When a Surprise Backfires | Road to GM, Game 108 

Hi Stjepan, my 2 cents here, when facing younger players or weaker ones it is dangerous to go into sharp positions, players at that level focus a lot in tactics, instead you should get a normal positional game, and outplay them in the middle game where you are much stronger. As other have mentioned your endgame technique is below your current strength, and one of the most important parts of it, as you know, it is not about knowing how to win an endgame position but how to convert a middle game position into a simplified winning position. Opening preparation is never enough, you have to take into account the player, the style, the weak areas etc etc. Other than that keep it up, have the same dream as you of becoming a title player someday and love your videos.

Appreciate your candour and honesty as always. The road to mastery of anything is long. One day you will probably realise that the goal is moot: it is in the struggle and the journey which gives meaning.

Beautiful game and analysis Stefan, couldn't find a better material for nimzo-larsen than this (even better than GM lessons). Thank you so much for this.

I play the nimzo larsen in most of my games and it's a big jump to go from controlling the centree with 1.e4 to completely neglecting it with 1.b3

4:34 you can just play d4 and fork his bishop and knight

Hello Stjepan, I think it's a hilarious, that you didn't consider Bc6 on move three ;) To me, this is just a very natural move: Nf6 blocks a potential f-pawn break, a king-side fianchetto is less powerful because of the e-pawn, Nh6 is just wierd. So either d5 or Bc4 to keep the option of pawn d6 for stability. That would have been my thoughts if I faced this opening without any theoretical knowledge. But I guess things like that happen, please don't get me wrong. Thank you for all the work you put in your videos. They are the best.

As you play Caro-Kann, Slav defence and Alapin Sicilian for black you should consider 1. c3; I believe it would be more efficient secret weapon in your hands.

Nimzowitsch-Larsen Atrack is not dubious. It is an excellent opening to avoid opening preparation and theory.

I could suggest you to try playing the Nf3 as first move. Basically it's very flexible and it can transpose into different positions you can get in ypur comfort zone from. I use it at times, even used the King's Indian Attack as a surprise at times.

Your videos are great but please correct the static noise in the background, is a bit annoying

Aren't you trying to do too much? Your opening reperotire is 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4 and 1.b3? To my mind that will just lead to some half knowledge at best. 1.b3 is something you play if you just want to play chess. You look at a few lines perhaps after 1..e5 the mainlines and try to have some ideas. Otherwise it's mostly transpositions and deciding which systems to play. I hardly could believe my ears when I heard you "prepared" for 10 moves after 1.b3 e5 2.Bb2 Nc6?? What's the point other than wasted energy? And 3...Bc5 is obviously just complete crap, you get to play d4 and he has to move the bishop again, there is no idea connected to the move that makes any sense. You don't waste energy on crap like ...Nh6 or ...Bc5, you just play chess. If you can't play against 3rd or 4th rate moves with your own powers than you are simply in trouble. Don't try to become a parrot by trying to learn/memorize what do against everything, become a chess player and find out what to do yourself based on ideas/games and your own logical thinking.

hey, since a couple videos I notice there is some humming (microphone noise), is the microphone near any electrical wires, closer to your laptop, etc? New laptop/soundcard? you could also try reversing polarity(?) of your laptops power supply, so just putting the power plug in the other way round (depends on the power supply used and how electric wiring works in croatia, but it does the trick sometimes where I come from..)

Your opponent played well.

Your mic was usually pretty good in the past, but in the last couple of videos there has been quite a distinct low pitch hum/buzzing sound. I'm no sound engineer, but I am aware that this can be caused by grounding issues. Check that all the connections are tight and if it persists, see if there is a difference between having the laptop plugged into mains power or not, and try different outlet points in your house to see if it is an issue with the grounding on a particular circuit! It could also be due to software settings, so you could try tweaking your audio settings. Perhaps other commenters might have some better ideas...

Very interesting game and analysis, thank you! Tough to get such a rare move, 3...Bc5 so early in your new repertoire, 1.b3 Larsen opening, but I felt you over analysed it and it seemed to shake you and then it seems to me this adversely affected the rest of your game! I look forward to watching the rest of your tournament games & goodluck with future games in your new opening repertoire.. :-)

You are a really good player! I'm 16 years old and play chess since 2 years and have a rating of 1400 and a bit thanks to your videos. I think next year I will have a rating of 1700 because I'm better than my rating says! Thanks :)

I like your attempts to understand the openings and principles and play from that, but when playing a 1550 player and you are yourself a 1900 player, this doesn't matter too much in my opinion: mistakes and imperfect moves will be played by both sides anyway, so spending 30 minutes to get the opening right is not very clever.

Please make a Video of this nice Opening 👍

Perfectly binge watchable

The Qg4 mistake is similar to winawer positions

seems like the best way to play you is to leave the queen hanging and you won't notice. :)

Legend has it that when this video came out the channel name changed to hanging queens

14:07 Why not just Nh4 ? seems 10 times more natural and less risky than d5 EDIT : I just tested it, it is indeed the best move.

32:13 'Bc5 has been played only twice in history....' There are 22 games with it in my database - it's the 7th most popular move (4. Bb5 is the most popular response).

Why not playing 4. Bb5, with the idea of taking control of e5 and preparing f4 without the complication (in case of Qh4+ the f1 square is available for the king). It's something common in the English defense with black.

Anyone knows how to face black when they play 1. B3 Nf6 and they they never play Nc6?

At 4:50, how does Nf6 not lose a pawn to Nxe5, dxe5, Bxe5?

What is the ideas of playing nimzo larsen!

As Ben Finegold would say about this game - very suspicious. Speaking of the opening, are u sure it's a good idea to play this if during the game u had more than a couple of times when the only thing that kept u equal or better was bad play from your opponent? I understand that u want to have a "secret weapon" but that's just a bad opening that will not work even against slightly higher rated players. Let's look at some lines with Bd6. There are some other lines that give black a pleasant position but I believe that Bd6 is the most convincing. 1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 Nf6 4. Bb5 Bd6 5. Nf3 e4 Black is already better. 1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 Nf6 4. Bb5 Bd6 5. Ne2 Ne7 6. Ng3 c6 7. Be2 Bc7 8. O-O d5 Black is much better. Lines where white plays c4 are good for black as well. You can say that white just played bad in the lines that I have given and there are improvements and you would be right but check these with a database u will find a lot of games of players much stronger than u. 2400+. And just by making logical moves black gets at least equality while u have to memorize tons of the lines to know how to keep the game equal. I looked at this opening when I was working on my repertoire and I found that if black just knows his basic ideas he will get a nice center and a good attacking position which plays itself much more naturally then what white has to play. I know I am just a random dude on the internet who follows your channel but here is my advice - if u like positions after b3 Bb2 start playing Nf3 on move one. This way u are more likely to get positions close to Nimzo-Indian/Queen's-indian which is very convenient considering that u started to play those as black. Usually, u will be getting smth like this - 1. Nf3 d5 2. b3 c5 3. e3 Nc6 4. Bb5. Basically, u have a defense that u know but a tempo up. It is equal of course but your understanding of the positions that arise will help you to outplay your opponents and you will also significantly increase your understanding of these positions in general so it will be easier to play something similar with black too. At the same time, if your opponents will decide to avoid those positions u will just get a good version of the same b3 Bb2 opening. For example, 1. Nf3 d5 2. b3 Nf6 3. e3 c6 4. Bb2 - could as well come from your current opening prep 1. b3 d5 2. Bb2 Nf6 3. Nf3 c6 4. e3. And if your opponent does not want to allow you to play b3 hoping to take you out of the prep u have a variety of choices. For example, 1. Nf3 g6 2. e4 - we are in Modern now 1. Nf3 d6 2. e4 - welcome to Pirc or Philidor where playing white is much easier. 1. Nf3 e6 b3 -we are likely to transpose to our main positions and u also can play french with e4 if you feel like it. Anyways, what I am trying to say is that u should not pick opening that gives your opponents more choices than they usually have or play something where they can just play 20 logical moves without a deep prep while you have to remember tons of lines. This is not a good strategy. You have to try to keep as many options as u can and give your opponent as few as you can. In the end, isn't this the essence of chess?

Interesting game and analysis but I spotted a mistake. At 15:55, u say "If he takes on c2 now, I exhange Qs first"; but in fact after white plays Qxg6, black instead of capturing back the Q has a mate in two, with ...Be3+ (intermediate) and then ...Nxa2 mate!

Nimzo-Larsen Attack is dubious? Also 1. b3 is the less common variation of the Nimzo-Larsen attack, usually you start with the knight to f3, then b3- that was the variation played by Nimzowitsch and the more common one in general. But chess opening nomenclature is confusing and contradictory

5 hrs for a draw, i would have fumed on my way home if i was the one playing black

What would happen if you replace all this studying and preparing openings time with studying the 9 Yusupov books?

As others nave already pointed out at 6.40 you miss an hanging queen...

Your awesome bro i already learn from u

If this were played online I may think the lower rated is cheating, so resiliant!

FYI audio has a hum that makes me not able to listen. I'll check back for next one.

Couple of questionable moves on your part. 1) Not trusting your opening theory and playing better moves after his Bc5 and 2) playing patzer moves like Qg4

16:49 I don’t see how you can win Black’s bishop, f.e: ...Bc5

I played 1.b3 for a while but it doesn't have much sting.

I’m a 15 year old 800 OTB who only plays b3

Nh4 before d5 was a better move i think.

have you thought that in ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-w8lhFXBsxaQ.html 1. Rxc7 Rxa5 sacrificing the knight, 2.b5 Rc3+ 3.Kxd6 the b-pawn is very hard to stop. Your king and rook is very active also.

the day that i spent 3 hours preparing a game against a 1500 elo player i close with chess XD i hope you are joking

Plz give heart nice videos bro

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-w8lhFXBsxaQ.html why dont you play d4? outdated comment but still