you're going to learn 50 chess principles broken into three categories beginner intermediate and advanced let's begin principles number 1 through n fall into the beginner category and are going to be most helpful to players rated less than 1,000 principle number one is to control the center of the board primarily these four squares the reason that this is good is because pieces in the center of the board control more squares than pieces somewhere else if we look at this Knight in the corner notice that it can only go to two squares if we look at this Knight on the side it's a little bit better it can go to four squares this Knight is even better it can go to 1 2 3 four five six squares but this KN in the center is best of all it can go to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight squares this is generally going to be true for other pieces as well they are usually more effective in the center of the board so the player who controls the center of the board is going to have more options to put their pieces there at the start of the game a great way to start if possible is to get your two Center pawns forward followed by the knights defending the pawns if you can achieve this at the start of the game you're already off to a good start principle number two is that you want to develop your Knights and your Bishops as quickly as possible that simply means get them off of the back and into the game right away for example in this game white does a great job of De developing this piece black does not here again white does a great job of developing a piece black does not and so already white has a significant advantage in the position because they have two powerful pieces that are able to start doing stuff and Black's pieces are just sitting on the back principle number three is that you want to try to Castle before move 10 in this position white has done a great job of developing the Knight and the bishop on the king side which allows the king to Castle early and if you're following the other principles of fighting for the center using these two pawns usually you're going to have a wall here of other pawns remaining which act as a nice shield for your king this is a very safe place for your king to be you fight in Center using your other pieces and you leave the king off to the side and so that's why if you can Castle before move 10 that is a great strategy to keep your king safe and not get checkmated early principle number four kind of goes along with what we've already talked about but avoid making too many pawn moves in the opening phase of the game you can see if we follow this game out black is doing a terrible job here moving way too many pawns and white is doing a good job of following the principles and after just seven moves white is already in a borderline winning position because they have so many pieces that are attacking things that black has to be really really careful and they're not really using any of their pieces okay so avoid those pawn moves early in the game principle number five is to avoid bad Bishops so a bad Bishop is a bishop that is stuck behind a pawn chain so in this position when black played the move D6 they created a bad Bishop on f8 this bishop is stuck behind the pawn remember it can't jump over pieces it doesn't have a lot of options you only have one place that that Bishop can move to white on the other hand moved this bishop out first and now if they wanted to push this Pawn up one that's totally fine the bishop is already outside of the pawn chain okay this is the pawn chain Bishop's already out look at all the squares that it's controlling that is so much better so what black should have done instead if they're going to move this Pawn they need to get the bishop out first and then move this Pawn later principle number six is to avoid moving the same piece multiple times in the opening in the game that I'm about to show you white does a great job of following this principle and black does not Watch What Happens E4 E6 D4 Bishop comes out with check the problem with that is now white plays C3 which blocks the check but at the same time attacks the bishop now black has to waste time moving the bishop again then white develops black decides they don't like the bishop over there spend another move so they've now moved the bishop one two three times it's the same piece moving three times they're definitely breaking that principle watch how the game continues White Castles black castles and you might think black has done anything wrong but already white has a very powerful move E5 chasing the Knight away when the Knight moves white can unleash a sacrifice that ultimately ends in a quick Checkmate to Black's King and how did this happen probably because black wasted one two three moves moving the same piece multiple times but not really accomplishing anything so try to avoid moving the same piece multiple time multiple times in the opening principle number seven is don't bring out your Queen too early the queen is a very powerful piece and as soon as you bring it out early in the game you have to understand that any other piece on the board that attacks it is going to force it to move so you can spend a lot of time having to move it around it gets chased all over the place that is exactly what we see here black tries to use the queen as a weapon to go on the offensive and white simply plays the move d4 which unleashes the bishop now the queen has to move otherwise it's going to be a bad trade Queens are worth nine points the most valuable piece on the board Bishops are only only three so you don't want to make that trade so they go back but guess what now the Knight comes in and again you have to move the queen they swing it over here but watch what happens again you have to move the queen because you don't want to lose it to the pawn right so you go here and now white has an amazing move Bishop to B5 attacks the queen and if you say Nelson The Bishop's undefended that's correct but now the Knight jumps in for a triple fork and black is actually going to be losing their Queen after the king moves the Knight will simply take it and all of this bad stuff happened to Black simply because they broke the opening principle of bring out bringing out the queen too early so please don't do that unless you are an advanced player and you know exactly what you're doing there are exceptions but most of the time you don't want to bring the queen out too early principle number eight is that you want to pay attention to the F2 and the F7 squares at the start of the game so the reason these squares are so important is because only the king is defending it that's literally the only piece that's defending it which means there are lots of tactics there are lots of Tricks the four moov Checkmate happens on those squares so you always want to pay attention I'll show you a quick example here this is one of my favorite openings to play against the caroan I play Knight C3 and I immediately bring out my bishop and line up on that weak square and if black continues with kind of natural moves bringing out the Knight I offer this pawn and when they play Bishop to G4 they've already made a critical mistake because now I can play the move Knight to E5 which looks like I'm losing my queen for free but actually I'm piling up on that weak F7 square and now I have Checkmate in just eight moves the king can't escape because the Knight can't take my Bishop because the Knight very very tricky way to play but it all revolved around the weak F7 Square the same thing can happen on F2 so just pay attention if your opponent is attacking that particularly with the bishop is usually how it happens that's when you want to be really really careful principle number nine is that you want to avoid stalemate at the end of the game when you are way way ahead clearly white has a crushing position black is running out of options here but if you play the move Rook here trying to cut off the king from escaping you've created what's called a stalemate a stalemate is not a win it's actually considered a draw which is not what you want and that's what you have to avoid so the general rule if you are way ahead at the end of the game and you want to avoid stalemate always make sure that the move you play is check because if you're playing a check it can't be a stalemate so for example here would have been a much better move because that's a check I know it's not going to be a stalemate again here's a check I know it's not going to be a stalemate here's a check I know it's not going to be a stalemate and this is actually just Checkmate but you do have to watch out for stalemate when you're way way ahead at the end of the game principles 10 through 31 fall in the intermediate category and are going to be most helpful for players rated 1,00 to 1500 now while we're talking about 1500 I want to tell you about my brand new course breaking 1500 which opens tomorrow if you're lucky enough to be watching this video the first day that it's released it's only going to be open for 5 days okay July 15th through July 20th and then we're closing the door so that I can really focus on everybody inside but if you're serious about improving and you're rated anywhere under 1500 this is the course for you it's going to take you step by step in a systematic efficient way it's going to give you a game plan for what you need to work on what do you need to follow how do you need to improve and get past whatever Plateau you're stuck at okay I put a lot of years of teaching experience into this one course spent a lot of time making sure it was just right and I'm super excited so if you're interested in that check out the link in the description having said that let's get back to the video principle number 10 is that you should develop your Knights before your Bishops in most cases and so in this position if black plays to move Knight to F6 attacks our Pawn we want to develop a piece and also defend at the same time we could play Bishop to D3 which is not a bad move but a better move would be playing Knight to C3 this follows the principle of knights before Bishops and the reason this is important is because usually the knights are always going to go to these squares we kind of know where we would like to put our Knights the Bishops it depends depends on what your opponent does sometimes you might want to for example deal with a pin on your knight so you could deal with that by blocking with the bishop or maybe in other cases you would want to let's just say black does something else maybe you'd want to go on the offensive and pin their Knight you don't always know and the Bishops the more information you have the better decision you can make about where to put the Bishops that's why it's better to start with the knights and delay the other reason is notice the Bishops are still very effective even from their starting square squares at controlling the board look at all these things that the these Bishops are controlling whereas the knights are not really doing a lot when they're sitting back on the starting squares they're only controlling a couple of squares so that's another reason Knights before Bishops is the general principle principle number 11 is that you should connect your Rooks so what does that mean well after you develop your pieces and you Castle there's sometimes still a few pieces in between the Rooks and you want to try to connect them so that they are both helping each other so for example moving the queen out of the way followed by moving the bishop out of the way now the Rooks are what's called connected and this is very nice because it gives them the maximum options so for example from this position this Rook only had one option it can only go to one square this Rook could only go to two squares you don't have a lot of choices but as soon as you move the bishop out of the way all of a sudden one two three you have four options for that rook and you have four options for this Rook so wherever you need them to go they're going to be able to do it also if you're following the other principles of developing your pieces quickly fighting for the center and castling early the natural consequence of that is that you are going to be having connected Rooks so it kind of just goes along with everything else that we've already talked about principle number 12 is very related but it's that Rooks should go to half open or open files now when we talk about an open file we're talking about a file something that goes up and down on the chessboard a file with no pawns no Pawns of either color that's called an open file so this is actually an open file even though it doesn't really look like it because there's a lot of pieces on it that doesn't matter there's no pawns on it so it is an open file so if I was following the principle putting my Rook on the C file would be a smart thing to do that is an open file also putting it on a half openen file this is considered a half open file there's one color Pawn on it therefore it's half open and then a file like this would be considered a closed file because there's Pawns of both color okay so closed file half open file and then open file is right here so put your Rooks on the half open and open files principle number 13 is that Knights on the rim are dim so when we talk about the rim we're talking about somewhere along here and a knight there is not going to be very effective so let me show you this example Bishop to B5 one of the ideas is that I would like to maybe trade this for the Knight at some point if the circumstances are are right black sometimes plays the move Knight to A5 it's a tricky move and they're basically hoping that if I'm not paying attention they can trap my Bishop with the Noah's Arc trap like this and win a piece also they're avoiding the trade not giving me the option to trade if I want to however when they play A6 all I need to do is move my Bishop back to E2 and the Knight on the rim now is actually very very ineffective notice it can't go here I'll just take it it can't go here I'll just take it the only place that it can go is back to where it came from and that's actually one of the best moves according to the chess engine because it just is so useless over there so they have to waste time going back to where it really should be which is why in general just don't put your Knights on the rim like you just don't want to do that they're more effective in the center this is where you should look to move them to and maybe somewhere like this or like this or like this Knights on the rim are dim principle number 14 is that you want to avoid doubled pawns doubled pawns are two Pawns of the same color on the same file let me show you an example this is called the nimzo Indian and one of the ideas of the nimzo Indian opening is that you're going to trade this bishop for this Knight to create doubled pawns so these are doubled pawns two Pawns of the same color on the same file and the reason that they are not so good is because for example this Pawn can never defend this Pawn can never help each other also it's block this one is blocking this one from moving so they can get stuck and they can become targets as an example something like this black can play Bishop A6 lining up and they can play Knight to A5 lining up again and notice how this is a very weak Pawn imagine if this guy was over here on B3 you'd have a nice Pawn chain everything would be defended but because they're doubled you don't and they are targets if they play something like C5 you can trade here you can trade and now you've created what's called double isolated pawns which is even worse and again they are just targets you can attack them it's very easy to attack them because they can never defend each other okay so try to avoid double Pawns in a lot of situations but there are exceptions which we'll talk about some of that stuff in the rest of the video principle number 15 is that you want to avoid isolated pawns so in this position even though it looks very even both players have two Rooks and a bishop and the same number of Pawns Black's pawns are much better because they are connected they're able to support each other White's pawns are isolated pawns because they have no pawns on the adjacent files so this Pawn has no pawns here or here therefore it's isolated this Pawn has no pawns here or here here of the same color therefore it's isolated and notice how black is just piling up on that pawn and white is going to have a hard time defending and if this Pawn was let's just say on C3 it would be much easier because the pawn could help each other so try to avoid isolated pawns if possible principle number 16 is to avoid backward pawns so let me show you an example of what a backward Pawn is in the Sicilian the open Sicilian after Knight to F6 attacking the pawn they defend the pawn if you play the move E5 here you let out your Bishop a little bit you attack the Knight which is nice but the problem with this is they're going to go check they're going to trade off this bishop and then they're going to jump their Knight to F5 and attack this backward Pawn so a backward Pawn is a pawn where pawns on the side of it so like this E Pawn have been Advanced so far forward that they can no longer support it so it's called a backward Pawn also there's a half open file so the opponent is able to attack it okay imagine going back to this position earlier if black would have only played the pawn up one this is no longer a backward Pawn because if it needs to move forward it still has support from another Pawn but as soon as you play E5 it is now backwards you no longer have any support if you're trying to move it forward and it's a very weak and good Target for the opponent like we saw in this position white is just going to pile up on here maybe even castle and bring the Rook over and just continue to attack on D6 so avoid backward pawns whatever possible principle number 17 is to avoid moving Pawns in front of your castled king so here's a very quick example for you both players are developing their pieces White Castles early which is great and they have the wall of Pawns defending their King the principal says don't move these pawns after you've castled white after just a few moves decides to play H3 probably trying to stop the Bishop from coming here but they violate the principal now you might say that doesn't look like a very big deal but watch what happens in just a few moves black sacrifices the bishop on that H3 Pawn which was pushed forward so they had the option to do it totally exposes the king notice the bishop over here is stopping that pawn from capturing and all of a sudden a few moves later black wins the game and white is in trouble and it all started right here when they decided to play H3 so avoid moving Pawns in front of your castled king whenever possible principle number 18 is to not open the center if your king is still there so in this position you'll notice that white has Castle their King is no longer in the center of the board but Black's King is and if we here now as black decide that we're going to play the move D5 start to initiate some trades it's going to open the center and notice as soon as we do that it allows White's Rook to come over and start putting pressure on our King even if we try to defend that with a pawn now they're going to play D4 keep attacking and notice we don't even have the option to take we're pinned and this is a big problem for us and it all started because we initiated that that exchange when we played D5 which opened up this file for The Rook to attack us you do not want to do that when your king is still there now if we were castled and our King was off to the side that's a different story but in this case not the best move for black okay principle number 19 is when you are attacking try not to trade Queens in this position white has the queen in an aggressive position they're trying to attack and black plays the move Knight to D5 noticed the Queens are now hitting each other but what you should not do is trade here if you're trying to attack because as soon as the Queens go off the board it becomes much more difficult to get checkmate and it's much more likely that you're going to go into an endgame and the attack is going to be unsuccessful if you do want to attack what's a better move the move Bishop to G5 you keep the Queens on the board you bring out another piece you keep the attack going and after something like F6 you could even play Bishop D3 ignoring this and continuing to attack because as long as the Queens are on the board you are going to have a very powerful attack after something like this you could even just Castle Black's King is a mess and the fact that the queen is still there means you have very good chances of getting Checkmate okay so remember if you're attacking avoid Queen trades unless you are ready and prepared to go into the endgame principle number 20 is that if you're in a cramped position and you don't have a lot of space like black is right here the best thing that you can do is trade pieces and a lot of times you have to initiate that with some sort of a pawn break so in this example the move C5 would make a lot of sense here by black to start freeing some of the the lines and diagonals for their pieces for example if white takes now you take with your knight and you're getting ready to trade some more and notice you're opening up spaces for your pieces to have options and to move okay and the more that you trade the more freedom you get even something like this trading again would be good and now the Bishops can probably jump out Bishop D7 something like Queen B6 Bishop F6 at some point you have more options because you traded some pieces so when you're in a cramped position try to trade pieces and then also the opposite of that is also true if you're if you are playing let's go back to this position uh right here if you're playing as white and your opponent is trying to trade maybe try to avoid it if possible so you can keep them cramped principle number 21 is that two minor pieces that would be a knight or a bishop are both considered minor pieces two minor pieces are better than a rook and a pawn a common situation where this might happen is this opening right here where white decides to play Knight G5 going for the fork because it's defended by the bishop remember that's the weak F7 square that we talked about earlier but as soon as black castles it's now defended by the rook and the king and white a lot of times will make this trade but this is a bad decision because yes you get the rook and the pawn okay but at the end of the day you lose both of these and this is where the principal comes in the Knight and the bishop are better than the rook and the pawn in most cases okay even though if you count up the points three and three is six 5 and one is also six it just works out the practically speaking black is going to have the better position here why is that well for one look at the the pieces that are actually active in the game right now black has three minor pieces and white does not the rook and the pawn that you got probably not going to be able to use that until the end of the game and so the middle game is going to be dominated by black which is why they have such an advantage generally speaking don't get give up your knight and Bishop for a rook and a pawn principle number 22 is that three minor pieces three minor pieces are usually better than a queen even though they're the same points 3 69 and this is also nine the three minor pieces are usually better this was an actual game that I played a couple of years ago I was playing as white I decided to play G5 to launch an attack on my opponent's king I'm trying to open up this file so that I can use my rook and attack but here my opponent played an interesting move Bishop to E6 they Counterattack attacked my queen and allowed me to take the Knight and I realized that I would actually be able to get all three of these pieces for the queen if I wanted to so that's what I did because I knew that this principal three minor pieces is better than a queen so I captured I took my queen I took here now I'm threatening to take the Rook so they dealt with that but then I took the bishop and here we go I have the three minor pieces for the queen and what happens is over the course of the game the pieces are going to be able to control more squares and because the queen is such a high your PC can never really trade for any of your pieces CU it's going to be a bad trade so watch what happened over the course of this game and not expecting you to follow everything here but just watch slowly but surely I was able to position my pieces notice how this is defended this is defended this is defended this is defended everything is defended to where the queen doesn't really have any Targets and that's ultimately what happened and eventually later on again I'm just taking over so many different squares using my pieces that I was able to get a nice tactic somewhere here it happened got the rook and then I kept pushing I just have so many pieces here again look at the bishop attacking this The Rook defending it's so difficult for the queen to work because there's just pieces everywhere okay and I ultimately went on to win the game and got into this winning position okay so generally speaking three pieces are better than a queen principle number 23 is that Rooks are very good on the seventh or secondth rank so if you're playing as black this would be the second rank where they are going to be very good or if you're playing as white the seventh rank is where they're going to be very good so in this position right here I actually sacrificed this is a game that I played uh a couple years ago as well actually sacrificed my knight so that I could get this position where my Rooks and queen are lined up here white decided to save that Bishop but now I can take here and at the end of everything my Rook is on the second rank that's a very good thing because notice I'm a attacking all of these pawns or at least I'm putting pressure on all of these pawns I'm also controlling a lot of important squares that my opponent might like to use for their pieces I'm also stopping the king from escaping The Rook just does so many things on the second Rank and as the game continued I actually had this opportunity right here to get two Rooks which are called pigs on the seventh or pigs on the 2 which is even better this actually led to a very quick Checkmate for me here my opponent resigned because if they try to move over this is going to Simply lead to a quick checkm you can see how powerful the double Rooks on the second rank were so look for opportunities in your games to get your Rooks on the second or seventh rank principle number 24 is that doubled Rooks on an open file are very good so this was a famous game played by one of the world champions Alexander alakin playing as white and black just attacked his bishop and he decided to trade for the Knight because he noticed that if black took this way they would simply lose a pawn so when they captured this way they've created what's called an open file we talked about this earlier in the video right an open file because there's no pawns on it and notice Aline has the control of the file with these pieces and as the game continues he continues to maintain control and now at this point he doubles up the Rooks now that's especially good because it becomes very difficult for black to try to fight for control of the file because the Rooks are here and eventually he was actually able to invade and go to the seventh rank which we've already talked about is very good right and watch what happens after a little while he gets wait for it there you go the pigs on the seventh just kind of like the game that I showed you a little bit ago and ultimately after some fancy tactics here he brings the Knight and you can't take because it's Checkmate so The Rook has to move and then he actually goes here which is trapping The Rook The Rook has nowhere to go except back but that simply leads to a Checkmate by the Rooks and I'm not expecting you to see all of that but basically what you need to understand is that this open file allowed white to do that and then eventually transitioned to the seventh rank you could see how powerful those the combination of those two concepts is principle number 25 is that Bishops are better in open positions Knights are better in closed positions an open position is a position where there's lots of open files and diagonals like what you see on the board in this position white has the advantage because they have the Bishops which are able to just crisscross all over the board control lots of squares and are very powerful in this position notice the addition of a few extra pawns now it's closed off the Bishops are blunted they're stuck and the Knights are going to be much more powerful because they can jump around and basically go wherever they want to go if you want to jump in here or here or here you can move maneuver them around Knights are better in closed positions principle number 26 is that when you have an option to capture with two different pawns usually it's better to capture towards the center in this position white plays Bishop takes Bishop you're trying to decide which way to capture well the principal would say capture towards the center you should take this way notice a couple of things happen number one it opens up the Rook which is a nice bonus but also we keep all of our pawns together as opposed to splitting them off if you take this way now this guy is weaker backward Pawn because there's no longer it's no longer supported whereas when you take this way you avoid that okay so General general rule is capture towards the center principle number 27 is that at the end of the game your king needs to be activated so in this game right here black it it's looks relatively equal both sides have two Rooks they both have Five Pawns but what black does is plays King to E6 and notice Black's King compared to White's King Black's King is further Advanced more towards the center of the board and Whit's is not watch what happens over the next few moves this is far Advanced so the white Rook has to stop it and black takes this opportunity to invade with their King white tries to come up black now forces the king to come back and then comes up with the King and notice Black's King is more active than White's King and because of this one reason black is going to be able to win the game simply by this check forcing the trade and at this point in the game you might say wait a second white has Five Pawns black only has four but look at the king Black's King is much more active than White's King and black can simply actually you could win this game either way you could come over here and Gobble up these pawns and win or you could come over here and Gobble up these pawns and win and there's nothing that white can do to stop you for example if you simply just go here take the pawn take the pawn start pushing this guy the king could go and stop you but then you come over here with your king you take these and you win the active King very very important at the end of the game general rules when you're playing and the Queens get tra ated a lot of times that's a good sign to like okay Queens are off the board now it's safer for my king to start coming into the game and and doing stuff that's going to help you win at the end principle number 28 is that when someone fing kettles their Bishop in front of their King if you can trade it off you're going to create weaknesses around their King so in the king's Indian setup like this this is very common where they fee and Kettle the bishop that just means you push the pawn on the side and you put the bishop over there if the king is behind that a lot of times what like to do is put my queen and Bishop like this this is called a battery and you're simply going to come down with your Bishop trade it off and once that Bishop has been eliminated the king is much weaker okay this is a very strong Defender to the king in this type of setup so for example I'm going to Castle and I'm going to come down here trade it off and attack the king there's also a bonus is you can wait just a second because it does not really going to go anywhere if black ever tries to move it away you're going to take the rook and so what you can do is actually just leave it for a second and launch your H Pawn if you're trying to attack and this guy actually stops them from playing H5 because sometimes for example if you were to play H4 right away they'll play H5 and try to slow down your attack but when you have that blockade they can't do that and so for example you could push to H5 now you could trade you could open this up and as an example of what could happen if Black's not careful can simply come in and Checkmate because the the bishop is no longer there obviously black had some better moves but that's the general idea and a very good one to keep keep in mind create the bishop Queen and Bishop battery come down trade it off it's much easier to attack the king principle number 29 is that with the Knight on f8 there is no mate so if you're playing as black and you Castle King side one strategy is to put your knight on f8 which is right here and it's very difficult for your opponent to Checkmate you so for example you can bring your knight up you can slide your Rook over and notice what white is doing trying to attack here and they could maybe take your knight at some point and come down and take this and get to your king but if you play Knight to f8 even if they take this it doesn't matter because you still have it defended by the knight's hitting here okay and the thing about the Knight on f8 is it's very difficult for your opponent to force that Knight to move right it can just sit there it's so well protected it's hidden it's hard to get to and it's a very nice defender of your king in some cases you can also bring it up to G6 if you need to you can use it as an offensive weapon as well so keep that maneuver in mind basically the way it works is you Castle you slide The Rook over and then you bring the knight from here over to D7 and back to f8 with the Knight on f8 there is no mate the same principle applies with white if you Castle you can put your knight on F1 and black has no fun okay Knight on F1 black has no fun KN on f8 there's no mate okay principle number 30 is that you should slow down and use your time wisely this was a game played between two 1200 rated players and at this moment in the game black had almost 8 minutes left on the clock in like a 10-minute rapid game so plenty of time and they literally spent 2 seconds and played this move they played this move after two seconds lost their Queen and lost the game it was a relatively equal position actually uh before that and if they would have spent a few extra seconds I'm sure they would have noticed the bishop so just use your time wisely you would be amazed at how many mistakes you can avoid by doing that principle number 31 is to don't play hope chess hope chess is where you say well I hope they don't see it well I hope this will work out well hopefully this might happen if there is a good move that your opponent has you need to automatically assume that they are going to play it they are going to find it they're going to notice it don't hope that they just don't see it that's a terrible strategy a good example of this is the scholars mate where you go for the four move Checkmate because a lot of people have the mindset I hope they don't know how to stop this I hope they won't see the best move I hope they won't see what I'm trying to do you don't want to do that because if they know what you're doing they're going to play G6 and guess what now you can't take here because they've defended it you can't get check bait you can try again and hope they don't see it this time guess what they probably see it you can go over here and say well I hope they don't see this one but again if they know what they're doing D5 as an example is going to get you in a lot of trouble if you take they're going to jump in with the Knight now your queen has to move but where can you move the queen to you don't have a lot of good options for example if you go to D3 bam Bishop to F5 and now you're getting Fork next the next move not a good way way to start the game if you go to A4 Bishop D7 now where you going to move your queen to again you're getting forked it's just a bad situation and it all happened because you decided to play Hope Chest right here I hope they don't know how to stop Scholar's mate don't do that okay principles number 32 through 50 fall into the advanced category which is going to be most helpful either for players who are above 1,500 or who players who are trying to get above 1500 so even if you're below 1500 I still think you can understand these and start applying them in your games but they can be a little bit trickier some of them you have to know when you should use them and when not to that's why they can be a little bit more advanced but you should still definitely learn them even if you are below 1500 principle number 32 is don't trade a bishop for a Knight without a good reason so the ruy Lopez is a very common opening here for white but after the move A6 you're actually not really supposed to trade here and go for this Pawn C because first of all you don't win a pawn black simply goes here and forks these pieces gets their Pawn back but now you've given black the bishop pair in an open position and remember Bishops are better in open positions like we already talked about so you've already given black the advantage by simply making that trade without having a good enough reason now if we go back what would be a good reason well let me show you this instead of taking it now if you go Bishop A4 you Castle you defend your Pawn pawn and now if Black's not paying attention now would be a good time to trade the bishop for the Knight why because now guess what you get the free pawn and remember before black played Queen D4 but now your Pawn's defended you simply move back they can't take your pawn and so by trading you essentially won a free Pawn that's a very different story than before when you didn't really get anything in return so you can trade Bishops for Knights you just have to make sure you're getting something significant back from it otherwise it's probably not a good idea okay principle number 33 is that you should meet an attack on the flank with a Counterattack in the center so the flank would be one of these three files here or one of these three files here and then the center would be the two Center ones obviously okay so meet an attack on the flank with an attack with a Counterattack in the center so in this position F5 is called the Roo Gambit and even if you've never seen this move before in your life if you remember the principle that I just told you meet an attack on the flank with what a Counterattack in the center you could probably figure out what move to play do you know what the stockfish recommended move the chess engine recommended move is D4 attack on the flank with the Counterattack in the center now why is this so valuable usually if they're attacking on the side they're not developing they're not castling they're creating some kind of weaknesses and so by busting open the center and letting all your pieces out as quickly as possible that's the best way to take advantage of it okay let me show you another example we're going to flip the board for this when if you're playing this as black King's Indian setup and what does white start trying to do attack you on the king side a flank attack so what's the principle Counterattack in the center C5 they don't just try to ignore you keep attacking watch what's going to happen you take now you're threatening their Knights they're like okay fine I'll take you oh boom they walk into a tactic and all of a sudden White's position is falling apart it's very difficult basically what happens is it's very difficult for them to continue their flank attack and deal with whatever is going on in the center at the same time that is usually why a Counterattack in the center can be so effective principle number 34 is that Rooks should go behind past pawns so pass pawns are pawns that have no Pawns of the opponent that can stop them or capture them on the way to becoming a queen so this is a pass Pawn this is obviously not because we could simply take it so Rooks should go behind past pawns so what should I do if I'm playing this position as white well Rook to A3 would be a great move because it's going behind the pass Pawn why is this so effective because I'm not only defending my Pawn but I'm defending it every step of the way as it moves forward and tries to become a queen and black has to pay attention to this and can't just let me push it they have to come over here now my Rook is defending constantly threatening if this Rook ever moves okay so that's a great place for The Rook to be now this is a situation where I'm defending my Pawn I'm putting my Rook behind my own pass Pawn but it also applies in situations let me go like this like this where it's Black's turn and black is trying to think okay this guy's coming down here how do I stop it should you go here no this is going in front of the pawn don't do that instead you should come down here and guess what go behind Okay Go behind the pass Pawn usually The Rook is going to be more effective that way it's going to be more annoying to your opponent you're going to be able to do other things with the Rook while it constantly guards the pawn whereas if you would to just play going back to here if you just play this in front of it after something like A6 now your Rook is stuck here it's not really doing anything else except that one thing it could be much more effective over here okay so regardless of if you're defending or attacking a pawn Rooks go behind pass pawns at the end of the game principle number 35 is that two connect Ed pass pawns on the sixth rank will always beat a rook so if you know that principle in this position right here you should know exactly which move to play well push your Pawn because now you have two connected pass pawns on the sixth Rank and all black has to stop you is the rook and it can't now this is a different story if the king is like sitting right here he's going to take your pawns that's that's different right but as long as there's no other piece is helping The Rook is not going to be able to stop these for example Rook comes over here you just push and if they take you get a queen okay if they if they come maybe try to come down behind doesn't really matter they try to stop you doesn't matter you push you're threatening to get the queen they take you get the queen you can see there's no way for The Rook to stop the pawns you will always be able to to win unless there's some crazy trick going on in the position like you're going to get checkmated there's another piece involved like a bishop or a knight or a king or something that's different but just Against The Rook the pawns will always win principle number 36 is that you should attack in the direction of your Pawn chain so in this position Black's trying to figure out what move to play well look at the pawn chain and that's going to be a clue so let's look at Black's biggest Pawn chain which direction is it facing well follow it follow it in that direction so that's a clue black should try to attack over here which way should white attack well find the biggest Pawn chain which way is it pointing this way white should attack over here now why is this the case the primary reason is that you have more space in that area of the board so because the pawns are expanded and extended in that direction notice how black has all of these squares to work with right they can maneuver their pieces around all in this area of the board over here they don't have any squares to use like all of these are you know already occupied there's not really any room to maneuver compare that with White's position they have all this space over here all these squares that they could use to maneuver their pieces around they don't really have much space over here on the king side so that's why you attack in the direction of your Pawn chain and if you're wondering this was an actual game look what black does they play G5 they played H5 they're attacking over here in the direction White's trying to attack on the other side where their Pawn is at right but eventually and I'll just kind of jump to the end here so you can see how this finished out black was able to neutralize White's attack and then at the right moment watch this I want to get to the end to show you this they sacrifice right here they sacrifice the bishop to clear the way for the pawn and they ultimately won won the game now long complicated game you don't need to get bogged down in that but general rule attack in the direction of your Pawn chain principle number 37 is that Knights are the best defender or I should say best blockader of a pass Pawn so in this position white has the pass Pawn it's very well defended we don't want them to push it all the way down and get a queen so we're trying to figure out how do we stop that well we can use our Knight to blockade the pawn now one of the reasons why Knights are such good Defenders against past pawns is because they jump over pieces it doesn't really matter what else is around them they can just sit there blockade the pawn and constantly be threatening stuff because they can jump over pieces okay so Knights are very good blockaders of past pawns principle number 38 is that when you are ahead in material you want to trade pieces but not pawns so in this position everything is exactly the same except for this extra KN that white has so white is aead in material so the principal says we want to trade pieces so if you imagine for a second if I just remove these bishops from the board They Were Somehow magically traded would we appreciate that if we're white yeah because now it's pretty easy this Knight is going to be able to jump around take the pawns and we're probably going to win relatively straightforward there's not a lot of problems with that so trading pieces make sense but if we trade pawns well what happens and I want you to imagine hypothetically that all the pawns somehow just got traded okay I'm just going to trade all these pawns now of course this isn't how chess works but just imagine with me all the pawns get traded and okay we're still trying to win the game as white it's our turn wait a second how are we going to win well you're not going to be able to right unless black gives you the bishop for free otherwise you just can't win okay you need some pawns to eventually become a queen so when you are a head material try to trade off all the other pieces but leave the pawns now some sometimes you can trade a couple of Pawns that's okay but you need to make sure you leave at least one or two so you can get a queen because that's how you're ultimately going to win so let me actually go back to if I can remember what the um original position was actually I think I have it so back to the original position if you're ah head material trade pieces not pawns now this brings us into principle number 39 which is the opposite if you are behind Okay so if you're black in this position you're behind you want to trade pawns and not pieces okay and it's exactly what I just said black would be happy to say yeah go ahead trade off all the pawns right and Leave the Pieces because eventually you're going to win however you have to keep going right because even if you stop here and now you trade these pieces guess what this is still an easy position for white okay so if you have to rewatch that one you know you can but basically when you're ahead you want to keep at least one or two pawns you trade the rest of the pieces when you're behind look for opportunities to maybe trade off every single pawn and there might not be enough pieces left for your opponent to win if they can't get to Queen with that last Pawn that's kind of the idea okay principle number 40 is that one Pawn can stop two pawns so in this position it should be a draw if white plays the correct move however if they make a mistake and play the move A4 it's no longer a draw now it's going to be a winning position for black and here is how you would win as black you would play the move A5 A5 is now one Pawn that is stopping two pawns because if this Pawn obviously can't move it's stuck if this Pawn tries to move forward I'm just going to take it and I'm going to win this race okay I'm going to get a queen first right and I'm I'm pretty happy about that so white doesn't really want to do that which means both of these pawns are stuck and I've done it with only one Pawn now why is that important because now I have an extra Pawn over here which frees me up I can use my king to run over here and take some of these if I want or I can just sort of use my king in these pawns to try to push forward here I I have all the options now as black because of how this situation happened now bonus tip for you here if white was smart they would have played B4 instead of A4 because now I have no way to stop both of these pawns I can't play A5 anymore I just get captured A6 doesn't really do anything because now white just goes A4 I do something and they push B 5 they're going to get past in that situation now white could mess up and play A5 thems and then of course it does sort of stop the pawns although now they're further Advanced okay so it can get a little bit tricky but the moral of the story is look for these opportunities if your opponent gives you to solidify stopping two of their pawns by only using one of yours principle number 41 is that you should try to put pawns on the opposite color as your Bishop so in this position if I'm contemplating moving some of these pawns over here I think C5 would be a great first move to consider because it puts the pawns on the opposite color of my Bishop notice how effective my Bishop is now I'm controlling all these squares the pawns are not in my way it works nicely with the the black squared Pawn dark squared pawns controlling all the dark squares my Bishop controls the light squares everything is in sync and in harmony if you go back and I push this way notice how my Bishop is really not doing much it's pretty much only the pawns that are effective my Bishop's kind of out of the game so by putting them on the opposite color of my Bishop that's how my Bishop can be most effective principle number 42 is that you should watch out for Pawn storms when you are castled on opposite side so in this position white decides to Castle Queen side notice the kings are on opposite sides of the board one of the most common things that's going to happen is that somebody will launch an attack okayy it might be your opponent it could be you but you want to be aware of this when you Castle on opposite sides and either plan on how you're going to defend or plan on how you're going to attack on the other side faster or if you remember a previous principle plan on how you're going to Counterattack in the center when the flank attack comes okay but when you're castled on opposite sides this is much more common than if you're on the same side principle number 43 is that when you're attacking you want to remove key defenders in this position white has been trying to attack the king over here they have the Rook the bishop the other Bishop the Knight but this Knight on F6 is actually a problem because you can't infiltrate with your Bishop like you would like to so what do you do in this position well the move is Bishop to B5 because once you eliminate that Knight it clears up the F6 square and you can take advantage of that let's say this watch what happens in the rest of the game eventually there's a sacrifice you get rid of the Knight and then you invade along these dark squares because the Knight is no longer supporting notice there's all sorts of nasty forks and things that white can do now because you eliminated one of the key Defenders when you are attacking so as a recap if you're attacking and you're not sure what to do I want you to step back and ask yourself okay which piece does my opponent have that is defending the key squares and if you see a way to get rid of that that's a clue that's probably a good idea now principle number 44 I wanted to kind of throw in here but it's easier to attack than defend generally speaking when people are learning chess they're solving lots of tactics puzzles and that sort of trains your brain to look for things offensively which means it's usually easier to attack than to defend and so when you have opportunities to attack I think you should generally do it as opposed to playing passive and defensive all the time principle number 45 is if you see the move C3 you should consider the move D5 okay so when you're playing as black and somebody play particularly in an E4 E5 opening somebody plays the move C3 you should consider D5 why is this the case because a lot of times the drawback of D5 is that the Knight is going to jump on C3 and attack your queen that's no longer going to happen because there is a pawn there which means D5 is a much more powerful move the other thing is that if this trade happens this is potential weak square and a potential backward Pawn that you can take advantage of at some point if you're able to push this forward uh this is a very awkward situation for white because if they move the pawn you now have anasan and without moving the pawn the bishop is stuck and white can get all into all sorts of trouble and so that's another reason but generally speaking if you see C3 D5 now this happens in all types of different openings let me give you a couple of examples Knight F3 Knight C6 C3 is called the ponziani opening guess what Black's best move against the ponziani is D5 right just following the principles okay you're trying to just do something like this and have a great position let me show you another one here D4 takes C this is the Danish Gambit and white is hoping that you're going to take all the way here gets both Bishops out they try to attack you guess what a good move is for Black in this position D5 okay as soon as I see C3 I'm always considering in the back of my mind the move D5 principle number 46 is that when you see the move F4 you should also consider the move D5 okay and it's it's different reasoning but it's kind of the same move this D5 move so against the king's Gambit for examp example the best move that black can play or one of the best moves is D5 it's called a counter Gambit but the reason is again they're not developing their pieces they're opening up the king and so the sooner that you can bust open the center let out all the pieces the better chances you're going to have that's kind of the idea here's another example the Vienna game and after you play Knight F6 if they play F4 the Vienna Gambit even if you didn't know anything about the Vienna Gambit the principal would tell you well F4 I should probably consider D5 guess what the top engine recommended move is it's D5 okay just on principle doesn't matter that you're losing a pawn here you're going to get it right back here you're you're opening things up and a key feature too is that it lets out the queen so you have options also lets out the bishop so you have options also stops any ideas of the bishop coming on C4 and attacking you here there's lots of good good things about the move D5 and if you have a nice opportunity because of C3 or F4 to play it you should usually do it principle number 47 is in Queen Pawn openings you usually don't want to block the C Pawn so for example playing the move Knight to C3 is generally not a move that you're going to see by most strong Grand Masters because they know the value of moving this Pawn forward and allowing the queen to come out okay so the Queen's gambut extremely common opening at the top level and they have lots of options for the queen it just works very nicely but as soon as you play Knight C3 it's awkward where's your queen going to go you can't go there so you have to try to find another place for it it's just not natural okay so in D4 D5 openings usually you want to allow that c Pawn to come forward at some point doesn't have to be right away but at some point to give yourself options principle number 48 is to remember the Crooked path at the end of the game now let me explain what's going on in this situation this is a very very valuable and really cool principle white is going forward and would like to capture this Pawn and get a queen so they try to bring the king over okay and black moves here they try to bring the king over black moves here they try to bring the king over black moves here they go here black moves here they take the pawn Black's King comes up and guess what we are stuck we cannot get out the only thing we could do is go back and forth and eventually if we get bored enough we can push our pawn and black simply stalemates us okay we have no moves game is a draw so can we sorry I just gave away the answer there uh can we win the game instead of going straight here yes the answer is we can and the way you do it is with the Crooked path so let me explain something first to you if I want to get to this square one two three four moves and I end up on that square okay however I could also go one 2 3 4 and guess what 1 2 3 4 I also end up on the exact same square same number of moves same square what's the difference the difference is by going here I am able to box out my opponent's king from going to where they would like to go and watch what happens now when I take the pawn remember last time Black's King was here and was able to come in and trap me they are too far now I can come up and I win the game okay so the way the Crooked path works is essentially you want to do something with your king but you also can do something else at the same time if you're smart about the direction that you move your king in so rather than going in a straight line you go like this you box out the king and you win the game there's some really really cool endgame studies that show this but the Crooked path very important to Remember at the end of the game principle number 49 is to be careful with poisoned B and G pawns now a poisoned Pawn in chess is a pawn that looks like it's free but when you take it something bad happens hence the name poisoned pawn and a lot of times the B and G pawns can be poisoned uh in the French defense there's a line where white sometimes will bring out the queen now I don't know the French I haven't studied this but what I do know is that you have to be careful taking this Pawn because in a lot of cases it's a poisoned Pawn as an example if you take it you think oh cool I got a free Pawn black plays Rook G8 now you have to move your queen this is defended by the Knight and you think oh well I'll take another Pawn the problem is while your queen was off doing this black now has The Rook involved the Knight is involved the bishop is involved the pawn is coming through here you have to deal with the pin and basically it's it's more trouble than it was worth okay and that's the danger that's why you have to be careful about taking these B and G pawns because they might be poisoned principle number 50 is that you need to be flexible about your plans when you're playing chess so in this position right here let's say white decides you know what I'm going to attack the king with a pawn storm I think that makes the most sense we're on opposite sides let me go ahead and launch the pawn storm so they play the move G4 black plays C5 now a lot of players what they will do is say Okay C5 yeah whatever let's keep going I'm G to keep launching my Pawn torm keep attacking the problem is they missed an opportunity to Simply take this Pawn because now if black tries to recapture look what happens they lose a rook they simply lose a rook actually it's more than a rook because you're going to get a bishop too it's totally losing it's a totally losing position for black but if you were so caught up on your plan and you didn't stop to consider what happened you would miss that okay very very common mistake people get tunnel vision they don't realize that hey you have to be flexible when you play chess of course it's good to have plans but you have to know when's the right time to stop and deviate depending on what your opponent does sometimes they play moves that allow you to continue with the plan sometimes they play moves like this where it's better to react hey guys if you enjoyed this video you're going to love breaking 1500 my brand new course which comes out tomorrow if you're lucky enough to watch this video the day that it's released but it's a structured stepbystep efficient game plan to get you from wherever you're at past 1,500 as quickly as possible I spent a a lot of time putting this together to make sure that it's going to help you the most and so I'm really excited about that it's only open for 5 days July 15th through July 20th links in the description I'll see you guys over there real soon thanks for watching stay sharp play smart and take care [Music] [Music]