Hi there.
In this lecture, I want to show you the very famous Légal trap.
So this is named after a French player, Legault.
But it's also sometimes called the Blackburne Trap after a British player.
Blackburne So it goes.
E4 Your opponent plays E5 you play Knight to F3, they play Knight C6 and now you play Bishop C4.
Now here they play an interesting move.
D6 It seems they're keen on pinning.
Maybe they've learnt about pinning.
They want to pin your knight.
This kind of pin is called a relative pin.
It's not an absolute pin because if it's against your queen and not your king, in fact, if it's not
against your king, it's just a relative pin.
It's not an absolute pin.
And what that means is sometimes you can break the pin advantageously and legally.
So we see Knight C3 here being played.
If we play Knight C3 and they do, they are keen to pin us.
This is a mistake.
It can be a mistake, especially after age three and they play Bishop H5.
We have a wonderful move here which at least gives us a good advantage.
And it also alternatively, if they really play badly in the follow up, they can be checkmated.
I wonder if you can spot what White can play in this position and as you start chess, you'll learn
about pins.
And I'm sort of reinforcing the idea that this is a relative pin.
It's not an absolute pin, and you still can legally move this.
Knight by the way.
I know it's funny.
It's funny me saying about legally move and this is the legal you know that's legal the player legally
move you know legal is a different word just just to clarify that anyway so here white play can you
spot a good move for white in this position?
Are you just going to the castle here?
Sometimes you don't want to take the advice of casting it as soon as possible when there is a strategic
imperative exception.
And here you can actually capitalize on something as a higher priority than just following the recipe
of castling.
You can actually play Knight Takes E5.
Believe it or not, it looks as though.
Hold on.
This is this is ridiculous.
The queen's hanging.
Why can't black just take the Queen?
Well, this is the basis for the trap.
If Bishop takes queen, then actually, you know what?
We have Bishop takes F7 check after King E7.
Guess what?
What can we play here?
We can play Knight D5 and that's Checkmate.
Wow.
We've just sacrificed our Queen for a checkmate.
Yeah.
So their best move, in fact, wasn't to allow that.
Their best move was Knight Takes E5.
And what we can do here is take this bishop.
They take our bishop and it looks as though we haven't gained much.
Right?
And in fact, right now we're a piece down.
This is some trap.
We end up a piece down.
What is this, King?
What is this?
Well, we get the piece back actually, with Queen B5 check and we take on C4.
And actually, we're a pawn up After all that.
We're a pawn up.
It's a very nice position.
As an example, to follow up Bishop E7.
We put our nice two pawns in the center and here actually the best move is Queen D3.
Technically speaking, if you want the maximum advantage from this, just Queen D for an end castle
and you've got a lovely position.
Pawn up.
You might wonder, What's that about?
Queen E3?
Okay, if you castle there is Knight Takes E4, which, although you're still better, it's not as good.
There's different variations of events.
You want the best possible version of events you can get on the chessboard.
So, yes, that's why I'm mentioning it even in the follow up here.
The best possible sequence of events is actually with Queen D3 to avoid this naughty Knight takes E4.
So you just play Queen D3 and then you castle.
It's a great position.
So anyway, but the main focus of this lecture is this trap.
So they're trying to pin you early that knight to your queen.
They're trying to pin you early and maybe they're looking forward to maybe they've beaten some other
people and they're looking forward to you actually playing like this, in which case, you know, you
could be in a world of pain soon, potentially, if you don't play your cards right, you could be in
a world of pain, for example, like this Knight D4 and how do you stop this damage to your king?
You know this.
Ouch.
Knight takes and you're getting crushed.
All of a sudden your kingside pawns are spoilt, you're a pawn down, etcetera.
But yeah, black can't get away with this.
Sometimes you do need to punish them and not routinely.
Castle This sequence makes things actually emphasize the points Black wanted to make about the pin and
torturing the pin damaging your pawns.
No, you avoid all of this.
You play H3 here.
If they want to take your knight to get your queen to move, you know what?
That doesn't matter.
We're focused on F7, so there's no time for them to play Knight.
D4 We just chat mate them.
So yes, HP is a really cool move here and if Bishop H5, then we have that brilliant Knight takes E5
shot.
So just to recap that, Bishop takes D1, we have Bishop takes F7 check King on E7.
Knight D5 is Checkmate there and if.
Here we have.
We have D takes E5.
Queen takes H5.
We are again looking at F7.
There's no time to move the knight to exploit the Queen, not protecting C2.
So this is great for us.
So that's all great for us here.
Knight takes E5.
This is all great for us.
Queen takes H5, Knight takes C4, Queen B5 Check, and then we're picking up the knight.
So it's all great for us.
So yes, a great variation to be aware of.
The Diggles trap.
Okay.
Spencer Marsh.