I love a good speedrun! Can't wait for the French defense! I also appreciate that you are playing with a decently long time control (10+5) since it allows more time to explain your moves and the positional ideas. Lots of speedruns play at a blitz time control and while it does allow for more games, often the explanations can feel rushed. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
You’re correct that in blitz it’s tricky to commentate and play well which is why I chose to do a longer rapid time control for the videos. Glad you enjoyed it! The French Defense is coming later this week 💪🏻
Thanks a lot for this Speedrun. I own the Chessable course and i have changed my white repertoire to Nimzo Larsen. I was struggling with white before and now i had 2 wins and 1 draw with white in the last otb tournament, first time i tried this opening. But it will help me a lot going through the Speedrun and hearing all your comments.
Oh nice, I'll definitely be tuning in through this speedrun. I play a lot of e6/b6/QID as black, and this obviously has a lot of the same setup and ideas from the white side. I appreciate the easy-to-follow pace and explanations. I also sometimes transpose into a French defense- sounds like there will be some good material for that too! Time to subscribe.
great video. i like that you show what to do when the opponent plays dubious moves. I encounter this in my 1000-1180 rating range a lot and many times I don't know what to do. I notice the course screenshot in 21:09 shows that you cover moves that are not great but show up on online chess games often at the lower levels. That is really useful for my rating. Not sure, but I think opening books will just cover the really good moves and not mention dubious moves, but that is what I need to practice playing against.
I think it’s important for courses and books to show not only the best moves from the opponent in the opening but also the potential mistakes and popular club-level moves that are played too. That’s the philosophy I use when creating courses 👍🏻
As an avid Nimzo-Larsen player I don't really understand the point of playing Nf3 before b3. Doesn't it just take away lot of the trappyness since it discourages e5? I thought this move order was chosen only by high rated players to shake up their opponents prep against 1.b3
Yeah, with the 1. Nf3, 2. b3 move order we are mainly preventing 1...e5. However, there's nothing wrong with playing 1. b3 and allowing 1...e5 if you like those positions! Starting with 1. Nf3 just takes the opening/game in a different direction by not allowing that possibility.
OK I get the first 3 moves, but I really don't know what to do with the e and d pawns. Is the answer 'it depends'? What occurs more often, e3/d4 or d3/e4?
Ultimately it does depend on how Black plays and we'll see a lot more of the nuances as the speedrun goes on. That being said, here's a few principles that can help to figure out which pawn moves should be done: -Against early ...Bf5 moves d3+e4 or d3+c4 tends to be good (the d3-pawn blocks the f5-bishop's diagonal pretty well) -The same is usually true with ...Bg4 moves -Against early ...d6 we are usually playing d4 (to prevent ...e5) so we cannot do the d3+e4 set-up in this case. Instead we'll go for d4+c4 usually -Against Queen's Gambit Declined pawn structure (...d5 and ...e6) we are usually going c4+d4 -Against Kings Indian Defense pawn structure (...Nf6, ...g6, ...Bg7) we are usually going for c4+d4 -Against early ...d5, ...c5 we are usually going e3+d4 or e3+c4. Sometimes d3+e4 if we get to play Bb5 and capture a knight on c6 There's more than this but hopefully that gives some ideas. Future games in the speedrun will have more explanation 🙂
