on E5 I I never really want to take here because the queen comes out so we're gonna take on E5 and that attacks tonight that could freak a few people out but actually just taking here is completely fine for black because after Knight takes Pawn takes we're never actually winning the rook in the corner in fact we can even get pinned in some situations which is sort of funny uh but yeah 95 is obviously the idea the night is pinned and my opponent does take now before I do this I could probably do this now but I always like to add a level of pressure now there are very big problems for black to solve uh and my opponent does it this way so now Knight D7 or Knight C6 this is probably the way to go right Knight takes C6 now the queen is under attack it's definitely better to take with the pawn here that's a mistake and it's a mistake because my opponent now cannot block with the queen so they block with the Knight but now I'm up two Pawns and two pawns if Queen E7 I still wasn't able to take the Rook but this is just a totally winning position uh and I take the center I put my queen there and now I mean you still have to win a game of chess up two pawns easier said than done but uh that's that's sort of the objective now Bishop F4 there is rookie eight which is potentially unpleasant so uh and there's also like various ways to blunder a Checkmate if you're not careful so I'm just going to develop my my queen but uh if you just stay calm uh you you really should not lose this structure is Rock Solid Knight C4 is coming there's still a way to lose here C5 takes Bishop H2 discover check maybe you blundered that and then your your queen gets hit so be very very careful finish up your development don't do anything too crazy protect your king uh I think for simplicity's sake I'm actually just gonna go for the bishop I would rather Leave myself with a bishop versus a knight I want to remove this long range weapon there is also no Greek gift here kind of looks like there might be with Knight G4 and queen H4 there isn't because my queen can always slide over to help and the bishop can come out and cover the defensive Square on H2 so we are two pawns up we will analyze this game as well uh because obviously you're first of all you're 100 getting games that look like this game uh 100 uh they will happen but um you have to know how to convert them and you also have to know what exactly to play if the opponent doesn't play exactly the same eight moves like on move seven they do something different on move six they do something different yes I already talked about this uh a Greek gift only works if made is Unstoppable at the end we actually can just go back and we can stop mate here by playing the move Queen H3 and that's uh that's it um actually what's even worse now is black has to trade the Queens because if black doesn't trade the Queens we will take the Knight Legos here we will take the queen so Queen H3 Queen F2 looks like it could be made I just wrote back so yeah I mean when folks are down materials sometimes they like to get aggressive and uh it happens I always tell every subscriber that playing me might be stressful but uh don't worry like if you lose to me it's it's not the worst thing in the world and it's actually in the long run it's uh it's good for Humanity you are helping uh you are helping people in the long run so Queen takes Pawn takes the Knight comes back and now you just have to convert this position I mean I might go here it would be great if my opponent allowed that if they don't then I will just move my Bishop but I also want to connect my Rooks on the previous move I couldn't do this so now Bishop G5 we're gonna play rookie one and we we're just like looking to trade everything basically Knight E3 less pieces my opponent has on the board the better you have to keep an eye on the open files uh okay I can trade and I can come back and now I will try to trade the next Rook because there's no thread here so that's actually just a guaranteed Rook trade and the less pieces my opponent has the better you know what I mean um you can bring your king here you can continue to try to go for trades I'm gonna offer a night trade this is definitely the best move uh will my opponent find the fork nice good for them nice little comeback here all right yeah so now I want to play like principal chess okay I want to stop just kind of you know only going for exchanges my king comes to the center it's an end game so Pawn play is very important you want to not allow any outside pass pawns you still can go for trades uh and then you want to build behind the pawn so we're pushing that pawn forward like this we're gonna try to clear the the pieces out and now D6 now the Pawn's very very close to becoming a queen so what you can do here is you can remove the Knight somehow you can get the Knight down there and get a trade you don't want to lose your Pawn obviously so your Pawn is defended uh how can we do that um you can also continue to take space and just remove opportunities from your opponent like Knight E5 now it's okay to lose a pawn because the pawn is going to promote so now that the Knight has been removed I will play D7 on the next move I also will just take the Knight I I don't care if the king is in front of it uh fine that's fine but now since the king cannot take anything I will walk in and anytime you run your king deep and you want to take you want to make sure that the pawn can't promote otherwise you're gonna allow something like F4 and uh you've got to make sure that you can stop the pawn otherwise you're actually gonna accidentally lose the game the king takes and just be careful be careful see it's never too late to blunder all of a sudden you're pushing and you lose your bishop and uh you have to make sure you can stop the pawn you can push your H Pawn here uh or you can uh you can just go escort your DNE Pawns and my opponent resigns that was that was a nice instructive game that was a very nice instructive game I do appreciate the game uh Knight F6 happening on the fourth move is also a thing Pawn takes E4 um Bishop B5 I like very much uh Bishop C4 is actually also a decent move here which attacks the F7 pawn and um it's it's the best move uh because after Bishop E6 um you have to now not take the bishop but rather now you take the Knight and you get this funny situation where the reason we're not taking right away is because we're not actually going to be able to win The Rook but by deflecting the bishop first this way and then taking now this is a totally different story but you still don't take first you do this and then you take it's very very tricky I mean I I felt like I I played Bishop B5 and it's kind of like the natural approach but here my opponent should have taken with the pawn why because when I do this they don't have to take they can like move their Rook or play here uh and then uh and then it's just a complex game I mean then it's like castles castles I take they take I might take the pawn it might take like this and the game goes on so uh uh I I mean I don't think that was that was that was kind of like clear at all you know what I mean like in 95 I played in the game Bishop B5 but my opponent took with the bishop and unfortunately when you take with the bishop this is the situation you find yourself in but that's the trick of the ponziani um I hope you enjoyed these two games I've put the moves in the description from the intro and um yeah enjoy the ponziani opening now get out of here

ladies and gentlemen in this video I am super excited to share with you a very easy to learn easy to practice and very tricky and potentially dangerous opening weapon that you can add to your toolbox that opening is known as the ponziani I am going to split this video into three parts first part I will show you the moves on the big board and all the moves are in the description if you want to play with them on any chess website and then I have two practice games that I played against my subscribers this opening is so so common and you will get it almost all the time if you are playing especially if you are around 1200 and Below but it works far beyond that trust me so we&#39;re going to be playing the ponziani opening uh you have the white pieces uh you are rated 3 500 in a grand master or maybe not because if you are then why are you listening to me and you&#39;re gonna open up the game with E4 now your opponent&#39;s gonna play E5 which is the most common move and you are going to play Knight to F3 now if you&#39;re ever if you&#39;re watching this and you&#39;re like my opponent doesn&#39;t play they didn&#39;t play this they didn&#39;t play that that&#39;s where you fill in the gaps on your own I cannot give you a full repertoire with the white pieces almost no video can do that but you have to add bits and pieces as you go along so we&#39;re gonna play Knight F3 opponent&#39;s gonna play Knight C6 this is the most common position that occurs after two moves in chess and now you&#39;re going to play the move C3 why what is the idea of the move C3 the idea of the move C3 is to sacrifice the natural developing Square for your knight and build for a big Pawn Center in and of itself that is the idea now the best move for black in this position is immediately striking the center with the move Pawn to D5 that move is like 50 to 60 percent less common than the next three or four moves the most common move in this position is Knight to F6 the second most common move in this position is Bishop C5 which is a horrible move and at all levels it is the second most popular move because you just played D4 this move makes no sense because you get a massive Center you get two active Pawns in the center and very quickly you can start shoving your opponent&#39;s pieces backwards finishing your development and castling your king the two Pawn ponziani Center maybe also spelled p-a-w-n ponziani is so vicious and the crazy thing is so many people play Bishop C5 and you&#39;re just gonna get this monster Center it doesn&#39;t really matter what like does black doesn&#39;t have to give you the check but I can go here folks look at this position you&#39;re already winning after like seven moves you attack the Knight you take you damage your opponent&#39;s structure you got two massive pawns on the center D5 is on the way Bishop C4 and queen B3 are on the way so many people are gonna play Bishop C5 and boom D4 you&#39;re already like much better if not winning crazy and the same can be said of a move like D6 D6 same exact thing and there&#39;s even a nice little trap here which is if your opponent does this you play H3 and the point is that if they ever take this Pawn you have attack on the Knight moves Queen A4 is a fork and that fork happens in a lot of places for example remember a few moves ago Bishop before Knight C3 Knight F6 look D6 oh check boom hit the king hit the bishop this is very very common in the ponziani it&#39;ll happen to you in many many of your games the second best move is the move Knight to F6 you will play D4 anyway and now black has a choice between which Pawn to capture taking this Pawn is a little bit dangerous because now you are going to play D5 and then you&#39;re gonna take this Pawn back so the Knight moves Knight takes E5 I&#39;m allergic to how bad Black&#39;s position is Knight takes E5 and in this position there is another vicious trap so your idea here if you&#39;re playing with white develop Queen F3 hit the Knight hit mate there&#39;s a nasty trap in this position after the move D6 now you might think oh Gotham Queen A4 you just showed this to me no it&#39;s even worse than that in this position you play Bishop B5 check and there is no way for your opponent to get anything in the way here A variation might go C6 Pawn takes pawn and if they do this you have check and you&#39;re just clearing out the position and making a new Queen if they do this which I have seen or Pawn takes you have Knight takes Pawn takes and you&#39;re gonna be picking up which of these two pieces is better to capture you can take the Rook but taking a knight for nothing is even better and you are completely winning and last but not least you have one of the most disgusting tactics I have ever seen and probably you have ever seen either so if you&#39;ve made it about four or five minutes in this video watch this queen B6 is a threat on your bishop and a thread of mate and in this position you will play Pawn takes discover check if your opponent takes you take the rook and make a queen but if they don&#39;t if they don&#39;t be very careful hear you play Knight takes F7 check the black king cannot move and now you play Pawn takes and you make a knight aren&#39;t you glad you clicked on this video if you take a rook promote to a knight and Fork a king in a queen you officially don&#39;t need to win another chess game for the rest of your life for three lifetimes that&#39;s it you you solve chess I mean you win your opponent moves you take this you go on to win the game some of you would still find a way to lose this game with white but you know while that is impressive that is something that we&#39;re going to try to avoid folks this is such a vicious trap in such a vicious opening Bishop B5 is game over completely game over so many people have fallen for this trap at so many levels the first ever ponziani game that I played was a Blitz game against a 2800 rated International master I&#39;m not going to expose that person because fide might rescind their title of international master of that after that game and this is exactly what they fell for the first ever game I played a Blitz game against the 2800. and if that happens I don&#39;t even know what to tell you like I really my You&#39;re Gonna Catch so many people with this stuff and there are other lines of course like they can take like this and if Pawn takes D4 you&#39;re not gonna take back you&#39;re gonna shove the pawn forward attacking the Knight most commonly they play Knight to D5 I like Queen B3 and I like setting up like this oops like this on the diagonal but you can also Play Bishop C4 and then sliding back and doing this this is kind of more Gambit style trying to give up a pawn in general if you can get your pawns like this in the ponziani like that tight formation the second black allows themselves to get overwhelmed the game is over just absolutely over no questions asked and if they try to build a wedge that&#39;s fine you develop make sure to Castle and this will be Rock Solid if you keep those pawns together black is going to have a very difficult time trying to get rid of you um now there is also this move Queen E7 and it looks like here you can block the pin with Queen E2 you can&#39;t do that because there is a really ridiculous deflection move this is all included in the moves but you just do this and if they try to Target your Pawn you have to remember to move Bishop to B5 pinning the Knight to the king so sometimes you do have to remember an exact move if you just play it off you know random memory you might not remember you might get a terrible position uh but D4 is the most natural move and then you have to know what to do with this and what to do with this the best move against the ponziani is the move D5 and there are some very tricky lines here I really like Queen A4 and the idea is to pin the Knight to the king uh and if they take you do this and now you&#39;re threatening to capture here if Bishop D7 very simple grab the bishop take the pawn with check and you are just one Pawn up and uh you have the bishop pair and you have a plus two Advantage according to stockfish I had this in a title Tuesday game against like a 2500 rated player and there are other lines uh the best line is F6 that&#39;s a ridiculous looking move but and I&#39;ve put these moves for you in the description this should be five putting pressure uh you can capture attack the center Castle do a little bit more work on this line on your own but uh very very aggressive stuff here the computer is gonna bounce back to equality very quickly it&#39;s just on a low depth don&#39;t be scared uh you might not even know what low depth means there&#39;s other lines Queen A4 Bishop D7 for example blocking the pin is an accidental loss of a pawn it&#39;s actually considered okay by stockfish but I think a lot of your opponents are going to blunder this and completely panic but this is also in the description you just bring the Knight back something like this and even here there&#39;s a very nasty trap where you can play check and sacrifice your queen and get the queen back and then get the bishop back and you&#39;re just doing well um D5 is the best move but it&#39;s the fourth most common so I think what you&#39;re far more likely to face is Knight F6 and Bishop C5 uh you have to know your D5 lines and in my opinion the ponziani is so slept on I mean get rid of that Italian get rid of the Rue Lopez this is such a fun opening to play and if you know your lines you&#39;re gonna vaporize people absolutely vaporize people hope you enjoyed this little intro let&#39;s check out these two games so I&#39;m gonna be playing some Blitz Games the first one here is against uh Walter White hopefully not the actual one is that the one from the show so we have e45 and it&#39;s gonna be a Blitz game but obviously you can play rapid I just like to include these to speed up the video a little bit I&#39;m gonna play Knight F3 and all my opponents know uh and I selected folks specifically who are going to play Knight F3 and Knight C6 and now I&#39;m going for the ponziani my opponent doesn&#39;t know this opening is coming I just asked the two volunteers to observe I asked the second volunteer to observe this game and choose a different line so now the next person will not play Knight F6 just so we get some variety Knight F6 is a very natural move and it&#39;s probably the one you&#39;re gonna face the most their opponent takes and now we have to remember to go here this is a supernatural night jump this is the best move and if we take back like this the move D6 is possible and then we have Bishop to B5 uh I&#39;m gonna see if my opponent how familiar they are uh with the position because obviously now now they really do have to play D6 uh they have to start cracking up my Center if they don&#39;t yeah right so if they play like that I can play this queen B3 thing that I showed in the intro this specific move order is a little bit odd I have to say um Bishop C4 is probably also fine uh I don&#39;t know I mean I&#39;m trying to play something that I think will be useful for any level of Chess I will play Bishop C4 that check is important to look at with the bishop and the King under attack but then of course yeah so now we just come here this is not like a fortunate move it&#39;s just a byproduct of having a decent position uh and uh this is actually good resistance now the move Knight B6 is uh definitely playable I mean uh yeah and now I actually have some difficulties not like a huge difficulty but if I move my Bishop then my opponent can take my Pawn so this is one of the risks you run of of kind of putting your pieces out like this I think what I will do now is I will just simply attack my opponent&#39;s Queen I mean generally if a queen is that far in your territory it can be a target for your for your pieces but already we have a very very interesting game and this is kind of it&#39;s not something you can really prepare yourself for it&#39;s very easy to make mistakes so that&#39;s why it&#39;s good to build up your experience in the ponziani uh you&#39;re not always going to blow everybody off the board uh but uh this is uh you know this is a good start all right Queen A5 so that&#39;s still pinned if we play B4 my opponent can just take my Bishop is hanging so I need to do something about it or maybe not maybe I don&#39;t have to do anything about it uh maybe I can just Castle and so what I like about the ponziani is in in many cases you&#39;ll get that strong Pawn chain in the center and people are very baddest up until like 15 1600 they&#39;re very bad at understanding Pawn Dynamics and like when they should push how they should attack pawns and they&#39;re very kind of capture happy so my opponent might just play this move because they can but then I&#39;m gonna take attacking the queen and then I&#39;m gonna try to shove my second Pawn forward and if I can get two pawns like that on the fifth rank it&#39;s game over as I showed you in the intro okay my opponent doesn&#39;t take uh good for them that&#39;s actually pretty smart I&#39;m still maybe looking at the possibility of this move um I&#39;m anticipating that castles will happen uh at some point in the future maybe I drop my Bishop back to D3 so it can no longer be captured and I&#39;m setting up bad intentions for when my opponent goes that way with the King will it happen have no idea honestly I have absolutely no idea uh and uh maybe in that last position I had Knight B3 I can like try to play around with trying to trap the queen with Rook B1 and B4 as well uh Queen E4 is a okay move but I I think I can continue to try to bully the queen a little bit like Bishop E4 Knight G5 um yeah I think I&#39;m gonna do that now the queen has to go there it&#39;s just very unpleasant the whole position and for black it feels like um maybe I&#39;m gonna put my rook in the middle now so if the if the center of ever opens up I&#39;m ready uh Bishop H7 doesn&#39;t quite work that would be nice uh but it doesn&#39;t work yet Knight B3 looks nice also bringing my knight over that way looks very nice this opens up my Bishop so I can get my pieces over to that side I can always bring my Bishop back the immediate threat right now that just wins the game is Pawn to D5 because now my queen sees the d-pawn and can help escort it up the board and the good thing for me is that if my opponent ever plays the move D5 I don&#39;t actually have to take on poisson I mean oh oh that is very unpleasant yeah D5 and that is a queen blunder and all because I got my pieces connected my pawns connected literally and this is one of the ways you can win in the ponziani is you can get your pieces connected like that and it it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s very difficult to deal with Knight C4 is not a bad move but unfortunately the attack is Swift and uh brutal it&#39;s very brutal and this is again like up to a certain level in chess if your opponents don&#39;t know how to deal with a lack of space they have no chance against you so I just want to quickly analyze this game it&#39;s another one of the reasons that I like to uh I like to play Blitz is I I can do a little bit of time analyzing Queen E7 is definitely a nice move it&#39;s nice that my opponent caught that move despite maybe never facing this before uh and as we discussed in the intro you know Queen E2 is not an unreasonable move to play if you don&#39;t know what you&#39;re doing but then D3 is a very unfortunate situation and you lose your Pawn so you have to know what you&#39;re doing here with Pawn takes D4 D6 and now this is very important Bishop B5 otherwise you can get caught otherwise your opening can can totally backfire I took back my opponent played Knight D5 um I played Bishop C4 it&#39;s not the most accurate move uh but here it was important for me to attack the queen I castled which is one of the better moves Bishop B7 and uh it turns out according to the computer I could have been a bit more aggressive I decided to come back which I thought was a little bit more human and rookie won and um yeah this idea to play D5 and it wasn&#39;t a perfect game but all I did was keep my Center together Castle kind of take the center uh with my pawns and and that led to a relatively straightforward Victory so uh I&#39;m gonna play one more game now all right game two um now you may see that it says zero one that&#39;s because we recorded a game where my subscriber played a very strange third move uh in uh in the ponziani and I actually asked them to do a redo now you might say that I I just lost the game fair and square but after I played C3 uh in the first game uh my subscriber played B6 and I kind of was like all right look I basically asked the second person not to play the same move as the first person but that&#39;s a little bit on that&#39;s not really how chess works so maybe they were like well I can&#39;t play Knight F6 I have to do something else they played and I was like listen play D5 the best move right so we need a game where the best move is played uh and and there it is um B6 is not like a horrible mistake but I I did want to play a game that was a little bit more practical and since I asked to redo I ended up resigning so here we are I lost to a 1600. D5 now we know Queen A4 hitting the Knight and some people here might play Bishop D7 by accident as I told you in the intro because even though it&#39;s the best move it&#39;s actually really a blunder if you don&#39;t know that you have this situation so you have to be very well prepared to know this whole sequence and it loses you a pawn Knight F6 is actually not uh it&#39;s not a crazy move Knight F6 um to play it now it&#39;s not like uh it&#39;s not a complete mistake we will take on E5 I I never really want to take here because the queen comes out so we&#39;re gonna take on E5 and that attacks tonight that could freak a few people out but actually just taking here is completely fine for black because after Knight takes Pawn takes we&#39;re never actually winning the rook in the corner in fact we can even get pinned in some situations which is sort of funny uh but yeah 95 is obviously the idea the night is pinned and my opponent does take now before I do this I could probably do this now but I always like to add a level of pressure now there are very big problems for black to solve uh and my opponent does it this way so now Knight D7 or Knight C6 this is probably the way to go right Knight takes C6 now the queen is under attack it&#39;s definitely better to take with the pawn here that&#39;s a mistake and it&#39;s a mistake because my opponent now cannot block with the queen so they block with the Knight but now I&#39;m up two Pawns and two pawns if Queen E7 I still wasn&#39;t able to take the Rook but this is just a totally winning position uh and I take the center I put my queen there and now I mean you still have to win a game of chess up two pawns easier said than done but uh that&#39;s that&#39;s sort of the objective now Bishop F4 there is rookie eight which is potentially unpleasant so uh and there&#39;s also like various ways to blunder a Checkmate if you&#39;re not careful so I&#39;m just going to develop my my queen but uh if you just stay calm uh you you really should not lose this structure is Rock Solid Knight C4 is coming there&#39;s still a way to lose here C5 takes Bishop H2 discover check maybe you blundered that and then your your queen gets hit so be very very careful finish up your development don&#39;t do anything too crazy protect your king uh I think for simplicity&#39;s sake I&#39;m actually just gonna go for the bishop I would rather Leave myself with a bishop versus a knight I want to remove this long range weapon there is also no Greek gift here kind of looks like there might be with Knight G4 and queen H4 there isn&#39;t because my queen can always slide over to help and the bishop can come out and cover the defensive Square on H2 so we are two pawns up we will analyze this game as well uh because obviously you&#39;re first of all you&#39;re 100 getting games that look like this game uh 100 uh they will happen but um you have to know how to convert them and you also have to know what exactly to play if the opponent doesn&#39;t play exactly the same eight moves like on move seven they do something different on move six they do something different yes I already talked about this uh a Greek gift only works if made is Unstoppable at the end we actually can just go back and we can stop mate here by playing the move Queen H3 and that&#39;s uh that&#39;s it um actually what&#39;s even worse now is black has to trade the Queens because if black doesn&#39;t trade the Queens we will take the Knight Legos here we will take the queen so Queen H3 Queen F2 looks like it could be made I just wrote back so yeah I mean when folks are down materials sometimes they like to get aggressive and uh it happens I always tell every subscriber that playing me might be stressful but uh don&#39;t worry like if you lose to me it&#39;s it&#39;s not the worst thing in the world and it&#39;s actually in the long run it&#39;s uh it&#39;s good for Humanity you are helping uh you are helping people in the long run so Queen takes Pawn takes the Knight comes back and now you just have to convert this position I mean I might go here it would be great if my opponent allowed that if they don&#39;t then I will just move my Bishop but I also want to connect my Rooks on the previous move I couldn&#39;t do this so now Bishop G5 we&#39;re gonna play rookie one and we we&#39;re just like looking to trade everything basically Knight E3 less pieces my opponent has on the board the better you have to keep an eye on the open files uh okay I can trade and I can come back and now I will try to trade the next Rook because there&#39;s no thread here so that&#39;s actually just a guaranteed Rook trade and the less pieces my opponent has the better you know what I mean um you can bring your king here you can continue to try to go for trades I&#39;m gonna offer a night trade this is definitely the best move uh will my opponent find the fork nice good for them nice little comeback here all right yeah so now I want to play like principal chess okay I want to stop just kind of you know only going for exchanges my king comes to the center it&#39;s an end game so Pawn play is very important you want to not allow any outside pass pawns you still can go for trades uh and then you want to build behind the pawn so we&#39;re pushing that pawn forward like this we&#39;re gonna try to clear the the pieces out and now D6 now the Pawn&#39;s very very close to becoming a queen so what you can do here is you can remove the Knight somehow you can get the Knight down there and get a trade you don&#39;t want to lose your Pawn obviously so your Pawn is defended uh how can we do that um you can also continue to take space and just remove opportunities from your opponent like Knight E5 now it&#39;s okay to lose a pawn because the pawn is going to promote so now that the Knight has been removed I will play D7 on the next move I also will just take the Knight I I don&#39;t care if the king is in front of it uh fine that&#39;s fine but now since the king cannot take anything I will walk in and anytime you run your king deep and you want to take you want to make sure that the pawn can&#39;t promote otherwise you&#39;re gonna allow something like F4 and uh you&#39;ve got to make sure that you can stop the pawn otherwise you&#39;re actually gonna accidentally lose the game the king takes and just be careful be careful see it&#39;s never too late to blunder all of a sudden you&#39;re pushing and you lose your bishop and uh you have to make sure you can stop the pawn you can push your H Pawn here uh or you can uh you can just go escort your DNE Pawns and my opponent resigns that was that was a nice instructive game that was a very nice instructive game I do appreciate the game uh Knight F6 happening on the fourth move is also a thing Pawn takes E4 um Bishop B5 I like very much uh Bishop C4 is actually also a decent move here which attacks the F7 pawn and um it&#39;s it&#39;s the best move uh because after Bishop E6 um you have to now not take the bishop but rather now you take the Knight and you get this funny situation where the reason we&#39;re not taking right away is because we&#39;re not actually going to be able to win The Rook but by deflecting the bishop first this way and then taking now this is a totally different story but you still don&#39;t take first you do this and then you take it&#39;s very very tricky I mean I I felt like I I played Bishop B5 and it&#39;s kind of like the natural approach but here my opponent should have taken with the pawn why because when I do this they don&#39;t have to take they can like move their Rook or play here uh and then uh and then it&#39;s just a complex game I mean then it&#39;s like castles castles I take they take I might take the pawn it might take like this and the game goes on so uh uh I I mean I don&#39;t think that was that was that was kind of like clear at all you know what I mean like in 95 I played in the game Bishop B5 but my opponent took with the bishop and unfortunately when you take with the bishop this is the situation you find yourself in but that&#39;s the trick of the ponziani um I hope you enjoyed these two games I&#39;ve put the moves in the description from the intro and um yeah enjoy the ponziani opening now get out of here

Transcript for:The Ponziani Opening

Transcript for:
The Ponziani Opening