8 Truly Remarkable Chess Puzzles

Right last but certainly not least we have what is known as the Tumbleweed or also known as the Drunken King variation .

What's up guys ?

So I have this book that's been sitting on my bookshelf for many , many years .

It's called Unorthodox Chess Openings .

Copyright in 1998 .

I don't know how long I've had it for , but it's 500 pages of non main line openings .

So you won't find like the , the main line , Ruy Lopez or the main line Sicilian or anything like that .

In here .

I went through all 500 pages and made a list of the worst openings according to Stockfish .

So in this video , I'm gonna show you the top seven worst openings .

Hope you're excited for this .

Let's jump right in .

Right .

So the first on our list is the Seneca gambit .

I hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly , but it comes out of the king's gambit and the king's gambit declined .

This is known as the classical variation .

So it's declined because blacks not accepting the gambit at pawn .

And now after night of three , this is kind of the main move .

The seco gambit is when black plays the move G five .

Now , this is not a good move at all .

It's very questionable what the idea behind this move is , I guess you could say to lure this pawn away so that there's less pressure on the E five pawn , but you can also just take it right away and then maybe black's planning on going here .

Not really sure .

So what I want you guys to do , first of all is what do you think the evaluation that stockfish gives for this position after G five is , well , the answer is plus 2.9 advantage for white .

So basically that means it's almost like winning a piece .

Remember , pieces are worth three points .

So if it's plus 2.9 you've essentially just won a piece in another way .

So you're not actually winning a piece , but you're getting a lot of other compensation .

So if you'd like to pause and figure out what's white's best move and why go ahead and do that and then we'll talk about why this is such a bad opening .

All right .

The seco gambit is when black plays the move G five .

Now , this is not a good move at all .

It's very questionable what the idea behind this move is , I guess you could say to lure this pawn away so that there's less pressure on the E five pawn , but you can also just take it right away and then maybe black's planning on going here .

Not really sure .

So what I want you guys to do , first of all is what do you think the evaluation that stockfish gives for this position after G five is , well , the answer is plus 2.9 advantage for white .

So basically that means it's almost like winning a piece .

Remember , pieces are worth three points .

So if it's plus 2.9 you've essentially just won a piece in another way .

So you're not actually winning a piece , but you're getting a lot of other compensation .

So if you'd like to pause and figure out what's white's best move and why go ahead and do that and then we'll talk about why this is such a bad opening .

All right .

Well , if you've had a chance to do that , the best move for white is actually F takes E five , which is a little bit interesting because if I was playing this game , I think I would probably take the G pawn because I don't want it to push forward on the night .

And actually , that's the second best move .

So both of these captures are very good for white .

This one does allow black , you might say some counter play because they can push this pawn to G four .

But Stockfish is solution is actually quite simple and , and pretty interesting , I think night to G one .

So we undeveloped the night because it can't really go anywhere else , right ?

All these squares are taken .

So we have to move it back and it does allow black , this little idea of taking here and then playing queen H four check and winning our H pond , which at first glance looks a little bit scary .

But after we play G three , queen takes H two .

Stockfish says that after rook to G two with tempo , we defend everything .

Queen has to move , let's say queen H five , we simply play the move D four and it's giving an evaluation of right around plus five for white .

And after this , you can see this strong central ponds um are just completely controlling this game .

I mean , this is amazing plus five and you're not actually up any material except for , well , you're not up any material .

It's just all it has to do with this strong central control and it just goes to show how important controlling the center is .

So going back , the big takeaway from this is when you play pawn moves like this on the side , you better have a really good reason , right ?

You should be fine fighting for control of the center , you should be developing your pieces .

And if you're going to play a move like this , not to mention now , if Black ever decides to castle over here , what , what's gonna happen to the king ?

Right ?

It , it's , it's wide open .

So really bad choice on Black's part .

I do not recommend the Seco gambit at all .

Right .

The next opening we're gonna look at is an opening known as the Mosquito Gambit .

And the most common move played here is queen to be four check .

And now you can probably guess stockfish is next move , but it's simply nice to see three just developing another piece to a really good square .

And even though the material is relatively equal , yes , we have one extra pond , but everything else is equal .

As far as we both have , you know , four pieces , we both have a queen and two rooks .

The fact that we have this leading development , the queen is looking very awkward over here stockfish when it gets to a further depth .

Now is saying plus five for white , that's how big of an advantage you get .

And so what's the key takeaway from the mosquito gambit ?

It's breaking an opening principle of bringing out your queen too early .

You shouldn't do this unless you have a very good reason .

And this really has like almost no point whatsoever .

It's just asking to be kicked around by the night , doesn't really even threaten anything .

You can't take any of these pieces .

And so again , mosquito gambit is not a good option .

OK .

So it's D four E five , by the way , this is the England gambit .

And after we take it , black plays the crazy move queen to H four .

This is the mosquito gambit .

So again , I invite you to pause and think through what do you think Stockfish evaluation of the position is after black plays the move queen to H four .

And then also , while you're thinking about that , what do you think white's best response should be ?

Well , they had a chance to think through that .

Stockfish is evaluating this position as plus 3.7 .

So it's even more than a piece , which is crazy because we're actually only just up a pa but Stockfish is basically saying no , it's just like you're up apiece because this move is so bad .

So how should we approach this ?

The top stockfish move is knight to F three ?

And why is this such a good move ?

Well , it's developing a piece .

It's defending our pawn and it's gaining a tempo on the queen black now has to waste another move , moving their queen .

And the most common move played here is queen to be four check .

And now you can probably guess stockfish is next move , but it's simply nice to see three just developing another piece to a really good square .

And even though the material is relatively equal , yes , we have one extra pond , but everything else is equal .

As far as we both have , you know , four pieces , we both have a queen and two rooks .

The fact that we have this leading development , the queen is looking very awkward over here stockfish when it gets to a further depth .

Now is saying plus five for white , that's how big of an advantage you get .

And so what's the key takeaway from the mosquito gambit ?

It's breaking an opening principle of bringing out your queen too early .

You shouldn't do this unless you have a very good reason .

And this really has like almost no point whatsoever .

It's just asking to be kicked around by the night , doesn't really even threaten anything .

You can't take any of these pieces .

And so again , mosquito gambit is not a good option .

OK .

Next on the list , we have the Mado Visy gambit .

So here we go .

E four B , six D four bishop to B seven .

This is called the Owens defense .

By the way , where black immediately seeing Kettles the bishop here , putting pressure on this eon bishop to D three is one of the main lines , you just defend it with the bishop .

And now the move F five .

OK .

And Black is basically really trying to put pressure here .

And the idea is that if we take , which is what we're gonna do .

Black now has this move bishop takes G two .

And this is where we enter into the Mavis Gambit after queen H five check uh G six .

So I believe this is the first technical move in the Mavis Gambit .

Uh It's , it's the only legal move .

So you have to play there .

So , uh again , I invite you to pause .

What do you think the evaluation of this position is according to Stockfish ?

And what do you think White's best move or met best plan in this position should be if you had a chance to look at that according to Stockfish , this position is plus 4.5 for white .

That's almost the equivalent of being up a rook .

Remember rooks are five points .

So plus 4.5 very high .

And it has to do with the fact that yes .

OK .

Yes .

Black has this bishop .

Yes .

Our rook is trapped and we're probably going to be losing the rook .

But look at what ha what's happening to Black's king right now .

There's an interesting point about this opening and let's go ahead and talk through that .

So we're gonna take the pawn and of course , if Black tries to take back , well , then we just can take either way and it's checkmate immediately .

Right .

This is cooler , in my opinion because it's with the bishop , but either one is , is fine .

So black can't recapture .

They can try to play night F six to attack our queen .

But now we have a really nice finish .

I'll let you pause and think through , if you haven't seen this one before , it's worth taking the time to find it .

What can white play to win the game ?

And if you had a chance to look at that and want to see the solution G takes H seven opens up the queen with check .

Of course , the knight can take it .

But then this G six square is open for a bishop and we can deliver the mate really nice stuff .

And so we've seen this doesn't work .

Black gets mated .

This doesn't work .

Black gets mated .

Uh Of course , taking our rook also doesn't work .

We simply take and again , black gets mated .

So there's only really one , only really one idea that black has here and it's the move bishop to G7 .

And the point is that black is opening up the square for the king so that it's no longer a checkmate at the same time defending this rook , so that they are actually threatening now to take this because the rook is defended and we can still capture the king goes over .

And here is the point that black has .

And this is actually interesting because a lot of people who play this from the White side don't know what they should do in this position .

So , what do you think White should play in this position ?

And after you had a chance to think through that , I'll tell you what the best plan is and what the plan that most people mistakenly think is , is the best move .

All right .

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , a lot of people think that the best move here is to capture the night because it's with check , you're winning a piece with check .

Why not take it right ?

The problem with this move is that after king takes white is still slightly better , but black actually does get quite a bit of compensation from this position because now your queen is attacked by the rook .

That's actually a pretty active rook , right ?

This bishop is actually pretty active .

White doesn't have an immediate way to take advantage of Black's king even though it's missing the pawns .

And so after we move the queen like queen to G four is the only real good move for white .

Black is gonna take this rook .

And it's an interesting position .

Like I said , technically , it's still slightly better for white , but black has a lot of counter play and compensation in this position and actually does quite well in practice .

So if we go back to this position right here , the interesting thing is that stockfish says taking the night is not the correct plan .

We shouldn't go that route because of what I just showed you black actually gets some nice compensation .

The move that stockfish recommends is Knight to H three just ignoring this night and saying , you know what ?

We don't want to let the rook come into the game .

We don't wanna have to waste time on our queen .

It's more important that we get these pieces out .

Right .

And now we're kind of forcing Black to make a decision .

If they want to take the rook , they have to do it now because if they don't take it right now , guess what ?

We're gonna play Rook G one and this rook's gonna come into the attack .

Now , of course , black can decide to take the night instead .

Um But let's go ahead and start with bishop .

Takes H one .

I think this is the most obvious move .

Now , we can see why Stockfish wanted to play nine H three knight to G five and we were threatening checkmate on F seven .

So Stockfish is basically saying , look , I don't even care about that night .

I'm going here for checkmate now , of course , night to age six can happen which stops checkmate and saves the night .

But what you'll notice is Black's king is kind of tied up a little bit more than it was previously .

Like before , once we took that the king was able to find some breathing room on G eight , the rook was involved .

Now , the rook's out of the game , our pawn is actually really annoying here on age seven , it's well defended .

It's controlling this square so the king can't escape there .

We've got these squares covered so very dangerous position for Blacks king .

And Stockfish says the evaluation at this position is plus five as opposed to the other one , it was maybe plus 1.5 , you know , if we took the night .

And so this is the correct plan and Stockfish just likes to move night to D two , just bring in another night .

And you know , I'm not gonna keep analyzing this position .

It's very good for white because of Black's precarious king placement .

The rook is stuck .

Um A lot of these pieces are kind of stuck and you know , black can't really do too much .

And of course , if you take back , you lose your rook , everything's hanging , your king is exposed and it's minus nine for black at this point .

All right .

So the only other movie you can play is King de Two , which also is a terrible move .

You're blocking your bishop , you're blocking your queen and you're bringing your king up where it doesn't want to be and you can't castle .

I mean , there's just nothing good about this position .

And so the easiest thing for , well , there's , there's several things that black can do .

Queenie seven is a good move .

Lining up on the pond .

D five is probably what I would recommend .

And what I think is the most natural , you know , human way to bust open the position .

You can also play night C six .

Queen F six is a good move .

Night .

There's so many good moves .

So anyway , let's just say D five .

Of course , if white takes this , I mean , look at the king , it's completely open .

You've got bishop G four check .

You can bring your night out , you're gonna castle , bring the rook over , maybe , bring the knight in , maybe bring the bishop in so many good moves .

White's in big trouble .

OK ?

So I think we're gonna bring this night probably somewhere , get the bishop out castle and be on the lookout for tactical tricks and ideas depending on what Black is going to do .

So , going back , Mavis Gambit is tricky if you don't know what to do and you've never seen it before .

But if you understand the idea and it's really just like I said , just that one idea .

Bishop G7 um taking is fine here , but then don't take the night , OK , play night age three and you'll be completely winning .

OK ?

Next on the list , we have the Orsini Gambit now .

This comes out of the king's gambit .

So E four E five F four and it's the king's gambit accepted .

So black takes the pawn and now white plays the move B three right now .

Again , before we talk about what's going on here , I invite you to pause .

Try to think through what do you think stockfish evaluation of this position is ?

And what do you think the plan that black should take up should be ?

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , the evaluation from this position is minus three or minus 3.3 depending on how long you let stockfish analyze for minus three for black .

That's basically being up a piece even though we're not up apiece .

Why is that the case ?

Well , whenever you play the king's gambit , you are opening up this diagonal , right ?

Your king is in danger .

Now , most of the time in , in a normal king's gambit , you're gonna play night of three right away and night of three takes away the move queen H four from black because your knight would just take it right .

So that sort of protects you along that diagonal in this ori gambit B three does nothing to stop the queen .

And so this is what Black's plan should be queen to H four check and white has a big problem .

They only have two legal moves and both of them are really bad .

If you play G three , black takes it because this pawn here is , uh you know , obviously just controlling that square .

And of course , if you take back , you lose your rook , everything's hanging , your king is exposed and it's minus nine for black at this point .

All right .

So the only other movie you can play is King de Two , which also is a terrible move .

You're blocking your bishop , you're blocking your queen and you're bringing your king up where it doesn't want to be and you can't castle .

I mean , there's just nothing good about this position .

And so the easiest thing for , well , there's , there's several things that black can do .

Queenie seven is a good move .

Lining up on the pond .

D five is probably what I would recommend .

And what I think is the most natural , you know , human way to bust open the position .

You can also play night C six .

Queen F six is a good move .

Night .

There's so many good moves .

So anyway , let's just say D five .

Of course , if white takes this , I mean , look at the king , it's completely open .

You've got bishop G four check .

You can bring your night out , you're gonna castle , bring the rook over , maybe , bring the knight in , maybe bring the bishop in so many good moves .

White's in big trouble .

OK ?

And so the point here is if you're going to play the king's gambit , you have to watch out for this move .

And B three just doesn't cut it .

You don't have time to do this kind of maneuver in the king's gambit .

It makes no sense at all .

Do not recommend the Orsini gambit at all .

Right .

Next up is the Frederico variation in the Sicilian .

So we have E four C five night of three G six .

Everything is normal .

So far D four , this is pretty main line stuff .

And then now we have the move F five .

This is the Frederico variation .

Now , uh before we talk about it again , if you want to pause and think through what do you think the evaluation is here and what should white's plan be ?

But they had a chance to think through that .

The evaluation that Stockfish gives is plus 3.7 for white .

So it's over a piece advantage .

Everything that I do has to be revolved around that diagonal .

No , like Stockfish is plan in this position is just a simple 93 .

And this is a good point that I want to highlight sometimes when you play against these weird gambits , the best thing to do is just develop normally , like just make a normal developing move and wait for the opportunity .

You don't have to force it , right ?

So for example , NF six , bishop G five E six .

And then let's see what is Stockfish say now D five .

So you've kind of positioned some pieces nicely .

And now is when Stockfish says , hey , let's go for , try to break down some of the , the , the center here and see what we can do about Black's king .

So that's it .

That's the plan .

Um Let's just say something like bishop E seven .

Happens now , the night can come into E five and because you've just kind of slowed down and got some extra developing moves .

It's much more powerful and you have a lot more threats .

You've got D six , you've got captures here .

You even have ideas of potentially bringing this night over in D six and going to C seven , you still have this threat if you can get rid of the night , lots of things happening and it's much better than if you rushed it earlier , right ?

So going back to the beginning , Federico variation is a bad choice .

Please do not play this as black .

All right , next up , we have the Jerome gambit .

Now the Jerome gambit is E four , E 59 F 39 C six .

Bishop C four .

So this is the Italian game bishop C five .

A very common response by Black and the Jerome gamma is when white plays the move .

Bishop takes F seven check .

So it's a peace sacrifice .

Uh Well , before I talk about it again , what do you think the evaluation is ?

If you had a chance to look at that , it's minus five right now after the king takes stockfish changes it a little bit to minus 4.2 .

So almost a rook basically is what it's saying .