How To Play The Queen's Gambit

Welcome everybody to another 10-minute chess opening video. Today we are looking at something that so many people have requested, the Queen's Gambit. Now, I'm actually going to include a little bit of material here on both sides. I rarely do that, but first we're going to start out with the Queen's Gambit for the white side, and I'm going to give you a few weapons to be aware of with the black pieces as well. The Queen's Gambit begins after the moves d4, d5, and c4. The point is that you are gambiting a pawn, you are giving away a pawn early, and what you want in exchange for this pawn is you want two pawns in the center, right? Because that pawn has now moved, it has ceded control of the center, and in a perfect world, white will then take that pawn back with the bishop, which has now opened up with the move on to e4, and white has a dominant center. Notice that now what happens is that black is left with one central pawn, and white is left with two central pawns, which is good. At a very elementary level, that's really what this is all about. Now, from a theoretical chess standpoint, I want to address the Queen's Gambit for beginners, intermediate players, and honestly, if you're watching this somehow as like a 2000, I'm still going to include something that might be useful for you. So, if you're going to play the Queen's Gambit on move two, you should be aware of the Queen's Gambit accepted. Anytime this pawn is taken, accepting the gambit does not lose for black by any means. You should know what to do against that. I recommend that you do take the full center, and there's some dangers if the opponent just defends like this. You can already begin to play moves like a4, undermining this pawn, and creating some serious weaknesses for the opponent. If the opponent plays a6, you just take, and they can't take back because of the rook. If they take back, if they play c6, you now can take once, and then just develop your knight to c3, and it's again difficult to defend this pawn with the tactic a6, you just take, and there's a exchange down on the other file, which is going to be an issue. At the same time, you also can just kind of develop your pieces, and if black spends all the moves in the opening just defending one pawn, black will fall behind in development considerably. There are other defenses. So the two ways to reinforce this pawn with pawns, this is the Queen's Gambit declined, which I'll also flip so you see it with the black pieces. Queen's Gambit declined is a legendary unbreakable tier opening, if you haven't watched the opening tier list that I did along with Hikaru. It is seen at all types of grandmaster level, blitz, rapid, classical, does not matter. It has not been broken for many, many years, and the point is that black will now play knight f6, bishop e7, and castle. Now there are branches of the Queen's Gambit declined. Some of them are, for example, this is the classic with bishop e7, knight c3, bishop e7, the two main lines being bishop f4 and bishop g5. Here black can play more aggressively in the center. This is called the Tarasch defense, and here you know you've got to know what you're doing with white. There's also bishop b4, which doesn't play passively, instead goes here. This is called the Rogozin defense, and so on and so forth. I mean here black can play c6, now you're which we will get into. The point is not to memorize all the deep theory. The point is to have a solid foundation on which to play an opening, and then start adding the more theoretical layers as you move up the ranks. You're not going to need to know the intricacies of the Rogozin defense. I mean, you know, until you're pushing maybe 2,000, just have a good fundamental understanding of what you're looking for early on. If you're going to play the Queen's Gambit with the white pieces, I recommend the two knights approach, and then I recommend putting the bishop on f4 or g5. You can play for g5 simply with this in mind, that if black castles very quickly, like let's say like this, you don't actually always have to castle here. There's some positions where you play a very early queen c2, and now you've lined up the queen to the h7 pawn, and if they play h6, you can sometimes play this. You're going to say, Levi, what the hell is that? And I'm going to say that's called a fish hook or a fishing pole, and the point is that you're setting a bait. You would like your opponent to take the bishop, after which you will play h takes g5, and now your queen and rook hit down here. If they play here, obviously take, take, queen e4, and good luck stopping the queen from infiltrating. Now, you're not always going to win games like this, but that's just one of the attacking ideas behind bishop g5. But black has to castle. The other idea is that you're actually happy to make this trade and reinforce like this. You don't want to play e3 unless your bishop has gone out, and now you've got a very solid center. You can again look for a short castle attack with g4, h4, g5, and so on. This is for the more aggressive players, and for the more solid players, like if black castles, then you just play bishop d3. You castle like, I don't know, black can play in a lot of ways if you're going to be solid. You play rook c1, bring this rook to the party, and then try to play e4, going for a more positional and slow approach to the game. That's really how you play the queen's gambit from the white side. Now, that's if black plays queen's gambit declined. The other way that I haven't really looked at yet is the Slav defense. The Slav defense is different than the queen's gambit because black reinforces, but the bishop stays a bit more open. The knight is the problem. The knight now cannot come out to c6. You can play this all the same, and the only layer here that I will add that potentially you should know is that you have queen to b3, a common idea that only exists when this bishop leaves, and queen b3 will hit the b7 pawn when you're a beginner. This is going to work a lot when you're a slightly stronger player than a beginner. People are not going to lose this pawn anymore, but there will be other opportunities that await you on the queen side with bishop f4, potentially getting a knight to b5 and knight into c7, but if you just want to keep it all the same, you just want to play like, bishop g5, e3, rook c1, by all means, by all means, go ahead and do it. Those are the two ways to decline your gambit, and that really leaves us with other stuff. If they defend with the knight, you just take. You'll love it. Why would I take? I mean, you didn't take the other way. The difference is that when they don't put a pawn there, they're not taking you with a pawn, and if they have to put the knight in the center, now you take the full center. Don't forget that at the end of the day, chess principles exceed or supersede opening knowledge of some form, right? Like, if you can put two pawns in the center, that is what you should be doing, and if they take with the queen, well, then you just play knight c3. I mean, you can't play e4, so you play knight c3, knight f3, and e4. Like, you try to take the center with two pawns, get your dark-squared bishop out, get your light-squared bishop out, and either you don't castle and you try to attack, or you castle and you play it slow. The queen's gambit is so solid, except against gambits, and against c4, there's a few gambits. So, for example, there's the Baltic defense, which is a very aggressive system. Against the Baltic defense, you should try to be as solid as possible and play things like knight c3, for example, and if black tries to cheese you early on, like, again, with something like knight c6, looking for knight b4 and knight c2, just stick to your game plan. Bishop g5, rook c1, not really worried about something on c2, just develop your pieces, you're extremely solid, and at the same time, there is something called the Alban counter gambit. Now, this one's a little bit dangerous, because if you take on d5, I bring my queen, and now I'm pressuring the center with two things. You don't get a very peaceful position. If you try to play knight f3, I play e4, and all of a sudden, it's like, whoa, black's attacking me, and if you play taking this pawn, black can lodge the pawn into d4, and now it's not so easy to develop. Actually, one of the benefits of playing knight to f3 on move two is that you avoid the Alban counter gambit basically completely. If black plays knight c6, black is in a totally different situation, and now there's other ways, I mean, you can even go transpose into the London. You say, Olavi, this is a Queen's Gambit video, why is the London here? We're taking advantage of this move order, that's all it is, but the Alban counter gambit with e5 after you play c4 is nothing to be afraid of, you just have to know what you're doing. Just play knight f3, and learn one of the I mean, there's some a3, g3 systems where you develop like this, or you can immediately fight against this pawn. This is for the more advanced players watching. As I said, beginners, intermediate, advanced players all are going to learn something, but that's generally how you do it. I mean, that's nine minutes. You can x out right now if you just wanted a repertoire for the white pieces, but I said I was going to give you one for the black pieces as well, so let's do that. Let's flip this around. We are now going to be the wrecked noob, huh? So let's not be the wrecked noob, let's change this around. Now we're the Gotham viewer, and they are going to be the wrecked noob, and let's say they play the Queen's Gambit against us. Now, you say, Levi, Queen's Gambit only exists after d5, what about knight f6? Well, you're not gambiting anything, that's just a different position. So, first things first, you can accept the gambit, but it's very risky, and when you accept the gambit, you need to develop very quickly in the center against e3 and e4. I actually like to play e5, the point being that if white takes on c4, you just take this pawn, and if they go like this, now you get a Queen trade early, and you get quick development. So, knight c6 attacks the center, you're looking at bishop g4 check, and long castle, so you get a very quick lead in development on your opponent, which might throw them off. So, I like e5 a lot, but if they play knight f3, you cannot play e5 because of this. So, you should just copy, occupying the e4 square, develop your bishop, play pawn to e6 so you don't block in your bishop, develop the other bishop, like to b4, and castle. You can accept the gambit, it doesn't lose by any means. However, you can also decline the gambit, and a good setup to play against the Queen's declined is something like knight f6. I did a video on the Catalan system, so with g3, bishop g2. What I recommend here is you can either play bishop b4 or bishop e7. If you play bishop b4, be ready to trade the bishop, or the knight, or the bishop, for example, like that. And if you do something like castles, bishop g2, and you're going to have to get this bishop out with b6. That's what you're going to have to do, because the bishop can't come out this way. Bishop b7, knight d7, and then c5, so something like castles. Let's say this happens, I said be ready to take, knight d7, and pawn c5, so you at least have two pawns fighting in the center of the board. Your games are going to look a little bit different, but that's if you basically want to play the Queen's gambit declined. Slav defense is okay, it's not, you know, it's not any better or worse than the Queen's gambit declined, I think they're equally okay. The same game plan, develop, bishop out, pawn, etc. Now, there's one spicy thing that I want to include, and that's the move knight c6. This might be interesting, because I did say that if you're able to put the Queen in the center, you should, and this is actually called the Chigorin defense. If you'd like a Queen's gambit declined weapon, this might catch a few people off guard. c takes d5, Queen takes d5, the point is that now two things hit this. So knight c3, you just take. Now, if they play e3, they've blocked in the dark-squared bishop at the cost of opening up the light-squared bishop, and now I like to strike in the center with e5. The point is that if they play knight c3, you don't move your Queen now. Huh? Bishop b4, and you pin them, and you're just getting a quick lead in development. You're going to trade off that bishop, you're going to develop this bishop, and castle long. Maybe you like that, because you get a lead in development, people are going to be very uncomfortable here, especially beginners that just want to get a solid Queen's gambit set up. And obviously, I have to give you a weapon with the white side now, right? So the best thing for white to do against the Chigorin is to just be very solid. So just play something like knight f3, and set up knight c3 in the future. And generally with black, what we'll do here is, again, we're going to try to play bishop g4 as fast as we can. White might play knight c3, and now we kind of see the problem. So you can play this in the form of a Scandinavian, something like Queen to a5, and looking for a quick castling. So d5, something like this, and we're just trying to play aggressive chess, which the computer is not always going to like. But okay, I mean, it doesn't really matter what the computer wants, because if you're playing someone who's around your level, and they're not cheating, then they don't have a computer. I hope this was helpful. All right, I hope this was helpful. We're about 14 minutes into the video, but I wanted to do this for white and for black, since people have asked. All right, and in case you're wondering, because you like my shirt, it's from All Saints. It's made of silk. It's really nice. I got it today, and I know you all were wondering, I like to wear different patterned shirts. So yeah, I figured I'd share that. I don't really have much more to say, but I'm not going to cut it here. As always, drop a comment. Leave something in the comments. Oh my god, I don't even know what opening I'm doing anymore. What game in the Queen's Gambit that you played, whether with white or with black. If you're not part of the Discord yet, that's all in the description. There's so many useful links. If you want to support the channel and get something back, you can get an openings course, E4, D4, and openings courses for black. I don't have much else. I'll see you in the next video.