Very instructive video! I think it would be awesome to have a series of videos like this one, where you set up a position, you choose the first move for 2 or 3 variations and you let us calculate and evaluate the lines, then giving your solution so we can check if we are correct or not.
Very nice video indeed! It was very fun to do the exercise. I actually stopped the video before you told us what to analyse and compare. I saw both the variations 1.hxg5 and 1.h5 and evaluated 1.hxg5 as better (My numerical values where +2 and +1 respectively), but I also calculated the last variation you shown at the with ..Bxa1 Qxa1, which I evaluated as much better than either of the first two and thus I wanted to play 1.h5. I was baffled through whole video, why you bothered only with the first two. It was first at the end that I understood that I missed the defence ..Nh4 rendering 1.hxg5 best. In the position where you vacated f6 by playing Nxh7, i wanted to play Rxh7 with the idéa Bd3, Bxg6 and black's king is stuck on the backrank before I remove the knight because I thought i it had a role to play of stopping the king escaping to c6 via d7. I rejected Nxh7 because of the pin ..Rh8, but missed totally the idéa with Bh4. In your variation after 1.hxg5 I rejected Ne4 after ..Qxg5 in favour of Bd3 partly on general grounds: Bd3 is a developing move with the threat of Bxg6 followed Rxh8, but Ne4 which centralises the knight is just a one move threat. The funny thing here is that I totally missed the refutation ..Qa5+ of Ne4. I hope you think it was interesting to see the thought process of another amateur player, rated 1950 FIDE. Thank you so much for this beautiful lesson and exercise!
Great video coach, as ever - incredibly instructive. Positions like these are exactly the sorts of things I struggle with - understanding/appreciating the strategic nuances in the position in order to evaluate one line over another. My calculation is still instinctively rooted in looking for some sort of material edge/checkmate at the end of it (in this example I looked at h5 on that basis). Thanks again!
I get you, and I have the same. But maybe even this is about a material edge. In the beginning of the position you have an inactive rook on a1. This is traded for the monster on g7. Given an couple of moves this indeed is a material deficit. But on the short term white wins in the line exactly because of material (useless queenside pieces for black).
A fantastic video as always from our favourite coach ❤. Quick question: Will there be a 1......c5 opening course of your creation soon? I would love to have a full sicilian course made by none other than IM Toth 😊
I picked hxg5 as resulting in a bit over +1 for white and h5 as -1 for black. That is because in h5 Bxb2 hxg6 bxa1 gxf7+ Kxf7 Qf5+ Kg7 black threatens c6 with Qa5+ and white doesn't have pieces developed to prevent or counter. In the other line, hxg5 Bxb2 Nd2 Bxa1 Qxa1 Qxg5 (Black can't castle) Bd3 Rf8 Ne4. White's pieces are centralized and active and harrasing black's position and black is three moves from castling.
"losing the exchange" I am kinda trying combating this kind of language in my mind. Guess I would try to describe it (when evaluating) as "winning the dark squares"
I picked the right move, but came up with the complete wrong line. After 1. hxg5 Bxb2, my idea was 2. Qh5 with ideas of lifting my h Rook to h4, and if Knight takes, it felt like there was a way to trap black's Queen with Bishop to h4 and then push the g5 pawn. But I guess Black's dark-square Bishop can always come back... which I didn't see initially... idk I'm still trying to make it work, but it gets really blurry. At least I pushed myself to calculate further than I'm usually comfortable with!
Fascinating position emphasizing the importance of calculation, visualization, and evaluation in making the right choice. It's an insightful and engaging video that offers valuable lessons in chess strategy and decision-making. Keep it up, coach!
This video was great. Just want to explain some calculation I made. after h5 Bxb2 hxg6 Bxa1 gxf7+ Kxf7 Qd5+ Kg7 Be5+ Bxe5 Qxe5+ Kg8 c5! I correctly calculated was completely winning with the threat of Bc4+ that can't be stopped. For example, black plays d5 cxd6 Qxd6 Bc4+. If Kf7 Qxh8+. If Be6 Bxe6+ and the rook in the corner will still fall as well as the rest of the pieces. I even checked if Qb4+ was a source of counter play for black, but after Nd2 there aren't anymore checks. I estimated that the evaluation after c5 is between +6 and +8. Not only is c5 the only winning move but it is in fact +8. I calculated, visualized, and evaluated this line perfectly. The problem is that after Qxe5+ I failed to see Qf6. I evaluated h5 was better because of this amazing line 10+ moves in, but because of this Qf6 move on move 15 it made my calculation irrelevant. How beautiful.
my problem with comparing these two moves is h5 looks more forcing. like h5, Bxb2, Nd2, Bxa1 looks like a complete disaster for black compared to hxg5, Bxb2, Nd2, Bxa1 but i'm guessing for some reason black is somehow better not taking on a1 in the first line or not going into Bxb2 since taking the rook is not a strong threat.
Look like h5 variation is much better as the king has no access to the h file and perhaps a check on e5 offers a bishop exchange(which is blacks strongest piece) with a very active queen and weak king.
I calculated b5 check trading his strongest bishop off and queen recaptures with check. He is undeveloped and we are ready to being the army. I was wrong.
I'm curious as to why we can't have 1. h5 Bxb2 2. Nd2 Ne7 (2...Bxa1 3. Qxa1 Attacking both knight and rook) 3. Rb1 Bf6 4. Qf3!? Sacrificing the b-pawn with permenent pressure on b7, hindering queenside development and forcing short-castle into our attack). In my mind, I can tell from abstraction that the end position in this line gives a really clear game-plan for White and leaves Black with some serious problems to solve. Any thoughts?
Aha, I've just now found 4. Ne4! winning the dark-square bishop and the refutation to 4. Qf3 which is simply ...Bc3!, which I don't think is dreadful but indeed significantly worse than 1. hxg5.
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Calculation, visualisation, evaluation, and these videos is what we love the most!
Very instructive video! I think it would be awesome to have a series of videos like this one, where you set up a position, you choose the first move for 2 or 3 variations and you let us calculate and evaluate the lines, then giving your solution so we can check if we are correct or not.
Supporting by commenting and liking.
"calculation, visualisation, evaluation" love it
Brilliant ! thank you
Glad you liked it!
Do you have a video to teach when to break the center?
Very nice video indeed! It was very fun to do the exercise. I actually stopped the video before you told us what to analyse and compare. I saw both the variations 1.hxg5 and 1.h5 and evaluated 1.hxg5 as better (My numerical values where +2 and +1 respectively), but I also calculated the last variation you shown at the with ..Bxa1 Qxa1, which I evaluated as much better than either of the first two and thus I wanted to play 1.h5. I was baffled through whole video, why you bothered only with the first two. It was first at the end that I understood that I missed the defence ..Nh4 rendering 1.hxg5 best. In the position where you vacated f6 by playing Nxh7, i wanted to play Rxh7 with the idéa Bd3, Bxg6 and black's king is stuck on the backrank before I remove the knight because I thought i it had a role to play of stopping the king escaping to c6 via d7. I rejected Nxh7 because of the pin ..Rh8, but missed totally the idéa with Bh4. In your variation after 1.hxg5 I rejected Ne4 after ..Qxg5 in favour of Bd3 partly on general grounds: Bd3 is a developing move with the threat of Bxg6 followed Rxh8, but Ne4 which centralises the knight is just a one move threat. The funny thing here is that I totally missed the refutation ..Qa5+ of Ne4. I hope you think it was interesting to see the thought process of another amateur player, rated 1950 FIDE. Thank you so much for this beautiful lesson and exercise!
Great video coach, as ever - incredibly instructive. Positions like these are exactly the sorts of things I struggle with - understanding/appreciating the strategic nuances in the position in order to evaluate one line over another. My calculation is still instinctively rooted in looking for some sort of material edge/checkmate at the end of it (in this example I looked at h5 on that basis). Thanks again!
I get you, and I have the same. But maybe even this is about a material edge. In the beginning of the position you have an inactive rook on a1. This is traded for the monster on g7.
Given an couple of moves this indeed is a material deficit. But on the short term white wins in the line exactly because of material (useless queenside pieces for black).
Awesome vid,more on calculations please
A fantastic video as always from our favourite coach ❤.
Quick question: Will there be a 1......c5 opening course of your creation soon? I would love to have a full sicilian course made by none other than IM Toth 😊
Great video. My rating went up over 100 points after watching it!
If you want more exercises that are similar to this, check out Bricard's "Strategic Chess Exercises"
I picked hxg5 as resulting in a bit over +1 for white and h5 as -1 for black.
That is because in h5 Bxb2 hxg6 bxa1 gxf7+ Kxf7 Qf5+ Kg7 black threatens c6 with Qa5+ and white doesn't have pieces developed to prevent or counter.
In the other line, hxg5 Bxb2 Nd2 Bxa1 Qxa1 Qxg5 (Black can't castle) Bd3 Rf8 Ne4. White's pieces are centralized and active and harrasing black's position and black is three moves from castling.
"losing the exchange" I am kinda trying combating this kind of language in my mind. Guess I would try to describe it (when evaluating) as "winning the dark squares"
I picked the right move, but came up with the complete wrong line. After 1. hxg5 Bxb2, my idea was 2. Qh5 with ideas of lifting my h Rook to h4, and if Knight takes, it felt like there was a way to trap black's Queen with Bishop to h4 and then push the g5 pawn. But I guess Black's dark-square Bishop can always come back... which I didn't see initially... idk I'm still trying to make it work, but it gets really blurry. At least I pushed myself to calculate further than I'm usually comfortable with!
Fascinating position emphasizing the importance of calculation, visualization, and evaluation in making the right choice. It's an insightful and engaging video that offers valuable lessons in chess strategy and decision-making. Keep it up, coach!
This video was great. Just want to explain some calculation I made. after h5 Bxb2 hxg6 Bxa1 gxf7+ Kxf7 Qd5+ Kg7 Be5+ Bxe5 Qxe5+ Kg8 c5! I correctly calculated was completely winning with the threat of Bc4+ that can't be stopped. For example, black plays d5 cxd6 Qxd6 Bc4+. If Kf7 Qxh8+. If Be6 Bxe6+ and the rook in the corner will still fall as well as the rest of the pieces. I even checked if Qb4+ was a source of counter play for black, but after Nd2 there aren't anymore checks. I estimated that the evaluation after c5 is between +6 and +8. Not only is c5 the only winning move but it is in fact +8. I calculated, visualized, and evaluated this line perfectly. The problem is that after Qxe5+ I failed to see Qf6. I evaluated h5 was better because of this amazing line 10+ moves in, but because of this Qf6 move on move 15 it made my calculation irrelevant. How beautiful.
In the h5 line I saw the Dark Squared bishop gets to live and alarm bells immediately went off.
Great content.
my problem with comparing these two moves is h5 looks more forcing. like h5, Bxb2, Nd2, Bxa1 looks like a complete disaster for black compared to hxg5, Bxb2, Nd2, Bxa1 but i'm guessing for some reason black is somehow better not taking on a1 in the first line or not going into Bxb2 since taking the rook is not a strong threat.
It is a valid point to some degree. hxg does not feel that forcing but in fact Black only has 2 serious candidates: Qxg5 or Bxb2.
Tricky example. I don't understand why black has to take the rook.
they don't but that's the best way to compare the two moves
Look like h5 variation is much better as the king has no access to the h file and perhaps a check on e5 offers a bishop exchange(which is blacks strongest piece) with a very active queen and weak king.
I calculated b5 check trading his strongest bishop off and queen recaptures with check. He is undeveloped and we are ready to being the army. I was wrong.
Yeah minus 8. Black is winning in the variation i calculated.
I'm curious as to why we can't have 1. h5 Bxb2 2. Nd2 Ne7 (2...Bxa1 3. Qxa1 Attacking both knight and rook) 3. Rb1 Bf6 4. Qf3!? Sacrificing the b-pawn with permenent pressure on b7, hindering queenside development and forcing short-castle into our attack). In my mind, I can tell from abstraction that the end position in this line gives a really clear game-plan for White and leaves Black with some serious problems to solve. Any thoughts?
Aha, I've just now found 4. Ne4! winning the dark-square bishop and the refutation to 4. Qf3 which is simply ...Bc3!, which I don't think is dreadful but indeed significantly worse than 1. hxg5.
Hey Andras Toth! I've been a big fan of your channel for a while now (especially loved the Amateur's Mind series!) and I believe I can help take your thumbnails to the next level. As an experienced thumbnail editor and chess enthusiast, I'm eager to lend my skills to your channel.
With a strong eye for design and a deep understanding of the chess community, I'm confident I can create thumbnails that really grab attention and attract more viewers to your videos.
I understand your time is valuable, so I'll make sure to deliver high-quality thumbnails quickly and efficiently. My rate is $20 per thumbnail, and I guarantee you'll be pleased with the results.
If you're interested in teaming up, just let me know! I'm thrilled at the opportunity to collaborate and help your channel reach even more people :)
Thanks,
Rishi :)
What an awful video
Said absolutely no one ever.
Great video, Coach