How To SQUEEZE Your Chess Opponents | Logical Chess Ep. 26

Today's game you're going to see a tactical aggressive opening in the Sicilian defense that actually transitions in the middle game to a positional battle where we have an opposite colored bishop position, looks something like this, which looks pretty equal, but actually it's not. There are some strategic advantages that white has over black. We're going to talk about what they are and you're going to see exactly how white takes advantage of those to ultimately win the game. This is episode 26 in a series where we're going through this book, Logical Chess Move Move-by-Move by Irving Chernoff, fantastic book for those of you who are following along with us. I think you're going to enjoy this game a lot. Let's jump to the beginning and see how we ended up here. So e4, c5, this is the Sicilian defense. It's a nice way to control d4, but it's a different way to do it than with e5 and the nice thing is if white ever does play this, a lot of times black's going to trade and you essentially remove one of the center pawns with one of your side pawns and at the same time you open up the c-file for your rook or your queen. This is why it's very, very popular at a lot of levels really. So Nc3, e6, Nf3, Nc6, and finally white plays d4, striking at the center. Black trades, white recaptures, and black plays Nf6. Now this is called the four knights variation of the Sicilian defense. I don't play this personally, but from what I have learned and seen, this can lead to some very wild positions. And actually white has a lot of different options here and one of the things he mentions in the book is that one of the cool things about chess is you can kind of use your own personality, your own style, to make decisions that steer the game down a path in a certain direction. We talked about this a little bit in the last game, but that's what we see here. If white wants to, they can play this very tricky move, Nbd5, trying to jump on this square here on d6. If black wants they can play d6, then white can attack it again, then black can play e5 to block off the bishop, then you can jump over here and now you're trying to take advantage of a different square in black's position. It's pretty interesting. Also, black can play Bb4 and we get this totally wild line. Bf4, knight takes, check, the king moves, the queen comes out, d5, white castles. It's a total mess. I don't really know what's going on, but this is another option. But instead, going back to the original position, white doesn't do that. They don't simply just develop their bishop, which they could also do. Bishop here, you could play g3, bishop g2, you could play a3 to stop the bishop from here. Instead, white simply says, no, I'm going to trade here and just take a small positional advantage and be happy with that. And if that fits the style of you, you can do that, right? So that's the cool thing about chess, you can make these decisions based on what you prefer to play. Of course, black doesn't really want to take this way and allow, you know, they have to lose castling rights, then white's going to castle at some point, the rook's going to be lined up on the queen. So they decide to take this way, which does follow the principle of capture towards the center. All right, now here white plays a move which sets in motion a sequence of things that are going to happen that really cause black problems along the dark squares, okay? So if you look at black's pawn structure, all of these pawns are on light squares, which means they have a lot of control over the light squares, right, if you look carefully, look at this, but not so much control over the dark squares. And so white says, okay, let me try to take advantage of that by playing the move e5. We attack the knight, we control this square, if this pawn ever tries to move forward, we have en passant, and also an important point is it clears the way for the knight to jump into e4 and further increase the pressure on those dark squares. You can see how all of these pieces are playing a role to really put pressure on this d6 square. So black goes knight to d5, really there wasn't anywhere else to go, you can't go here, you can't go here or here, unless you want to go all the way back to g8, so they decide to go here, and white jumps over to e4, eyeing that d6 square, and this pawn is really doing a pretty good job of kind of controlling black's position. So black says, okay, this is not good, I need to break free from here, and they go with the move f5. And now white doesn't want to just retreat the knight, so they do en passant, if you're somebody pushes their pawn two spaces forward, it lands side-by-side your pawn, you have the option to take it, it's kind of like if the pawn just moved one square, you could just take it, right? It's the exact same thing with en passant, you just take it anyway, you get one chance to do that, and that's what we see here. So now black recaptures with the knight, putting the pressure on the knight on e4. And here again, look at these pieces lined up on the d6 square, white says, now's the time, let me jump in with the check, and really black has to take this. If you move to e7, then your king is, you can't castle, you're stuck in the center, you're blocking your bishop, you don't want to do that. So black has to take, and white recaptures. Now let's talk about what has happened here, because this is a very, very good situation for white, for two reasons primarily. Number one, you have blockaded black's d-pawn to where this bishop is going to have a hard time getting into the game, right? To get the bishop out, you need to move the pawn, so that it can come out here, and then move this pawn maybe so it can come out here. Of course, this doesn't look very appealing, you can't go there, this doesn't do much, so that's one thing. The second thing, and maybe even more importantly, is you're stopping black from castling. You cannot castle if your king passes through a check, right? When you castle, the king moves two squares like this, since it passes through check, that's an illegal move. This is really great news for white, because the king needs to get out of the center, and the fact that it can't is a big deal, okay? So that is what white has achieved by doing that little maneuver of e5, jumping the knight to e4, and then jumping it to d6, okay? So black says, okay, this is a problem for me, I need to get this queen out of here, and they play the move knight to e4, attacking the queen. White says, that's not a big deal, I'll go to d4, and it's actually a fork on the knight and the pawn, and so how does black defend both of those at the same time? Well, you just go back. And white really liked the queen on d6 so much that they decide, let me try it again, see if maybe black will play something else, and black says, nope, I'm happy with the draw if we repeat, and so they go back to e4. So at this point, white says, okay, I don't want to draw, I think my position is better, which it is, they were right, so I need to find a different move. So the move that they find is queen to b4, and it's still attacking the knight, but it's also keeping the queen on that diagonal, which is, again, preventing black from castling, okay? So black plays d5, which, you know, starts to get the bishop out, defends the knight, but it doesn't solve the problem of, can I castle? So here white plays bishop d3, develops a piece, and also threatens to take the knight and simply win a pawn, and black plays the move queen to d6. They have to deal with this somehow, and queen to d6 is a very nice way to do it, because now if white tries to take the knight, you simply lose your queen for free and you lose the game, right? So you have to deal with that. So I have a question for you guys, what move would you play in this position as white? Well, if you look carefully, there's not a lot of places that the white queen can move to if you don't trade the queens. For example, if you go to d4, e5 is going to happen, now you're wasting time, you let black's bishop into the game, this is not a good square for the queen. If you go somewhere like, let's just say a4 or b3, the knight's going to jump over, fork you, you're going to lose a bishop that way, and then black's going to probably start pushing forward. That doesn't look very good. You don't have a lot of places to go, you can't go here, you can't stay here, so because of that, white says, I guess I should trade. And the thing is, this is the nice thing about positional advantages, you keep them even as you go into the endgame a lot of times, and that's what we're seeing here. What are the advantages that white has? Well, one is the bishop pair, right? Well, that doesn't go away just because you trade queens, you still have the bishop pair, which is nice. Usually the bishops are slightly better than a knight and a bishop, especially on an open board. This board is very open, right? I mean, you can see there's lots of open diagonals for the bishop to use, so that's a good sign. The other thing, which is kind of hard to see in this position, you're going to see it over the next couple of moves, but actually there are weaknesses along these dark squares that persist from the earlier phase of the game. And how white takes advantage of those is really where this game becomes so beautiful. And that's what you really need to pay attention to, because I think a lot of people in this position would think, well, okay, I don't know, it looks pretty equal to me, right? Watch what happens over the next couple of moves. White plays the move F4, immediately clamping down and not giving black time to push that forward, because if black pushes this forward, everything changes about black's position. The bishop is free to come out, the pawns are side by side, they can very easily push forward and they're controlling all these squares, but by playing F4, white says, no, I'm going to clamp down on that right now and not let you do that. Now Stockfish, I want to point out, actually said Bishop F4 was the better way to do it. And if you think, well, the knight's going to go to F7 and then chase you away, look what Stockfish says. You can castle queenside, and if this happens, the rook slides over, and black's in big trouble because of the pin. You're going to lose a pawn here. Even if you push, there's F3, and there's just too many pieces attacking this pawn and you can't do anything about it because your king is there, right? So nice little idea there by Stockfish, and I think that's actually the best option. But F4 is also good with the similar idea of not allowing black to play E5. So black plays the move A5, and the reason is they need to get the bishop into the game somehow, and since they can't seem to get it here because we've stopped that, they're going to sneak over to A6, and they need the rook to defend it to counter this guy. I think it's a smart idea. Bishop to E3, very good move, and notice what's happening. White has blockaded both of these pawns, and again, it might not seem like a lot. It might not seem like this is a big deal, but you're going to see as the game goes on how this decision ultimately is what pretty much wins the game for white, okay? Bishop A6, king to D2. This is a very good move. This is a very good move, and I think a lot of people maybe would castle or castle, but bringing the king closer to the center at the end of the game is one of the best things that you can do. We've seen this in other games in the series. Once the queens are traded, it's very unlikely that you're going to get checkmated, so using the king is a great decision. So black plays Nc4+, which is a fork, and you're going to lose either the bishop or the pawn if you don't take this, so white decides to take, and then black recaptures. Now, we need to talk about this position. This is kind of a critical position in the game, and this is where you really need to understand what's going on. So first things first, opposite color bishop endings are always interesting because of the fact that these bishops can never control the same squares, okay? This bishop can never attack that bishop, that bishop can never attack this bishop, this bishop can never defend a pawn that this bishop is attacking, and vice versa. They just can't do anything about the other bishop. Because of that, a lot of times you get a drawish type of ending, because if your opponent is able to put, let's just say, every single one of their pawns on white squares, defend them with their bishop, you can never attack them with your bishop, and vice versa, they can never attack yours, and a lot of times that's just going to lead to a draw. The other thing is if you're able to attack the opponent's king, because the bishops are on opposite color squares, it's kind of like you have a free piece, because they can't stop you from attacking them because the bishop's on the wrong color, right? This game, there's not really much attacking going on, but it's also not drawish, and the reason is, this is kind of the next piece of the puzzle here, this bishop is actually very, very bad, and this bishop on e3 is actually very, very good. Why is that the case? Because of the pawns. Look at these pawns, they hinder the movement of this bishop, whereas the bishop on e3 is free to go wherever it wants, right? And over the next couple moves, it even gets worse for black, okay? So let's take a look at how this happens. a4, he's blockading this pawn on a5 on a dark square so that he always has a target. At the same time, you're taking away some squares from this black bishop, okay? The black plays Kd7, b3, and again, look at the bishop and look at where it can go. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. There's like nowhere for it to go. It's running out of options. That is why black's position is so bad, and white continues to maintain a grip on all these dark squares. Let's keep going. So, bishop goes in to attack the pawn on a5, black moves the bishop back, maybe thinking one day the bishop can come over this way, and they needed to unleash the rook to defend the pawn. King to e3, just continuing to bring the king forward on those dark squares, and the bishop can't do anything about it, right? Rook to a6, attacks the bishop, simply retreats, and this is probably even a better square than b6, because look at this, you're controlling all these squares from the king, you're stopping the rook from coming into the game, and again, there's nothing that this bishop can do about it. You know, imagine if this was a knight. The knight could jump around and eventually land on a square that would attack the bishop, or force it to move, or try to trade for it, right? Bishops can't do that, so it's this really interesting dynamic. So black plays Kc7, there's not a lot that they can do, I think they're trying to let the bishop come out this way, really they're all tied up, and white just continues, Kd4, invading with the king and just keeping the blockade on all these squares. Bishop to d7, rook comes over, this is actually an important point. You could invade directly with your king, but then the question becomes, what do you do now? I mean, yes, your position looks nice, but how do you make progress? So what white decides to do is bring the rook over first, and they're actually going to use this square as a landing spot to jump over to g5 and increase the pressure even more, okay? And when you have these positional games like this, where things are totally closed off, you want to really ask yourself the question, how can I keep improving the position of my pieces, right? This bishop's already very, very good, okay, it's so much better than this bishop. The king is already very, very good. The only major pieces that white really isn't using are the rooks, and so they're pausing before they infiltrate with the king and say, okay, let me get the rook involved in a better way, right? And that's what's happening here. So h5, the rook comes up, g6, the rook comes over, and black is trying to put all the pawns in the light squares, like we talked about, so that the bishop can defend. The problem is, there's just so many pawns, and there's so many weaknesses that the bishop can't do it all, right? And you're going to have to at some point choose which pawns are you going to defend and which ones are you going to abandon, right? Like for example, right now, if black were to decide to go here, yes, you defend this, but now you're abandoning this. And if you put the bishop here, well, then my king's probably going to come up and attack you again, and you're continuing to have all these different problems, essentially. So, back to the game, black decides to use the rook, it wasn't really doing anything anyway, so they defend that way. Ke5. And now that the rook has been maneuvered, now white is comfortable to bring the king up and in. Black plays Be8, and they're basically saying, look, if you want to take that pawn, go ahead, I'm just going to try to hold on to this. And a question for you guys, do you think white took the pawn, yes or no, and why or why not? The answer is, they did not take the pawn. They actually decided to bring the other rook into the game, and the reason is probably something along the lines of check, and depending on where the king moves, if, for example, black is able to get a setup like this, all of a sudden, it's not so easy for white. Yes, you have an extra pawn, but now you're under attack. This is kind of a nice blockade here, like how do you make progress? It's just not that simple. Even the bishop can come to e4 and shut down the e-file, maybe the rooks can swing around and come in. You don't want to give your opponent counterplay when you don't have to. And believe it or not, this pawn on e6 is actually causing black more problems than it's helping in this particular position, because it's stopping the bishop, it's stopping a rook, it's just blocking up black's position. Because of that, white says, no, I'm not actually interested in taking that pawn, I'm more interested in getting all my pieces into the game. Bring your rook over, black goes here, and again, Kf6. White doesn't take that pawn right now, they don't want to allow the bishop and the rook into the game, and they're simply increasing the pressure over here. Black decided to go bishop here, which, you know, I guess they're wanting to bring the rook over, but they do abandon the pawn. If they hadn't done that, and let's just say they would have played, I don't know, some random rook move, how would you have won this game? This is an important question that I think you should understand. What do you do in this position? The answer to that question is, you don't need to rush, there is no reason to panic or go fast, you can just take your time, because black essentially can't move. The way that Stockfish recommends is, put the pawn on g3, just to kind of support here, black's basically going to have to waste some time, jump in with your bishop, notice you're taking over more squares, black's going to have to waste some more time, then grab the pawn that was, basically you could have taken at any point, but you just get everything in perfect position first, then you take the pawn, and then probably just f5, something like this, right? This is pinned, you're going to take another pawn here in a second, there's really nothing black can do, you just keep taking stuff, right? They're tied up. That's kind of how you would win. All right, so let's go back to the game. In the game, black decided to do this instead, abandon the g-pawn, allow the rooks to come over and see if they can get some counterplay. G3, again we see the same idea of like, just take your time, no need to panic, this is not going anywhere, you can take it when you're ready, and white figures this is going to be a useful move, and so they take the time to do that. Rook comes over, the rook comes up, again, this idea of, I'll take the pawn when I'm ready, I'm just going to keep blockading, make sure there's no chance that black maybe sacrifices the pawn to let the bishop into the game, like no, you can't even do that. Black basically just has to move back and forth, what are you going to do? Takes the pawn, goes here, the rook goes onto the seventh rank, and now he wants to trade some pieces. General concept here at the end of the game, when you're ahead, trading pieces is good, don't trade pawns, you want to leave the pawns on the board so that they can become queens or push down the board and cause problems, at least threaten to become queens. And so, that's what's happening, trade, king goes here, rook goes back. Question for you guys, should white take the pawn here with the rook? I hope you didn't say yes. If you said yes, I need you to comment below, say skewer, just put skewer in the comment if you thought that you should take this pawn, comment skewer so that I know. The problem with rook takes h5 is now you lose the game because of the skewer from the bishop after you move, you lose your rook and you lose the game. It's never too late to blunder, right, as international master Zura would say. So what do you do? If you can't take the pawn, what do you do? King g7, look at this amazing move. The rook is now cut off from the defense of the pawn, it has to move somewhere and then you can safely take the pawn because there's no skewer. Now it's just an attack, you're going to have time to move your rook and you're just fine. So notice what happened here, guys. White just gradually increased the pressure along these dark squares, slowly invaded with the king. Look at this king, I mean it went all the way from e1 to g7. The rooks came up and over, came up and blockaded, the pawns helped to block, everything was just gradually, the pressure was increased until eventually, when you were ready, you took the pawns and now you have a winning endgame where you have these, you know, two passed pawns. So I'll show you how the game finished out, bishop here, rook came down, white trades some more and then starts pushing their pawns. It got a little weird here, black was kind of all over the place with what they were trying to do. They attacked this, white saved one of the pawns, then started pushing, then black decides to bring the king over, then they say, no, let me throw this forward just to try to mix it up a little bit. White says, I'm not really interested, I'm just going to push my pawns. Then black goes back to taking, I mean they're all over the place, it doesn't really matter, it was a losing position anyway, but, and then right here black actually resigned. So very, very instructive game on how to take advantage of your opponent's positional weaknesses, even in a game with opposite colored bishops, which a lot of people would say, oh, it's probably going to be a draw. Well no, because white's position was so much better, the king was able to invade, and eventually you win the pawns and you win the game. I hope that helped you guys, and next game is game 27, which is on page 187 in the book Logical Chess Move-by-Move. I'll see you guys next time. Stay sharp, play smart, and take care.