1.e4 vs. The French: Part 5 | Chess and Psychology – IM Dorsa Derakhshani

hello and welcome back to another fun night with dorsa i am forgetting which number this is but i know where to continue number five thank you we are on part five of uh french uh we've had a bunch of segways we've done a bunch of filler doors i know.

That's people seem to really enjoy it when i talked my personal games and how i prepared it why i did what i did and how i learned that opening so i'm continuing those and i feel like it's a little bit too honest because if i'm playing another series tournament anytime soon that'll be a little little problematic.

But hey well anything from my students and my viewers so um yeah we to kind of circle back i the the way that i kind of learned how to play really good.

In french and uh kind of kurokon and a little bit of philidor was because i read that the specific book that paimarjun margin wrote oh my god 2014 15. it's been a little while but it's still relevant and the the opening still holds.

As you can see um so it's something that if you want to just gain a better understanding of this middle games how to avoid the super specific main lines and how to just make sure your opponent is annoyed i do recommend nikki's books the first one was about.

French carl con philidor the the other three were sicilian and the last one was miners miter defenses i have not actually read the last one yet anywho i want to go ahead and jump in because it's been a very long week already uh so.

The one that i'm going to show you is like the last time we talked a little more in depth about bishop g5 on bishop g5 was something that i play very frequently on and off but i also hold a special place in my heart for e5 so i'm gonna take a second and just kind of get a little bit of vote who plays this he who has encountered this.

Position in like let's say last two years as white or black okay i see oh my god i see so many hats i did not expect that cool well i guess if you're in a french class you probably have encountered french positions before all right okay great i see a bunch of.

People in the chat are also agreeing that they have encountered this which is wonderful so uh the thing to keep in mind is that again you are not obligated to to always play bishop g5 or always play e5 but with bishop g5 i i i got burned a little to be honest there was a specific game that just really.

Really burned me bad um it was i'll just give you this before we close the bishop g5 chapter i ha it was like 2015 world youth championship and i was playing on board one and if i win i have a really clear shot that's getting first if i don't then my opponent has like was she was playing a really good uh it was.

Mahalakshmi um she was playing really good she was about to win the tournament but if she won she was like definitely gonna win the tournament if i won then i was probably going to win the tournament so it was like one of those tournaments one of those games so i had this all prepared and i went to.

The game and i felt so good about it and for some reason i just my position started to really collapse like really bad like terribly and i thought you know i mean upland is doing stuff i'm doing stuff and that is not the case.

She just it was really really bad and i lost the 430th move needless to say it was a very fun game after that i still i mean i think i think there was still a few rounds left and i played them and they were still very fun tournaments.

Uh so many memories are passing by ah man world youth world junior always was so much fun but i'm just showing you a very general reason on why i don't um who won the tournament in my category which was girls under 18 2015 um my lakshmi did want it it was like she was one of those but like we were both she was playing for.

India i was playing for iran so we always played in like asian dudes and then world views and then every year we just played and played and played and oh my god i was running out of openings to play against her but she won this one and anyways um i'm just showing you why uh why i am not the biggest fan of it just this bishop b4 really burned me.

One too many times so i'm still a little sore sour sore all right so i i started to get more into e5 now knight's gotta go now what do we do probably you already know the opening if you don't know us on the study as well.

But what do you think is a good idea for whites right now yep what is a good idea for black what is a very typical thing in this pawn structure and we also want to try and develop we don't want to take that before we have to.

And now um i've seen people play this multiple different ways but i am very comfortable with bishop v3 so black has a few ideas i'm going to show you the the the craziest one first with queen b6 all right what do you think this queen wants here why did my opponent just make this move.

Yeah and some eyes on this right so we have to be careful because if if we are setting up to do long cast so well that's going to be problem for us so what is a good idea for white if you know the opening great if you don't know it try to reason through it that is true you're completely correct.

Let's say they give the check that is also very correct because i mean your knives under attacks either you have to bring the ice back or c3 so c3 makes more sense now let's say they take you can't take back with the pawn you could take with the knight or bishop or you could be for it which one.

Well knight is okay but how about pawn to b4 because that if that works that would be great to inter meso you already get to kick the queen away there is quite a lot of theory in b4 um i'll actually show you a little bit of it you're not obligated to play before if.

You don't want to you can't take it but if you do take it then knight takes let's say you take back and pawn b5 and then you have to kind of think knight c5 and then take and then b4 and can get a little too comfortable for opponent and i don't like to give my opponent that many chances so let's stay with b4.

Now let's say they take it we take back bishop takes b4 is the best one what's a good idea for whites right now we gotta stop the check this guy is falling so it should be a easy peasy bishop d2 find they take we gotta take back with the knight so up until here is pretty forced.

Now opponent has uh b5 which is the best and somebody played castle against me let's look at castle first to see why it's a little bit worse so why do you think that is what does castle give us that b5 earlier wouldn't uh so.

I agree thank you chad let's see what about in person queen b3 um i'm not a poster queen b3 but i feel like if you do queen b3 i mean i kind of want to go b5 anyways so this stops it that's fair if i get this that's great i agree but what if if you go queen b3 they hm so you're stopping this.

But you're also kind of not just setting up for castle so what if i try to open up my rook because if take then knight could take and knight wants to jump here and you're not fast enough to castle even if you get bishop d3 i'll still go knight e4 you take i take you can't stop this.

So because opponent has this much the power in the center you have to be fast bishop d3 is kind of a must and after bishop d3 let's say they go b5 you retract the knight and the game that i have my opponent 29 b6 and i kind of simply got to castle and i got myself into this situation which is totally good.

And this was a really comfortable game for me if only if i can remember when slash where i played it um i know there was one a game here there was another game that had a little bit of a move order difference i'll get into that as well.

But this would be really comfortable you move it away now i'm bringing my attack here if g6 will crate if f6 then i can also take if you take with the rook i'm still gonna know g5 it and i have a bunch of threads here so i'm very comfortable with this as well so let me go back.

I'm gonna do a big jump let's say here what if they play b5 first what now kind of have to go knights b2 right now let's say uh knight goes to b6 to still want to do those knight c4 ideas so the difference here is that comparing this line with the shorts castle and having the bishop on d3 line is that black could be like saving a move by not.

Castling so how does that help uh muhammad is asking can i can i ask how many hours do you train per day oh man right now i'm just teaching teaching counts as training that's going to be a lot of hours i'm not preparing for a specific tournament so i'm not trading the.

As a professional chess player would so it's kind of different when i am preparing for a specific tournament then i would be doing oh my god opening prep getting sharper the evaluation understanding what the position needs oh my god end games and games so.

It really depends on why am i preparing what is the purpose of the training so why to move what do we do here you know what your opponent wants to do um there's a huge imbalance let me just put my foot here make sure.

That's good so what do we think i'm getting a bunch of knight b trees man i wish i could play knight b3 or queen b3 is in the chat the problem with queen b3 is still knight c4 surprisingly the best one is a4 because you want to combat this knight c4 and if knight c4 happens now you get to take.

Attack the queen now if the queen takes it well awesome now i'm attacking the this knight with three they're only defending with two i'm very happy about this let's see what else is there um there is a kind of interesting king of.

Two as well that i kind of tried once in a police game i just didn't really understand why i was doing it though so i'm not really recommending that but i do recommend a4 now in the real game when my opponent played this so this was a how did i put it uh opponent should have uh played.

Castle first to make sure that we develop to kind of kind of put the king in safety then go b5 and then we don't really have a pawn a4 as fast i mean white is still better that's kind of why the the the peace sacrifice for black doesn't work but this would be the the better.

Situation for black but in a different game my opponent decided to kind of mix up the move order a little bit but now i could have had a four but i kind of didn't and then i went queen f3 and i put the queen on d3 and it made things really awkward i knew i kind of had advantage but it.

Was just so hard to get the pieces moving i ended up winning the game um but i'm still going to like do a huge jump here because there is not much theory in this specific situation that i want to talk about big jump big jump coming up.

So that's kind of the big thing i wanted to talk about when it comes to queen b6 now let's talk about difference line let's talk about asics how do you feel about asics i've only had a very few games in this i mean there is a theory in it but game wise i've had less wait wait i'm seeing something in the.

Chat that i feel like i should respond to okay that was funny so there's a discussion about how to become an i am and uh the the answer seems to be to become an i am you must beat items and they're very good at chess and rarely lose hope.

And um so the trick the becomes figuring out how some unwinnable positions can be won i mean this buddy james is not really wrong per se but man you should have seen the dirty.

Flags people did did me when i was playing like what two hours ago there's a lot of dirty flagging that's not the case it's not that we it's not that the title players is rarely lose we're just more experienced and more tricky and kind of know which buttons to push or not to push.

But um the the main thing is no that's not how getting norms and titles work exactly you do need to you need to it's it has to be a fetus uh tournaments it's free the rated events you can't play uscf event and game speedy titles you need to play feta rated tournaments you need to be playing a certain number of.

Titled opponents even ims gm's legends lm they count depending on what title you're trying to get you need to gain a certain performance rating so it's not your rating that needs to cross a certain level but also that you're you need to have a specific performance rating in that specific tournament that you're.

Getting it's a title uh norm from and you need to you need to have at least three norms so like you need to have three different tournaments that you have had that's great performance which you would obtain by beating the title players but we have a viewer saying swallowing an engine.

Sounds like an easier way to beat items and gm's i don't know that's just not comfortable and digestions and how would i understand what the engine is saying i would turn into a weird nah that's too complicated just strange us all right.

Back to it now what do you want to do here a6 what's a good idea for us let me start by which side do you think you're going to castle most likely yes so but i mean if you just go ahead and play bishop d3 then queen b6 would be more problematic.

So you need to start preparing for this queen b6 as well because since opponent's pawn is up here there's tension between these two pawns right so because of the pawn structure the way it seems to be is that the you are going to want to like do f5 and stuff an opponent is going to want to do stuff in your queen side so as.

Long as you can neutralize the attack that opponents will do in the queen side and at the same time keep your attack in the king side you should have an easy understanding of what's going on now some of the things that black can do to kind of mess with your hopes and dreams in king side is f6 or f5 so keep that in mind as well.

But right now a3 is possible queen d2 is possible i was quite a big fan of queen d2 and after queen d2 let's say opponent goes ahead and plays pawn to b5 now yes we don't really want a long castle anymore i agree with that what i think is a good idea there are few ideas that are good but what seems.

Right to you a3 i like a3 tk3 is totally fine then you're gonna probably get this bishop out and start heading for castle yeah that's completely fine uh in this specific game um i wanted to take because i was actually just learning about this.

Specific pawn structure so i wanted to give it a try there's nothing wrong with take but let me just keep this position in mind let me just do a mini jump back if bishop goes to e7 then when we take and if the bishop takes it kind of feels a little bit more prepared for.

Especially because opponents kind of wasted a move and then took it so i was getting deeper in understanding these specific pawn structures but then when my opponents played asics i was like man i've been sorry a6 then i was like oh man i've been preparing for the specific.

Structures i want to try it let's just take it that is not the very good decision to make but it was a fine move so i don't have anything against it and i kind of wanted to see if my opponents would do this super super cool potential blender.

What do you think is a good move for whites right now i'm sorry why knight to e4 the weirdest thing is i think i've seen this before it's possible yeah because of these d6 basically you're attacking the bishop.

And you're attacking d6 and there's just a lot of tricks well yeah a lot of people would say bishop e4 bishop before is actually not good because knight is denied b6 i mean even if you take they take back and you're just losing too much and gaining too little.

So d4 knight takes knight takes knight e4r is the best one the idea is well first of all if you move the bishop well then hallelujah you move it now i guess bishop e4 you don't have knights b6 anymore if you don't move it if you let go queen b6 then i can take if you take with the knights well this.

Guy drops so let's say queen takes now boom c3 um let's see let's say let's just castle then i could try and take it and then after take i could just you know take over here because if you take i have this discovery attack why am i erroring while i can just do this.

But i would also prefer to to make it a little bit more comfortable on you so if you were to go short castle why not just c3 this is already pinned right there's two attackers one defenders i'm enjoying this yeah goody all right um so i was i think a part of.

Me was kind of um hoping my opponent would play this d4 and blunder but the kid didn't the kid knew what he was doing and then i had to enter this end game which i do think is definitely worth looking into because of how the the the pawns are so let's take a second and talk.

Let's just see what do you think is going on here what's something that white wants what's something that black wants so what is going on here anything specific yeah so white's gonna want to do stuff in the d4 square so what do you think is a good idea for black.

Um there seems to be a bunch of fight going to happen about this square okay let me let me rephrase my question what do you think is black's biggest problem yeah this bishop is the same color as these pawns right so blacks that's kind of the biggest problem that black is facing so black.

Would like to be able to resolve that and that could happen if black can get d4 and this bishop is here right so your main priority should be to move this knight put c3 and put a knight here so that's kind of what i tried to do my pawn is kind of stopping my c3 so i had to play it a little more creative and.

It got a little weird but i had advantage and it was just a matter of how to convert and it took another 20 30 move to convert it to a full win but the endgame is now comfortable so my point is that when you're learning openings it's not just about memorization it's also about.

Understanding the pawn structure and like okay let's say you put the queens off then what are you doing let's say you keep the queens then what are you doing so it's about the center the weaknesses the structure the king safety it's about the whole thing it's not just about memorizing openings which it's sometimes really hard for people to.

Understand when they're just looking at openings they'll literally just go engine did that and the engine engine engine or like master games played this i have so many kids who like asked me about a specific opening just because they heard it's cool like somebody played it on a stream and i'm like like this is a whole different thing.

That you do not play you're never going to play because it's not your style and you're just asking me about it because you think it says a cool name so many kids love the dragon opening and i'm like just like just because it's dragon and i'm like well how about the other dragon okay.

No i i can't really do that because they can actually watch streamers and there's only one dragon opening um but yeah so oh my heart yeah we have to be very careful with your opening choices.

All right i'm going to do a big jump back yeah so let's talk about bishop e7 now what do we think i like that why um no you're not drunk um i feel like if my opponent kind of closes up the center i wouldn't mind casting this way but as.

Long as like it's the tension is here i don't i don't know if i want to do it wait wait what am i talking about no no no if opponent closes up i don't want to castle but as long as the tension is here i'm still kind of undecided i want to have the option so yes queen d2 is good you also might want to go queen f2 to kind of start.

Bugging this pawn let's say castle now what how are we feeling there are okay i'm getting a lot of bishop b5 questions bishop b5 is not the place to be for your bishop first of all even if you come here and you take this they take back and they get bishop a6 which i don't think we do i don't want.

And yeah if i can't have this diagonal that would be ideal for me right now it's not really i can't really do that because they can push but this is this is a good bishop i don't want to just take it but take them that night with this all right what else we got.

It's very possible but remember we i kind of mentioned that after bishop e7 we might want to take and if they take back they've lost the tempo so why not that why did that um i kind of wanted for the castle to happen first i mean we could take it but then they.

Take and i i'm not trying to take it i'm trying to queen detour it so i guess it could just transpose but this kind of makes it a little bit more tricky just a little bit it is possible but what is f6 because the rook is in front of the.

Queen that's kind of giving me some questionable thoughts so let's say take let's say first things first bishop takes back now what can we lawn castle now i agree.

Let's say queen a5 now what they're trying to create an attack but because the center is less locked now we don't have to be that worried kb1 is fine but can i just take this and then then take back then i can just.

Develop i don't think king b1 is bad but it feels like it's a extreme it gives them extra opportunities and you know how i feel about slightly happy opponents they shouldn't exist so yeah the idea is if i can figure the.

Center out before i make a decision about castle i get both both ways but if they take with the knights now what actually let me show you um how this game actually turned out because this was a real game that i had and it was just so nice i'm attacking left and right and then again at attacking attacking attacking.

And like i knew i had a bit of an advantage pretty much the whole game but it was really hard to convert it until i actually got a nice i stopped their attack and i have extra material so all right i'm going to do a big jump back and i know it was like we kind of.

Went fast but i'm not trying to my main focus is the the opening and the spawn structure and the middle games that could follow this is not a typical middle game that would follow and because it was a little weird it the game isn't a study if you would like to pay more time on it but all right let's stay with.

Knight takes c5 now let's can we steal lawn castle or should we start planning on short castle i'm sorry are you sure no that's not you're right i'm just trying to trick you i should be like look whenever you're.

Thinking there should be like two doors here like an angel doorstop saying yeah is that are you sure that's a devil door swing no no no no that's not a good idea so it reminds me of halloween exactly exactly i did have a the weird devil mixed with.

Red riding hood costume i had a red writing costume yeah i couldn't find my wings i eventually found my wings though it was an emergency devil horn find thing at the end anyways it was quite fun so yes there should be one of that one of that.

So i'm trying to kind of trick you all the time i'm also trying to guide you all the time all right so long castle is nice um i can't tell you i mean i can't really justify bishop b2 it's okay there's nothing specifically wrong with it but it also doesn't really do the.

Things we wanted to do um yeah i'm bored with long castle so let's see let's say opponent tries to attack me what are we to do that's fair how would you start i'll be.

G3 g3 why oh if i play ashran they take it i'm happy so happy it sure is possible but uh yeah right h4 is definitely possible but if you do h4 they can also go b5 so i kind of wanted to this was actually.

A little bit of an off game of mine i went to queen f2 and then i kind of continued it with g4 and it i i kind of waited around too long and my opponent got a little too comfortable and i lost the game i mean he was like 2600 i think wait actually no this is the game that i.

Drew how did i drill this oh this is a different game sorry different experience here i played queenie one in a different game yeah and i lost this real bad this one i remember and i was i don't even know what i was trying to do this is like this is not even a cheap trick.

It's just a weird trick and my nights is just so weird here and like my king is so left alone on his own and yeah i lost this real bad uh but the good idea here queenie like queen f2 clean ones are not bad but h4 makes more sense to get the pieces rolling first to get those pawns going.

Uh or or if you really want to like play chill king b1 also makes sense then b5 then you can push g4 or h4 so the moves that you do should be either you know king safety or push push because if you do what i did with my queen ideas it gets a little slow what about pawn f5 how did you feel about that could that work.

If they don't take i'm gonna try to have sixes so let's say they take i will take over here and then what are they gonna do let's say bishop e6 now what do you think is a good idea for whites now responding bishop to g4 or c4 um it's possible would you would you.

Want to take it though or do you feel feisty enough to give this check because if they take you can take back if they take you can't take back if they take this false if they don't take well this is falling so this could be a nice nice way to play.

It f5 i think it's like the the chillest way to play it if you don't want to get yourself into those attacks uh between like they attack you you attack then if you don't want to get yourself in those then f5 would be the the chillest way but you have to remember what's going on.

All right i'm gonna do a mini uh jump back actually let's talk about queen a5 anything here what would you do here getting a few king b ones in the chat a3 okay let's see my king is castle in the queen slide they want to do a queenside pawn storm if i play a3 then it kind of gives them.

A new target to come attack is not you know it's not losing but it does give opponent a lot of hopes and dreams to come attack it and whenever i'm around we don't want happy opponents and if i if anything i do would make my opponent happy if i even can't find the chest reason for not doing it that's good enough reason for me to not do it.

So no no so yeah king b1 makes sense your queen is here you might have some hopes and dreams for a2 i'm just going to king b1 and wish block you there we go all right let's go back up what about b6 how do you feel about b6.

Oh sorry that's usually sure so you can see the chance yeah that's the one thing with leeches i don't know how to keep my brain happy with my screen and keep you happy without the extra stuff thanks.

F5 is a little too early to be honest but the thing is even if you are looking at the engine there are so many potential lines that you're just going to get confused so now it's just more about your understanding your experience and what's what doesn't make opponents happy f5 is.

Not a bad idea but it does give opponents slight chances if they take that's cool because they can take it what if they don't take what if they go like 94. i guess the point i'm trying to make is that's f5 not a bad idea.

H4 not a bad idea queen f2 or e1 not a bad idea but at this moment it's more about your choice as long as you don't give opponents more help on attacking your king and you're doing something to attack their king it's fine you can start with h4 g4 try to bring your queen over.

Um you would like to be able to do f5 f6 opponents might be able to do f6 so there's a lot of stuff that are happening so kind of up to you because b6 is actually a threatening move i'm not really challenged by this move all right so we want to trade bishops.

Um even if they do i'm not obligated to take it i can just wait until you take me and i'll take you and i'm still attacking here let's say we go h4 they go bishop a6 even if i don't want it even if there's no tactics anything there's just like purely no tactics even if i just continue pushing and you take me.

I will simply just take it back with either one of the rooks there are tactics there but even if they're not this is doesn't this doesn't really concern me because you're spending two moves exchanging a bishop that i have not developed of course here this bishop takes c5 and if them take then i can take and i mean.

Happy stuff all right um now a final line that we should cover is what if take what would you take that back with sorry what would be the idea no just like a normal move to see how to develop how tickets because both like white's position in that situation is comfortable but black's position is also.

Not really threatened so now it just becomes how to continue this position type of yep we gotta take it with knight i agree let's say bishop c5 now what so you see it's a very similar middle game similar structures similar center stuff similar ideas.

Now since the the tension here is gone between those pawns we could consider long castle we don't have to but we do have the option so now let's say they castle now what honestly yeah i don't see why not you could start with like h4 or like queen f2 or stuff but i'm totally happy with.

This too and now if they continue their ideas not g4 if they take take that's still totally fine i actually had a very stressful game i was playing this closed uh tournament and it was like oh she was sitting semi-close there were multiple of them i played and i was playing a grand master.

Who was like 24 98 and it was the first round and i was like ah if i lose then there goes the potential norm and stuff deal with so much harder so i was just trying to not lose and i was just trying to keep my okay like hold my end and just try to play okay i wasn't trying to do something too crazy but i also don't want to give too much.

Advantage or lose too much advantage so we got into this position and i got an advantage and i kind of blew it here but let me ask you here what would be a good idea for white i missed it during the game though so let's say you get the perfect attack you're attacking what is what do you think you should do.

So well that's what i did i took it and the game was fine and it ended in a draw i couldn't really make make it work it's still comfortable but i can't do much opponents can't do much i oh thank you i'm seeing somebody in the chat.

All right what is the one move that could give white like plus six almost your queen is in a good spot your h2 rook is fine your bishop is as good as it can get right now your knight or your other rook are the ones that could be improved any final thoughts.

How about knight to f4 the idea is simple if you take me well wonderful this should be fun you can't really stop this what's happening if you don't take it you can't you just can't stop this let's say you take rook takes g4.

I can even just go to rook g1 i mean i feel like rook g3 is a little bit more effective but that's kind of the idea you need to be able to come come up with a ways to attack more because you only have two super active pieces on this king whereas you can easily bring this.

Knife as well all right i'm going to do a big jump back and the final thing i wanted to talk about is yeah just you can castle and you can just go for this ideas you don't have to if you don't want to but you do have the option of long.

Castle i've also had a few games in which my click on my opponent takes take take take and then they try to exchange everything which we also saw a little bit about for example you can just go like knight b5 and if they take you take you want this knight to stay in front of this pawn you.

Want to do upon c3 sometime soon still a little undecided about this bishop i could just leave it on d3 i'm not that excited into exchanging it so we'll kind of see how things go but that would be a nice way um let's see if for example here opponent goes like pawn a6 i had a long castle game like here i.

Could start pushing the h pawn too and you can simply just kind of wait to see what happens i kind of missed the knight e4 idea to be completely honest because i was just not looking for it and my opponents i mean you can't really take because well thanks you can't take here because well thanks.

Check and it was just such a cool but weird move and i didn't see it in time during the game and i went back 92 i ended up winning the game anyways but still this would have been much more pleasant because now i have bishop the other bishop can get here.

So this would be too good to be true so i hope you are kind of more comfortable with some of the potential centers pawn structures middle games that you would get in this specific uh line of french and oh my god i'm a little afraid to say.

But i think we're done with french oh does it feel real i don't believe it fully but for now we'll say we're done and if i come up with something else we can revisit the topic so we still have a little bit of more karaoke to cover from next week on but we'll see we'll see how things are.

Turning out uh oh actually i don't think i'm seeing you on youtube until my until next week because i believe tomorrow the streams are not happening because of gct and the the tournament and life and i'm glad i have my graduations this weekend so keep.

Keep up with my instagram and uh i got my mizumet celebration at some point keep up with that as well and uh finally oh yes please don't forget to be here six a.m watch the gct commentary with um alejandra ramirez yasser sirvan.

My potential future coach chirila and all those fun stuff 6 50 a.m central time good luck everybody i'll be sound sleep i will see you later you