I Officially Made Chess History.

nine months ago I was sitting pretty much like this when I decided to create a chess opening now I was literally sitting by my kitchen table at 2:00 a. m. on a random Tuesday and I thought it would be so fun if I was able to come up with chess moves and call it something and so I decided that I wanted the name of my opening to be the name of an animal because it was something that everybody could resonate with and I also wanted my opening to be very easy to remember because that would mean that a lot of beginners would be able to play it so ultimately after 30 minutes of thinking I was able to come up with the cow opening now to my surprise whilst I was looking at my database I couldn't see anybody that had played this opening in a classical chess game and I had 9 million games in that database which obviously means that this opening has probably been played in Blitz Games or in other types of Chess but from the database that I had I couldn't see anybody that had played it in classical chess and that to me at least meant that the opening was very rare so I got extremely excited about that and I never thought that this opening would become anything big I thought it would be something that I'd talk about for one or two weeks and then it would be over but this past 9 months have been the most insane Journey with this opening and in this video I'm going to tell you everything so let's start with why I decided to call it the cow opening well in my brain whilst I was coming up with this and and once again I was sitting by my kitchen table with a physical chessboard in front of me and I was moving pieces around at the same time as I was drinking a glass of Coke cero I mean this really was not a moment of deep thinking of of of of anything like that this was really just a moment of kind of Randomness to be honest like I said I wanted something that was very symmetrical and so I knew that everything that involved E4 and D4 had been studied for so long and it would be really hard for me to find something new within that I thought maybe B3 G3 you know could be something but ultimately I thought okay what happens if we just move our Central pawns one square so I started making the move E3 and I thought okay what is black going to do well black is probably going to take a lot of Center black will go E5 after that I thought okay well what happens now if we're going to keep this symmetrical like I thought what happens if I go D3 I mean it it doesn't look crazy we're still keeping our pieces together we're still taking center it's just that we're taking it one step behind and after E5 I thought okay so what happens if now I know that the hippo is going B3 and G3 and kind of creating this sort of setup what happens if I instead of Fano faneto my Bishops if I faneto my Knights so I started doing these moves and all of a sudden I came to realization that this could be it that was what I thought it looked ugly to me to have the knights on the side of the boards because obviously moves like H5 can very kick easily kick away these or A5 can kick away this night but I thought okay Anna here we have a hippo that is with the Knights instead of with the Bishops so I thought that this opening because it was only six moves I was sure that I would find a lot of games with this but after seeing this on the chessboard in my kitchen I decided to take my laptop and put this into chest space to see how many times this have been played and like I said when I saw Zero games in classical like rated chess tournaments I was like what is this these These are six moves how has this not been played I look at the evil bar and the evil bar was saying that this was around 0.

5 for black so the evil bar was saying that this was slightly better for black but not that much and if you do not believe me I will show you right now here we go here we have the evaluation here we have uh the eval bar and stuff and yeah it's saying that it's 0. 5 for black which obviously is not great I mean you're starting with white you want to take an advantage with white but I just thought this is not not that much of an advantage for black this is very playable so I decided that okay this could be something and what I did was that after I saw these moves I decided okay an time to come up with a name and so like I mentioned before I was trying to resonate with what animal this could be CU I knew this had to be something that everybody knew I had to called this award that everybody around the globe could understand it couldn't be something like I don't know what is a fancy word what is a fancy word um racket not because racket is a fancy word at all but if English is like your third language like not everybody knows what a racket is so okay this is really not the fanciest word but my point is that I wanted it to be a very simple word that everybody knew and I was thinking okay an animal everybody knows animals it should be like a very standard animal it can't be something like a lizard you know it's too random it's too niched it needs to be something generic something that everybody knows some animal that everybody sees in their daily life so I started thinking about cats and dogs and pigs and everything that's part of a ranch and then I thought what does this opening do how what what are the characteristics of this opening well I thought okay well this opening is very passive but I actually believe that there is a future so I believe that this is passive in the beginning but just like the hippo you kind of create this kind of passive opening to later on break the center and just get a a pretty active position and many times you'll win games because your opponent will think that you're playing very passively and will over extend their pieces thus creating weaknesses so I thought okay passive but still has a lot of potential and then literally like this this really sounds crazy but then the story of Ferdinand came into my brain and if you don't know what Ferdinand is Ferdinand is uh a story about a bull that which is the male cow right yeah which we they show in Sweden every Christmas because we watch cartoons on Christmas here in Sweden and The Story Goes that Ferdinand is a bull that is very calm he's just sitting under a tree smelling flowers and he's having the time of his life but then one day a beast stings him and he starts running and he starts going crazy and everybody's scared of him and he unleashes this kind of Beast Within himself and later on well well yeah okay later on they they they yeah throw him into a uh bull uh bull you know like with the Matador and stuff so they throw him there and they want to yeah yeah they want him to put up a show and everything right but he's just not stung by the Bee anymore he's just his calm passive self again and then well that's pretty much the the thing of the story or whatever you say but the point here is that I saw this opening as being very passive in the beginning but at some point your opponent will overextend their pieces and that will be the Beast thing that will be what will unleash this kind of super good uh chass player within you and then you will go on and prove everybody wrong and win the game and when I thought about this story I immediately thought this could be called The Bull but the bull was too difficult of a word and it didn't sound that great and I thought if English is your third I don't know fourth language I don't know if English is not your primary language bull is not an easy word to know it's not one of the first words to learn in English you go red blue yellow orange pig dog cow and so I thought okay let's call it the cow maybe the bull could be some crazy variation in the future obviously I never thought that would be true but so very proudly the day after I made a video called iron a new chest opening the cow opening right and I was showing this on stream and it wasn't really getting a lot of traction I mean like people were kind of laughing about it and they were like Anna what are you trying to do this opening sucks this is like not anything but I made a few videos about it and I played it for a bit for like a month or two and it kind of became this thing within my channel however the story truly Begins the moment that one of the world world's biggest streamers who averages I mean some like 20,000 viewers when he's streaming called Tyler one was part of POG Champs and whilst he was studying chess for POG Champs he ran through this short that I did and in this short I basically say that this opening Works no matter if you're playing with white no matter if you're playing with black and with that I meant that this is a system that you can play with both colors however Tyler went to like that literally and he decided that he could probably win every single chess game with this opening because I said that it works for both callers so he started playing the cow opening nonstop after POG Champs he started as like a 200 rated chess player after POG Champs he would go on to do one of the greatest chess months in history or chess runs in history where he would play chess for 10 12 12 hours a day having thousands of viewers watching him and everything he would do is that he would play the cow opening and it would go to the point where people would think that he was the one that came up with it and uh he even created a really famous emote in his channel that was the gift of playing the cow opening which is just putting these pawns up and then the knights going here and when I saw this I couldn't believe my eyes one of the world's most famous streamers is playing the cow opening the opening that I came up with a few months ago I thought this was crazy and I just thought okay like now this is getting really popular and it did all of a sudden the cow opening exploded in popularity people started really playing it and it really became an online meme but this this was until a week ago when it was not a meme anymore ladies and gentlemen I don't even know what to say I will literally not lie to you I started crying when this happened the other day and you may call me exaggerated but this I thought was the craziest thing in my life you see I basically just went E3 E5 D3 D5 and then I saw that the cow had become an official opening on chess. com like when you play it it says that you're playing the cow like this opening that I had literally just thought about in my kitchen table at 2 a.

m. was drinking a glass of Coke cero was now like printed on the world's most famous chess website I mean this was to me just absolutely crazy but it wasn't just the fact that my opening was printed here it was the fact that now after playing two chess moves E3 and D3 this is called the cow I don't think you understand how difficult it is to get an opening this early on in the game I mean there's a lot of people that could play E3 and D3 and now on the world's biggest chess website this is official Theory are you serious with me I thought this was absolutely incredible I couldn't believe it and so what I did is that I decided to go into into openings into the actual tab of openings and then I searched for the cow and here we have it this is the book theory of the cow there's so many variants there is just pushing your pawns one stop there is uh getting your Knights out all of these different variants are the cow but not only that they even implemented the bull variation which was a video that I did a while ago also calling it The Bull variation I couldn't believe my eyes this little joke that I had in my head was Now official Theory this everybody is official theory on chess. com like how this is just to me just so insane and I had to make this video to tell you about this because we have made chess history I know that this is stupid I know that this was just a meme opening in the beginning but in a way I feel like I have created something you know I don't know I have created something I have an opening yes it may not have my name and oh thank you it that it doesn't have my name cuz it wouldn't be this doesn't represent me I feel like this represents an idea this represents just the idea of Simplicity in chess and I think the idea that you don't need to play a super fancy opening to get an okay game and what I'm saying here is not that the cow opening is the greatest opening of all time because truth to be told your opponent is going to get a better position in the opening when you play it but what I was trying to prove was just that we could create something that was simple something that was fun and something that beginners all across the world could play just for the sake of having something easy to remember and they wouldn't lose that much on it I wanted to prove that openings are not the thing that make beginners lose a Chas I and I strongly believe that I think the tactics I think that General chess understanding is so much more important than openings at pretty much all levels apart from very high levels of Chess even in my level I can play this against people in my rating and I can win a lot of games and to prove that to you I'm going to play a Blitz game against someone that is around 2100 with the cow and if I win I will prove a point and if I lose I will just cry and never play it again but let me try to prove a point here all right let's play a game with black and I'm playing three plus two because that will give me a little bit of time to explain all my moves moov okay sorry so E4 I'm going to go E6 once again with the black pieces the very sad thing is that it doesn't say that it's the cow opening it says that it's the perk defense small center of the fence who even knows what the small center of the fence is I think that we should all do a stampede together and tell chess.

com that the cow opening can be played with the black pieces too and make this Theory as well I will say though that I think in general that it's harder to play the cow with black than it is with white but because you already have so much initiative with white so I think in general it's a little bit harder but I still think it's playable it's it's definitely playable so I'm going to go H6 now that he is that if you push then I will go back and now we're seeing yeah okay so we're seeing that my opponent is trying to Target this if I go back it's just going to be too slow so I'm actually just going to go into this if they want to take they can take and then I don't know if we're going to see Queen D3 yes we are threatening actually Checkmate which obviously I cannot allow so I'm going to go Queen F6 just defending this and then if takes takes I'll just take back and otherwise I will just try to develop as quickly as I can so here I am going to go Bishop here just so that I really am able to get this bishop out um I could have taken here first but the night here and then chck and I wasn't entirely sure about how that was so now we could push for instance this is definitely a very plausible move plausible kind of fancy word right kind of fancy word okay let's Castle uh before anything and then now I'm safe so my point is going long castles which I always think is very fun I always love seeing stuff like long castles now it's time to find some cool uh stuff so the threat right now is to go Knight there definitely something I don't really want to allow so I think actually I'm just going to take this Knight I think the Knight is going to be too strong otherwise Queen takes I mean now the threat is to do this um I think we should push this Pawn I definitely have a little bit of a weird Pawn structure but I'm going to go Queen F5 and I'm defending this pawn and then I'll go Knight F6 I think is going to be the plan just to defend it soon I also want to go B6 and get this bishop cuz this bishop is a little bit underdeveloped I could also go C5 and then try to bring this up this is another idea so I'm going to maybe this is what I'll try to do I'll try to just go C5 and then Knight up and then KN check that would be pretty awesome so let's see will will I be able to do this okay so the queen goes back so I was thinking about this move I was really thinking about this move um and maybe actually it's the move I will do I was just I kind of want to do this but this this takes I just really do not like that so I think I'm just going to go Knight F6 just to defend keep everything safe I don't need to go for anything crazy I actually kind of like B5 which looks kind of crazy but the idea of that is that if takes I get some squares and my Bishop gets opened up pretty quickly and I also yeah yeah yeah I think I like that I'm going to go B5 also if I'm able to get this Square it's going to be really good for my knight so I'm happy with this move Knight F6 I'm actually quite liking my position it's equal material I don't see how my opponent is going to attack me and I am starting to get ready to go for an attack I am starting to get ready to be stung by the Bee that will initiate a crazy mode within me that will just make me play really good chest um so I'm going to go B5 I really like this move and then I'm going to go Bishop B7 I'm actually not taking cuz then there's this I'm going to go Bishop B7 if Queen takes C7 there's Rook C1 um so I I just think that this move now is is is great and I don't really know what happens now if I just simply take this Pawn this move to me looks really good now it's equal material again and after this I quite like C5 but I think okay so this is hanging is that the is that the plan is the plan that this is hanging maybe that is the plan kind of want to go here kind of want to go there this this knight uh Knight let's see I'm just thinking Queen oh I really like this move I just realized I really like this move if Queen takes Pawn I have Knight C3 if this move I was actually looking at Knight there um Knight takes Rook as impossible cuz I'm threatening the queen I'm threatening also right now to go for this check and so we are seeing this move which already wins does it win anything I think it th wait uh let's see let me calculate so Knight here yeah this doesn't win anything so I can't do that so the only move that really comes to m is to go for this move check and then I think Rook takes was the idea of my opponent and then I'm going to take here in between takes and then I'm going to take here and I'm threatening this Rook right now and The Rook moves and I think I'm just simply going to go Rook here and I don't really see exactly how I'm not just an exchange up I think I'm just an exchange up right now which I'm very excited about so this has to be good for me um yeah this has to be good for me so what did we see we saw this move this this I mean I think I'm going to start with this just to threaten the bishop see where the bishop goes and then I'm going to go Rook B8 is going to be the idea if Knight's here I'm actually Pro Am I going there let's see I don't really want to mess up actually I'm just going to go R here just to yeah run this and then I'm going to go R here the idea now is that [Music] the uh the bishop cannot be uh threaten anymore with F3 I I just didn't want F3 to be a move so this I am quite low on time which is I mean stressing me out a little bit I think I'm going to go H5 oh no okay I blundered I blundered I blundered oh no oh no okay I will have to take with the bishop I I will just go here I think oh I definitely blundered that's very sad okay we're not losing on time yet maybe later but not yet just going to try to move my pieces around try try to get them better I completely missed the chat with a little time but let's try to do the best out of the situations I do have some idea still oh oh I was going to do this in a different situation but we will do this it's going to be very double atched probably Bishop f8 but then I'll take this it's going to be very double edged cuz this Pawn is going to be so strong so I'll take here and then we will see what happens think king of s actually now my idea is probably to just go R here oh what what was this move why did I just get a free rook okay okay all right so two mistakes syrup blender syrup misses that was definitely not my best time game but did the cow save me yes it did it saved me this was definitely thanks to the cow now let's do a little game review I'm very surprised about the last move um I think here yeah this was completely equal my plan here was that okay if Bishop here I did think that i' would be better after takes but my plan was maybe to try to get get the rook in somehow so I do actually I I did quite like my position um so apparently I had an accuracy of 83. 7 I played like a 2250 so I am not mad about that I am not mad about that so let me let's go ahead and analyze the game so let's see where my mistake was E6 okay I just really quickly want to see where my mistake was because the chess game shall be played uh oh wow uh learning your mistakes after the opening everybody it is actually I have such a great position out of the opening look at this like my opponent got so excited but I just had a really strong position out of the opening so here I should just take and I was scared of 94 but I just go queen of seven and it's almost minus one for me after 10 moves this is a fantastic Advantage so my cow just turned out amazing wow and then here I was just probably better for a long time B5 is a really good move I'm so proud of it the bishop B7 was a mistake I should go A6 and open up for The Rook wow okay and then obviously yeah here things went a little bit wrong but then I was able to win The Exchange and then yeah things went a little bit wrong but I was still kind of better in the end game I think or at least at the very end here I thought that I had played it quite nicely and I was able to get a a nice position but this move I don't know what happened I think my opponent panicked but anyways with this video what I've wanted to show is honestly just play whatever you want and have fun with ch if you want to play the cow opening play it if you want to play something else play that I truly do not think that chass is all about the opening or about Theory I think that chass is about understanding the game and understanding tactics and especially at lower levels obviously um so I'll probably get a lot of people that are mad at me for spreading a terrible opening but even my parents laugh when they see this now I mean it's just chess is supposed to be fun and chess can be whatever you want it to be but I think to me chess is just supposed to be fun and something that I really enjoy playing so if you want to play the cow let me know how it goes and like I said I am just incredibly happy that the cow opening is official theory on chess. com now it's a dream that I never thought would happen we have made history everybody and I couldn't have done it without you you are the ones that have played the cow and made us do a little and peed on chess.