3 Simple Rules to Prevent 95% of Your Chess Mistakes

What is up, guys? Today I'd love to share with you the three rules that help our students the most and I use them all the time as a Grandmaster, therefore I do hope that you'll find them helpful. Let's start with this position. It is black to play. How would you play here if you were playing black? I'll give you a couple seconds to think about it. And of course, it's not just about this position. The same way of thinking would apply to any other chess game that you play. Most players will realize that, hey, there is an open file, feels uncomfortable for your king to stand there, and anyway, you need to castle, therefore why not to just do that? This seems like a perfect chess move, but it's also a losing blunder. Here's the thing. White can play Qe4, establishing this battery, and at the same time hit your bishop, which means that you'll have to cover up your king somehow, and then white would pick this bishop for nothing, ending up with an extra piece. Which brings us to the first key idea. I call it the anti-blunder check. Let's be clear about this. Most of the games on amateur level, especially in Blitz, are lost because of a blunder, and therefore, if you can reduce the frequency of your blunders, that will instantly level up your results significantly. Now, there is also one common fallacy around blunders. People typically assume that a blunder is when you hang a piece by a move that you play. Let's say, black moves the knight right here without noticing that white can capture it, and that would be a blunder. Now, sure, it is, but in most cases, that's not the type of blunders that people play in their games. It's usually those kind of moves where the move itself is perfectly fine, but the blunder is the fact that black did not perform the anti-blunder check. They didn't ask themselves if this move is safe. Here's how you do it. Before playing this move, you need to ask yourself, can my opponent go forward and attack something? Because we only care about those moves. We don't care if he wishes to move the rook anywhere. You know, we only care about attacking moves, alright? For instance, the queen could also capture this pawn, which is one of the aggressive things for white, but it's not the end of the world for black, and indeed, we already know that there is this Qe4 move, potentially some Qf5, Qh5, still trying for the same checkmate, but that's not dangerous because you can easily defend. Qe4, though, as we know, is really a problem. So what would be a better thing for black? Well, castling in itself is a good idea. We just need to secure our bishop somehow, and any move that would do that would do the trick, right? The easiest would be just to trade it off and then to castle with a good position. Here is the other game. It is still black to play. How would you play here as black? Now, in the actual game, black play Rxb4. Is this a good move or not? Well, let's come back to the idea of the anti-blunder check. One of the easiest ways to secure your position is just to always keep an eye on your opponent's ideas and ask yourself what is he going to do. In this case, are there any threats that white is trying to pursue? He's got this battery, crossed this diagonal, and he probably wants to bring his queen right here. All right, is there anything else? There is also Rxh6, taking advantage of this pin. Cool. Now, does it necessarily mean that we need to defend against those threats? Well, not really. It just means that you need to keep an eye on them and then realize whether they're dangerous or not. For instance, Qxh7 turns out to be really deadly. And by the way, once black played Rxb4, which is a losing blunder, because it allows Qh7+, and then Bg6, white keeps attacking and now the king needs to move. This also drops the rook, white keeps attacking, and white won the game. Now we know that this threat is real and black could have easily stopped this by just playing f5 to break this diagonal. And now there's not much white can do. By the way, how about Rxh6? Should we worry about this move or not? Well, as I said earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to start defending straight away. You just need to figure out whether it's dangerous or not, because many of the ideas that your opponents pursue are just wrong, and then there's no need to stop them, such as in this case. Actually, it's very good to allow white to capture this pawn, as in this case, black has a really strong counter, Qc1+, which happens to be a double attack. And this Rxh6 is gonna be lost, and white is just losing the game. The first rule to find the best move is you don't talk about the best move. What you really need to do instead is to ask yourself, Can my opponent go forward and create threats, or capture something, such as in this case, it is white to move the game of Fischer against Durao. And before you even begin thinking about white's moves, ask yourself, can my opponent do something? Then you see, okay, is this a threat or not? And you realize that you've got the other knight guarding this one, so it's not a threat, which brings us to the other two remaining rules. What are you gonna do then? If your opponent has no threats, and it's actually time for you to pick the best move, what should you do? Well, you may think about this and try to guess Fischer's move. Before we move into this, real quick announcement. Many of you guys have messaged me about our recent Black Friday offer. It has expired within just two days, but I understand that many of you have missed out, so we're extending it, but this is the only and definitely final extension, so you still have a chance to get any of my premium courses at a massive discount up to 80% off, so if you ever wish to level up your chess, now is the best time to do so. You can click the link below the video in the description and find if there is any course that you enjoy. Which brings us to the second rule. You wish to attack weaknesses. What are weaknesses? Well, these are pawns of squares on the 6th and 5th rank, which are not guarded by other pawns. Because if something is guarded by the other pawn, it's very hard to attack it. But if there is a pawn which has no pawns on the adjacent files which could possibly attack it, it makes it weak, such as this pawn on b6, which is already under our attack. Similarly, sometimes there are weak squares, such as this one on d6, and if you could land a knight there, that would be absolutely terrific. And even though there is nothing to be captured there, if you can land a knight, it would, just hypothetically, right now you can't do so because black guards that, but just to illustrate the point, if you could bring the knight right there, it would control so many squares into your opponent's position that it would make it deeply uncomfortable for them to move around or do anything. This would establish your domination and it would be very easy for you to develop your attack after that. Therefore, you wish to attack weak pawns and weak squares in your opponent's position. In this position, I'm pretty sure that a lot of players, probably the majority, would bring the rook to this open file and then would be stuck not knowing what to do next. But Fischer played Ra3, aiming for this transfer, so he played Rb3 next and now this weakness on b6 is attacked twice. Therefore, the plan is again, very straightforwardly, you attack opponent's weaknesses. Black guarded this pawn by going Rc6. What do you do next? Well, there is also this weak square and Fischer decided to attack that as well. This time we've got two knights ready to jump there and now Black's got this problem. Black still played Bf8 to cover up this weakness. Alright, what do you do next? Alright, this brings us to the third rule. So initially, we make sure our position is secure. In this case, there is indeed nothing that your opponent can do. You tried attacking weaknesses but your opponent guarded them. What do you do then? There is nothing to attack straight away. This brings us to the least active piece rule. You gotta look at your position and find pieces which are least active and improve their position. In this case, we've got two knights doing a great job. We've got this rook putting pressure. Therefore, we've got these two remaining pieces, our king and the rook, which are currently doing nothing and your task would be to improve their position. Fischer did that by playing Ke2. In an endgame, king becomes an active piece and you wish to centralize it. Black played Be7, trying to cover this second weakness, which they have. Alright, here's another interesting question. Should you care about your pawns and about your pawn structure? Well, yes, but only once your pieces are active. Just because your pieces are way stronger than pawns, your minor piece is equal to 3 pawns, your heavy piece is equal to 5 pawns, therefore you do wish to take care of your most valuable assets first and only then you get to pawns. In this case, your pieces are more or less active. This rook definitely needs to be activated, but there is no clear way of what you can do about this. You can go ahead and put it right here, but it would only be a trade. Not very clear what to do after that. Therefore, Fischer decided to postpone this decision for a moment and instead he played f4 just to solidify his pawn chain and now his position is rock-solid. Black played Kf8, also centralizing his king. Again, this brings us to another interesting question. Ideally speaking, you'd love to move forward, attack, especially opponent's weaknesses, but what if your opponent has no weaknesses? Or those weaknesses are already covered, such as this pawn on b6? Well, then you need to create weaknesses. Usually you do this by opening up position. You can do this by either pushing your pawns forward and sometimes by sacrificing pieces. In most cases, by pushing your pawns forward and opening more lines. Fischer goes g4 and potentially in the future, Black played Ke8, now he goes Rf1 and potentially this f5 break becomes possible and this would create new weaknesses, which would give you new targets for your attack. Black noticed that, he decided to go Rd5, potentially putting a little bit of pressure right here, even though the pawn is defended, but also he overlooked another interesting idea. Fischer played Rf3. He actually noticed one more weakness in his opponent's position. Besides this pawn weakness and a few weak squares, there is also this weak pawn on h6, which is no longer defended as Black relocated his king and bishop to the middle of the board. Now Black moves back, they don't have much to do. Rh3, this time White tries to hit this pawn. Black plays Bf8. He's desperately holding on, but the position is so awkward that now Fischer found a super unexpected and really cool final blow Nxa5. Sacrificing the knight, also hitting this rook. But if the knight is captured, Nf6 occupies one of the weaknesses and all of a sudden the king gets checkmated. If you missed my recent video about the 10 best traps in the Russo Gambit, check it out right here. It's super fun and effective. And let me remind you once again that it is the very final chance to make use of our current special offers Black Friday, Cyber Monday up to 80% off. If you're interested to level up your chess, click the link somewhere on the screen or down below in the description and I'll be happy to help. Either way, have a great rest of the day and I'll talk to you soon.