it's pretty rare in a game of chess to be able to
surprise your opponent as early as the second move but that's what this video is all about the vienna
system and the vienna gambit an opening that i'm extremely fond of and excited to share with
all of you doesn't matter if you're a beginner intermediate or even an advanced player i'm
talking 2 000 plus because in this video i'm going into the general ideas but i'm also
going to give you the specific theoretical moves and two points i'm going to put the pgn in the
description you can copy it into any chess engine and you should stick around to the end of the
video because i'm going to show you the exact statistical breakdown of how strong this opening
really is and how to use an openings database all right let's learn the vienna so we
have uh to start the game with the moves e4 e5 and now knight to c3 okay in general terms if
you're an e4 player uh you are going to face e5 a lot especially at the beginner level but even
as you climb the rating ladder so you play knight c3 and the point is that in a lot of our positions
we're going to play the move f4 before we move the knight to f3 in fact in just about every position
so first things first we're going to start with the vienna gambit because everybody wants to know
what that is the vienna gambit is played after the move knight to f6 okay and we go f4 it's not
really a gambit uh because it cannot be accepted it can't be accepted because if they take it uh we
push and now their knight cannot move forward it has to retreat and now we have to cover queen h4
check so we play knight f3 uh here black can play something like d6 this is actually the best thing
that black can do to fight back against our center we'll reinforce the center and the computer-backed
idea that i like the most here is you know pretty straightforward it's if they take i actually
play queen e2 i pinned the pawn to the king uh and black's best move here is bishop out and
after something like this we have a huge lead in development we've regained our pawns we are ready
to castle queen side but there's a lot of ways that you can play this just know that accepting
the gambit is more or less losing for black you can play d4 you can put your bishop out to c4
you can castle you'll have an overwhelming lead in material out already on the board and as long
as you don't allow queen h4 check you should be in very good shape the second thing to note is
that declining the gambit is possible but you have to do it with d6 if black plays knight c6
black is essentially losing already after fe 5 knight e5 and d4 now it's like a halloween
gambit but we haven't sacrificed the knight and now if black plays like knight g6 for example
we have e5 and now the knight has to go back to g8 and we have the same position except we're not
even down a pawn so d6 we can play a variety of things i like bishop out d e5 and not even
recapturing but rather castling with a threat of discovered check well sacrificing the bishop would
discover check so like pawn takes d4 for example uh you have bishop f7 you even have this uh and
this is just losing for black uh if they take here uh we have bishop f7 king e7 rookie
one uh and i mean it's it's it's made in a few moves but more importantly you're
gonna win this queen it's it's very bad so black cannot decline the gambit uh black has
to uh decline with the pawn if they're going to decline and here it's very straightforward now
we bring the knight and in this particular case i like to pin the knight to the king like this
play d3 we'll take at some point like when they attack us that's one we'll take uh but then we
will castle we will we will open up the f file and this position is very good long term we want
to put pressure on this we want to use the open f file once we cancel and the rook will be open on
this side of the board but declining the gambit you will get a lot of positions where they do
decline the gambit but in general if you bring your bishop out to c4 or b5 then play d3 to not
block this guy in you'll be more than okay which brings me to the main line of the vienna gambit
which is d5 if you get an opponent that plays this they know what they're doing or they got lucky so
if this happens you take on e5 obviously because you're gonna attack the knight which is another
reason why if they don't know what they're doing there's a high chance they don't play this because
a lot of people don't want to lose this pawn now they play knight takes e4 and here if you look
in the database there are two moves which are main and my move which is in my openings course
on e4 the move queen to f3 this is the third most popular move but i like it the most because it's
the most direct now knight f3 is considered the main line but i don't like it because black can do
a million different things black can play bishop e7 black can play bishop g4 bishop e6 bishop c5
it there's too much and d3 is a very trappy system so if they're going to play knight c3 bc3 this can
kind of transpose to what we want but here black has a good move d4 uh you can play d3 and then
you can play like knight f3 d4 bishop out castle and so on but really what you're going for here
is the queen h4 trap it looks like you've made a horrible blunder i mean you have if you blunder
checkmate but you have to play g3 they will take and now you play night out hitting their queen you
can't take this because they would take your rook so most people here will drop back thinking that
they're maintaining this pin and they can't take because their queen was under attack but now you
ignore this entirely and you play knight to b5 and knight b5 threatens this uh oh sorry sorry not not
knight to b5 absolute brain fart please erase that from your memory but that's why i filmed this in
one take knight takes d5 you would take the pawn take the pawn and threaten knight c7 um i don't i
don't even have any idea why i suggested them with knight p5 please excuse me you would take the pawn
in the center you would threaten this fork now they can take your rook and hang the rook
themselves uh if they do that then well the position is very chaotic some people might not
like that they might play like knight a6 for example which would defend the pawn and continue
this but that's a huge mistake because now you have knight to f4 and you attack their queen their
queen now has a lot of difficulty staying on this side if they play queen h6 you have a very nasty
move knight back to e2 with discovered attack on the queen and the knight is under attack so
again this is very trappy uh th this is not like something that you you can expect to happen
every single time and again it's not my main recommendation because a good player will just
take the knight continue their development which leads me to the main line and that is
queen to f3 we gotta go through the forest i wanted to show you all the stuff that probably
will happen uh because honestly at the lower levels you don't get the main line a lot people
will mess up earlier in the game so queen to f3 attacks the knight now black has three moves
here the one you're gonna face the most is here uh then knight c6 and f5 are the probably the two
best which are played the least but at my level i get them all the time gms and iams are playing
these moves all the time so if knight takes c3 you i recommend you take with the b pawn because i
want you to rebuild the center with a move like d4 you can take with the d-pawn and your goal then
would be to play like bishop f4 and long castle something like this to put pressure on this
pawn maybe with even something like bishop c4 because that would result in the pin on the
queen this knight can develop with knight h3 and even knight g5 if there's a bishop here uh or
you can bring it out this way sometimes to f4 but in this case there's a bishop there so i like
bc3 and after bc3 a lot of games will go like this they will black will play bishop p7 black
can do a lot of things i mean black can play c5 if black plays c5 i don't recommend that you
go d4 but if black plays bishop e7 i recommend immediately taking the full center playing bishop
to d3 and bishop e6 knight e2 something like this and castling and then long term creating an
attack on this side of the board if black castles if black is very fast with the move c5 for example
then bishop d3 is still fine because this doesn't trap you you always have the bishop here and then
this is just a trade and it's completely okay for you this is not something that you need to worry
about but if black plays c5 here you can't play d4 because after take take they will hit you with
this move uh and you you have a bit of a problem um you you're gonna have some serious difficulty
defending your pawns so if they play c5 right away i say all right punish them for not moving this
bishop queen to g3 it's my favorite move very tricky to remember because now they can't develop
and some people here will freak out a little bit they'll be like uh well what about g6 well now
you're gonna develop your pieces so you're going to play night out to f3 uh this bishop has a
choice it can pin the knight once it arrives on c6 and trade itself or if the bishop comes to f5
you can even offer a trade like this because again long term you want the open f file you you don't
care about your doubled pawns in the center because you get an open file here you get an open
file on the f file in the long run and you have a very strong pawn in the center of the board so
that's as far as if they take on c3 you have to deal with c5 or not c5 positions uh the other two
lines to know are knight c6 we'll start with this one and f5 versus knight c6 attacking this don't
take the knight you need to pin the knight to the king to prevent it from capturing and now what's
considered the main line is black takes on c3 now you should take with the d-pawn because you need
to open up your bishop and get developed quickly um bc3 is again an option here but i'm not
i'm actually not a big fan of it so that's the hardest part here it's remembering when
you take with witch pawn and you can really break that down like a little checklist has my
opponent played knight c3 first or has he played knight c6 or did he play f5 and so on so i like
this and now the main line goes czech and queen e4 it's a very common maneuver uh to trade
the queens and get an equal position again if they don't know the theory you will never face
this ever it's much more likely that you will face something like bishop e7 or bishop e6 at which
point you should remember your ideas bishop out long castle bringing the knight to the center and
noticing what in the position you can put pressure on and how you can attack black's pieces depending
on how they set up so uh if they go for this queen trade variation for the more advanced players
there's a cool sacrificial idea bishop e3 if they take your pawn you can sacrifice all of the
queen side pieces and castle uh and now you are threatening this and if people take your bishop
then you have this this and not bishop g5 yet but a gorgeous move knight d4 the point is that you
attack both of these pieces and if they take you you have bishop g5 and its unstoppable checkmate
on e7 so a very cool little trap there you can play bishop to e3 and of course if they
trade queens while life goes on you'll castle queenside and you'll move on with your with your
existence if they play f5 in the main line of the vienna gambit i recommend attacking the knight now
going like this and here is the trickiest system if black knows the move d4 uh well they know
what they're doing if not then you're gonna go d4 but d4 i recommend sacrificing this pawn entirely
queen to g3 if they take the point is bishop to e2 threatening bishop to h5 you might say well levy
how's that a threat bishop h5 doesn't look so scary well yeah but you're gonna sacrifice that's
the point and now you're bringing in your bishop you're bringing in the pawn and black actually
can't defend himself so if king e7 you have this if king here you have e6 and it's simply
losing the king has to come forward and you'll have a discovered attack on the queen and if
this again bishop to g5 devastating attack um so bishop to e2 uh and if black plays
something like g6 you can go bishop f3 knight e2 and castle remember this little bishop
b2 trick it's going to be very useful for you and if black plays something like again bishop e6 you
have d4 as well as knight e2 and knight f4 just going after this guy immediately or building
up a full center it takes a little bit of time to getting used to how to play these positions
exactly in the vienna gambit but hopefully in about what was that like 12 minutes those are
all the general ideas and theoretical points um they can decline the gambit or they can
accept uh they can play into the main line of the gambit which is d5 but hopefully that
points you in the right direction now what if they don't play knight f6 on the second move
what if they play knight c6 well now i'm gonna go for f4 with a little bit of a delay now you can
play f4 here i don't recommend it this is called the kind of deferred king's gambit uh meaning
that you you know you play uh the king's gambit on the third move instead of the second move but
it's a little too dangerous for my liking uh and here you can play like like this and try to trick
them back into d4 but the thing is if black knows the move g5 here this can be very scary in many
of these positions you actually have to sacrifice your horse completely like this uh looking for a
super gambit you know just going for a position where you've sacrificed all the material
but you're just going for a direct assault if you like this you can try it but it can't
possibly be my recommendation because it's technically losing for white but you can try
it if you'd like uh if they don't know g5 and instead they go here well congrats now you're
in a vienna gambit again so against this i'm gonna recommend to you bishop c4 and first things
first let's look at the copycat variation so this variation is losing for black if you know the move
queen g4 which is a benefit of delaying knight f3 you attack g7 a lot of beginners here will play
queen to f6 because it attacks this and sorry it defends this and attacks this but here comes
the magic knight to d5 and this attacks f6 and c7 but lets them go here and they'll get excited
they're gonna take this i've even had a 1400 think this was made it's not so a lot of people
freak out here and go uh-oh how do i guard this um and how do i guard this uh oh all right well
how about g6 and you this might look really good but that's not the point the point is knight
to h3 and the queen is trapped literally just trapped it can't go anywhere back people will run
their queen to the free square and now you play d3 and you glue in the queen and c3 is coming
and there's nothing black can do to stop this a lot of black uh uh black players here
will play h5 and they will attack your queen but you don't need to worry about that if they
attack your queen you can just move your queen you don't need to rush they can't go here
right so now you have pressure here and here and knight c7 and all of this is still
a threat this is just lost you can run this through the engine if you
like but if you get this on the board it's just losing uh stockfish's
best variation here is something like knight h3 followed by h5 immediately so king f8
knight h3 queen g5 queen d4 d3 and bishop to e7 i can basically guarantee you that you will never
get this because i've never gotten this in a game and now the best thing to do is queen g3 back
again maintaining this and black has to play b5 again you can check this with the computer but i
can wholeheartedly assure you that you will never ever ever face this okay you will never face this
and if you do they're cheating and if they're not cheating they're an anonymous grandmaster and
if they're not an anonymous grandmaster then i don't know okay you're playing an alien but
i've never faced this against any grandmaster that i've ever played people don't know how
to play once they fall into this position um now there's other ways to defend the g7
pawn like king to f8 if they play this or g6 i recommend sliding back and threatening
this i've had people blunder knight d4 mate uh people will play knight f6 here and now you
should prevent knight to d4 by playing the move knight e2 then you will play d3 and go for bishop
to g5 and your position is much better because they've weakened their dark squares considerably
so i get this this they can attack my queen i'll slide over and now i will play bishop g5 and
queen h4 to try to win material on this side of the board of course if they play king to
f8 um then queen f3 back with the same ideas knight e2 d3 and so on and so forth you
can choose which way you'd like to castle copycat variation is no good the con the
considerably popular main line is to play knight to f6 this is just the two knights uh and
here i like d3 black can play bishop c5 or bishop b4 i've played this against a lot of grand masters
black also has the professional move knight to a5 here i can just you can just slide back take
take and then try to play for a later move f4 uh you can also play queen f3 and try to castle
queen side as fast as you can just give the bishop get get castled as fast as possible um against
bishop to b4 i like to reinforce my knight like this and then play castles f4 f5 but what you're
going to face the most is knight f6 and bishop c5 and against this i will just show you a little
cool trappy variation after f4 again if they take take it's like the vienna gambit but they
took it and now we just have a good version of it so a lot of people will play it like this knight
f3 and now knight g4 and this looks scary it looks like you've actually blundered something but here
you just slap them in the face and play knight g5 now you're counter-attacking so if they play
knight to f2 uh you have queen h5 and if they play g6 you have bishop takes f7 check king has to move
um and i think the most winning variation here is check king back and queen slides in and it's
losing they this is it's losing it's losing and if i wasn't clear it's lost so they can't play
like this they always have to monitor this move so a lot of people here will play castles thinking
that they've you know defended their f7 pawn but now we play the really nice move f5 and this
disconnects the bishop from the defense of the horse our bishop defends our horse from the queen
and knight f2 is met with queen to h5 and black resigns the game because of unstoppable threats
of f7 and h7 so here people have played for example h6 and now you play uh well you can play
bishop takes f7 but knight f7 is nice hits the queen the threat of discover check and i've won
games like this takes takes uh king to h8 and f6 bye bye because after pawn takes f6 bishop comes
with checkmate if queen f6 this is made in one so a very devastating attack uh and you
need not be worried about knight to g4 and if they play bishop to g4 uh there's the
the most important move of this entire thing knight a4 okay this hits the bishop and you
need to defend against the move knight to d4 with the pin so for example if knight
d4 here there is um capture on c5 take and now you play c3 and what you're trying
to do here is you're trying to make them take take and you have a very solid center and you'll
castle your king this way so you'll play bishop queen and bring the king this way you can castle
this way it's okay but you need to not worry about the safety of your king that's why i said this
video is good for the advanced player because if you're 2000 you know the theory here you're
gonna be fine even against master level players so i i think that's basically it i mean there's
other move orders in e4 e5 you know you might face something like an early d6 against
that just go d3 and f4 just do your thing just do your thing d3 and f4 knight f3 after that
delay knight f3 castle you'll be in good shape um now i promised all of you a a statistical review
of this opening right you guys uh you guys who stuck around till till here or skipped ahead
you know you're still amazing either way so i picked um a guy named kinda pink jake uh
jake is a huge huge supporter of my channel originally on twitch uh and he was actually
one of my first 200 subscribers here on youtube which is insane to think about because i now
am nearing 100 000.
If you're watching in 2021 let me know how many subscribers i have at
that point or if the channel got deleted well that would not make sense because then
you wouldn't be able to watch this video anyway jake used to play e4 e5 we can see that he's
played over a thousand games of e4 e5 580 of his games went knight f3 with the black pieces 150
went like this knight c3 he only had 82 games out of 1160 which shows you how deep out of the way
the vienna is so jake would play both he's played knight c6 and knight f6 against knight f6 he has
only ever played three vienna gambits out of 1100 games now to his credit he did win two of them but
he played bad variations and in fact he won a game where he accepted so his opponent didn't know what
he was doing but what about knight c6 okay bishop to c4 and jake here has played 21 games he did
play a lot of two nights uh and how many of this okay about 11 11 games out of 1100
possible games and look at the score 86 now i wouldn't be surprised by the way if he's
played me in a few of these games um but no maybe not because i've played jake on stream before
but 86 percent for white in these positions that's crazy that is unheard of so that shows you
the potential of this opening okay i'm going to just show you one grandmaster example uh it's
actually a guy that i played evgeny samashevsky superstar grandmaster from russia you have getting
so much chefs he's like over 2700 he's you know top ten in russian rankings so evgeny plays
e4 c6 but look at his e4e5 games on chess.com one ever game against the vienna and it was
against me and i played it against him it was a title tuesday game you know i wasn't winning
from the opening it was a very very long game but even at the grand master level this guy saw one
vienna ever according to his chess.com database so that should show you the full power and
potential of this opening and if you're looking for a weapon at the beginner level
to get people out of their comfort zone as early as the second move well then the vienna is
for you if you're an intermediate player that's played a lot of d4 wants to switch to e4 this
could be a good way to do it you don't need to learn the italian you don't need to learn uh
the spanish you don't need to learn the scotch play the vienna take a walk through the beautiful
streets of austria you know sit back look at the beautiful museums and concert halls and
architecture uh and enjoy your time playing e4 e5 and knight c3 now separate plug i have an e4
course if you enjoy my content and you'd like to support me you should click on the link in the
description because it will take you to a very nice website where we've put all of our courses
there you can look at the table of contents and i go into written format on the vienna and other
things that you would face in the king's pawn but that's only if you have the financial means to
do that and want to support everything that i do uh that's basically it for now hope you've
made it through the end of this video and uh well i'll ask you if you have what's your
favorite season of the year and what do you like to do during your favorite season mine is probably
the fall and i just like to take you know walks outside or go running when there's uh you know and
i can wear a hoodie and i'm not pouring in sweat alright hope this was a good video
and i will see you in the next one