Why You Keep Losing | 15 Chess Principles You MUST KNOW 

1. Knights before bishops. 2. You should try to defend and develop at the same time. 3. The principles are guidelines, but there are exceptions. 4. The best attacking piece is the king's bishop. 5. Place each piece on the best possible square as quickly as possible. 6. Don't move your pieces more than one time in the opening. 7. Castle early (better on king's side). 8. Two pieces are worth more than a rook and a pawn. 9. Develop all pieces before attacking. 10. Deal with threats first before continuing development. 11. Each pawn you move in front of your castled king weakens your position. Try to keep all 3 as long as possible. 12. Developing a piece that ALSO attacks is a good move. 13. Open lines are to the advantage of the player with more development. 14. The best defender of white's king side is the knight on f3. 15. Whoever controls the center has better chances of attacking.

That principle with the three pawns and the f3 knight, and how moving them gives chances to the opponent, that was new and very valuable information to me. Thank you Nelson!

Nelson, you are the best chess channel and ACTUALLY teach very efficiently, rather than make a big show. Bravo!

That last part there really shows that the best defense is a good offense, a.k.a. counterattacking.

As an intermediate player I can say that you can do A LOT if you just focus in not blundering. Especially in quicker games, if you don't screw things up, chances are that your opponent will do that eventually

I've gone from 900 to 650

One thing that you didn't mentioned about weakening the king side through moving pawns forward is that it can potentially for lower elo players be a weakness to keep the 3 pawns unmoved. I haven't been back-rank checkmated myself much, but I've done it multiple times in the elo range of 1300 - 1900. People in this elo tend to forget the crucial danger of getting checkmated on the back row so they continue what they do, thinking they have an advantage but suddenly they get checkmated or forced to sacrifice pieces to avoid the back-rank mate. It's probably obvious to higher elo players how to avoid the back-rank checkmate, even if you didn't move a pawn, but to lower players they are either unaware of the danger or forget it. I'm not particulary good at seeing these kind of lines where you abuse the weakness, so it often prevents me from doing stuff like sacrificing bishop to create attack. And it rarely happens to me as well when I weaken the king pawns. It is great advice, though just to keep in mind the potential of back-rank mate that people like me and lower elo players tend to ignore.

Thanks for the video. A couple of questions stand out to me. First, you advocate the queenside castle to get to the point that is shown at 19:07. At that point, the position is vulnerable but not terrible for white. If white moves Bf4, the bishop is now defending the h2 square. That temporarily means that two pieces are preventing the black queen from moving to h2 for a checkmate. That also prevents the black queen from checking g3 again. Black pawn moves to h6 and g5 can deny g4 to white's bishop, but in the time needed to make those moves, white's bishop could take the pawn on h7 and be in a position to check on e5 before trading bishop for knight. I imagine something like .... 0-0-0 Bf4, h6 Bxf7, g5 Bh2, Rdf8 Be5+, Kb8 Bxg4, Qxg4+ Kh1, Rxf3 That's still a bad position for white, but maybe I've missed a move that white could have made to save the position and maintain a piece advantage. Maybe the sequence for white would be ..., 0-0-0 Bf4, h6 Nh2 At this point, the white bishop is still protecting h2, so black can't just hit h2 to force checkmate. Now, the knight at h2 and the white queen are threatening the black knight on g4. The black knight can go to e5, but that seems to mean losing the initiative with white still a piece ahead. I wonder whether the bishop should capture the f2 pawn at the 17:38 mark. If black captures with the knight, then white has to respond to the fork. That sequence might look something like the following. ...., Nxf2+ Rxf2, Bxf2 White has now lost a pawn and a rook in exchange for a knight. I understand that the white bishop sacrifice can lead to perpetual check. Maybe black counters by refusing to take the bishop. Bxf7+, Kd8 Bg5+, Kc8 Be6+, Kb8 White now has both bishops, a knight, a queen, a rook, and four pawns in not so great structure. Black has a queen, a bishop, two rooks, and six pawns, but one of these rooks is trapped behind the king. I don't know whether this position is decisively better for either side.

This is going to be a great series for the channel. Every two weeks to start is probably fine but I will definitely be looking forward to the next one. Great job!

Nelson is a natural-born teacher. Many thanks for clear, concise, easy-to-follow lesson. I'm never overwhelmed with too much, too fast information as with many other RU-vid presenters.

Thank you Nelson, we're moving up the ranking slowly, from beginner to (almost) advanced. I'm holding my own against 1000 ELO Bots. I find your videos most informative.

What a fabulous idea for a series. I have just blown the dust of the book, which I have in the old descriptive notation. Your video lessons will compliment the ideas of the book and bring it more up to date. Great work Nelson, very much looking forward to game 2 - thanks

This is a really nice distillation of chess wisdom, thank you! I've played many games where I'm on the receiving end of these attacks and I didn't really know what I'd done wrong. This is a very helpful collection of simple ideas.

Thanks Nelson, this series is a great idea! So I had read the 1st game in the book, and as I did I thought that black's attack, although very strong, was a bit premature because black's king was still in the center.. I had an eye for moves like Bxf7+ or Qa4+! Even without seeing the perpetual in full, I would not have resigned with white after Bxf2.. nothing to lose at going for a few checks to see where they lead to 🙂

Love the new series Nelson! You present the chapter in a really instructive way.

This is so cool. Years ago when I got back into chess and needed to learn better this was one of the books I picked up at my local bookstore. I really like the idea of telling the "why" behind the moves. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

You did a good job on this video, Nelson. Logical Chess-Move by Move by Irving Chernev was the very first chess book I bought, way back in the early 70's, I still have it, and enjoy going through the moves, one at a time. My other favorite chess book is entitled: "Chess World Championship 1972 Fischer vs Spassky by Larry Evans and Ken Smith. The unique thing about this book, is that it takes you through the '72 World Championship, one game at a time, with a diagram for every move, and an explanation for each move. I feel these types of chess books are really valuable for the average chess player, and answer many of our questions on why certain moves were played. Keep up the good work. Ray

Thank you!!! Great of you to go over this book

Great first video in this series! Really enjoyed reading the first game and then watching your analysis of it. Thanks for the great insights as always. I feel every week might be a bit better since each game isn't too long to study, but will be watching regardless!

This is so helpful...thank you so much for this wonderful content. :)

Great content! Thank you, Nelson!

I’m really looking forward to next lesson. Love this content, thank you Nelson!

You have so many creative ideas for this challenge, keep up the outstanding work!

Thank you for the lesson :) enjoyed it!

thank you Nelson, this certainly has added value, good job👍!

This is very informative video, looking forward into this series!

Awesome information!!! Thanks, Nelson!!!

Great timing! I was given this book for Christmas and hadn't got around to reading it yet!

Nelson - that was so clear and easy to follow. Thanks. Looking forward to the next one.

Amazing video. Super important points and clean delivery. I love it

Love the idea to cover books, Nelsi. Keep it up! Learning a lot through this.

Thanks, great idea and book selection. Subscribed and notifications on! 🙏

As far as moving the frequency up to every week rather than every 2 weeks. At least at this point, short games that last only 4 or 5 pages, every week would probably work fine. If anybody needed more time , they could watch the corresponding video at their convenience.

Chess Vibes, always love your videos, always look forward to them mate.

Love this Nelson! Thanks for all you do!

Awesome video. Love translating a book into video format. Will stay tuned to this series.

Great lesson Nelson! Thank you!👏

Very instructive. Thanks!

Awesome idea, Nelson! I actually had the book, and have yet to crack the spine, so really psyched to read it with your commentary!!

Outstanding instruction. The real deal.

Great tips, thanks for sharing!

Awesome lesson, Nelson! Keep up the great content.

Great video, thanks!

Great structural video. I really appreciate it!

Great lesson! Looking forward to the next one!!

Great illustrative analysis. Thanks for this!

Nelson the masterful explainer, strikes again! Outstanding stuff!

Great lesson and beautifully paced. Thank you 👍

great analysis! very helpful

I had already read the chapter but this was a very valuable recap, thank you!

Amazing content, keep up the good work 🎉

Thank you Nelson for such a helpful lesson. I'm reading the book and found your explaination informative. Hope to see more videos in this serie.

Thanks very much! Ordered the book immediately and looking forward to the nest lesson

Great video... that was brimming with great conceptual stuff. I've had a bad habit of playing a3 prematurely to deter knight b4 stuff but it's gotten me in trouble, and now I understand why.

I've just recently started getting into Chess without knowing any principles and im glad to say some of these things I've figured out on my own. First chess lesson video ive watched and youve definitely helped alot. Much appreciated

Finally got over my anxiety to play real games after doing 2k puzzles, from review it seems the middle game is my weak point, when there's a lot of options to choose from. Thanks for all of your videos you explain things very well

I don't have the book yet...but can't argue with any of these principles...and you presented them with great clarity...appreciate the unrushed step-by-step!

This series is great for me. I got the book as it was recommended to me but I never got round to going through it properly. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Great video, i love your content. Very instructive

Awesome video, thank you.

Thank you for your clear explanation, and time stamps, see you tomorrow for more

The principle of not separating the front 3 pawns while castling has helped me so much. I'm a beginner still and I've got a good few wins now just from that. Great video, keep up the good work

Thank you Nelson for this great video! Much of this is intuitive, but it's good to hear you describe it.

Very valuable information. Thank you so much.

looking forward for the rest of the series 👍🏻

This was the book that moved me beyond a beginner, over 50 years ago.

love this content/book club concept. Awesome idea for the channel.

This is great, I've been working my way through this book for about a year now and it's very instructional. This is what I needed to push through and finish it.

What an instructive video, thank you so much

Good information. Sounds like a good book but I'm generally too busy to sit down and just read a book. Family like and such, so this "recap" is really useful and a good reminder of what most of us should already know.

Fantastic lesson.. Thank you

Principle number 14 is new to me. Thanks Nelsi

Grat content! You & naroditsky are the best

Great vedio. I learnt a lot of key concept in kingside attack. Thanks

Loved it... so effective aand clear

So happy to see your channel approaching half a million subscribers. You’ve been my favourite since I found you, way back when you had a few thousand subs. I guess I need to thank the almighty algorithm for recommending your vids. Keep up the great work of explaining chess to us knuckleheads 😂

Love this "book breakdown" of a chess classic. Looking forward to future episodes and other books being covered in the future.

Very nice explanation dude. keep up the good work ❤

great summary and extra value with the perpetual in the end. I personally see the series going weekly, since reading through 1 game shouldn't take long :)

Thank you for your informative videos Nelson, your calm and precise explanations have really helped me elevate my chess play You're a great teacher, and I really appreciate what you are doing Take care, and I wish you the best🙏

Thanks a bunch! At least half of these are new points for me.

Thank you sir, excellent work

Nelson, I’m so glad you’re doing this book! I have the original (1957) book in hardcover, that uses old notation (e.g. P-K4). I went through this book in the 1970s, and it had a HUGE impact on the quality of my game. I recently bought the newest edition with modern notation.

Thanks for a very good lesson.

Book ordered! This was an amazing lesson!

This is a really great video. Thanks

I definitely missed the perpetual counterattack when going through the book, I'm glad you pointed it out! Don't resign unless it's forced mate!

Great effort. Education, entertainment and engagment 100%. Thanks

Great series, already looking forward to game 2

Perfect lesson. Thank you Nelson for making us better players

Great video!!

Great video Ready for next chapter 😊

Start to a great series!

Hi really like this idea of a series. Please proceed with that!

Great content!!!! Subbed

Thanks for a great video!

This is a very great video! Me and my friend struggle to play chess even in the opening due to our lack of knowledge In principles, so this definitely helps! Thanks, Nelson! :D

Actually an insanely helpful video thank you

Great video! Keep it up!

Great video! ❤