Target Audience - Under 1800 Rated Chess Players - You MUST KNOW These Tactical Chess Ideas!

I'm already 2200 .

And most of the time I'm able to come up with better moves than a 1400 would be able to come up with that being said , when a grand master looks at the board , they're gonna come up with even better moves than I would come up with .

I think there's one main reason why stronger players are able to come up with better moves .

And the reason is that they have more ideas floating around in their head .

For example , this position on the board .

If a low rated player were to look at this , they might not know what move to play and what move is the best .

When I look at this position , I know exactly what move to play and what's the best because I've seen the smothered checkmate before .

Whenever you have the queen lined up on the king with the knight on F seven , smothered checkmate as a possibility pops into my head and then I'll think , does it work in this case ?

Uh Yes , it does .

And that's the move I should play night to age six , creating the double check .

The king moves over the queen comes down , the R captures , the knight comes in game over .

How did I know that ?

Because I've seen that before .

And it is an idea in my mind the way I like to think of it is a handyman who has a toolbox .

And if the handyman , you know , has a toolbox that's basically empty , they're not gonna be able to complete very many jobs .

But as you add more and more tools to that toolbox , the handyman is not able to complete more and more jobs if all you have is a , a ladder and um a tape measure .

Well , you're only gonna be able to do so many things with that .

But if you add a pencil and uh a level and a hammer and a saw and you , and you keep adding tools and now you can do more things than you could before .

Chess is the same way as you get better at chess .

You need to keep adding to your toolbox .

If you will , you need to add ideas into your mind .

So that when you play chess , you have things to think about and you notice those things .

So that's the goal for this video .

I wanna give you 15 tactical ideas so that you have more ideas floating around in your head and you'll be able to come up with better moves more often .

Now , some of these you may have seen before .

But even if you learn one or two new things , it's going to make you a better player .

Let's jump right in , right .

The first idea you want to be aware of is called the Noah's arc trap .

This is when usually a bishop gets trapped by three pawns .

So in this case against Sicilian , if you play bishop B five right away , black could play a six .

And when you try to retreat your bishop B five C four and now this bishop is trapped .

It has nowhere to go .

The pawns are gonna take the bishop .

So watch out for this .

When you , especially when you bring your bishops either to B five or G five , the pawns start rolling forward , you want to pay attention to this .

If we go back , an alternate version of this would be if your opponent plays a five , they can also play C six , then B five and then a four , same idea , except this way the pawns are like this , the other way , you know , the palms were like this , but the same thing , your bishop's trapped and you're going to end up losing a piece , right ?

The second idea is when you have a piece that's pin , usually it's a night on C six or F six and you attack it with a pawn .

So in this example , if we play D four and black doesn't capture and plays a move like let's say NF six , we can play D five and we're attacking the night .

But this is really good for us because the night can't move because it's pin .

So whenever there's a pin on one of the nights with the bishops , you wanna watch out for paws that can move forward and attack those nights .

Right .

The third idea is a little bit of a strange one .

But this is something that cost me a game .

When I was in middle school .

I was a top rated player way ahead of everyone .

And I ended up losing a game because I wasn't aware of this idea .

But I'll never forget it now .

But when your night is on F three , this is extremely common .

You put your night on F three in Castle Kings side .

If it's attacked by a piece , you have to be careful playing age three because if you play age three and the bishop usually , which is sitting on C eight or somewhere on this diagonal , the bishop can take your pawn and normally you could recapture .

But if your knight is under attack , guess what , you can't really retake or you end up losing your knight and your king is a mess .

And really , it's , it's bad for you either way because if you don't recapture what you still lost your pawn .

And now this bishops right here , it's just not good either way .

So you have to make sure that your knight is defended by something else .

Like maybe if my knight was on D two , defending it otherwise don't play H three .

So watch out for that .

Um , if the night's gonna become unprotected when you're recaptured , right .

The fourth idea is extremely common in low level games , but it's called back rank checkmate .

When you castle , your king is usually safe behind the pawns .

But as the game goes on , if both of your rooks end up leaving the back rank , it can become a big problem .

In this case , white has an immediate way to win the game check .

Black has to block and the game is over because it's checkmate because Blacks king is blocked by their own pawns .

If it were black , smooth white would have the exact same problem and they would be checkmated .

The easy way to prevent this is by simply moving one of your pawns up .

You can play H three .

That's usually the best one , the safest one and it creates an escape route for your king so that if your opponent does try to put you in check , you can always run and hide like that .

All right .

The fifth idea you want to be on the lookout for is sacrificing a rook to set up a night fork .

The way that I like to think about this is if your knight can move anywhere and attack a high valued piece .

In this case , it can move here , it can move here and attack the queen .

The follow up question you wanna ask yourself is , is there are there any other high valued pieces that are close to being also somewhere that that night can attack .

So in this example , I might say to myself , well , the king is kind of close to being , you know , on one of these squares .

And that would be a nice fork on the queen .

If you can get your brain to think about that , you can probably spot the follow up move , bringing the rook down with check .

We're also skewering the king and the queen .

So if the king moves , we just take the queen , which means blacks forced to take it .

And then guess what that night , which before was kind of just a bad move is now suddenly a killer move which forks the king and the queen and you just want a queen for a rook .

So be on the lookout for how you can sacrifice your rook to set up night fork .

The next idea is very similar , but it's a rook sacrifice to set up a bishop fork .

And again , what I like to do is think about my pieces and where can they move to that ?

Attacks high valued pieces .

In this case , we could just capture this pawn with our bishop and attack Black's queen .

So that makes me think what other pieces are almost in line with this bishop .

Well , the king is sort of close again , that starts my brain thinking down the path .

OK ?

What happens if I move my rook over and sure enough , that's not a bad move because now black has to capture it or we're just gonna take the queen .

But after they do , we can capture here and create the fork with the bishop .

So be on the lookout for how you can sacrifice a rook to set up a bishop fork .

All right .

Speaking of forks , the next one I like to look out for is queen forks early in the game .

This is usually with queen to a four or queen to a five in this position , you can see white has played bishop B five and then D three , both kind of questionable moves this early .

And we've allowed black to play queen to a five check for king , our king and our bishop .

Now , in this case , it turns out to not be a big deal because white can simply play night C three which actually blocks the check as well as defends the bishop .

So that is a defensive maneuver that you want to pay attention to .

But sometimes this isn't an option like if this night had already been traded or if there was maybe a pawn here preventing the knight from going there or something like that , then this would be a good move for black .

Same thing for white , be on the lookout for queen to a four and it actually can happen on other squares as well .

But early in the game , look for queen forks if the queen can put the king in check , you wanna at least think about it and ask yourself OK .

Is the queen also attacking another piece ?

Like in this example , it's attacking the bishop as well .

So look out for queen forks .

All right .

The next study is very common in E four openings after you played bishop C four .

And you're lining up on the weak F seven pawn .

But the idea that you want to look for is sacrificing the bishop on F seven .

So that after black recaptured , you can move this night somewhere creating a very dangerous check on Black's king .

In this case , the dangerous check is actually a fork which also unleashes the queen and you're going to win back this bishop .

So after the king moves somewhere , you can simply take this and now white's winning .

So keep an eye out for sacrificing the bishop on F seven following up with , with a good move either with the night here or here .

Now , in this case , nine G five is not an option , but nine E five is very good , but sometimes the best move happens to be night G five .

So you'll have to check that in each game , but keep an eye out for that .

OK ?

The next idea you want to look out for is when your opponent is not castled and their king is in the center and you have the ability to use one of your rooks to put them in check .

This is usually a very , very good thing because whenever they block , they're gonna be putting themselves into a pin , for example , bishop to E seven .

Now we can play queen to E two .

This is a kind of also related but piling up on whatever pinned piece you have .

There is a really good idea because now if black tries to castle and get out of the pin , well , then you're just gonna take the , the bishop because right now it's defended twice .

But if they castle , it only has one defender and you can simply capture it .

So this is a good way to keep your opponent's king stuck in the center and it's usually gonna be bad news for them .

So look out for bringing your rooks to the open uh file in the center and taking advantage of your opponent's king .

And on a related note , here's a very similar position where we try to play check , but our opponent actually blocks with a piece .

This is super common .

A lot of times there's a night or bishop that can hop in front of the check .

And one really good thing to keep in mind is that you still have a pin on that piece .

So remember if you can attack the pinned piece with a pawn , like in this case , F four , you're probably gonna just win a piece for a pawn that way .

So this is a very easy way to take advantage of the pin if you have a pawn that's available to attack the piece .

Right .

The next idea is actually fairly common , but a lot of people don't look for it so they don't even notice it .

But when your opponent brings their fish out and pins your piece a lot of times , a good response , it's just a block with your bishop because you're breaking the pin and it frees up your piece to move .

Another benefit of this is that sometimes you can hop that piece to the center and create an attack on the bishop on G four .

So what this looks like practically is in this case , black has played D four .

We capture , they capture and what we can do is take the night .

And even though it looks like , OK , well , it's just a trade .

We take , they take , it's actually not just a trade because we're creating this discovered attack over here .

And some people might think , well , they'll just trade the bishop first and then they'll take our night and it's everything's just a big trade , but it's actually not .

And here's the important thing to remember when they try to trade .

Instead of capturing with the queen , the knight also can hop back .

And so you take the piece that way and you save your night and win a peace .

So to recap here whenever there's something on the D four square .

In this case , uh the night can hop over , create the attack on the bishop and capture whatever peace was there .

In this case , it was the night , ok ?

But sometimes it , it could be just a pawn and it also can happen .

Um If you're playing black and you put the bishop on E seven , it's very dangerous when you have the queen and bishop lined up because it creates a very strong attack on whatever pieces there .

Usually it's , it's the other person's bishop .

So keep that in mind , right ?

The next idea is called the Greek gift sacrifice .

In this case , Black has just blundered by castling and we can play the Greek gift sacrifice , which is where you sacrifice your bishop on H seven .

So you're giving up the bishop for the pawn .

And the reason you would want to do that is if your knight can follow up and also if your queen can follow up behind the night in most cases .

So I if Blacks knight is sitting on F six , kind of preventing your queen from coming in , it's probably not gonna be as good .

In this case , Black's night has been kind of awkwardly moved away .

And so that's a key component of this .

But if that's the case , usually sacrificing on age seven is very good because now you can follow up with the knight and if the king tries to retreat and hide the queen comes out and you're basically just checking Black .

So that's the point .

The other thing that black could do is also come here , but that's also very bad .

Uh You can even just do something as simple as like H four threatening to play H five or even like queen D three .

Next is very strong , lots of good ideas , but White is completely winning .

And that's the Greek gift to sacrifice .

So keep that in mind .

All right .

The next idea you want to look out for is whenever you have a discovered attack on a high valued piece .

In this case , it's the queen , it's called a discovered attack because we can move this bishop somewhere and create the attack on the queen .

Whenever you have that , you want to look if there's a check because if there is a check , like in this case , we can simply take it black has to recapture and then they just lose their queen .

So keep an eye out for that .

And it doesn't always have to be checked with your discovered or attack , even if the king was somewhere else .

And there wasn't a check .

Sometimes there are other good moves with the bishop , but this is the most common and this is the one that I try to pay attention to the most , right ?

The next thing that I like to kind of keep in mind is are my opponents , king and queen on the same file on the same diagonal .

And if the answer is yes , you want to stop and ask yourself .

Do you have any ways to take advantage of that in this position ?

Are my opponents , king and queen on the same file ?

Well , yes , they are .

Do I have any ways to take advantage of that ?

Well , it sure looks like I do .

I'm creating a pin on the queen .

Now , black could block .

But again , if you remember from previous points in this video , whenever you have a pinned piece like that , if you can attack it with a pawn like d five , guess what ?

It's usually a pretty good move .

And now we are simply winning a piece .

Even if the nine takes , we can simply recapture and black can't take because of the pin .

This is winning for us .

And it all started because I asked myself the question are my opponents , king and queen on the same file or diagonal .

So you wanna be asking that regularly ?

All right , the next idea is more common in end games , particularly with queens and rooks involved .

But whenever you have your queen attacking your opponent's queen and it's only defended by their king , you wanna look for ideas of moving your rook behind and putting them in check because what this does is if the king takes you , it's deflecting the king from defending the queen and you can simply win the queen for free .

And if they decide not to take the rook and decide to just move , well , now you've added another attacker on the queen and you can simply take it for free and the game is over in this case .

So keep an eye out for whenever you have your queen attacking their queen .

Can you bring a rook or sometimes it even works with the bishop .

But a lot of times it's , it's more common with the rook .

They can bring it behind creating that um attack and collecting the king away and you're able to win the queen .

All right , the next idea is blocking off a defender of some high valued piece .

So in this example , Black's rook is sitting here on D four defended by this rook on D eight .

If we had a way to block off this rook , then this would become undefended .

So the movie we can play is night to D five , which also threatens black queen .

So Black has to deal with this this night somehow .

And if they capture , we can simply retake the rook and we just won the exchange .

Now , it turns out that in this position , it's actually better to capture with the pawn rather than take the rook because we create a discovered attack on the queen .

And then we can take the rook later .

That's even a little bit better .

But the point that I wanted you to remember and take away from this is that sometimes you can even like even if there was a pawn here , you could give away a piece with the idea that next move you take the , the higher valued piece that's now trapped .

And so that's , uh , something that's , that's pretty cool when you can pull it off .

It's a little bit tricky to get it to , to work .

But it is , uh , another idea that you want to keep in mind cutting off the support of a high valued piece by even sacrificing a low value piece usually can turn out pretty , pretty nice for you .

All right guys .

Well , those are 15 ideas that you can take with you on your next game .

As always , stay sharp , play smart and take care of .