I'll Teach You How To Easily Beat Aggressive Chess Players

I will be playing a game against an 1850 rated opponent and I am going to teach you my thinking system. My thinking system is basically how should you think during a game to find better moves. That is what I am going to teach you in this video. So for the opening I am going to play the Pegasus system opening D4 with Knight to D2 which is my favorite opening. And the opponent actually plays a very interesting line. This is the Lazar Gambit. I only see this like once every three months or so. If you play the move H3 here you lose the game because Black puts the Knight here and if you take it you are checkmated and if you don't take it then you lose your Queen. This is a very strange line by Black but we are just going to play Knight F3 and I think this is basically going to transpose into some type of England Gambit situation. What we have here is that we have one extra Pawn but our opponent has some better development. In all of these situations where you are up in material but your opponent has better development it's very important that you think about your King safety. We want to have a safe King. Trading pieces is also great for us because that brings us closer to an endgame. So castling, trading pieces, those are really the things that I am thinking about here. I have been thinking here for a while what we should do. I think E3 is still a reasonable move. We are going to just play E3, keep things simple, get the Bishop into the game and then castle. I am really happy with every trade that I can get because we are currently behind a little bit in development so that's why I played this move. And then we can castle which means we are already safe. Then maybe I'll play H3. I never really like if they have a piece in my position. If possible I would like to get rid of that. I think they are going to castle long which is the typical plan for them in these positions. So I think Knight C4 is interesting, Knight D4 just full on drops a Knight. So Knight C4 is interesting because it could give us some trades and trades is what we want since we are a little bit being attacked basically over here. So I like this move. Let me play this Knight C4 move. Might give me some trades over here. And then H3 I think is still a move that we need to play at some point. But this is a good example of how to play against an aggressive opponent who is basically sacrificing a pawn. Every single one of his pieces is being used to attack. He is going to castle Queen side and then try to do some sacrifices in which he could win my Queen. That's their goal here. It's important that you count pieces all of the time. So we see that our opponent has 5 active pieces. We have only 3 active pieces. It's important that we don't let this difference become too huge. Usually 3 piece difference is already quite something. They do surprise me here that they castle short, that's very strange. But alright, let's eliminate their Bishop, damage the pawn structure. Let's play H3, kick the Knight, bye bye Knight, you have to leave. And then they give us another exchange, which we could go for, but it does fix their pawn structure. But I'm going to do it because being up a pawn means that I am quite happy with exchanges. So let us exchange. And then it's just about bringing those final pieces into the game because we really don't have that many pieces in the game. They do take with the Queen, which was to be expected. So I could take, take and then offer a trade of Queens, that's the simplest way to get into an endgame. But maybe they actually then try to threaten some checkmate things, that could be possible. But it won't work. So yeah, let us do this, let us take. This is going to be a very boring game maybe, we will just trade everything. But that's the best thing you can do against these aggressive opponents. Just take my Queen, please just give me an endgame where I have one extra pawn. There's not much else that I need to do here. The only thing that I am a little bit worried about is the fact that we have opposite colored bishops. When you have opposite colored bishops, that means basically that there is a bigger chance of it being a draw, even though you have one pawn difference. So we will need to win a second pawn probably. Or find a strange way that we could trade these bishops, which is sometimes available. So they are threatening a checkmate, but I do believe that if we play E4, we stop their checkmate and not only that, we also activate our bishop with an attack on the Queen, which is great. This pawn is also currently hanging, so if we could win that pawn, then we could have a two-pawn lead, but this pawn is also hanging. So this is really now about winning a second pawn, and then seeing if we could win that endgame. So I think the most interesting part of this video is really going to be the endgame lesson that we will get here of how do you push when it's opposite colored bishops, and you only have one pawn difference, and also what we just talked about, that when you're playing against an aggressive opponent, you want to trade pieces, really, especially if you are up in material. So they are attacking this pawn, alright, F3 is horrible, it's weakening my King, Rook E1 is sensible, there's not really a problem at Rook E1. I'm also thinking if I can counterattack, because opposite colored bishops is more drawish in the endgame, but it does favor the attacker in the middlegame, because if I attack a dark square, for example, the bishop here, they cannot defend it with that bishop. So this bishop here would be a plan. But let us first worry about the pawn which is hanging. But it's another good example, like, my bishop cannot protect my pawn, so it shows that opposite colored bishops really favors the attacker. So we have to make sure that there is no attack for diamond, that maybe we could have an attack, I see a potential attack against this pawn. So bishop here would be great. Also, since we have the dark squared bishop, I want to put all of my pawns on the light squares. The more pawns I have on the light squares, the more free dark squares that we will have for the bishop, and also their bishop will be hindered by all of my pawns on the light squares. So they are looking into playing D5, which I think is not a good plan, because we would just push the pawn over here to E5 possibly, so I think that doesn't matter. We have to get our bishop into the game. If I could teleport, I would put it here, but that's not available, so I think I am going to play it over here with B3, bishop B2. This already took away this square from their bishop, and if we then play C4, we also take away this square for their bishop, so that you can see that by putting my pawns on the light squares, I'm really turning their bishop into an almost non-existent piece at this point. And they are even putting their own pawns on the light squares here, which is not good for them. So we can deal with all of this, but I could also just develop my piece and threaten a checkmate. Like, that's something that we could do, just develop a piece and threaten a checkmate. If they take the pawn, that's checkmate. So I think here we would like to push the pawn, probably. I think pushing the pawn is logical. Capturing helps them to open up the position a little bit again. Queen over here, okay. So taking is definitely wrong. We could push. Yeah, we could push. I think we could push. That makes sense. Yeah, let's push. We are blocking our own diagonal, but there's always an easy way to fix that, by just pushing the pawn once more if we have some tactics. I'm also thinking I might even do a rook lift. I might play like rook here and rook here, potentially. F6 is strange, because they are weakening their own king, and they are also helping me to open up the diagonal again. So I think we could take that. We do activate their rook, but then I could pull up my rook here, and then swing over, possibly. That's interesting. Or I could just move my rook anyways, but then they would take, I would take. Yeah, I think we'll take. Let's take. Helps us to open up this. So any queen move that we make is now also a discovered attack on the rook with the bishop. So for example, queen here as a simple queen trade, but also we have an attack on this rook. But I think rook e3 and rook g3 is really the way to go. Yeah, I think that's what I'll do here. Also keep this pawn blocked, so that at any time their bishop is not participating, while our bishop is very, very strong. So I'm really thinking just the rook here, and then we have so much pressure, we even have a pin to the point where we could capture this rook then, because the pawn would no longer be protecting it. And I'm using every single piece to attack dark squares, and I'm using every single pawn on a light square. That's really the strategy here. Block their bishop, open your diagonals, attack the dark squares, where they are always missing a defender. All right. My opponent was thinking here for a very, very long time, and they have decided to play the move queen h6. So since they have been thinking for a very long time, there must be something behind this move. What is this doing? Stacking this pawn? Not really something I'm worried about. It's tapping off the g-file, which makes sense. Other than that, I don't really see anything. I just realized as well that maybe rook here could have been something that we could have considered as well, because it's another square where we can attack this. So what do we do? I feel like this move doesn't do anything. We could either activate a second rook, control the e-file a bit, we could go up here and add an attacker to g7, or we could also play this, which is quite strong actually, because it pins the pawn, which means we could take this rook for free. So before I make it immediately, let's just double check, but I think this is the move. Maybe they will just play rook g6, but that's okay. That's okay. Let's play rook g3. I think they will play rook g6. Because right now we are pinning this pawn to the king, which means that we could really just take here with the queen. They take with the queen, and then we take with the bishop, and they cannot capture back with the pawn. So I feel like rook g6 is a move for them, or maybe rook f8, but it's a bit sketchy, because they are staying on this diagonal with the rook. Alright, so this also adds some pressure to my pawn on f2, but I'm not really too worried about it. So I have a couple of things that I could do. Any queen move that we make always reveals an attack. So queen moves are interesting. Maybe queen g4 is interesting. Rook goes here. Then I don't have much. I have to think here for a moment. What are we going to play? Queen e3. I've also been thinking about just bishop c1 and attacking their queen, because it's almost stuck, but they still have these d squares available. So queen moves are interesting, because we attack the rook, or I could also activate my rook. I can also add my rook just as a defender over here, but then maybe just bishop here, although then we do a check and we pick up the bishop. So I think rook f1. Maybe there's a more aggressive move that we could play, but this is a good defensive move, protecting this pawn, and this doesn't work, because we would pick up the pawn and then pick up the bishop, and maybe a4 is still a move that I want to play at some point, or c4 could also be a move, but we don't want to help them to get a bishop into the attack. So this is a bit of defense, a little bit passive. Maybe we had something else, but I didn't really want to calculate too much either. So we are just going to see what they do, and then I think if we move the queen, we will always have an attack, and there's even a possibility of a windmill tactic over here. There's actually a hanging pawn over here as well, but I really feel like this is no position to go for that pawn. Maybe we can safely do it, like I'm sure in the end the computer will always say once we do a game review that this is a free pawn, but you don't really want to go grabbing free pawns if you're playing for checkmate. So this looks completely impossible, because you just gave me this check, and then I'm also going to pick up your bishop. So that's literally just a blunder, that's a free piece. And if you don't, yeah, they resign, but if you don't play that move, you are losing anyways, because I really don't think that black can do anything else over here. We really controlled all the squares quite well. Alright, a little bit strange ending, but I really hope this was a valuable video for you, that you got some new plans for your games. Subscribe if it was helpful, and I'll see you in the next one.