Transcription
I will be playing a game against a 2060 rated opponent. I am going to teach you exactly how to think during a chess game, and I'm also going to teach you my favorite chess opening, which is D4 with knight to D2. I like calling this the Pegasus system chess opening.
The number one reason why I really like this opening is mostly because black just doesn't know what to do against it since most people have never seen it, and the plans for white are actually pretty simple. We are just going to focus on developing our pieces, and it depends a little bit on the exact setup that black decides to play. Here they challenge our opponent in the center, which is very interesting. This can lead to a lot of very fun games with the white pieces.
We are going to do what I really love doing with white and black. That is to build a triangle with my pawns. The triangle structure is really amazing, and black already makes a mistake. They play a very normal-looking move developing the bishop. That is not good because now we can take here. And after we take here, black will be forced to move that bishop again, but now I can attack it, and they have to move the bishop yet again. This is a problem for them. They don't want to do this. Okay.
Uh now you might be thinking, "Why are you even doing this?" Well, you might notice that this bishop is stuck. It won't be able to do anything here, but if I develop it here, then it will be active. So, that is the goal. We will put it here, and then eventually we will push this pawn as well. Okay.
Uh I am actually going to play the move uh A3 first. Looks like it does nothing, but it's super important that we play this move. This needs to protect that pawn so that I can play C4 without losing this one. We will develop the bishop, and this is my second triangle, a small triangle with these three pawns. So, everything is really going great.
So, right now our position looks a little bit confusing. You might think like, "What the hell are you even doing with this piece setup?" But in just a moment you are going to see exactly how strong this is because the moment that we play C4, we are just going to get a complete dominating position here with white, which is exactly what we are going to do right here. We are going to play C4, and if black captures this, that is really not good for them. That is going to give us quite a strong position. And they capture it, okay. Even if they don't capture it, the tension that we have on the center is very strong. But they decide to make things a little bit more easy by capturing it and basically giving up on their central pawn. Okay.
So, we always have two choices here of how we want to recapture. We can recapture with the knight, which makes a lot of sense, because you are attacking that bishop. We are actually even threatening to win a piece immediately. Uh but they can solve it quite easily by doing something like bishop back to E7. I think that would just solve their problem. And since our bishop is not developed yet, I'm going to decide to use my bishop here. But if you want to do your knight, that is perfectly fine as well. My rule is that if my bishop hasn't moved yet, it's always the bishop that I will use. Otherwise, I will use the knight.
And this is the position that I wanted to show you. This is the goal from the opening. Where we have two bishops both aiming at the opponent's king. We have our pieces developed, and the only thing that we have left to do is to castle. So, that is what we are going to do. We are going to castle here. You might think that this position looks a little bit symmetrical, meaning that the white and black position are somewhat the same. Well, some of it is the same. Basically, this section of the board is the same, but everything else is somewhat different. And especially with the pawns being here, we do have more space. Our pawns are further advanced than our our opponent's pawns here. Okay.
They play knight D7, and this is really the moment where I will have to think a little bit, because this is where the middle game begins since the opening is uh finished. All right. So, knight D7, it's not really doing anything, so I don't have to worry it. A very typical move to play as queen E2. The queen is better placed here than it would be on um on this file. Queen is also supporting the bishop, possibilities of playing bishop to A6 in the future, which could be great. That is something that we can do that the opponent cannot do because we have the pawns here. So, this is a a typical plan to play. And also, of course, it gives us the possibility of putting the rooks in the center as well. Okay.
Uh so, queen here, well, they could take and take, but this is always protected. So, there's not really anything going on anyways. So, that is fine. If they go here, I could play H3. Maybe they'll do this check, but I could take it and then they take with the bishop and I move my king. Um yeah, so I think we are always 100% fine over there, but it is good to pay some attention to the opponent. Okay.
Uh so, bishop here, I could do it, but I like it most when there is a rook over there. I think rook D1 and rook C1 are very logical moves in this position. Almost must-play moves, probably. Uh let's start with rook C1. This rook still has some purpose, the other one doesn't really have any purpose. So, let's see what black uh decides to do here. They decide to play knight over here. Okay. And that's basically inviting a couple of trades. They are also threatening to capture, capture, capture, capture, capture, and win a pawn. So, we have to be somewhat careful with how we uh approach this. Right?
So, I could just take that with the knight, then they take with the bishop, then we could take with the bishop, then they would take with the queen, but we're basically going for a huge exchange. I could also take with the knight and they take with the bishop, I take, and that's also a huge exchange. Both are similar. I cannot move my bishop back because otherwise I would be losing a pawn here in a forced sequence of moves. Um I could play pawn H3 to cover the square. That makes a lot of sense, but then if they do take here, I'll have to take back, and we will have given them a bishop for a knight, but I actually think it is somewhat okay. So, H3 looks interesting, and exchanging everything looks interesting, but exchanging everything is really going to turn this into an end game, and I didn't really want to be this this to be an end game video. So, I'm going to play H3, which basically solves the problem of any of their knights going here, and basically asks black like, "What are you doing? Are you really going to make all of those knight moves just to get my piece to a better square in the end?" Okay. They don't. They don't go for that. That is fine.
All right. So, now I think we have to do something with this bishop. We don't want this bishop to be captured by a knight if that's not necessary. So, I'm considering possibly moving back, or are also still the trades could be interesting. If we take, take, take, we could capture everything, and then play knight F3 uh in the end. So, let me think here for a moment. Bishop A6. If they take, take, they are distracting our queen, but that doesn't really matter. So, this could actually be a move, but if they go here, that's actually fine. I think this is actually a move. And then if they take, we go here. This square is covered. Yeah, I think bishop A6 might be the move that we want to play. Um yeah, I think that's all good. We don't want to trade a bishop for a knight if that's not necessary. So, that is the goal here. You just have to be a bit careful because you might overload one of your pieces this way because you are making one piece do two things at the same time, but there is no possibility for them to give me any any issues here.
All right. Uh so, depends a bit on what black is going to to but I think we have been playing this game very well. Everything is going according to plan. What I would like to do is also get my rook here and then we are pretty much finished with our development. So, they take, let me take. We actually eliminated a very strong bishop that they had. Like, these fianchetto bishops are really the the best pieces in this position. We were able to yeah, eliminate their bishop for our bishop, which was honestly struggling a little bit to find a purpose in this in this game. Okay. And now we'll have to figure out how we are going to to keep pushing here.
So, there's always some tension here. Currently, the knight is protecting that. Uh there is the possibility of knight C4, which actually threatens to capture a bishop with a knight. That is great. This move looks like a bad move in general, I would say. Doesn't really do anything. We could also do the rook here because then if I move my knight, I have the immediate threat of capture. So, that is interesting. So, I think rook here makes a lot of sense. That's one good move. Maybe also knight D4 actually is a good move here now because if we play knight D4, there is the immediate threat that we could cap we could uh play this fork with a knight. So, knight D4 we have to calculate uh rook here. Um but then we have knight here and then the queen is trapped because if it goes here, we win it and otherwise we have this check and the rook picks up the queen. So, I think this is actually a good move to play. Um yeah, we'll do this move now. This is a good move because basically our opponent has this light squared weakness. They have put some pawns on the dark squares. They now have light squares, which are weak, and the piece which was protecting all of those, the bishop, is gone. So, I'm immediately going to try to prove to my opponent here that they have created some light square weakness.
Now, we could play something like this, knight C6. They are also playing very badly with the piece coordination. Uh if you see like this rook, yeah, it's not in the game. This queen barely has any squares. So, this is not really looking great. Uh they play bishop here, but that's a little bit unusual, right? Because I think we have the simple move um knight over here, which attacks the queen. They have to deal with it. They have to move the queen, and then we just snatch the bishop, I think. Or we could take the rook as well. So, I think knight C6 just wins the game on the spot. Uh we are dropping the bishop, but it doesn't matter because we are getting the queen. Although uh they got a bishop, we got a queen, they got a rook. We could get a knight. They could get an I touch I actually have to calculate this knight C6. They got a bishop, which is three points. I got a queen, which is nine points. So, I'm ahead with six points. But they got five points. So, I'm ahead with one point, but I got three points. So, I'm ahead with four points, and then they got three points. So, I'm ahead with one point. So, it is a huge exchange, but I'll go for it. It will make the game interesting. Um but they could have made it complex, I think.
Uh they move the queen, but I think now Oh, was their plan to capture here? That's a little bit unusual, right? Um What are we going to do? I have to calculate. This is actually more complex than I had thought initially. I think this capture makes a lot of sense. Because we attack the queen. I think that's the capture we can play. We attack the queen. We also eliminate the whole issue of them taking here. All right.
Um now we have to decide what to do. So, we have the option to take a rook, and basically lose a knight, and I think that is perfectly fine. But we do need to make sure that we can get that knight out of there because we don't want to lose more pieces. I could attack the queen. Queen has to move. The queen actually barely has any squares. And then my knight will be free. So, that's one way to do it. Um we could also take here, but that's really just an exchange. So, I believe we have to go for this if we want to push for a win. Otherwise, we are just not really making any progress. Oh, they take this. That's very confusing. I thought they were going to take this. That I don't I don't understand why they just did that. Okay.
So, we are controlling this uh with our queen. That is great. The knight's hanging. We have to solve it. Maybe we just do this whole sequence. Knight B3, knight D4. That makes sense. We have to be a little bit careful because we don't have that many pieces close to our king and they have some pieces which could go after my king, but I think we are definitely winning. We are just completely winning at this point. Because of that tactic. That tactic was available because of the very strong opening and the very good piece play that we have in this opening. So, hope you already enjoyed this part of the video. I think this was a very good demonstration of what this opening can do.
Uh so, they are solving the back rank problems, but we can now activate our rook with an attack. That is great. Uh they move the queen. I would like to do some rook infiltration. Maybe I could have done queen B7 on the previous move. That could have been slightly better, but I have to speed up because I'm always talking and not really thinking. So, I have to play faster moves. So, this this is a plan. They will probably do this and then I'll do this. Then they will take. Oh, wait a minute. That would actually lose me the game. Um That would actually lose me the game if I take. Wait a minute. So, this this fork, they take. Yeah, yeah. I can't take the rook. Hm.
Well, let's do it anyways. I mean, the move itself is a good move. We'll just have to not do this. Because the thing is that they can take with the knight and then if I take the rook, the knight takes backwards and if I take the rook at the knight, they take my rook. So, the pieces are basically all dependent on each other. So, if they go here, I can't really I can't really go for that fork. I think my queen is a little bit out of the game as well. I might just retreat with the queen. Oh, they don't even respond. Why are they Why are they pushing pawns close to the king in the end game? That I don't understand.
So, that's a fork and it's basically a trade. And what we want to do as soon as you are up in material is just trade everything because we are making the game the game so incredibly simplistic if we just trade everything. So, that's one more example of a trade that we could go for. So, let me go ahead and do it. That is one more trade. That is fine. Okay. And now we have to win this end game where we have a rook and they have a knight. That is 100% a winnable end game, but it will require some skill. So, I think this will be an interesting one to watch for you as well.
Uh so, a couple of things, E4 is possibly interesting and I think it might be winning on the spot actually. Uh yeah, we'll do E4. I think this might be winning on the spot because it gives us some possibilities of infiltration here against their queen and also infiltration with back rank stuff. So, that is great. This check doesn't matter. So, would we go here or would we go here? I think actually going twice is better because we could check and the king would have to go up and the queen could check. I think that's just straight up completely winning. Uh I have to be a little bit careful because they have two pieces which can counterattack like this check and stuff, but doesn't really matter. We are controlling their back rank. So, that seems promising. Maybe I could also just push the pawn to steal a square. That's interesting as well.
Um they are going for checkmate in one. Okay, but I think that they just blunder checkmate themselves. This is check. Um I have to think a little bit here. Not no time left really. So, this check king goes here. Hm. What I can do however is this simple check. And then they have to move the king which gives me the queen in an exchange. Which is good because then I don't have to think since I only have 40 seconds left. Uh I protect my pawn. And now the rook is just go going to completely dominate the knight in this end game. Uh so, we'll go stand next to the knight. That is the right thing to do. And then the rook will swing over and pick up everything on this side of the board. They are thinking about this, but it doesn't matter. We'll go here. We'll pick up the pawn. And then as soon as we pick up some of these pawns, that's winning. That doesn't matter because I can challenge your knight with a pawn. I had already calculated this entire sequence. Then we can take, then we can push, and then we make a queen. I think that's the goal. Yeah, we take. You cannot capture here. Uh I don't actually have to react to any of this stuff, honestly, but I will just take here. Okay. And then I think we just push and that threatens to create a passed pawn. It basically forces a passed pawn, which is a pawn that can promote. Uh yeah, I'll do it this way. Uh now we have a pawn that can promote. That is a huge problem for them. They will have to deal with this.
Um yeah, we can take here. They are actually sacking a pawn over there as well. But I don't know if I want to take this though because if I take here, then I'm giving them a check. But it doesn't really matter, right? I could go here, but they will just pick up the pawn anyways. Uh although if I do this and they give me a check, if I go here, if they go there, I could go here. Huh, so I actually think we can just capture this pawn for free. But I have Maybe [clears throat] that was not the right choice because I also just gave them a passed pawn here. They have this pawn which they can push now. So, maybe [snorts] that was a like a time pressure mistake, but it's it's fine. I mean, we're definitely winning. This pawn is way way closer than this one, but I shouldn't have given them a passed pawn. I think we could have ignored this as well.
Uh, we'll just push push push. Yeah, they'll have to sack the knight here. Yep, they sacked the knight and this is never going to do anything because we can block it. We can attack it with the rook. We can use our king. Yep, we can go here, pressure on the pawn. We take the pawn. And of course, as you know, this is a winning end game. We have an extra rook and we could actually make another piece. I think this was a perfect game. I really hope that you enjoyed it. Very good demonstration of the opening. If you want my help to improve your chess, I'm actually currently handing out free chess coaching sessions for a limited time only. So, have a look at pegasuschess.com.