Nimzowitsch game is a masterclass in efficiently converting an advantage. This is one area where I struggle, sometimes I’ll inadvertently throw a won game, not being careful. I see that Eric calculates the same wether or not he has the advantage, and also has such a deep knowledge of the game that he can identify a weakness immediately. I would love to be able see such beautiful ideas in my own games, thank you Eric for relentlessly sharing your passion with the chess community. also, quack
Eric you have been a constant source of learning, and its not just the theory or tactics, it is the way you present ideas, enveloped in the the most relaxing tone out there in all of the chess streamers. This series is exactly what I had been looking for as I'm stuck on the 800 ELO band for a while. Good to see how simplicity and logic are still the greatest tools one can have in order to excel and progress forward. Please never stop making chess content!
This series and many of your other videos have drastically improved my openings. I used to play the same two openings for each side but really focusing on natural development and less about memorizing moves has really improved my rating. Plus learning a few traps along the way never hurt lol. Thanks Eric!
@@jakubstraka6309 having a better position forced his opponent into making blunders, at that point all you need to see is that your opponent is hanging a piece. getting past 900 is basically just not throwing away the game until your opponent blunders.
@@Kaserbeam but still he could not fork or do tactics and only doing better position, as he said positional chess. He should never use tactic, even the basic ones. If there is fork but the pawn moving in that direction would weaken the position even a little bit, its not positional chess anymore bro.
I think I play games like this a lot. Buuuut I also start thinking three or four moves ahead forget to deal with the original threat and blunder my arse off 🤭. We are 900's for a reason.
@@Joshwaheazo Hang in there ! Once you cross the magical 1000 ELO treshold, you will stop blundering. I'm kidding. Chess is not about not blundering, but blundering less than your opponent, right ?
@@jongler9775 Haha, thanks for your support. I don't blunder every game. Usually I play mostly best moves I just have a very aggressive style and if my opponent plays a very got move I'm not expecting I'll tank about 10 minutes on the clock. Play the 2nd move instead of the 1st and hate myself 🤭. I'm quite a casual player. I either win by 14-28 points of material or I totally blunder. There is no middle ground. It's a bit silly really. I think if I put more time into some puzzles I'd climb rather quickly. All of my games get extremely complicated.
Sometimes your opponents have games where they play really well, above their rating. Sometimes your opponents have games where they play really horribly, below their rating.
I love this type of series where I can see the reasoning of highly skilled players on games where the players make noticeable mistakes (for them!). Looking forward to you reaching the 1100s!
I like pax 1913 comment said it all about Eric's beginner master n for all that are at 1000,1100,1200 elo u could be better than that for I beat 1800,1900,2000,2100,2200,draw a 2300, then turn around n lose to a 1300 why just like pax said it all in one n if your interest is a new perspective in chess then maybe tryin utube jbird chess with the chess board symbol
Love how you proceed through the games explaining your thoughts clearly even for a 600 like me. I’m starting to improve my games only by watching you. Thank you so much for this. Really appreciate.
Hello Eric i just wanted to say thank you , I almost doubled my accuracy in the games i won after watching this series due to the exposure of different tactics!
Can we just give some kudos to that last opponent? They held a pretty advantageous position against an IM for the entire opening and had to get whittled down with a lot of manoeuvring and exploitation of positional mistakes in the middle game. Under 1000 elo and giving an IM a run for their money for half the game? They have a bright future!
He played the opening on a high level. He probably learned it by heart up to that point and because his opponent (IM in real life) knew the opening well, he actually got to use what he learned. Afterwards however, when he was on his own, he played more or less in accordance to his own level, blundering material and so on.
‘We are actually following the game between alireza and fabiano from the sinquefield cup a couple days ago.’ You’re following the line, but WE (your 960 opponent and I) are not 😂 Great chess content as always
This is the best beginner series I've seen. The pace of explainations make it easy to take in. Also, good/bad to see these 4 move jerks hit everyone. Why bother if you don't actually want to play chess?
Eric, you did not mentioned Qa5+ at 7:41. Luckly after b4, QxB you have Qd7++. A line more interesting would be … Qa5+ b4 Rd8 c7+ followed by mate next move in d7 or d8. I’m seeing this vídeo in my cel fone, i might have missed something
At 33:07 1...f4! 2.Nxe4 f3! seems crushing as White's Queen is attacked and if he moves it it is mate on g2. But you then played 1...f4 later. Not criticising as I love these videos.
Yes, Alireza Firouzja and Fabiano Caruano did play a Two Knights Defense the other day at the annual Sinquefeld Cup tournament. But, in my day the game to which we'd cite was Fischer-Bisguier. I cannot immediately recall the year, tho probably it was between 1957 & 1963. In the old days white would retreat the bishop to e2 (Firouzja played Bd3!), leading to a difficult defense. I think that with the black knight on a5, you would want to try to play pawn to c3, tho I guess I'm just wrong. Thx Eric - enjoyed.
The Caro-Kann, French, and Scandinavian defenses are solid against e4. They have the benefit of often having similar pawn structures and ideas, so studying one will help you understand another. But honestly, at your rating, just focus on fundamentals. Control the center, develop pieces, etc. You can easily get to 1500+ just by having solid principles and not blundering pieces; you don't need much theory at all, outside of learning how to deal with the simple opening traps.
If you're looking for an interesting opening, I think the Taimanov Sicilian is a great choice, especially if you're into more imbalanced games. It avoids all the E4/E5 traps and obscure lines in the italian, spanish, etc. and It's not super theory heavy like the d6, Nc6 open Sicilians (Najdorf, Dragon, Accelerated Dragon). It's very solid and setup based (you'll basically just be playing the same opening moves in most games Qc7, a6, b5, Bb7, Nf6 etc.) and there isn't much in the way of traps white can spring on you. It gets you to a solid position for the middlegame and the ideas from there are pretty straightforward compared to other Sicilians. If you're looking to get into the Sicilian, the Taimanov is a great place to start even at low elos and most low elo players won't know the best strategies against it. It's helped me a lot.
At a glance, in the 2d game there seems to be a good queen sacrifice. After Ng3, g6; N:f5, gf:; B-b5+, c6; Qd4! (zweisenzug), Nf6; dc:, Q:d4, cb:+, Kd8; ba:+Q+, and white wins
Hey Eric, I have almost religiously binge-watched all episodes and the first thing I want to say is that you are incredibly easy to listen to because of the informative nature of your way of navigating this series, but also just from the sound quality of your speech.I have nothing but praise for you and the way you're doing these videos, no criticism whatsoever. If there's one thing I can notice is that you're very consistent in what you're doing through-out this series. However, for the sake of the name of this series, would it be possible to include a literal "speedrun" just for one game? As in, pretty much turn off the viewer-benefitting talk and completely zone in for one game going for a very high quality, but literal speedrun nature of a game. If you could just add ONE of those in, especially against this rating of players, It'd be much appreciated. I'd imagine you could be against this because it might be disrespectful against your opponent, which I could totally understand. Anyway, thanks and looking forward for future episodes!
Quick question, if, in the 4th game, the bishop on d3 was so awkwardly placed (preventing queenside development for the opponent) then why was the suggestion for natural continuation for black to play Nd5 into Nf4, attacking the bishop? I would have thought that leaving the bishop there for a while and completing development yourself/trying to maneuver pieces to the kingside to start an attack might have been better? Genuinely curious and trying to learn/understand the position! Also great sweater Eric!
First off, Nd5 attacks the knight, gaining tempo. And second, the d3 bishop is very short on squares if attacked. It can only move to e2, e4 or f1 (if the white knight is not on e4). The first two are no good because the f4 knight is also attacking g2, which means the white either has to retreat and undevelop the bishop to f1, preventing kingside castling, or trade on d3 and deal with double isolated d pawns as well as black having the bishop pair. Now, in many variations this is still good for white, because they're still up a pawn, but not playing Nd5 allows white to castle, and then retreat the bishop to e2 if attacked. Finally, even though white's dark square bishop has trouble developing, white's d3 bishop and g5 knight are doing a good job preventing black's light square bishop from developing as well. f5 and a6 are covered, Be6 would destroy black's kingside structure after the trade, Bg4 is countered with Be2 and black does not want to trade while down a pawn. Fianchettoing to b7 is perhaps the best option, but it's blocked by the c pawn, and if black advances the pawn they leave a massive hole on d5.
Very instructive for me this episode, 🙏 I'd like to know, was there ever a time you did show mercy playing chess? I know I did, and still I wonder if that's a good thing.
It's interesting that most players below 1000 have no concept of checkmate. If you attack a piece and threaten mate, the chances are they will save the piece. Looking out for mate doesn't seem to be something they are actively thinking about. I understand that there is a lot to think about when you're learning the game, but you'd imagine that mate would high on the list of priorities.
So after Qd4 when opponent presumably plays f6 to save the rook and you then play Bb5+, say opponent plays c6, you can't recapture with dxc6 since queen hangs. How is it more powerful?
Man, cant say I'm not jealous of Eric in this speedrun (though he DID win by experience) - he has 1000 rated players falling to what is basically scholar's mate and here I am, trying for months to crack 800 :/
33:00 Can't black play f4 immediately in this position? If knight takes e4then f3 with the same idea of threatening checkmate and queen. So white probably has to give up this knight
Realized the same watching through the vid, so I analysed it with Lichess and yeah, you're completely right. F4 is the best move in that position and the best white can do is losing the knight.
Why go into the Two Nights Defence at all at 22:45 and not just take the pawn? 3... Nxe4 4. Nxe5 d5 should just be much better for black - white is unlikely to find a good move at this level: both versions of retreating the bishop to the third rank are bad (5... Qg5!), throwing in Bb5+ just delays the miserable Bd3 for a move, and Qf3/Qh5 is just another variant on those early queen attacks that are easily defended against. The best tries I can see are either 5. Nxf7 Qe7 and then white hasn't got time to both save the knight and avoid the discovered check (and end up down material) or 5. Qe2 (are they honestly going to find that?)) where 5... Bc5 is already posing questions about king safety.
Is anybody willing to share their opinion on Queenside or Kingside Castle?? How do you decide the most appropriate, putting into consideration that you aren't under attack/threat?
