I love that you're always so understanding of your opponents mistakes. You never forgive them though and punish them severely on the board but never verbally. A true gentleman always. Thank you for all your explanations of why moves are suboptimal. I was amazed that you had your game published when you were so young and found such a winning combination against a much higher rated opponent. My new years chess resolution is to reach 1000 in rapid play and blunder less (oh no my Queen is mostly not a trap with me). Thank you again for your teaching, it's a key part of my learning for this year
Really enjoying this series! (Side note: thank you for making content that can safely be played out loud with kids or their grandparents in the room! haha)
You can safely put Eric or Naraditsky on RU-vid when mixed company is around. That is one of the many reasons they are my two favorite chess YTs. Great edutainment. Sorry, Gotham got to pass.
love the content Eric! I love hearing your thoughts on attacking strategies in the middle game as that is where I suffer the most. Would love to see a season 2!
This has been the most useful series for improving at chess by far. As opposed to being obsessed with trying to nail particular openings and traps I'm playing far more intuitively and responding to my opponents weaknesses. Before I would just mindlessly try and follow a system and eventually become lost when the opponent played something unexpected. Has showed massively and improved about 150 rating points. Aim to reach 1k this year! One of my favourite elements of this series is the patience and humility that you show all of your opponents. Even at the lowest level, and silliest moves, you would still try and explain the opponents thinking and play solidly in return instead of just speedily crushing them. Sure you still end up wiping the floor eventually, but you approach each player with the same level of respect with which you might approach a GM, and never underestimate! which is an important chess lesson within itself. Thanks Eric!
@@Kcrude wait this is exactly me, from 950 to 800. im fighting for my life rn and the wins dont even feel satisying, my last few wins were dudes just blundering queens, not me doing anything cool lmao
My chess resolution is to write all the notation for my casual games I play in person ever week and actually learn the coordinates by heart and analyze my games
Man, I feel this way too much. I'm not great at Chess, I'm only playing for the enjoyment of the game, but I am such a poor loser. It's hard to break the habit of responding like that. I'm gonna give it my best shot though.
@@zndrb10 You can try pretending that you're playing a teacher, and if/when you lose, take it as the lesson / learning opportunity. One thing I like is I can't get frustrated at a "teammate" for making a mistake.. it's always something I myself can learn to do better.
"It's unfinished development; it's still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is the dinosaurs here. It's like a curse weighing on the entire white position. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming savageness, this overwhelming domination, these overwhelming knights, and overwhelming lack of mercy. Even the arrows up here in the board look like a mess. There's no harmony in the white pieces. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there's no real harmony as we conceived it. But when I say this I say this all full of admiration for the position. It is not that I hate it; I love it, I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment."
I recommend adding opening name to the title. Because this is an instructive speedrun, it will be helpful for the new players and us to find these videos by opening for reference in future
This is by far the best video series on chess having a grandmaster working his way up and explaining each decision and seeing all kind of trap on going, Well done this is great stuff
my resolution is simply to get good enough at chess that i'm not making very basic errors in my games. i will be happy if i'm simply bad at tactics but not making one move blunders of pieces.
Isnt it incorrect at 17:02 when you said "I'm not actually attacking g5", as then you would just use the Queen sack into double bishop mate you mentioned earlier.
I just looked up Eric's 2003 Niles opponent (from the newspaper clipping 26:15) on fide, Mark Marovitch. 25:42, The way Eric was talking about him i thought he'd be 90 years old. Dude was born in '61! Means he was either 41 or 42 when Eric played him! Sure that's still pretty old compared to an 11 year old, but dude! Eric made it sound like he was playing someone from a nursing home!
I love your content. I think my chess goal is to be more mindful with the games and moves i make, rather than tilting or playing mindlessly. Also, play some more scrabble please!
Hi Eric! Often, since you´re such a strong player, you win right at the opening. This doesn´t give us the chance to enjoy your explanation of typical strategies and moves of certain openings. Maybe, when certain game winning tactics arise, it would be interesting to point them out, but then not play them and continue in the spirit of the opening (at least early in the speedrun). I think that would be the best of both worlds! I´d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you for all that you do!
@21:29 Bxf3 is afaik the mainline Scandinavian, best move evaluated at +0.9 (2nd best is +1.6). After exchanging the bishop, you eventually play e6 to get a light squares pawn complex.
This is a small goal to some, but means a lot to me and is not as easy for me to obtain compared to others. My goal for this year is to buy my first ever chess set, I would really love a nice wooden official chess set and board but they are quite expensive, so I have been playing online for a couple of years. However if my situation improves this year I would love to have one in my home, so when im reading books I can use a physical board and move the pieces around to analyse the different lines in certain positions. At the moment I have to set up the position on a computer then when i need a different variation i have to go out and back in and set up a new board. Sometimes i feel a physical set would be more useful. Also I would love to play my friends and family when they visit, having a nice chess board on the table to look at would also be a treat. Unfortunately to get these amazing traditional chess sets they can be quite expensive, imagine having a tournament style set in your living room what a lovely thing that would be. So yes, that is my goal, I have played chess for 2 years now, and have developed a love for it, and I watch all chess creators whether it be, Eric, Levy, Naroditsky, Hikaru, Magnus, i watch everything I can chess related, I am so pleased I found chess, or it found me. My rating is only hovering around 1500 but i am on a steady increase month after month so who knows where i might end up ❤
Chess New Year resolution: reaching 1800 FIDE. Right now I'm 1650. I've just started playing classical tournaments and I've discovered a completely new side of chess, and I love it. It's a totally different game from 10 minute chess.
If anyone is interested in the b4 move of the Scandinavian (mentioned in 11:05 game), it's called the Leonhardt Gambit and was Eric's first instructional video on YT! It's a really interesting line and I think it would be great for all players, especially around this rating where the Scandi is common, to have in their back pocket for some fun wins.
I plugged that last game into an engine out of curiosity, and that was a clean 100 accuracy. Good lesson for people new to chess: high accuracy does not always indicate cheating, especially if the win was very quick and the opponent’s accuracy was very low.
You are the best Eric: There is more to chess than winning. You exemplify personal maturity and kindness...along with chess brilliance. Wish the world had more of you.
14:06 Can we play Qh5 at this point? 17:02 queen does not defend g5 here as there is queen sac checkmate which Eric mentioned earlier. 17:40 i think the best discovery is Nf5 and taking undefended bishop.
As for your first question, Qh5 is not optimum because of Ngf6 allowing Black to develop with tempo. And after Qxg5 Qxg5 Bxg5 Bb4 O-O Bxc3 bxc3, Black has managed to catch up in development and has a better pawn structure as compensation for the lost pawn.
And after Nd6+ Ka8, Nxf7 also wins three points worth of material in addition to weakening the pawn structure. But if you go with Nf5, that also wins three points but there is a trade-off. After Nxg7 Rg8 Nh5 Nf5 Bh2 Nxd4, Black regains one point.
GAME OVER @7:56 I think it is better to let the N or P capture e4, I would use a different move to gain tempo. if d3xe4 he loses the Q. If Nc3xe4 you have a stronger pawn and gain one tempo no? If f5xNe4 he loses the rook.
Before I ask my question, I'd love to thank you for this amazing series. My question is in your first game, when you played pawn f5, if your opponent had taken en passant would you have taken with the queen or with the pawn? Because if you take with the pawn your opponent might check you with the queen on h5 right?
My NY resolution for chess. Is year get better (current 1450 rapid), so maybe to 1600/1700? But I'd love to learn blindfold chess and beat my friends (all beginners) That and actively use courses I've bought in previous years to actively improve. .
anyone else wonder at what "opponent rating" Eric will first lose? what a wonderful series. I watch each episode the minute I see it is available! Eric might have won 64 in a row at this rating, but I would like everyone to know i win 51% at the 800 ELO rating! Wish I could "gift subscribers" so he could thank me. pretty sure i don't know how to do that!
I’m like 700ish elo. I got a little fed up going back n forth and took a break. so I just did puzzles for a couple months. I’m at 1900 puzzles, I want to hit 2000 puzzles and then challenge myself to play at least 2-5 games per day for a month and see how I turn out.
My chess new years resolution is to get up to 1600 from 1200 Elo and 2500 puzzle Elo from 2042 this year. Lots of studying between school and chess lol.
I wish you could stay more time on this range 1.100 to 1.200, but having seen your normal play in the higher levels I know you'll be zipping like a hot knife thru butter. 🚑
@17:27 wouldn't it be a tactic to sac your bishop (Bxe6). Then if black recaptures, you can win the queen with the knight check and discovered check Nc4+
My chess new years resolution is when I'm not feeling great to not just torch 100 points of elo playing terrible blitz chess. I'm giving it a week or so but we'll see how it goes.
Would be interesting to hear why you sometimes want to castle quickly, and sometimes don't seem to mind waiting. In general how to think about castling?
I feel bad for the old man who made a mistake against Eric then first appearing in the paper with that mistake, then having his mistake retold for tens or thousands of people in a RU-vid video and then having good mistake stressed in this comment.
7:54 in this position you shouldn’t have moved the knight because white couldn’t capture it with the pawn because after dxe4 dxe4+ it is check and the pawn attacks the queen and the white queen is lost
Honestly I kind of agree...some days I just lose like 5-10 games straight, many from completely winning positions, and I tilt so bad I want to cry. Seriously infuriating
I've been playing chess for 5 days after stumbling across Anna Cramling's channel. I'm failing at Blitz terribly, but I passed 800 on Rapid today, which I'm very happy with, and it's almost exclusively down to this Speedrun series, thank you!
My resolution this is year is to never have any resolution or celebrate this ridiculous event called the new year ever and never congratulate or accept congratulations again.
I'd really love to break 1100 and meet 1300 this year, though I'm not quite sure how to do so. I'm finding it quite difficult to improve, even with puzzles and game analysis. But I'm still enjoying chess, especially watching your videos :) Happy New Year!!
