Chess Education Corner ((CEC) for beginners and strong beginners)

Hey! You might ask why this has appeared in this club, it's so intermediate (like myself) and advanced players can share our chess knowledge to beginners (rated 1000 or under) so they can improve. these may include the following:
Chess principles
Chess openings
Tactics
Positional understanding
Middle-game plans
Endgame mindset

Along with other things! and if you as a educator want to share something that has already been covered in the past? that's completely fine, because some learn better through repetition or pattern recognition. You as a beginner this is aimed towards, I wish you a happy learning!

a similar forum aimed towards intermediate players will be added in the near future as well depending how this forum is doing

The first lesson i will go over is actually an opening with the black pieces, the french defense, which is initiated with 1. e4 e6. Using this colour when referring to white's moves, this colour for black and this colour when talking about individual squares, so without further ado, let's get started!

(It's recommended that you have either a physical chess board at hand or check the moves in the analyse tools on a separate tab if you're on PC or laptop)

White has some answers to this like d4, Nf3 and sometimes even Bc4 or maybe Nc3. But that won't matter because we play 2...d5, striking the e4 pawn. To that white may respond with the following:
3.e5, restricting your g-knight from developing to its natural square (the f6 square)3.exd5, exchanging your d-pawn with their e-pawn
the above are likely to happen if they play 2.d4 or 2.Nf3, but 3.e5 would not work for white if they played Bc4 because the bishop would be hanging.

Let's walk through this together, this lecture is about if your opponent plays 3.e5:
the move i recommend if this move is played is 3...c5, challenging white's center immediately (control over the center is important in order to have an advantage of the middle game, i will go deeper into that later). now white will most likely play either 4.Nf3 or 4.c3 depending what they played on move 2 (4.c3 if they played 2.Nf3 and 4.Nf3 or 4.c3 against 2.d4) see what I did there? this position is mutually intelligible, meaning it may occur in different positions! Though do keep in mind some players loves giving checks so they might even throw in 4.Bb5+, here i actually recommend that you play 4...Bd7, offering your opponent to trade your bishop that is stuck behind your pawns for their more mobile bishop, white may either trade the bishops or retreat all the way back because they realized the check was slightly pointless for what they were trying to achieve. Which is a violation of the chess opening principle of moving the same piece twice for no reason. If they play 5.Bxd7 then simply play 5...Nxd7. The position is about equal in this position, but this shell like structure is really hard for beginners to penetrate. you can keep going with moves like Ne7 to then develop it to either g6 or f5, i personally recommend Nf5 because it sees more squares on white's half of the board, then follow up with Be7 and castle.
Now back to if white don't choose the 4.Bb5+, and instead opts for 4.Nf3 or 4.c3. Here the main move is 4...Nc6, which i also recommend that you play for simplicity's sake. Here it's common if white didn't play 1 of the moves on move 4, it's entirely possible that the other is getting played. There is a well known trap for white in this position people between roughly 500-1000 if you play the main move 5...Qb6, where white can actually play 6.Bd3, now you may think this is a bunch of hoax. Like if you do a counting exercise if you trade everything on d4, thinking you just won a pawn, you'd be partially correct! however you're missing the fact white's queen x-rays the d4 square, meaning white's queen protects that square through the bishop, so 9.Bb5 like I disguised in the earlier in this paragraph, is a check and oops, would you look at that? you're forced to lose your essential castling rights and your queen to pour salt over the wound in a position that is resign-able for you. But to avoid it all from happening then i recommend 6...Bd7 to stop the bishop check. Now they should castle short, or play 7.b3, 7.Qb3 works too but it's not common in the beginner levels because the move offers a queen trade and beginners has a tendency to love the queen as you might know, so a move like that move usually don't even cross the mind of a beginner chess player. Anyways if white plays a move like 7.Be3 (it's surprisingly common too) then that just straight up loses to 7...Qxb2BEWAREIt's sometimes not a good idea to take the b and g pawns with your queen because you might end up trapping it all together, but in the case above it's an exception because your queen is forking white's rook in the corner and the c3 pawn, white is forced to play to play 8.Nd2 if they don't want to lose the rook, your take the pawn on c3 and is completely free.

That will be all for this small little pilot lecture, hope you enjoy!

if you have any questions then feel free to ask them and i'll do the best of my abilities to answer them!

Chess is different for many people, for some is battle of the mind, some use chess to stimulate their brain, but chess is hard, especially if you don't know chess' unwritten rules (principles), so today i will go over these unwritten rules and a cheat sheet to use in your future games for the opening and middlegame, but i will go more in depth in the middlegame aspect of the game as that's where most games gets intense.

Opening principles include:
1: Play for the central 4 squares (e4, d4, e5, d5.)
2: Develop knights before bishops (this is an exception if developing the bishops first is part of an opening you play. This is because knights almost always go to the f3, c3, f6 or c6 squares depending on which colour you have.)
3: Avoid moving the same piece twice if possible (you're wasting time potentially developing other pieces into active positions by moving a piece you already moved.)
4: Castle quickly (this is pretty self explanatory, if you lose the king, you lose the game, plain and simple, you can have as a rule of thumb to be castled by move 10, though there are some openings where you intentionally delay castling because it's advantageous to wait slightly longer like in the london system, some openings leaves you no other option like in the Caro-Kann or French defense(both with advance variation.))
5: Connect your rooks (some titled players says moving your queen early is usually a bad thing to do, and that's true!.. to some extent, but I firmly believe moving your queen 1 square up is good no matter what opening you play as long as your minor pieces have roles in the game, plus think rooks as partners. They want to see each other, and rooks who can see each other early is a happy rook.)

and this is some middle game principles that you may need when playing games (I will be going more in depth below this section):
1: King safety
2: Material consideration
3: Mobility
4: Open and semi-open files
5: CCT or CCA

All the middlegame principles explained:
1: Assuming you already have your king castled by now, but only because your king is castled doesn't mean that you're off the ropes! Your opponent can still threaten your king behind your wall of pawns, that very same wall of pawns could also be the end of the game with a loss because back rank mate is a looming threat once you committed to castling, especially in the endgame, so make sure you give your castled king a luft (the chess term to give your castled king some breathing room, borrowed from the Swedish word for "air").
2: This one is pretty straight forward, It essentially means you should be aware of piece advantages (or disadvantages) and you should try your best to keep, try your best to not slip up and give your opponent's a piece advantage. If 1 of your pieces is threatened, evaluate if you can trade it off, if the answer is yes, then evaluate if you want to make this trade, if the answer is yes, then go right ahead, if the answer is no then move the piece somewhere safe.
3: Mobility is key in all middlegames, no matter the opening! The more scope your pieces has, the better it is. Think of pieces as if they have eyes, the more squares your knights and bishops can see, the better they are they are. This goes into principle 2 as well, if you trade an amazing bishop for a terrible bishop with almost no mission, then that move served you no good.
4: Rooks loves semi-open files, but what do they love more? Open files! But the ideal scenario is if the open files are uncontested by an enemy rook, so if possible, place the rooks on those, because they are powerful in those kinds of positions.
5: CCT stands for "checks, captures, threats", some people also says CCA, which is the same except the "threats" part is replaced with "attacks". This is to be applied at all times during the middlegame, where you need to look for moves in that order. Are there any safe checks you can give where the piece you're checking with cannot be captured, if the answer is no, then proceed, if it is safe, then consider that one and look for another one, to see if you find one, then play the checking move. Are there any captures you can do? Look for every single capture, even the ones where you can see the queen can be captured in 1 move in exchange of a pawn. If there are no captures either, then make a move that has a threat on your opponent's side of the board or threatens 1 of their pieces, for an example your knight is soft pinned to your queen by your opponent's bishop, your king is castled and you haven't given your king a luft yet, so you can play a move like h3 (or h6 if you're playing with the black pieces) to carry out the threat and solved the question about king safety temporarily.

in hindsight i probably should've started with that one, but i got overly excited when i got the thumbs up to create this forum, but it's out there now for everyone in the club to see now!

This next lecture I'm about to give is essential knowledge for beginners to understand, how to stop "Wayward Queen Attack", or as it's known as in the chess community (for some) "The early queen attack". I will be using the same setup as i did on the lecture about the french defense (scroll up if you need a reminder)

So the Wayward queen attack has 3 main lines to go over and i will briefly go over them and how to not get brutally checkmated before move 10!

So it generally starts with 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5, but it can also arise if white plays 2.Bc4 or 2.Qf3. Many beginners struggles to know what to do in these kinds of attacks, so today, I will teach you all how to defend it!

Starting with the very first move as black, you can block this idea by playing either 1...c6 or 1...e6 (the caro-kann and the french defense respectively), this stops the bishop that should be standing on c4 in the future to reach the weakest point in your camp, the f7 square (in every case in the opening, no exceptions), helping the queen to deliver the mate. You are straight up better after you push your d-pawn to d5 in both openings and play 3...Nf6 because white can't open you up efficiently with just a pawn, bishop and queen.

Now let's rewind back a bit to if you are insistent to play 1...e5 because your favourite opening is in that line, i don't know. But let's dive into that line because that's the most common continuation to 1.e4 at. Now whether white picks 2.Qh5, 2.Qf3 or 2.Bc4, I actually recommend different moves here, depending on your rating, especially after 2.Qh5. the rest remains because it's generally a good move, which is 2...Nf6 against 2.Qf3 or 2.Bc4, against the first move it's because it blocks the checkmating square on f7 (which EVERY beginner who plays this opening is going after after watching a GothamChess short about it) and after the second move it's good because it straight up blocks the white queen from infiltrating to h5, plus it's generally a recommended move against the bishop's game which i am not well versed in so it's for another time. BEWARE!! A move like 2...g6 is extremely common in this opening below 600, but it's actually the worst move you can play in the position because white takes the e5 pawn, you're forced to block the check and white picks up your rook in the corner.
Going back, now you're probably asking, what move do i suggest instead, and the answer, it depends. But for people rated below 700 I generally recommend 2...Nc6, defending the e5 pawn because of its solidity, but to 700 and above I can also recommend playing 2...Nf6, wait, what? Isn't that just leaving your e5 out to meet its fate? Well yeah, but that's the point. I will go into intricacies why this move is recommended later.

1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nc6 (recommended for everyone)Now white should play 3.Bc4, threatening checkmate in 1, every other move with the bishop then it's slightly misplaced. Remember when I told you pushing the g-pawn to g6 is a bad move? Well not in this case, actually it's the better of the 3 moves that stops checkmate. What changed? You have your knight protecting the pawn on e5, making it invulnerable from the queen so the queen is forced to retreat to either its home square (which is extremely passive, which in 9/10 cases an extremely bad moves to make) or 4.Qf3, hoping you won't see the checkmating threat is renewed. Which is when you play 4...Nf6, stopping all dreams of a quick game. The most common move I seen as a former beginner myself in this position is 5.d3 but here I recommend you to play 5...Nd4 (which is a really good move when the game reaches this point in multiple cases, except if their queen is on d1 because it forces white to respond.) then you should develop your dark-squared bishop to g7 and castle if your opponent allows you to. Int that position you're off to a relatively normal middlegame

1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nf6 (recommended to people rated 700 or higher or those who wouldn't mind sacrificing a pawn)Now onto this, I know you scrolled down here to see why 2...Nf6 could possibly be, and the answer... is less about solidity and more about development and piece activity, let me explain. As you probably know by now, you're essentially leaving your central e-pawn out to die with check, but you see in this variant you actually want this because once the queen takes your pawn, you block with the bishop, they might play something like 4.Qf4 in which you either play 4...Nc6 or 4...O-O. From here you place your other knight on the c6 square and push the d-pawn forward 2 steps. Now let's stop here for a second, while white has 2 pieces developed while you have 4, that's something you could use to your advantage in the middlegame (or should i say YOUR middlegame because white is still in the opening phase, they moved the queen 3 times at this point, they aren't properly developed, their king isn't castled. you remain dominant in the middle game).

So yeah, that's about it, I hope you enjoyed this lecture and I hope you guys learned something in today, until next time, cya! :-)

i should also have mentioned after 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nc6 3.Bc4, do not under any circumstances play 3...Nf6 attacking the white queen,

because this will happen if you do.

This next lecture will be a opening repertoire with the white pieces with a 52% win rate with the white pieces according to the lichess database, 53% for 1400 and down (basically the equivalent to 1000 elo on chess.com since the platforms uses a different rating system). if your elo is 250 or lower, i think you can say that you can defeat the martin bot with style (though keep in mind that you can rock this opening basically be used at every level, GM Ding Liren used it in the World Championship match against GM Ian Nepomniachtchi and won and the youtuber jacksark, a 2300 rated player, uses this opening as a weapon with the white pieces)! This will be the first time i use the Lichess database to know the most common moves you might face in a given position.

So now I can imagine you're wondering which opening I will cover this time around, well look no further, it's...;

The reason why this is called a "system" and not an "opening" is because you can apply basically its opening moves basically to any position, except for the englund gambit where black replies with 1...e5 instead of 1...d5 in which case i suggest you just captures the gambiting pawn, and i will go over this in a following lecture on what to do

back to the topic! I will go over your ideal position in any london system, making random moves for black so you get the idea

it's a position similar to this you wanna go for (Qc2/Qe2 at the end is a subject matter, both has it's upsides and downsides and which side of the board you wanna play on, if you want firepower on the king side, play Qc2, and if you want firepower on the queen side, play Qe2), notice the pyramid? it's not easy to crack for lower rated opponents. Also have you noticed how i intentionally never castled on white's side? The reason why you wanna delay castling in this opening and not castle kingside out of haste is because in some cases you can have a massive attack on the kingside which makes the rook placement on h1 crucial. for a dangerous attack. Let me give you an example!

That last move black did thinking they're gonna win back a pawn seems reasonable on the surface, but it's a terrible blunder, but why? This will be the first lesson of this forum that you all can practice!.. except if you already know the answer somehow, if so then congrats! :-)

Anyways, back to this position, i wanna show all what you're most likely going to face and what is the actual correct way to confront the london system with black

These are the most common responses in order, with Nc6 being played 35% of the time, Nf6 with 21% of the time, e6 is on 16% and Bf5 is on 12%. But the actual correct move (c5) is only played 4% of the time, so every let's say 300 games you play, you'll face the c5 move 12 times on average. Which is not a lot at all. which is why you don't need to worry too much. but in case you do encounter that move i suggest to simply move the e2 pawn 1 step and follow up with Nf3 and Be2 to then castle king side. In fact, in every of the other move i also suggest e3 in every other chess position because that move is that solid, followed up by Nf3 and Bd3 and then place the b1 knight to d2 and play c3 in no strict order unless the position demands a response. But if black gives you a sneaky check on the b4 square, always block with the c2 pawn to kick the bishop away

Conclusion:
I genuinely love doing these spreadsheats, this is the first time I wrote a message including more than 2 chess board position in a single post! It's also the first time i made an lecture using a database to know what moves are the most common and the win rate. Now go out there and cook your opponent's in style! :-)

https://www.chess.com/game/computer/1043801321 this is a game I played against Martin to prove this opening holds a lot of power and has a lot of potential in the lower elo ranges.
https://www.chess.com/game/computer/1043828331 and this is a game I played against janjay, not very good example though... you'll see why when you view the game! Still, this opening is no joke in the lower elo ranges up until intermediate level.

I will post my last CEC post before going on a semi-hiatus on this account (I will still come online from time to time, though will not part-take in any activities actively), I grown tired of chess as of late, but my passion for teaching chess to beginners hasn't diminished just yet. But in this post I will go over how to defeat all the beginner bots and the maria bot (the 1000 elo bot) that I remember how to beat (including some of the ones behind a paywall) starting with Martin!
Martin: Martin tends to freestyle his openings, a true opening extraordinaire as some might say, but his weak point he usually hangs pieces in 1 moves without a clear follow up, just make sure you don't hang mate in 1, Martin never misses those! he can also sometimes find forced mate in 2, so you gotta be careful if you have a feeling you're loosing
Wayne: Wayne loves to play with his queen, but as soon as he loses it he self destructs and seems to become allergic to making solid moves. so either trade off his queen or straight up win it for free and you should be good!
Elani: unlike Martin, Elani does have an opening repertoire. but she falls short because she tends to hang pieces for free. However she does make up for it by saying stuff like "you fell for it...", making you question whether you made the right move or not, but keep in mind, 7 to 9 times out of 10 it is the right call, she just messing with your mind to make you think your move was terrible when it's move likely is great! (unless if you take a defended minor piece (knight or bishop) with your queen, obviously that's bad and you probably know why)
Janjay: Janjay will play real openings with you, however she tends to make disastrous tactical errors. Such as making king moves before castling (doesn't need to be provoked with a check either, she will make those moves on her own) she also has a blind spot for pawn attacks, meaning for an example she can prevent pawn takes queen by simply taking the pawn, but instead she simply lets the queen parish. Though keep in mind she will not always let you do this, but she do tend to miss these attacks a lot
And lastly Maria: Like Janjay, Maria will play actual openings against you, she tends to play 1.d4 with white, but she has played 1.e4 too so come prepared! She also tends to make tactical errors just like Janjay but unlike her lower rated nemesis, Maria doesn't have the same blind spot for pawn attacks, however forks works super well against her, so drill finding forks and you should do great against her, just be watchful for what she might attempt to do against you!