Hi there.
In this letter, we're kind of going to revise an opening track, but at the same time revisit it from
this perspective of general principles of the opening and how they can be violated.
The more fundamental principle to me about openings in general, which I like to think about, is putting
yourself beyond the feet before going on the attack, an act of war principle which applies to me greatly
on the chessboard.
If you indulge too quickly in active operations on the chessboard, your tactics are very likely to
backfire.
If your king is in the center, for example, there are quite often going to be unexpected checks and
tactics in general that are going to make your tactics.
Although lucrative, you're going to regret them.
They are often going to backfire.
And another thing you might be tempted to do is cling on to material and the opening.
Now, many of you may have actually started chess recently because of the Queen's Gambit series.
So maybe this is the appropriate lesson in terms of the Queen's Gambit.
I'm going to show you DeFore or in old descriptive notation.
This is pawn to queue for pawns Queen's form.
That's --'s king for.
But this is Ponza Queen's Force that's on the Queen's wall and that's in all the threat if we just say
one nowadays.
So it's abbreviated.
D5 Seaforth So they accept this gambit.
They might not have seen it before.
You play every and the opponent here plays B5, so they're actually not in pieces.
All they're trying to do is retain an extra pawn.
And actually this game is really a misnamed gambit.
It's not really a game at all, but I can do very serious damage to their position from the perspective
of the selection.
I want you to focus in, though, on the lack of peace development and the king still in the center.
Black is going to grossly violate this principle of putting oneself beyond the feet before going on
the attack or acts of operations by clinging onto material.
It might seem like a victory of some sort to be a pawn up and to try and maintain being a pawn up,
but not at the expense of other major considerations.
We see a fall and black plague special effects.
And you'll notice here that also not only these rooks, they're unprotected, but there's actually a
pathway in theory to this rook on that diagonal.
There are possibilities against this rook.
So it's even more a kind of a dangerous situation.
There are so many principles being violated.
It's untrue, but unprotected pieces is one of them.
King Center is another lack of peace.
Development is another.
Being too greedy is another.
So we see why actually playing 1835 Bishop takes.
Now there are two unprotected pieces.
At least this bishop is also now unprotected and subject to tempo game, what we call tempo gaining
a bit of time.
If you gain a bit of time, you can use that time for often converting that into another advantage.
So nice he free the bishop goes to a ASX and now already I hope you remember this maybe there in the
course or somewhere in the course.
But even if you don't try and work out the board sometimes, actually when you try to remember things,
you get them wrong to actually try and concretely work it out on the board to reassure yourself you
don't want to make chess a game of luck.
You actually do want a plan of knowing that, you know, all the follow ups and even all the tricky
stuff the opponent might play that you can't you've you've got it all on the hands, all under control,
your control.
So don't just move randomly.
The head is definitely a move which has a super powerful follow up is the very strongest move in the
position.
And that move is quite a frame.
So it hits that commentated rock.
And we see C6 being one of the desperate TRISTAM.
If the moves, we can just pick up this bishop, for example.
We can just take that bishop that'll be nominated.
So there are liabilities like liabilities or theoretical downsides, more than one in the opponents
position here and now.
Can you spot white place?
I hope you can.
Can you work it out?
You want to check all the forcing moves with high priority.
So check who checks, captures and threats of making one or two.
The forcing moves limit severely, the opponents replies, making it easier for you to calculate ahead.
So had the capture actually Route 86, you can logically expect to recapture.
And now with that Kingma sense of this whole thing backfires because the Kings in a sense, are this
is the whole thing.
Blagden put themselves beyond the feeds before going on to the attack or active operations.
They try an active operation and clinging onto a pawn at the expense of the king still being in the
center.
You know, there's bigger issues in the possession of black.
So black loses material like this and continues after this check.
So even lose the night.
Pure devastation.
So if you look at this game, blank violated every principle in the book, in this section, the king
wasn't put in a safer spot.
Counseling generally is recommended.
Development was disregarded.
The trade off or the lucrative bait for black to make all these violations was trying to cling on to
the pawn.
So the Queen's Gambit is not really a gambit.
That's the big that's the big secret.
If you're a chess connoisseur, by the way, the queen's game, it's not really a real game.
It's actually really quite sound to do this.
And black is in big trouble if they try too hard to cling on to this pawn.
But I just wanted to revisit this trap with you from the other key perspectives.
The art of war principal to try and bear that in mind, you want to develop pieces castle early and
then think about active operations if you do it out of order, something that is lucrative or your opponent
is sacrificing pawns which are lucrative to Monch maybe over months and not return back at the right
time.
For whatever reason, you violated these principles.
You put yourself in that situation of not being beyond the phase.
And if you haven't even done that, that many active operations in this case, all you've done is try
to be a pawn up.
Test is not just being a pawn up, you know, the object of the game is to checkmate the opponents king.
So being a pawn up might be in some way reassuring, but it's a kind of bait as well.
So you pay to the fish, you know, sometimes not that I've done any fishing, but, you know, it's
bait to violate principles of developments with the king still in the center.
So a big violation of the law in this game.
By the way, just for the record, there is another way of playing this, which is less accurate, which
is actually Route 66.
This is less accurate, but still a very nice position for it.
But you don't gain as much material.
If you look at the material gains here, it's not as much.
We scooped up the rook, a knight in the other line.
So on Queena Frame, if they did play in a totally disastrous manner of the Queen Afri and they didn't
just offer the bishop, then, you know, this is a totally disastrous manner when in fact, they end
up losing the rook and then that night after you've really cleared them out anyway.
So this is a good lesson, this sequence, just the underlying principles and philosophies of the opening,
OK, and so much.