London System: One Opening against anything

for bad players who are confused about the middle game like you the London system might be the perfect opening you can literally play the exact same moves against anything and always end up in a

solid position but justess page one beginners should deeply study the opening rather than learning this setup that's what you might think turns out you're wrong usually beginners are

surprisingly decent in the opening but don't know what to do in the middle game so if you can force your brain to pay attention for 10 minutes now you'll learn an opening system that you can play against anything that way you'll

have time to finally learn a Middle game usually I explain openings in missions but this time it makes much more sense to learn the ideal setup than the exceptions of that setup and then we'll look at two example games that will show

you the main attacking ideas and my next video will be fully dedicated to the middle game but now let us learn the London system so you can stop worrying about the opening pay attention because

in 10 minutes you will basically be Magnus Carlson first of all let's talk about the setup just follow these steps D4 then get the bishop out and push your Pawn but make

sure the bishop is already out now develop your knight to F3 and your other Knight to D2 complete the pawn pyramid and put your Bishop on D3 this is your ideal setup but there are some things

that you have to know let's say the game went like this you still have the same setup and black pushes C4 attacking your Bishop your D3 Bishop is supposed to

attack the kingside castle so it wants to stay in this diagonal just drop it back one square it's still pointing towards the king side let's talk about your knight I'll take these moves back

real quick black does some normal development move these two squares are incredibly important that's why your pawns Bishops and knight's mission is to attack on E5 now your horse can jump

there well protected nice this is your main attacking idea most people capture right away and you recapture with the pun obviously the Knight is under attack

and has to retreat and you play Queen H5 absolutely dominating the king side I'll show you how to secure the win on the king side with an example game later this is your ideal attack it's very

common but sometimes things don't go as planned for example in this position when you're trying to build your ideal setup some people go Bishop D6 attacking your Bishop do not trade they will

recapture and you lose all control over E5 instead as soon as they offer this trade just slide your Bishop back and if they take you recapture opening the file

for your Rook now you will have even more control over the king side and the last thing before we will look at an example game if they ever play Bishop F5

taking control over this diagonal don't let your Bishop sit and wait immediately challenge the control but don't initiate the trade let them take first and recap capture with the queen threat

neutralized and now let's take a look at an example game D4 D5 Bishop out some black move in D3 the first half of the

pawn pyramid black develops a knight and white does the same now White's next move is to develop the second Knight and believe it or not a common move that you will see every once in a while as Bishop

before pinning your knight obviously you continue your normal plan just push C3 the bishop has to retreat and finally

Bishop D3 your ideal setup is complete Black castles white has full control over E5 and perfectly executes the Knight attack of course black

immediately takes white recaptures attacking the Knight the horse jumps off everything is going as planned and here comes Queen H5 the perfect attack this

would be Checkmate and the most common way to defend it is to push G6 but now you can place your queen very comfortably the king is silently crying right now

but there's not much to do so black pushes C5 hoping to gain an advantage on the queen side but white plays H4 the

attack is rolling there's no turning back C4 drop your Bishop back and Knight C5 oh no has black discovered a weakness

this week square is double attacked black can position a knight behind our Pawn structure oh no anyway push the pawn you have a superior attack black

positions the Knight which is kind of annoying because it's blocking your Bishop that way reducing your dominance on the king side but why takes the L and

captures the Knight it's not too bad now it's attacking time white captures and oh what is this Checkmate in one the best move is literally to throw the

queen in the way the Rook takes it now moving The Rook like this stops miden one because after the queen captures the king can go here just to be made it anyway but before you go off and try to

play this obviously your game will not always go as planned so let's take a look at another example game that shows the most common Alternatives it starts

with D4 and now E6 oh no a completely different starting move well the good news is you can play the London anyway so get your Bishop out and often times what you will see is that they end up

playing something like D5 anyway so it's not even a new position push E3 everything is going as planned but now Bishop D6 you probably remember that I

told you to drop your Bishop back if you do that they'll likely capture it now you can recapture opening The Rook file pay attention if your opponent makes a

tiny mistake he's in big trouble first of all you should complete your setup they Castle you develop your knight and a few moves later your setup is complete nothing special you know this by now by

the way if black puts the queen here please don't blunder your pun use your wife as a human shield to protect the peasants and if they capture you have another open Rook file but let's go back

if you have this setup many beginners and even Advanced players fall for a very easy attack black makes some normal move not anticipating the big attack what you want to do here is the exact

same thing as earlier you bring your knight to E4 and again by far the most common move is to capture the Knight but that's a mistake you take with a PA now

this Knight is under attack but this is the very Knight that's defending the pawn which is double attacked right now black Retreats the Knight and now the pawn is inde defended anymore you can

take boom check the king fle and here comes the queen another very common move for you you will often play Queen H5 and here black decides to go for the

Counterattack the pawn is under attack but a long Castle solves the problem the queen attacks another Pawn but the king moves again and black pushes the next

Pawn committing to the queen side attack Knight B3 aiming at the queen hoping that she will Retreat and she actually does retreat now white can push more

pawns increasing the king side dominance black pushes Queen side again and there are many cool moves to play but our white player finds this one right here it's actually quite simple if the king

takes it it's Checkmate in one and if he doesn't take the queen can take on F7 which is also checkmate but black finds a move to stop this vicious attack Rook

E7 and white jumps the Knight to D4 threatening to take the pawn on C6 that would Fork the queen and the Rook a certified bye-bye moment black defends

the pawn with the rook in all this chaos there must be a tactic to win a piece there must be some way for white to use the high pressure around the king let's think hypothetically if the Knight could

go to E6 it would Fork the king and the queen why can't it go to E6 because E6 is defended by a pawn can we get rid of

that pawn yes it's sacrifice time Mr Bishop I have bad news for you my plan to Victory involves your death take the pawn this is horrible for black if black

doesn't capture the bishop there's this Checkmate pattern Queen G6 and Rook h8 so black is forced to take allowing the fork was this intended absolutely

not but did it happen because of our massive kingside pressure absolutely yes so are we going to take credit for it and pretend we're brilliant chess players absolutely and utterly yes with

the Rook now on F7 we can jump to E6 the King has to move and the Knight goes hippity hoppity your queen is my property significantly down in material the black player decides to take the

Knight leaving The Rook unprotected so the queen snacks it and from here on its absolute destruction you will see a few L attempts by black to attack on the queen side but white is simply stronger

Rook h8 the king flees to the only available spot but now the Knight is pinned so white pushes the pawn attacking the pin Knight black can't really do anything about it and tries to

play on the queen side white captures the Knight and black recaptures by the way there are multiple Force Checkmate patterns in this position but you don't have to always find everything white

just captures a pawn and is still ahead and black keeps messing around on the queen side obviously your game won't go exactly like this but we'll summarize

your general game plan in a moment check the king runs check the king runs check the king runs check the king runs out of moves because it's Checkmate so how

exactly can you win with the London system I think the opening is clear at this point build your setup and be aware of the few exceptions that I mentioned but then you enter the middle game the

easy part is over this is the hard part basically there are two factors that will decide if you win or lose number one the tactics I can't upload tactical skill into your brain I'll try to make a

helpful video soon but in the end what matters is that you get practice number two your middle game plan and here I have two aspects for you number one the

quick help number two the superior he the quick way to get better is this literally move your knight to E5 wait for them to capture your knight take back and bring your queen out now keep

attacking and maybe you'll find a checkmate at some point but that's not a middle game strategy that's just a cool attacking idea and if the attack fails and you just don't find a cool cheesy

attack you'll sit there with no strategy not knowing what to do and playing move by move why because you don't even know what a good move is sure you know a fork

is a good move but unless you find a cool tactic you don't know what a good strategic move is like what's the goal here what do you want to achieve in the middle game

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