3 Secret Rare Lines to Beat the London System

Hi everyone, I'm Jonathan Shrantz and in this video I'm going to show you three unique and independent

system

s that can play against the London

system

. If you're like me, you know exactly how annoying it can be when your opponent plays the London system. Many people hate facing this and the reason is that, at least at the beginner level, most people are not going to play any interesting

lines

. White just developed this little system, you build your triangle, you go out at night, you get your Bishop out, you get castle and the problem is that it's actually a very reasonable system for White, it's a very good setup, London is a good one. opening, but he can be extremely boring to play against, so for that reason I came up with three different

lines

. which I just want to share with you today, I know we're all busy so I'll leave the timestamps in the description below so if you want to skip ahead and pick just one of them, they'll be down there.

For you guys, just go look it up and the three systems that I'm going to share with you, the first one I'm going to call safe and sound, this is a very reasonable attempt for Black to just equalize, it's a little bit off. Beat, but probably if you're a real London player, this has been on the radar or this idea has been on the radar, but it's kind of like playing boring and drawing against London. If that's not for you, the second option will be a very weird line that I actually think is pretty good, so if you're looking for something that's weird and potentially dangerous to white people, that's the line you'll want to look at and the third line will be unnecessarily aggressive line, the most dubious line that I'm going to show, but it's very interesting and we're actually going to share a game that I just played that really inspired this whole video.

With all that in mind let's take a look now at our first approach against London, this is the safe and sound approach so if you're just looking to potentially call against London and just get a playable position and take it from there this is the line for you and if you are a gentleman. player f6 or a pawn to player d5 either way it will transpose, you can play many of these moves out of order as both sides, but essentially as black we are going to set up this pawn structure and after a move like knight to f3 we are going to play c5, you can also start with the bishop up to d6, this is all very normal, but in some order of moves we are going to get this very main position where very often white can decide to allow you to take here and let's just say I'm going to try to control the square e5 even at the cost of double pawns, but most players are going to remove the bishop and this is where we are going to start to deviate slightly from the main lines in the main line.

Actually, Black is going to castle by putting the knight on c6 and take it from there, but I've found that it's actually very easy for Black to eventually make the e5 move, this liberating pawn break if you set up your pieces a little differently here and One approach is to play queen on c7, the idea is that we are protecting the bishop because we want to put the other knight on d7 and this bishop will come into play by b6 bishop to b7, eventually we will be castled and eventually we may be able to play the pawn on e5 and if we get this break successfully we will most likely just call, so here a move that you can play in a similar position to this is the queen on c7 and after white play any.

From their normal development moves we will also develop our knight, they can develop their bishop and we can castle or even just play b6 now at some point both sides will probably castle. A good rule of thumb in this line is that as soon as White has castled in whatever move order they come to, that now becomes a reasonable opportunity for us to exchange this bishop with the idea that now, after these double pawns, There's no rook here on the h-file, so something like this would be totally safe and sound and then the bishop gets to b7, we're just going to try to castle and we're going to try to play the pawn on e5, something like this will be very close. of equality here and potentially Black can even get a slightly better position in uh such structures, for example if something like rook to e1 castles and allows us to just make a move like pawn to e5, what can usually happen is that If this series of exchanges occurs and after a move like this, Black is probably definitely better after queen to e7, probably after queen to c7 you definitely shouldn't have as much trouble and there's even a trick you can potentially play by placing the queen. on h5 the knight on g4 and then maybe you can put your rooks in the center and try to shoot through the exchange tonight and try to make some attack here, usually it won't work, but there are many ways to try to play to win, Even if you know the highest rated player with the black pieces and need to win, there is room to try to play to win here, but this approach doesn't necessarily give you the best chances of winning, so if you're really just looking for a really easy system , something you can play over and over again against London, this could be a very reliable way to do it, so remember to play this pawn structure.

Put your knight on f6. Queen on c7. Develop your knights and bishops this way. Castle and try to play to break the pawn on e5. Something like this should be. very reasonable for black and uh yeah, I mean you really shouldn't have too many problems if you decide to play this way, so if you're trying to balance something that's completely amazing with something that's actually legit and not dubious, this might be The focus for you after the pawn on d4 knight f6. I think on the second move here we could surprise our opponents with this very interesting idea: pawn on c6 and I'll show you a game I played against a 2100 in a three-handed game. minutes game on leachus.org to illustrate how difficult it can be for the opponent to resolve this and the pawn on c6 has a very interesting idea, let's try to exploit the fact that after the bishop to f4 not only could this The bishop potentially becomes a target, like for example we have knight ideas on h5 just trying to hunt down this bishop, but it also leaves this pawn unprotected, so the system basically involves trying to play the queen on b6 by attacking this pawn and trying to follow it with a bishop hunt, so that's exactly what happened in my game after the pawn to e3, the queen to b6 attacked the pawn, white now has to find a way to defend the pawn and many of the More defined lines in many Londons where maybe a knight could go here and you can sacrifice, are actually ruled out by the way we have played a pawn on c6 instead of, for example, on c5, it is not as easy for the White can get any of these common tricks here, so something like this if you have joe bava

london

in your setup, this could actually hinder them on the first move because it takes away a lot of squares from any knight that was thinking about plundering the b-pawn and if There is no good way to plunder the b-pawn.

White's pawn will need to defend it with the queen on c1 or with the pawn on b3. We will analyze the theory in more depth, but in this game that I am going to show you, my opponent played the queen on c1 and now I simply played knight to h5 hunting the bishop and here my opponent made a big mistake, let's go back and see different moves of the bishop that white could try, but in the game my opponent played bishop to e5 and this is a mistake because d6 is part of my midgame plan. I'm going to put pawns on d6 g6 developing my bishop and potentially playing for e5 or potentially c5 to get my fair share of the center so after the bishop retreats I just captured it immediately put the pawn on g6 developed my bishop and was able to play e5 like this here I already feel very comfortable with my position I have my part of the center I have the two bishops, there is really not much for Black to complain about here, the fact that the h-file is open is not even a big deal, Black will be able to castle most likely in the next turn or two and they really shouldn't have that many.

Problems: my opponent played the knight to f3 bishop to f5 and now came e4, I moved and after the knight to g5 my opponent is already lost and one of the biggest problems is that this last move has actually hung up this d-pawn, it is not It is common for black and white to already have this pressure without having many other developed pieces, but now my opponent will lose this game. I started with h6, kicked the knight back, he decided not to move back and now we have this unusual situation. where there are many pieces hanging and to make it even more complicated I take d4, this seems very strong to me now not only is everything hanging but this last d pawn should actually be very very strong, my opponent played the knight h4 attacking my lady, but Now I can just hand over this check and everything is pending, but this in depth is really good.

My opponent has more pieces hanging than me, so in this position we were able to exchange a bunch of pieces that I won tonight and now I'm on top. a piece with a very strong position I just drove my knight into the game I just got a phone call where were we uh what was I doing I was crushing this guy after the rook to d1 I just grabbed here my queen was able to sneak in and I was able to win this game, so this is a very interesting system, this panda c6. I think it's a really interesting way for Black to try to get a completely unique position against London and potentially take the opponent out of the book and make him think. right now, so we'll come back to this position once again.

Let's take a quick look at what can happen after the queen moves to b6, uh, b3 again is obviously a very reasonable option. b3 might even be the best move, but it will be difficult for some players. play like this and willingly weaken the dark scores on the queen side, especially with this bishop here, but if you play the queen to c1 once again, we definitely have time to go and win this pair of bishops here and white will probably They should consider a different move than the one actually played in the game, something like this only helped me a lot more than the opponent, so there are two other moves, but one of these actually falls into a very big trap and the problem is if play bishop for g5 there is a very well known idea in this type of position from queen to a5 check and we will be able to win a bishop and this type of trap works all the time in all types of openings, especially in London, so What really What they need to do is if they don't want us to just take the bishop and ruin the pawns, here they want to play the bishop on g3 and in this position we can now grab this bishop, after they get it back we can play the pawn on g6 something like this and again it's the same kind of system uh we're just going to develop our bishop we're going to put the pawn on d6 then we'll decide if we want to try to break through with e5 if we want Try to play c5 and I think overall it's a very reasonable flexible approach on the part for Black, so an interesting option for White is to play the pawn on b3 and this has the idea of ​​stopping our secondary idea of ​​just going and trying to hunt this down. bishop so now we will have to wait so for example if we play the pawn on d6 we expect them to make a move like the knight on f3 because now we once again have the idea of ​​hunting the bishop so here again if they go to g3 we can just grab it if they play bishop here, they've actually stopped us from playing queen on a5 because now this bishop would be defended so that wouldn't make much sense, but there is another way to hunt the bishop. in this position we can now play the pawn on h6 and if they come back we can now play g5 and something like that so if they come back we will try to take it again but sometimes a lot of unusual things can happen. because even here our knight is lined up on the same diagonal as the opponent's queen, so for example they could just move their knight and just say if you take my bishop I'll take your knight, but here again we have a very interesting way to hunt To get this bishop down, we can simply move the knight to g7, which is obviously a strange square for a knight, but the main idea is that after the bishop escapes we play the knight to f5 and one way or another we can actually just take that bishop next and then go about our day developing all of our pieces, so if white really wants to avoid all of this, if white gets our idea from the start, he might want to make a move like the pawn a h3 and this simply means that in no situation will we be able to go here, even if we play like this so that our knight will be defended because after some random moves, if we ever go after him, they will be able to run away, so with that.

In mind, what we can do is we can still play normally, uh, I would assume that some kind of normal development for both sides would be something like this where everyone could castle and we'll be able to bring ourknight and somehow something This way we can eventually play e5 if we need to wait until the moment when the situation is right and another idea also in a position like this, especially with b3, could be to play for the breakthrough of the c5 pawn to try to open this. diagonal for our bishop, so our competing ideas are basically if we try to play here to open up for our bishop or if we try to play some kind of move like we can get all our pieces, we can even move this knight out of the De This way, if necessary, we can eventually place e5 in this position with the idea of ​​hindering his bishop.

So do you want to play against his bishop? I want to try to free your own bishop. You have a lot of flexibility in a line like this, but I just want to point out this very interesting idea of ​​the pawn on c6. The main ideas, once again, play the queen on b6. She tries to attack this pawn. and then try to hunt down this bishop somehow and now we'll move on to the third approach, this is the one that really sparked my interest in making this video for you, this is a game I played an hour ago against someone. ranked 2 300 in leeches, so in this game I will show you a very aggressive and probably not that good, but a very interesting combative way of playing London with black, so in this game I started immediately with the pawn on c6 i .

I have similar ideas: if the bishop ever comes up, I will take my queen to b6 immediately, but instead of playing the queen to b6 here immediately, I had another unusual idea here with black and my idea in this game is that Yes, at some point I will play queen on b6, but I started with the very aggressive intention of h6 g5 by taking out my bishop in this way and I made a very high night maneuver to try to get a very aggressive position, so I played h6 here with the idea of ​​playing pawn on g5 and uh and only then in some position we finally place our pieces very similar to what we saw in the previous variation, but I just completed this elevated night maneuver that brought the queen to b6, so this is what I mean. is that we will come back it is a very interesting concept you can play this way you can just put your pawns on c6 d6 try to play h6 g5 i am sure there are many different ways there is nothing in the database if you play this this way you will get a unique position every time because there is no theory here, but I got my stuff out and the way this worked in this game was here after this catch, White got a little ambitious and took my horse here and I think this is actually the losing move, so so far it's again the same idea that now I have to take here and in all these lines that we saw in the previous game, when you get this monster pawn here on d4, it's often very good for black, so which I didn't recapture right away, instead I created another threat and in this position here now I recaptured the bishop and this group comes to life and this pawn is very strong and suddenly I have a very good position for now.

I have the two bishops but I also have some reasonable development ideas. I'm going to castle on the queen's side. This is a very aggressive line and I even have potentially very good squares for all my pieces and the reason I played. Here, um, attacking this pawn is because now I really intend to take this b-pawn. If he had taken it earlier, there probably would have been some rook on b1 and white might have had some activity, so after the knight got here protecting the defending c-pawn. his b-pawn I simply developed my knight, here my piece was attacked and I decided to just exchange it, castle, complete my development and, looking at the available squares here, I realized that I have d5 knights potentially showing up, as well as There is a lot of pressure potentially on the column f, so I still feel like all my pieces are very sensible.

I played the knight to d5. I put my rook in the f column after I was verified here. It's worth noting that if my opponent takes. here I had the rook take f3 in the position that could become very dangerous for the opponent so the opponent introduced the knight here I just switched and uh here and I was saying to myself in the game ah there's no way he's going to take this d-pawn and then my opponent did it, so I played knight on f4 with some big ideas. This is a revealed attack on the queen and I am on this pawn.

You don't have a good way to defend the pawn with the queen because now I. I will be able to play the rook takes d3 and after he decided to enter I was able to grab this pawn, the opponent is getting into a windmill here I was able to give a couple of checks and here I decided to sacrifice an exchange with the idea, but if now Tomas, I take again with my queen and I have a very powerful attack, so my opponent decided to play f3 to try to endure all this, but now I just crashed, I give him this check with the Great idea to clear the way for my queen and this leads to an immediate checkmate so if you are looking for something absolutely aggressive against the London system consider this setup c6 d6 h6 uh g5 and then there is absolutely no theory so you are on your own but the big The idea is that no matter where white plays, it's very similar to the last line where we'll have ideas from queen to b6, the bishop will go here, you'll put a knight here and decide which way you want to break in the center and you should get a game. very interesting, so I hope this was helpful.

Hopefully I've inspired you to come up with some kind of interesting anti-London ideas if you're interested in these opening ideas, especially really weird stuff, that's what I do. There's a lot on my channel, so subscribe, subscribe to the channel and I'll see you guys in another video.