Grandmaster Speed Runs Chess – Making a Plan
Simon continues his now-famous speedrun series, tackling more tricky games on chess.com. Inspired by Hikaru, Eric Hansen (Chessbrah) and Daniel Naroditsky. Online chess speedrunning blitz chess on chess.com, video lectures, how to get better at chess and win with checkmate, attack tips and tricks!
In this video, we look at some typical mistakes that players make around the 1800-2000 level on Chess.com.
#speedrun #chess
➡️Chessable –
➡️Secret website to improve your chess – www.GChess.com
➡️GingerGM – www.gingergm.com
➡️Twitch – www.twitch.tv/gingergm
➡️Twitter –
Grandmaster Simon Williams is on chess.com, improving and learning chess openings with a world record masterclass blitz speed chess speed run!
Ginger GM Well hi everyone uh back to a speed run Video and um we're looking at the what Rating range 1800 to 2000 and I'm gonna Take you through some of the standard Ideas to help you improve mistakes that People make at this level and how you Can basically get to that 2000 Range now We're doing currently five minutes Um but I might have to up the time limit As my opponents become more tricky and Um we're playing someone here good Player 1827 and we're playing the jibava London system So I'm starting with the standard free Moves and my opponent is stopping any Idea of me going to this Square that's Quite a nice blue isn't it I've seen That before So Um there are a couple of moves I could Try here and I normally go E3 but as my Opponent is not guarding the E4 Square I Think I'm gonna actually open it up Because I have better development With two pieces developed and when you Have better development in the early Stages of the game it's a good idea to Open the position up Now my opponent has moved a knight here Clearly with ideas against this Pawn but I'm never sure about this move because It stops him playing this natural break So I'm just going to develop and defend
Uh a pawn that he's attacking so I'm not Doing anything special at the moment And now he's moved his Bishop here and I Can now develop my last piece again I'm Not doing anything special if he Captures here I can take with a bishop Seems okay he's trying to win that Bishop And this is actually a clever move Because he wants to play C5 Um so I actually made my last move was a Bit of a mistake but we just dropped That guy backwards because I really like This bishop this can be a great attacker Later on and now if you play C5 his Opening is making some sense if he Doesn't play C5 I'm just gonna go A3 and He will never be able to play that break So it's certainly the right time to play Okay so he's played his Knight here Now I think that means A3 is certainly an Idea but is this idea to go Pawn takes Pawn it might be so I'm gonna play a Natural move and I'm just going to move This Pawn forward so I kind of been Waiting to do this and this is where Knowledge of other openings help because We started off with Jabara London but It's becoming a little bit like a French Defense now and my opponent has thrown His Knight into this Square And now I think it's definitely time to Play A3 now he might double my pawns but
As long as I keep these pawns like this I'm still quite happy because this is a Very good uh Pawn formation And now I could of course Castle Which is a very normal move but I'm Going to play H4 to gain space on the King side and maybe to prepare some kind Of attack and I'm kind of waiting to see What my opponent's gonna do because if He castles I can go for this Pawn Straight away another good move from my Opponent he's coming in here And we need to think about what to do And I'm gonna now Um prepared this move is coming so yeah My opponent's playing well and I'm just Thinking if my Bishop goes here am I Worried about this Let's go for this move with maybe ideas Are now coming Knight G5 and starting an Attack So I'm gonna go for this one and this is A standard attacking formation even when They haven't castled with the idea now Bringing the queen out here and again This is one of those attacking Formations it's quite useful to know and The point is if it goes G6 I'm just Going to try to Checkmate him I've had This many times before this kind of plan And this now leaves me in at least a Draw situation because I can take here With check And can I improve on a draw
So some calculation needed here so I've Got to move my queen queen here King Here and he's coming this way But what I can do Is just take this one And I can now take the Rook if needed But again let's just see if I have Anything better And I'm gonna stop his King coming here I'm gonna go for checkmate and I'm gonna Move my Pawn here Because it stops his King running away And it threatens ideas of E6 Checkmate So if Pawn takes Knight we go E6 Checkmate and this is actually An Unstoppable move so pretty um pretty Pretty sort of smooth there actually uh You know we had a very quick 22 move win Against the 1820. And my opponent played pretty well but He wasn't aware of this attacking Formation of my knight coming into this Square And it's very important when your Opponent starts to go aggressive so as Soon as I played this move his level of Scaredness should have gone up he should Have been right okay now this is a very Aggressive move what's my opponent Trying to do I need to not you know I Need to be aware of of his his Formations and try to stop it and after H6 Queen here he's actually in a little Bit of trouble maybe he has to Castle
But he's castling into a monstrous Attack there So how would how should he have stopped This and this is the one defining moment Of the position and I expect It's already a little bit tricky Um if he takes my knight my my Rook Comes in uh so maybe he had to play Something like H5 to at least stop my Queen coming over here but that does Look a bit ugly and because I'm aware of This attacking formation with the queen Coming in it's really just losing from At this moment so that was I mean I I suppose how did I win that Game it was a combination of solid Opening and then knowing that this H4 Move in that last game was key and at That attacking formation so okay so Let's go to another game now I haven't Played the Sicilian For quite some time so we're going to go For a sicilian and the Sicilian that I Enjoy playing the most is the Sicilian Dragon but he's now played this move Which means we don't get the normal open Sicilian And the good thing about the Sicilian is You control the central squares a lot So I'm going to continue by just Developing playing sensible moves Normally you bringing Knights out before Your Bishop so let's just bring that one Out I know in this variation there's
Ideas of the queen coming here combined With a pawn coming here So I think I'll bring my other night out Because it does ask the question Can I take that pawn it gives him Something to think about And he plays a move now Which is very slow that stops my Bishop Coming out now what happens if I take Here Is there anything to worry about there I Mean it looks to me like like I can take This he might get a bit of an attack With D4 but I always have D5 and you Should always try to play the most Critical moves I mean a safety move here Would be E6 and then getting Castle Quickly but why can't I take that pawn I Always have E6 Let's find out if he has a reason for This so I'm going to grab that one And he's just castling okay this is his Idea and now I need to get my king safe And I want to block up the center So I want to do these two moves and I want To block up his active Bishop so this Looks like a very solid Central Formation Okay I will bring my knight back and I'm Gonna aim to play D5 to block that Bishop even more let's play it now and It seems to me like I have won a safe Pawn
So I do still want to Castle now which Square is better this one allows him Maybe to pin my knight this is always a Super solid Square for your Bishop so Let's just go here Now because I'm material up I'm actually Very happy to see exchanges so I'm going To take that one off again I haven't Played it I've done anything special Here the Rooks come in and I I think I Can safely Castle yes I can see that his Bishops might start lining up against my King but he's very badly developed at The moment So he comes back and now I need to think Of a middle game plan Now The plan of him putting the bishop on This diagonal is normal so a move like D4 is actually very interesting to cut Across that idea But I'm also thinking about my last Bishop how we want to get this out we Could go this way Now he might play D4 or do we stop him Playing this move and I think I'm going To stop him playing that move because This bishop it's okay on this diagonal But I always find it much more scarier Pointing towards my king okay now Next up this bishop must come out Now if I go two squares he might hit That so I'm just going to Put it on this diagonal
Pointing towards his King again I'm Trying to develop does that stop me nope So let's quickly get the bishop there And um this look okay now we see why my Bishop on E7 is good remember I'm happy To exchange pieces so if I move the Knight I can exchange Bishops because I'm a pawn up so I want to make Exchanges I know I'm moving into the line of his Rook but I've got ideas a knight coming Here Which I think I'm going to go for Now he's going to come this way right But let's do it anyway combine my Bishop And if I can Kick this Knight away I might even have My queen coming in over here so this is A very risky move because I weaken E6 But I do want to give my Bishop free reign So I'm going to go for this move maybe I Should have played something more solid Let's go for the most aggressive move Because if he moves his Knight I've also Got this move threatening checkmate E6 is kind of defended by my knight my Knight is a fantastic piece here And I've just been trying to okay so he Comes to a sensible Square now can I Take that pawn and I don't see any Reason why not he doesn't have well he Can tape there But let's go in
Let's take it if he takes here I can Take with my knight he takes my Bishop Then I move out of the pin and his King Seems very weak there I'm already one Pawn up if I get another move I might Just take this Pawn On H3 or I might get my queen out of the Line of the rook and try to bring my Queen nearer his King another idea is I Could just move my Bishop back Because then my knight can move okay so He's trying to do some complications Here but now can I bring my queen here And if he takes there I have a Discovered check Bishop F3 winning the Queen does that work Queen here Knight takes Knight Bishop F3 looks very Strong to me Let's bring it in And now I have three pieces attacking That is the key number another good move In the last position would have been to Pin the queen with Bishop F3 immediately But I want to bring you as many attacks As I can so now he's decided he's got to Come here Now this is an idea I might have some Very strong attacking move here but I'm gonna just guard this Pawn but also Give myself potential for a fourth piece To enter into the attack does this do Anything I don't think it does There's No Frets so now we can think about Moving this bishop do I take this one
Or do we keep it on this beautiful Diagonal and I think I'm going to keep It on the beautiful diagonal now my Knight can move because my Bishop Doesn't fall so I'm threatening Knight Takes Pawn check His Knight is the only thing blocking up My attack at the moment it would be nice To break through that night there but I Maybe don't need to Um This Rook has potential okay so what's He trying to do so he's trying to take Here as we've seen before But I have many moves and I think we Should go Well actually I mean he's not if I just Defend this Pawn let's just defend it Because I've still got so many threats Knight taking two pawns the fresh Stronger the execution my queen coming In and I don't know what his next move Is I could have pulled the trigger Immediately there but he's now played Quite a slow move now if I take here is There's some big tactic I've got to be Careful of this Pawn a bit Take care takes takes this one looks Good but I just check can he take there My king moves Uh it looks okay let's go for it because I'm threatening lots of things he's got To take here a bit short of time but I I Think I've worked out that my king is
Pretty safe if it just tucks itself out The way In in most situations maybe I can even Take it in other situations I've got to Be watch out for Rook takes root Knight Takes Queen Brook takes Rook Checkmate But after Rook takes Pawn sorry Rook Takes porn I'm just gonna go Rook takes Rook and keep my back rank defended with This guy That's my idea So here takes check my king moves and I Keep my Frets if Bishop takes my king Moves immediately and I keep the frets This bishop stops any back rank here and This Rook is going to be removed so here I just move my king Keep the same Frets alive if he moves His Bishop I take here because I'm Keeping this Square defended my next Move will be Queen takes Rook And that looks so I had to this I this Is the one bit of calculation that's Doing this game I had to make sure that I'm covered here And that he you know for any little Frets that are coming And Um Now of course we take here because we Want to get the Queens off And now well the game is already won my Opponent resigns So uh yeah I mean that was pretty smooth
I mean we won that pawn in the opening And you can see that you know don't Don't be scared of ghosts so I was a Little bit scared that this might give Him a bit of an attack but at the end of The day Try to always play the most challenging Moves because that's the way to get Better at chess as soon as you get a Little bit scared and you start playing Second less challenging moves you're Never really going to improve so try to Play the most challenged moves if you if You see a reason if you don't see any Reason not to take a pawn take a pawn And obviously here I just had to develop Keep things safe and then do a little Bit calculation at the end let's play One more game now our rating is now 1900. so we we're we're doing a good job Of uh getting up and uh let's see if we Can get a uh one one more gaming we've Got the white pieces uh I think at this Level the Jabara London is such a great Opening because it's easy to learn Um I played his first three moves Without thinking pretty much And now I'm gonna go for stage two give This bishop a bit of oomph and here the Old main line I used to recommend was F3 And G4 But I'm actually preferring now to put This Knight on E5 first Okay now the standard response to this
Move and I know this again from Understanding the opening is Knight A4 This defends and it attacks and the Point being if the queen comes in we can Simply block this And he's what's he done he's moved his Queen around but he's given us lots of Time to gain space over here and he has To really move his Queen all the way Back who did that help not him Now I'm going to go for this plan this Plan put in the Knight on E5 is a very Sensible plan and now the thing that you Can often do and I will do here and this Is again very standard is G4 so I Haven't had to play F3 and if he attacks My Rook I will play F3 of course uh why Not and now H4 and again this is just Knowing some basic opening ideas Threatening to trap his Bishop if he Moves his h-pawn I will take his bishop And Destroy his Pawn structure I don't Want to take that bishop and allow him To capture that way because his pawns Remain very solid but if he has to take The F Pawn then things are very good and This is basically already a very nice Situation to be in there's a lot of Tempting moves here but I'm going to Keep it simple and I'm gonna open up Lines for my light Square Bishop to Attack those weak Pawns And this is all from the opening all Very basic stuff from the opening and
Here I'm just going to develop that one Looks like a nice Pawn to attack and I Can even come with the queen here Why not because I don't see how he's Going to defend that pawn and already I I'm not going to say I've got a winning Position but I've got I've got a very Nice extra Pawn I think I'm going to Have with an attack here uh Bishop takes Pawn check is coming in And uh what can he do maybe he should Try A5 try to get some counter play but I can always go a free I think uh you Know um this move maybe I go B5 A5 is a good idea he's got to get he's Got to try and play actively and get Counter play somewhere so A5 would be I Would play this I know I'm I'm taking Here but he can't stop that anyway he's Got to try and get some counter play uh On on this area of the board right on on The queen side with a move like A5 B5 Something like that okay now this move Is not scary And well I'll take the Pullman check why Not And he's gone this way okay and now Shall I come forwards the thing is even Coming backwards makes sense because his Knights are very discombobulated but the Reason I'm going to come forward is Because if he takes me I'm going to Catch her with a pawn and I get control Of this Square which might allow Bishop
To come in Okay so he's continuing to come forward But now here wins a queen but does Knight here lead to a very sexy Checkmate look at this bishop D6 I've Never seen a Checkmate like that before Have you that's a really weird check Mate look at that for a checkmate that Is a bizarre crisscross Checkmate and Again my opponent pretty much a 1900 Strength player and we won in exactly 20 Moves with actually quite simple play How did we win so easily well the jabala London we we knew to set up And then when the bishop who comes here I know the modern plan is to put the Knight on this Square so I simply Continued that Now he's caused me some dilemma what is The best Dilemma to face that well I Know again from the work I've done on it That Knight A4 is best because you Attack the queen you force the queen to Make a decision and the queen doesn't Really do anything here It's lost lots of time so now I continue With Knight E5 what is the idea of Putting the Knight on this one it is to Support this Square so you can go G4 And eventually H4 I'm threatening to win A piece so it forces him to give his Bishop a runaway square but as soon as He does that I take the bishop he has to Destroy his Pawns
And now I just attack these weakened Pawns and develop And I attack them again He forces my knight to move well I might As well take a pawn with check I might as well go forwards in this Position and here we've got to look at Ways to attack that King and Knight B7 Won the game pretty simple stuff in some Respects actually Make sure make sure you like this video And subscribe to the channel Um uh a bit busy with hectic stuff going On in life at the moment but I'm gonna Try to keep the odd YouTube video coming Out uh and hopefully you know keep Things going so cheers bye for now Thank you
