How to WIN with the London System!

ladies and gentlemen welcome to this chess openings video on the london system the london has become unbelievably popular from beginner intermediate advanced up to the title player level because it's super easy to learn and the plans are pretty flexible in this video i'm going to spend about 15 minutes showing you how to play it and then i will play two practice games against my subscribers and you should know that i also have a london course that if you'd like to check it out to take your knowledge to the next level in the description on my

website i've also put the moves that i'm about to show you in the description you can copy paste those moves into any analysis board on any chess website that you wish use an openings database analyze with an engine and so on and so forth to take your understanding of the game to the next level so the london system begins with the queen's pawn two squares to d4 and for black the two most common responses are just the mirror image d5 uh and knight to f6 for anything else like some gambits that immediately target your pawn

like the england gambit which is wildly popular shout out to the video of gotham chess one of my favorite creators uh you're gonna have to fill in the gaps a little bit okay so if you get hit with something you don't know it's gotta be out there and you can research it so we're gonna begin with d5 and the london is really this bishop coming to f4 you can do it after knight to f3 and then bishop to f4 personally i like to commit bishop to f4 right away because i don't really know if my

knight is going to go here all that much there might be some move orders where it does not now what i'm going to show you is a typical position that you are after in the london then we are going to show black's most challenging responses to the london and i'm going to kind of tell you a little bit about how to study this cool wonderful so let's say the players just develop you're going to play e3 completing one side of what we call a pyramid on this over here and then the pyramid will be complete

like this you want to buy illuminati fans uh by all means uh you know rejoice so the other battle is going to be for the e4 and e5 squares you already see that we're controlling this score quite well and as we continue to develop our pieces the e5 square is very much up for grabs in my hypothetical example black is attacking us with a flank pawn c5 that is the most challenging response to the london system because it immediately creates queen side play with the queen and potentially the knight because our bishop has abandoned the

queen side but stick with me for a second the exact moves are not ultra important i'm more so getting to the critical position of our opening the bishop on d3 the light squared bishop stands inside of the pyramid okay targeting the enemy king if the king ever goes short castle also the bishop is just very safe here and the reason we've played this side of the pyramid is so that if the opponent were to play something like c4 then we can just slide back so our position actually very much makes sense we also repel the

enemy forces on this side of the board with our pawns that's why all of this opening kind of makes sense it all ties together and if we sufficiently control this square on e4 with the bishop and the knight and we sufficiently control this square on e5 with the pawn the bishop and the knight black's counter play is sort of killed in the center and the game plan of the london is to yes you can just castle and that's fine but the central game plan i like to employ is mobilizing directly into the middle okay which

opens up our queen to then potentially rotate through that available square and target that king side with the bishop right the queen and the bishop together and if the knight were to take us now by the way i just hope we're clear we're not taking this this is just to plant and then create our attack but if we are to be taken we are going to remove this knight from the defense of the king bring in our pieces and sometimes we won't castle at all yes you can but you can also just go directly after

this attack this is the perfect kind of london in a nutshell but you've only been watching this video for about four minutes you are not yet ready to do it as much as you want to is how it usually works on youtube you go and play it it doesn't work you come back you're like okay there's a lot of things we needed to go through to get to this position and openings are all about variation right sometimes you might castle short sometimes you might cast along in this case we didn't do that right now a

lot of things are at play here first of all black played c5 if we go all the way back to the beginning of this position black played this move c5 by the way white has choices even here yes you can complete your pyramid and play knight to f3 and bishop to d3 in fact oftentimes c5 in the london the best response the second that you see c5 c3 say that a million times to yourself c5 c3 c5 c3 however some of my more advanced players watching maybe 13 1400 that's not the only thing you can

do in the london you can also meet c5 with actually taking it if you're prepared because if the opponent tries to win the pawn back you can hang on to the pawn if they try to do this you can defend it with the c pawn and it's not so there's a very nasty trap here by the way if black plays the move b6 just looking to undermine your pawns right there's bishop takes b8 a nasty nasty trap the idea being you would like to give this check and once you do the pawn pushes through and

the game is over for example like this will you ever get this i don't know some of my higher rated players might beginners the games can be a little a little bit more variant in the games um and then c7 of course by the way on the next move and we discovered check right so dc5 is actually a little bit venomous if you know what you're doing there's a whole nother class of moves where the knight comes to c3 that's the joe baba style london you can play the job of london as early as this

position and try to play knight to b5 i am giving you an overview i am giving you the selection you have the menu now you take it to the next step right i'm not a huge fan of knight c3 although i have played it uh but the idea is to go for the c7 pawn with the bishop fried liver kind of just on the other side uh but i believe in the pure form of the london now if c5 is not played right if c5 is not played and instead knight to c6 is played this

is terrible because black now has no activity on the queen side whatsoever and if you just play normal with c3 bishop d3 and get that little knight d2 knight f3 action plant that night into the middle you're gonna be good to go do not be afraid of trading the light squad bishop it's completely okay make forward progress control these two center squares and if you're not going to be able to launch an attack what you'll do further down the line is maybe expand in the center with pawn to e4 but if you win the battle

for the center in the london you will have an advantage as the game progresses as the game goes on whether you are attacking or not now let's kind of slow it down a little bit night in front of pawn terrible not good at all i need you to finish that pyramid and finish your development but c5 is a pretty challenging move uh and often times it will be associated if you don't take it if you just go for the pyramid approach uh it will be associated with development right behind and if you choose not to

capture this pawn you're gonna need to know how to play this position so first of all counter play on your b2 pawn do not blunder the b2 pawn just don't do it you can offer a queen tray this is the most common way to meet this and this queen trade is very interesting you don't want to take and open up their rook it's usually unlikely that you want to do that you actually want them to take you because then you get your open rook now actually you have the advantage queenless middle game it does happen

this is known as the best way according to theory to meet it and if they play c4 you actually can just slide out of there you can slide out of there because now you've over extended their center and this break e4 becomes very powerful now we're getting into a little bit more intricate kind of analysis of the london system but that's what you get eight minutes into an overview of the theoretical portion um but generally queen b6 and c5 is the most critical way to play you can meet it with a queen trait that's usually

very decent and keen viewers would notice that i've played knight to d2 knight d2 is more flexible than actually the move knight to f3 particularly against c5 and that is because the rook has no breathing room if you leave the knight back here so there's a very good line here for black if you try the same exact approach this very tricky move bishop to f5 this is advanced london territory but even the beginners can appreciate that if you take this your rook gets trapped and that is why you need to play 92 first that's been

discovered in the last few years that 92 is the critical approach now another thing folks that we've really kind of glossed over uh and what i want you to pay attention to before i play any training games where is this bishop going you see what i need you to do when you play to london is don't just pre-move all the moves and get your pyramid bam bam doesn't matter no actually every move matters do they play c5 at all do they play it on the second third fourth move what do they do with this bishop

what do they do with this bishop if the bishop comes out to f5 yes you can continue in pyramid style with bishop d3 c3 blah blah blah but personally i actually very much like that when they leave their light squared bishop i like to turn this into a queen's gambit i actually abandon the pyramid plan because when the light squared bishop comes out the queen we do the exact same thing they do to us to them c pawn queen c pawn queen boom down to b7 by the way if you're like a 800 700 what's

going to happen in some of your games is you're going to win the whole queen side like you're going to win everything you know when the rook the knight the pawn trust me if you're like 13 1400 probably not but it's the critical way to play and you can play knight to c3 you can play queen b3 you can also play rook c1 just so you understand you can also play rook c1 and just focus the game plan on the queen side right but the higher level you are the chances of you of you just

destroying some of the first 10 moves not so high i know the video is called what it's called but um you're gonna be battling a little bit longer against some stronger players bishop f5 is a perfectly reasonable move these two plans together c5 and bishop f5 also perfectly reasonable but there is a whole class of london's where they don't move their light square bishop they just keep it boxed in and this is my favorite i mean if you get a non-c5 non-light squared bishop moving london oh it's just it's all i mean the game's all

yours pyramid them develop the knight developed the bishop and the last question really remaining out here is where their dark squared bishop goes uh if they offer you a trade of dark squared bishops let's say knight f3 like knight c6 is not great but let's say this this is a big question we've addressed the c pawn we've addressed the light squared bishop we've addressed now the dark squared bishop what do you do do not take everything about this opening is about the center squares you just lost the battle you're never gonna move your night there

so then it's not on me no refunds in this in this video it's not on me right that's don't do that you have a couple of options here i like rocking back because if they take me i open up my rook and then if they cancel oh it's over i'm not castling why would i have a castle let's just go for an attack right you can also just expedite the knight to the middle plan it's not the most accurate the stronger players will know how to neutralize this but trust me if people here are just

auto piloting right and just playing like well then you're gonna finish your pyramid now if they take you you fork them and then you just have everything you've won the battle for e5 you've won the battle for e4 boom queen f3 queen h3 this is everything we ever asked for right we just go queen of three queen h3 we just try to blow them off the board um so the other option actually is to just let them take you on f4 that's a that's a that's a advanced one though let them take you on f4

and many people will you know why let's say you play like knight d2 they're gonna be like oh double pawns i'm so smart but actually this is fantastic for white because you have dominant control over e5 and not to mention in the future you might also get dominant control of this and in the future if you ever castle you just control the whole e file with the rook now yes they can come and attack you with the queen but you can defend with the g pawn or plop your knight in the middle and go what

you're to do about it so meeting the dark squared bishop personally i like rocking back i also like knight jumping in like this but your knights go to d2 and f3 your bishop comes to d3 and as we wrap up the theoretical portion it's important obviously to address d4 and knight f6 which is the other most popular move now at any moment they can play d5 again at any point they can play on move two three four whatever if you play like this oh i'm sorry if you play the london and they don't play d5

the only other thing they could really do here is play g6 or c5 everything else is bad if they play this they have no other choice they have to play c5 or g6 um personally against g6 i think that instead of playing in traditional style you should play knight to c3 this is my favorite and queen d2 and the whole point is that you are going to try to trade this bishop and if they ever castle in you will castle along this is my favorite way to play against the king's indian when i see a

london queen with the bishop long castle plop a second pawn in the center if they let you if they let you most people will not so most people will play d5 and then you have to play bishop h6 if they trade that's great you hang out here they can't castle anymore and if they do castle h4 h5 is coming h4 h5 f3 g4 and you go along and then you need to build your experience obviously you need to fill in the theoretical gaps what's the most critical line this and that um but that's the way

i like meeting the king's indian and that's actually why i don't like knight f3 because i don't know what they're going to play this is much more flexible in my opinion now c5 i have a video already um which was a kind of a joke counter to agad matar's crushing the london system video so you should watch as many of my london system videos as you can here there's a couple of ways to play um just defending your center like this is good if you remember c5 c3 that mini lesson not the best move order

in this particular case e3 and knight c3 is good but this is already a pretty advanced move order if you're like anywhere about like 13 1400 and up um you could just keep the center closed uh you can actually take there are some lines but this is another thing that you need to incorporate if you're going to play bishop f4 against knight to f6 uh i'm gonna take on some of my viewers now to kind of try to bring some of this home a little bit more the first person is rated about 700 blitz but

actually a thousand eleven hundred rapid uh and the next player is about a thousand points higher than that so we're going to try to cover uh the entire uh rating range so to speak and you know people are going to be like well you're a low-rated player it's not did you just watch okay here we go actually 600 wow um but my opponent is uh 10 30 10 30 rapid okay d4 so hopefully people don't think i'm just bullying my opponent okay we have g6 so we don't have d5 we don't have knight f6 we

have g6 now yes you can play e4 here uh i'm gonna play bishop to f4 and bishop g7 now what did i just tell you knight c3 my air conditioner started rattling so um i have to turn it off let's go let's go put two pawns in the center that was always the plan i'm gonna let my next opponent know uh not to play this system just so we don't have a repeat all right a6 it's kind of a flexible move i guess the idea is to play b5 i'm just going to castle queen side

b5 interesting uh the king is stuck in the middle uh i still believe h4h5 is a decent plan my actually my plan to go here doesn't quite work right so this is the way you learn your openings uh and i could crash down the middle i could play h4 knight f3 it all looks pretty decent to be honest i guess i'll just develop a piece i don't exactly know what the plan is but if my opponent keeps the king in the center too long e5 is coming i'm not too worried about b4 because let's be

serious i have two knights bishop queen out i'm already castled one pawn wandering in and attacking my knight doesn't scare me a whole lot bishop b7 is very reasonable i can finish developing completely i can try to launch an attack i don't know uh everything looks pretty decent i i think this is pretty principled just try to go forward bishop takes f3 actually looks like it wins upon it might because takes and then take on e5 i'm not convinced that's a very safe position probably bishop to d3 would have been a little bit more solid

but we're gonna try to we're gonna try to get into the intermediate mindset here like all right well what have i learned from my opening i learned that i castle long against the king's indian setup and uh e5 and we'll see what's up hopefully you're all doing well by the way h6 very strange setup here by my opponent this is actually good practical experience for anybody watching because uh yeah this is this is this is really quite unique i don't know i mean i can take i can play rookie one so much stuff looks pretty

decent here also black is gonna kind of not get developed ever at this rate so i don't know bishop rookie one uh i want to take and open up the center but maybe not yet maybe everything looks decent let's go rookie one i don't know folks i don't know my opponent is confusing me and hopefully confusing themselves as well oh wow g5 was the idea see i'm the problem with this is that it's mildly it's mildly unfounded aggression you know like uh breaking some principles of the game here principles of the game meaning you're opening

the center with your king there you're over extending your forces without finishing your development like right now i'm not gonna trade queens i hope you we're on the same page i'm going bishop e5 and and rook takes e5 the position is not actually it's not like dead lost for black or something but you're always going to suffer uh on you know unpleasant things here um i'm immediately gonna go h4 because i know that you're much closer to castling on this side and the whole point of this kind of attack by me is to play h4

at some point uh i'm monitoring this bishop to make sure that nothing's going on over here gh4 is no good i think i think black really should go g4 oh no oh this is going to be a short-lived game after castles because now i have queen g5 and now yeah now now we really see the problem uh oh it'll fall no no no no no ah okay well i mean that is in a nutshell how you play the london against the king's inning i mean i wish you can all win your games in in in

16 moves via checkmate um that wasn't uh it wasn't uh let's put it this way the most traditional way because my opponent actually really delayed development like they didn't play knight f6 they played knight d7 they shouldn't feel frustrated about that game or anything um by the way even the engine the engine here already likes me just going straight down the middle um but even here i thought i played kind of logically uh and yeah the thing is you can't just open the center like this because what happens is i just have too many pieces

i have too many threats you can cocoon but i'm gonna jump in and it's it's gonna be a short game right it's gonna be a short game and i want you to have short games that you win not that you lose uh so if the opponent hadn't played like this and for example had played knight to f6 queen d2 short castle long castle and then played like knight d7 again it's either e5 or it's bishop h6 it's a very similar game plan i can guarantee you about a 60 65 win rate okay i can guarantee

that um with this kind of a system it's just it's it's so good you get such decent positions uh let's play our next game uh as i the reason i puff my cheeks is to stretch my jaw just in case you wanted to know that i'm not imitating a blowfish uh the next person is actually my lamp so i'm playing my lamp d4 let's go bishop f4 so lamp uh actually agreed to play the more traditional approach against me just so we can get some experience okay so step one bishop has been blocked in right

so now i can either play knight f3 bishop d3 or knight d2 sort of interchangeable let's go knight f3 okay there is c5 now i did mention that c5 c3 is quite decent right and now i don't know if lamp is going to play queen b6 lamp chooses not to play queen b6 if queen b6 was played we would have done this so we're gonna go knight d2 now what is lamp going to do with this bishop okay bishop d6 i can rock back i can play knight to e5 bishop back to g3 and now

maybe something with bishop d3 there is a line here an advanced line bishop b5 to try to take the knight and then move into this and it's not an attacking variation it's a much more positional variation we're actually right now in a very mainline theoretical position uh here b6 is considered the main move this is already super advanced but if you're watching and you're high rated you know what's up the whole point of rook 8 is to play e5 so of course i will play knight e5 and there is not going to be e5 right

so i could have cancelled but the whole point was to play e5 c takes d4 you're going to take with the e pawn so if cd4 ed4 is what you're trying to do and by the way you should credit yourself making it this far this is very instructive why because if you take with the c pawn why isn't your knight on c3 you take with the e pawn to open up your e file now i can play short castle i can also begin an attack of some sort like with f4 i don't know which is

best remember remember you're not taking that's not that's really not what you're trying to do here uh i'm actually going to castle so we're gonna try to play a little bit more of a positional game because opponent has a light square bishop that's sort of blocked out we've won the battle for the center and 97 might already be devastating after bishop takes oh we can expedite this attack bishop takes h7 i think is winning bishop takes h7 is everything this video is all about i'm hype this might be very good now yes we are investing

quite a bit of material here after bishop takes h7 um but queen h5 king g8 and then queen here could be devastating we're getting in and it could be very bad okay but opponent just goes king f8 which huh that actually i i didn't really can we take on f7 anyway um king f7 queen h5 maybe not maybe now we just bail out into a slightly better position uh by taking on d7 for example we also can still probably play queen h5 but then maybe the knight comes back to f6 king of face a good

move actually it's quite a resourceful defense uh i'm gonna play i think i'm gonna play f4 i really want to defend this night and if it gets taken i want to open now if my bishop gets locked in i'm i think i'm already just all in i'm gonna sacrifice to get it out get three pawns for the piece and a wide open king this is typical london stuff believe it or not typical london kind of position can turn into this now we're gonna back up and nothing has changed about the position except we won the

h7 pawn and now we're already creating a new attack right so this is the power of winning the battle of the center because black has nowhere to go like black has no initiative on the queen side we win the center and now we win the king side and oh my goodness that move does not smell that it's that decent uh i gotta play queen h5 right i mean this is now that's a mate threat oop that's a may threat i can also sneak into h7 and i'm going to bring my second rook and at some

point i will push the pawn to f5 once i push the pawn to a 5 with rook and king like this we're we're in amazing shape just simply amazing shape i think queen f6 runs into bishop h4 and that should be good for us but then there might be some equal danger stuff wow can i take take and queen to h7 yeah yeah i mean we we gotta shred it open here we gotta shred it open gotta straight open queen h7 threatens mate and mate on g6 so the it's actually a very brutal move if

i play queen to h7 threatening mate yeah so this threatens this and this so the only way to defend both is maybe rookie seven but then i take and i take that's also not very pleasant because at the end i have knight f8 listen i love my lamp also the person whose account is levy's lamp is a cool cool guy um but uh now we're gonna win the queen uh london baby i mean you clicked on this video to learn how to crush people with london lamp is a strong player but this has been a

pretty a pretty fun game and i would say about 95 of my audience is below that rating so i actually did a poll once so hopefully this motivates you and excites you to give this opening a shot because i really think that if you master the different intricacies of the london by the way as we ignore this and take with discover check and now it's made in a few moves um yeah i think you can be crushing people very similar to this uh if we just quickly back up and briefly analyze this game uh it's

important to note that by this point white is already actually positionally almost winning my opponent made a pretty big mistake taking already uh the way to play this is to take and try to go after this pawn but also is pretty unpleasant after moves like queen h5 or even queen b1 believe it or not to try to go for the h7 pawn with the idea of h4 in many positions first we got the center and then we play like h4h5 and actually white gets an incredibly powerful attack without castling so folks you're gonna watch this

video right you made it this far 27 minutes you should know a couple of things number one i have a london course okay one of my nine courses on one of them is on the london system in the trompowsky link is in the description uh you can you know use 15 off if you're a first time customer on the website and all the good stuff that's if you want to study the theory it's a lot more in depth it's about four hours of just pure video and analysis and a pgn file you can plug into

those uh you know those readers or any of those websites that you use uh and you will still have questions after this video i try to be as thorough as possible to tell you how the london works and how you need to address opening study now if you want to take your openings to the next level you want to fill in the exact gaps the specific variations certain gambits certain critical lines you got to go beyond you got to find more in-depth content on the london this is supposed to get you started uh get you

excited and uh point you in the right direction but from here on out you should watch my video called how to learn and study chess openings it'll teach you uh how to use a database how to analyze with an engine after you are done practicing an opening in a live game and this is what you do with all your openings hopefully in the last half hour uh you have come to learn something brand new uh maybe reinforce something that you've already learned or learned a new wrinkle in the london that you've already been playing and

from here you go and you practice you see whether they move their uh e pawn out or their light squad bishop out whether they played c5 or they didn't play c5 whether they're going for a king's indian or not for a king's indian did you play a certain move order the right way did you play ace did you make a certain trade incorrectly and so on and so forth i hope you enjoy thanks for sticking with me for uh last half hour and i'll see you in the next video peace out get out of here

oh before i go actually if there's any other openings you want me to cover and i haven't made a video on it yet let me know in the comments you know what to do