How to SMASH Grand Prix Attack!!

Welcome back on the channel, happy new year, happy holidays, wish you all the best and let's just hope that in 2025 we will all grow together. Keep following the channel, tell your friends about it, subscribe, sometimes even donate, and let's go with something really ambitious today. Got so many requests by many of you. Hey Maio, how to refuel the Grand Prix Attack? It's very annoying, it's a very simple plan by White. What are we supposed to do? Well, that's why you have me and I'm about to tell you, I'm about to explain you what to do and how to play against that opening. Grand Prix Attack, very simple for playing with the White pieces, very dangerous, and you're just going to be able to see a very nice, easy, and I just like to call them easy-to-go plan. Let's begin immediately, we won't talk so much, so let's go with the lines. Grand Prix Attack begins with e4, c5, knight c3, you play knight c6, they begin like they're about to start with a close Sicilian, but instead of going for fianchetto, instead of going for butcher the Sicilian with bishop e5, they go f4. And when they play f4, you just go with g6, they play knight f3, you play bishop g7, and now they have two moves. They have bishop b5, and they have bishop c4. I'm going to explain you first how to play against bishop c4, that was a traditional way of playing the Grand Prix Attack, and for many, not only years, but I'd say decades, bishop c4 was exclusively the best option for White here. Well, those who play bishop c4, they want to go castle, they want to go d3, they want to go queen e1, queen h4, they want to take advantage of the open file with f5, and they just want to go after the king side, actually, they want to go after the f7, and of course, once the queen comes to h4, they want to play f5, bishop h6, knight g5, and to go with a mating attack that is very hard to defend. Because of that, we should be going with e6. There is a perfect explanation behind e6. I'm not only playing e6 to develop my knight on e7, but I actually want to develop my knight on e7, because I don't want to fight against the bishop on c4. So when you play e6, you'd like to place your knight on e7, you'd like to kick that bishop away with d5, and here they have two options. A classic approach in this position is to go with short castle, but there is also a very popular, a little bit looks tricky f5, but usually on f5, we don't react at all. Anyways, when they play short castle, you play knight g on e7 to go with d5 next move, and when they go with d3, we go with short castle or with d5. Makes no difference, because your next move will be either short castle or d5, so that's just the same side of a coin. So when you play castle, they all go with the queen e1. Grand Prix attack players, I usually say, they play a very primitive chess, because they always want to go with the same plan. They want to put the queen on e1, they want to place that queen on h4 afterwards. When they do it, they just want to play f5, open up the darkspawn bishop, want to play bishop h6, knight g5, and that's how they play. I'll put it on the board, so they want to play queen h4, they want to play f5, they want to play bishop h6, and they want to play knight g5. Those who do it, they're going to kill you. If you let them go with that, you can just sign your score sheet and say, see you next time when I learn this line. Or, even better, see you next time when I check the video of this crazy guy from Serbia who actually teaches us how to play all these variations. So, after queen e1, you're just going with d5, breaking in the center, going after the bishop on c4, and they just have to move it. If they take, it just helps us, because all of a sudden, this bishop gets a free diagonal. So, when they play bishop b3, now I'm threatening to take on f3 and jump with the knight on b4 at some point. If they play like this, I'm first taking an open file. When they go with something like this, threatening rook and the bishop, I can take it whenever I like. And I especially like supporting the idea of c4 and fighting against the bishop on b3. Black is doing a lot better. Nobody takes like this. These good grand prix players, they just bring the bishop back to b3. And here, I won't take so much of your time. I'm just going to give you two plans. And with plans, you don't have to remember anything by heart. Even in 15 years after you watch this video, you're going to know what to do and what are your plans. And what are the plans here? Well, you have two possible plans. I'm going to give you both of these alternatives. And you'll decide and pick the one that actually suits your style more. So, first one is Smyslov's idea, knight a5, where he goes after the bishop on b3. But it's not about going after the bishop. But also, he's releasing the c6 square for another knight. It is especially efficient and important once they go with the queen h4, which basically would be a mistake here. Because they want to go f5, bishop h6, and knight g5, doing the grand prix attack classic. So, you go knight c6, and you say, hey buddy, Maya explained us that we need to oppose your queen before you play f5, bishop h6, and knight g5. And now, they don't have knight g5, because on knight g5, you would just kick the knight away. And they would hang in both of these pieces. And their attack evaporates. So, if they take on d8, you take by rook. Yeah, they don't want to analyze this position so much. I'm just happy with the fact that I'm controlling the center. The queens are off. I can take the light square bishop whenever I want. Afterwards, I had a game like this. e5, I took on b3. I played knight b4, threatening the pawn. The guy had to defend it. And I played b6. Then, I want to play a5, bishop a6, breaking one chili with some c4, because I want to use the bishop here. And that's how we're supposed to play this position. And that's what we're supposed to do here. Black looks great. And black looks amazing. The bishop here. That's all you have to remember. Instead of Qh4, there are lines with e5. Lots of guys do this. Hey, don't worry. They've just made like a nice outpost for your knight, which is especially important if you want to go with some, afterwards, I don't know, Nf5 to oppose the Qh4. I keep on developing myself. Keep on developing myself, and knight comes to f5. Black is just doing great. If they take, I once again won the bishop here. I'm just going to play some a4 afterwards, harass this bishop. We'll have the b-file open. We'll have Qb6 possibility with c4, and going after the king, black looks great. That knight on f5 controls the game. So just like you see, but generally, these grand prix attacking players, they like to do f5. Then you take on b3, because it's very important, before you take, because if you take, they will just take by bishop, and they will take advantage of this bishop. So when you take, they would be able to take by knight, and afterwards, they would go Bg5, and after Bg5, Qh4, and all of a sudden, you might find yourself under some sort of attack. In order not to do that, when they play f5, one of the ideas of Smith's Law's plan is take on b3, and now you can take on f5, and now you're clearly up upon, you got a bishop here, which means keep opening up the game, and you're controlling d5, you're up upon, they don't have the bishop anymore that is controlling d5, and on top of all that, they don't have any kind of attack anymore. So I just explained you the Smith's Law's idea. Most of these guys play Bd2, going somehow after this knight. You, of course, play Nc6, hey, Maya, what's happening if they play classic? Every single opponent against me does this. I already explained you. The point of Na5 is not only to go after the lights for a bishop, but also to place your knight on c6, so you can oppose and parry out threats such as f5, Bh6, and Ng5. They don't have time for that, and now you're just going with a very simple attack. They take, we take, and now they don't have time to take because who loves less loves the best. So we take on b3, we take on d5, open game, bishop pair, strong outposts on d4 and b4, black is better. And I just explained you in a few moves what to do. One last thing, if Bd2, Nc6, overprotecting on a5, now you would say, hey, Maya, can we take now? Nobody. You take on b3, you threaten the rook, they gotta take, I'm opening up the game, having pretty much everything the same, just with the queens on the board, which I even prefer because you know how much I like to attack and how much I like the queens on the board. And one more plan, those who play this classic approach with the Bc4, e6, f5, Ng7, sorry, or Ng7, Ng7, d3, Qe1, d5, Bb3, you can play different plan. Different plan is with the Nd4, that's most common thing nowadays. You just put your knight in the center, provoke them to take, you don't give them Qh4 because of, once again, typical Smyslov's idea, placing Nc6 to trade the queens off and not letting them go with the typical stuff. And any kind of queenless middle game is just better for black. And when they play Nd4, you always take by pawn, not because you're closing the bishop, it's just temporarily here, but because you want to go after the c-file and after the bishop here. So you take on e4 and play b5. That type of thing with b5, placing the bishop on b7, going after the pawn on e4 and chasing that light square bishop away with a5 is what we want to have there and what we want to do there. So after like Ng3, we play a5, a4, b4 and now the light square bishop goes on a6, queen goes on b6 and we're just controlling everything. In these positions, I want to show you a game that I had. You know, black is better. According to the engines, engines go that far that they almost believe that black is winning. I wouldn't say so. Black is obviously better, but it's far from winning. And lots of guys like to do f5 to take advantage of the bishop, to threaten f6 and to go after the pawn. You, with one move, just refute everything. My game was with Nc6, played against 1fn. Here in Serbia, he played fxc6. This was a rapid game. I captured by bishop exchanging. This bishop is of vital importance because then they would be without a proper defense of the c2 pawn. So when he captured, captured, I captured by queen, brought my queen on c5, brought a knight here. I want to bring my rook to c8 or f8. And he went chili. I can even chase that knight away with h5 and h4. And I really, really easily won this game. So I just showed you all kinds of things. And it's time to check main line with the bishop b5. Just like I said, this is going to be a very brief, fast, and I would say cutting edge tutorial how to kill grand prix attack. So after bishop b5, alarm! There is something very important to tell you here. Guys, watch out. You're not supposed to give them possibility to take on c6. If you give them to take on c6, you know what I'm, what am I supposed to tell? Live this game. Play something else. Go on, I don't know, somewhere on the grass, play football, do the bowling, do any kind of things. Sell some things maybe, but don't play chess. Once again, those who come with the bishop on b5, they want to take on c6. You gotta stop it. And you stop it by jumping with the knight into the center and not letting these guys to go here. There is also one more important thing. Don't now even think that your idea is to take the bishop on b5. They're happy if they give up bishop for the knight. So when they play castle, you just say, hey, I watched the butcher. He told us not to take on b5. So you play a6, kicking the bishop away. And here we have a move that is more common, but it's more common on, I'd say, higher level. It's bishop d3. And you have 40% of the games in this position. Unlike 60% of the games that go with bishop d3. 40% of the games go with bishop c4. Let's go with bishop c4. So when they play bishop c4, you play b5, chasing the bishop away, getting tempo for the queenside expansion. And they play bishop d5. And once again, take a look at this tutorial. You're going to like it. It's fantastic, important and crucial move here. Rook a7. This rook goes on a7. You want to kick the bishop away and I'll show you everything what is so special about the rook on a7. My opponents in the past usually were thinking like, what the hell? I'm just going to carry on with d3 because here you really threaten e6, bishop b3 and c4 to trap the bishop. They got to play d3. It's the only move. We play e6 and they play bishop b3. Everything looks cool. We can play c4 here. Seemingly we can play d5. But thanks to that fantastic bishop on a7, you can and you should, not you should, you have to play d5. And when you play d5, this is actually a refutation of this seventh move, bishop c4. Very interesting. Most of guys online are not familiar with this kind of a thing. I played against a couple of really strong players, including a few IMs. They were absolutely unfamiliar with this idea. He takes, he takes. Very fast. If they take by bishop, you play b4, you kick the knight away, which basically means the bishop on d5 is going to fall. If they take by knight, you take on b3 and the knight on d5 falls. But now, usually these better guys think that we've just blundered the pawn and they play rook e1. And when you play knight e7, they play knight e5. But guys, here we can see the point of having the rook on a7, which defends the knight on e7 and gives us possibility to go for a short castle. When we do that, we now threaten to take. They all take without any thinking. And when they take, take, take and take, when they take, you just have to know that this position is almost minus 1.5, minus 2 for black, almost winning. I'm not going to go deeper than this. I'm just going to tell you that this position is considered to be much better, almost winning for black. I played lots of games all the time once. Problem is they can't play c3 because we take the bishop, play rook e8 to go some queen e2, play bishop e7 and we got a bishop here, we got initiative, they have lots of weaknesses and potentially be king. Much better for black. If from another point of view, they take on d4, we take, they go like this, we threaten mate on e1, they defend it, we go bishop e7 to go with queen e2 because it's potentially square we would like to put the queen and carry on with mating attack. It's winning. And that's why I played the game when I played for Serbia against Spain. My opponent, very experienced player, I believe an FM from Spain, played e5. He already was in problems. I played bishop e7. I'm very happy whenever I have in any dragon or just like I said, in these type of positions, double fianchetto, played rook, doubled my rooks on the file. He played queen e2. I won the pawn. He played like this. I played queen e7, threatened the bishop. When he played like this, I played knight e2, king h1 and I played rook f5. He couldn't move queen anywhere else but to g1. He's offering his queen for my queen but big Maya here played queen h4. I'm threatening knight to g3 and he resigned the game. A beautiful game from the match from February 2019, Spain against Serbia and I won this game in only 22 moves. Hope that you enjoyed in this one and this is how we refute bishop c4. And finally, those who play bishop d3, you play d6 opening up your bishop going for those bishop g4 ideas. They gotta take once again, remember in these Sicilian positions, we always take by pawn because we don't want to cramp. We don't want to have like cramp development and somehow to choke our pieces with bishop d4, knight f6. Then you have problems with exposed bishop on d4 but you actually take like this, get a tempo and play knight f6. They can't take on d4 because you have queen b6 to win the piece followed by e5. If they play king h1 to be able to take it, you defend it with e5, that's a crucial thing. And on this one, all you have to remember, if they play like this, f takes, d takes, bishop c4 because I have few games like this because we can't take, we just go with b5, we just go with d3 and we just play like this. Reminds me of Caracan-Tal variation for locking up in that case king side, here the queen side, bishop c1 and rook a1 and they have lots of problems with development. Black is much better. If on e5, they play c3, crucial move is not to defend anything and not to touch anything on c3, just play castle. So when they play c takes, c takes. If they play knight e4, I play rook e8, an important intermediary move, queen f3, an important intermediary move and h5, chase the queen away. Now we defend the bishop, we can threaten to take, this knight is hanging and after this, I remember playing a game like this. I took on b5, the guy played like this and I knew the analysis up to this moment. I'm completely winning because obviously, they can't go with this because I'm going to give check and after this, I'm going to be completely winning. So just like you see, all these variations are just so nice, so good and almost leads to winning positions. When they play bishop c2 to be able to finally complete their development, you say, buddy, where are you going? I want to mess your development completely and when you take it, now I go for this threatening, I go with b5 threatening b4, I go with bishop b7 threatening to take and when they play queen f3, you just go queen e7, you want to take it. If rook e1, you play rook ac8, we're down upon but we have absolute initiative on the board. Well, in case of rook e1, we go knight h5 threatening on f4, playing queen h4 threatening the rook and after this, we go back because what we've just managed is to weaken the light squares and the diagonal h1 a8. And finally, after knight e2, knight f6, if they don't play king h1, they play c3, you take. They have two ways of taking. Here, I played against young strong im from Serbia. It was a Blitz game two years ago. He played bxc3. I played short castle. He played bc2. I played b5 and I won a double fianchetto. He played e4. I played bishop b7 threatening the pawn. He played knight g3. I played rook ca threatening this one and here, I just played b4. This is how I won games in just a few moves. Okay, probably six or seven moves from here against Stefan Tadic, 2022 Parachin Blitz. I believe that Black already has an amazing position. Any c-takes before, you just answer with queen b6. And finally, if d takes c3, you just play castle. They go, for example, king h1 and you play b5 going for the double fianchetto. And when they go with... Look at this. I played a few Blitz games, queen e2. You go with the typical wing action and wing attack h5 and h4, kicking this knight away. At the moment, we're threatening to win the knight. And two games in Blitz, I won when they defended like this. I played h4 and h3 and I guess you're familiar already with bishop and b7 being so strong and creating lots of weaknesses in the wide scan. Usually, they play f5. Then we reposition this knight to e5, controlling the center. Keep in mind, this knight is pretty inactive piece because it has nowhere to go. And in that case, bishop g5, knight e5, bishop c2, a5. And we just have a very, very lovely game with absolutely no problems. I have double fianchetto bishops. They have stupid knight. They don't have the attack. And you have takes. We play h takes. I want to play some a4, a3. I want to play some knight c4. I want to play some queen d7 and pinning from this bishop. And my position looks absolutely nice and flexible. I believe this was a nice tutorial on how to play against Grand Prix Attack. Should be very useful for you in the future. And get back to me once you start winning games against GPA, so-called Grand Prix Attack. Have a good one and see you next time.