Beat the Caro-Kann in 5 Moves

Hey, do you want to

beat

Carl Khan every time in just five

moves

or maybe to put it a little more statistically correct? Do you want to be able to

beat

Karo Khan very quickly 80 percent of the time? Well you might want to check out this trap line because there is a line you can play against Karo Khan that seems to work even against really strong players with a tremendously high success rate and the line I'm talking about is after e4 c6 instead of play anyone. Of the standard

moves

, you can play this move from pawn to d3, which seems very innocuous and doesn't seem like we have that big of a plan.

This is known as the brayer variation or as classified by Lee Chess. This is the unambitious brayer variation, but as we'll see, there's a bit of a trap here where, for some reason, everyone seems to fall into and come in this line after d5, which is obviously the most logical move you'd expect. that White would play a knight on d2. would be the typical way to continue and maybe white will set up some kind of king-side Indian attack setup where we'll go like this and then play for some kind of king-side attack, but there's also this move from the knight to f3. and so far it seems like white has played like a complete panzer like d3, a not very ambitious knight towards f3, ignoring the fact that black was going to take here on e4 and if you back off, we're just going to see a queen exchange, okay that doesn't seem too interesting and it just seems like maybe white doesn't know exactly what he's doing and then compounding that to make it even worse after all this white just decides to move the knight a second time and plays knight by g5 and now you can get an idea.

I have the database here so you can see which moves are the most popular in each position and also take notes, especially on this one of the winning percentages. it gets a little crazy at some point after e takes d3 here, white will just get the bishop back, take d3 and here we are, we're on the fifth move of the game and most of the time the players with black pieces will just perform a move that loses immediately and some of these moves include the knight to f6, which represents 59.6 of all total games. There's h6, which occurs in 16.5 percent of all games.

E6 probably doesn't lose, but it's not particularly good and you'll see that 9.3 percent of the time and you might be thinking that maybe this is just at the lower levels, but even if you filter by 2500 and up, you'll still see 82 percent of the time, this is actually 62.9 percent of all total games, White is going to win this. a tremendously high amount of time and if you have never seen this position before, I think it is particularly difficult to find the right move with Black, but it is not too difficult to understand the main trap that Black has set and you can see it in a line like knight to f6.

This is actually the most common way that people play and white is going to win this for a tremendously large amount of time and the reason we are winning has to do with the fact that the checkers are actually in the same rank and there may not seem to be any way to take advantage of the fact that immediately in this position the queen is defended by the king, but after the knight takes f7 it bifurcates the queen and the rook, if Black now goes to take the knight, what is the most sensible way to continue, you are going to play bishop to g6 and this is the means by which you eliminate the queen's defense, force the king to recover it or you can take with this h-pawn, but now the queen takes d8 and white has simply won a piece and it's exactly the same, uh, if you recover this position here and instead of knight to f6, if the opponent decides to play pawn to h6, it's exactly the same, you play knight to f7, you take. they fork and after they recapture you you play bishop to g6 and this wins the game again, you can simply take the queen and this may remind you of another particularly, another particularly, I don't know if it is a strong trap, but it is a trap that the players they tend to land at a very high frequency and that's the Tennyson gambit, so this one against Carl Khan is a lot like this opening you can play against the Norseman, where again it's the same trick with a different move order.

If you can get to this position, you can see that most of the time people are playing h6 or at least 30 of the time, this is the move you can expect to face, after which you do the same type of tactic, so if you are looking for this you can do it against karo khan against the norsemen today we will mainly focus on what to do against carl khan but we can already see that this is a trap that could give you a lot of points, well what? If Black plays a little better, let's go back to the starting position and run this one more time, so after getting here we play knight on f3 captures and we play knight on g5 sacrificing a pawn and after this recapture we recover What What is black really supposed to do?

We have this threat of just taking f7, but surely Black can play a little better than just developing a piece or just playing h6, well what are you supposed to do? It turns out more The players here who avoid are going to want to play the pawn move to e6 and this actually avoids our threat to take f7, so we want to reconsider what we want to do and it seems that White has made moves like the knight to c3 . I have tried castling, this seems very normal how you get here, but you might be able to play even better, but before I show you what the best move is, I would also like to mention that the knight takes f7 does not work in this position because Now after this recapture, if you were to play bishop on g6, which is what white does in most of these games, what you will notice is that black can actually defend the queen, however, you will notice that the most popular move here is to simply commit a mistake. the queen is far away um, but it shouldn't work because black has time to play king to e7 and even if you hit it with bishop to g5 thinking maybe aha, I've skewered you now, I finally beat you, well, there's no knight to f6 just goes in and even if you take this in the hope that they will take it with the king, they will take it with a pawn, you are one piece down, the queens attack each other so they are going to exchange them, this guy is hung.

It's not going to be very good for you, so after the pawn to e6, what should we do with White? There is a very interesting move here that seems to work very well and the move is the knight takes h7. This was another point of By putting the bishop on d3 and the knight on g5, we were attacking the h-link, so here we can just take it and if Black doesn't really do too much, we'll happily grab this bishop and have the bishop. pair and we'll take it to the end of the game and we should have a very reasonable position like if the knight is f6 which is the second most popular move we'll just take this guy and head to this end of the game where we should do pretty well if we put dry fish, it's actually plus 1.2, this is a very strong position for us, okay, no problems here, so what is black intending to do if you go here and just take his h-pawn? most players are going to try to do: they are going to play bishop to e7, which seems like a very good move, this controls the g5 square, so at least for the moment it is fine, our knight is not threatened with being captured yet . but it seems like maybe we're getting him into some trouble, maybe he'll get stuck there and can't get back into the game, but you actually have this very smart move by the queen to voluntarily go on h5. a pin and lining up with the opponent's rook and the reason this is so strong is that we are simply threatening something like knight to f6 so the second most common move for Black is knight to f6 well that doesn't do anything because "We're going to be recapturing here trapping this rook and fantastic, we just gained a lot of material.

Okay, so what are you going to do? You have to do something forcing or we're just going to play this and we." they're going to win the rook, so what they tend to do is play the pawn on g6, this is what happens, but now you just sacrifice, you play, the bishop takes g6 f takes g6, the queen takes g6 and it's well, two pawns. for a piece, but look at this, if the king has to go to d7, there should obviously be some serious problems and there are two things you can do with white. You can see that the most popular thing that has been played is the queen on g7 attacking this rook and This is definitely enough, there is no way for Black to defend the rook if you move the knight for example, well just remind the opponent, hey , you're in a bind.

I take f6 and just gained easy stuff and what that means. okay they don't have a good way to defend it so they're just going to take this and whatever and obviously this is very good for us we've gained some materials so it says it's more 1.9 blah blah blah , Well. It also turns out that back in this position after the king to d7 instead of simply playing the queen to g7 which gains material on the spot, you can also gain a huge advantage by simply developing your pieces, place your bishop on f4, your knight on c3, castle on the queen side and you can play for this great attack, you don't have to gain material because your position is very strong and it is really very difficult for black to develop pieces, so just take everything out and attack is another good one way to continue.

So that's what you're going to face very often and what I think is really difficult about this position is that when the opponent gets here it's very, very difficult for them to find the right move and I don't think I've ever done that. I've seen this with another opening, but the correct move is only made about two percent of the time and that's really uncharacteristic of any opening I've studied. Usually these people tend to know this and the move that the computer gives for Black is this move. knight to d7 and maybe there are actually a couple of different ways black can play that are very reasonable, but the knight to d7 is the one that is the best option for stockfish and maybe this is the way black should play, but I think even here there's a There are a lot of tricks and traps you can use and a lot of opponents just won't be able to play the way the computer plays to be able to defend this, there's like a crazy defensive line, but even if you understand it , I don't think that humans are going to be able to defend, but I will test you here if you had the white pieces in this position, what would you play because, again, I think this is another very difficult question and you have to be very careful and I think that a lot People really screw this up with white.

Now let me tell you a couple of things you shouldn't do with white. I think one of the temptations that we've seen in all the other lines was to take f7 or maybe take f7. h7 this tended to be correct on the other lines but here if you just take f7 black will recover and maybe you came here and noticed you have queen for h5 check and if black is going to play g6 what would be the way logic. To try to attack your queen and make her move away, you have the bishop taking g6 and after taking the pawn you can take the rook and we have exchanged two pieces for a rook, which is actually not a very good exchange in our favor. here is that after the bishop to g7, for example, if we simply put the dried fish back, we will have to move our queen somewhere and it is actually black who will be able to develop a bigger initiative.

Black has two pieces for a rook which is good for Black and it's really Black who is a little more active than us this guy will come here this guy will go somewhere the bishop will come out and it's actually Black who has fantastic position, so let's take it off the table, let's not sacrifice uh f7, what else are we going to do well if you're familiar with these types of positions? Another tactic that happens sometimes and is almost brilliant for White is this crazy move from the knight to e6 and this almost works and some opponents might take the bait and he just decides to take this knight that was attacking the queen and this allows for a beautiful ending. because now you only have the queen on h5 and after g6 you can sacrifice on g6 hopefully with the queen because that's cool and you can get this fantastic checkmate and boom, if they take the bait this is great, however unfortunately the knight to e6 doesn't work because black actually has a very good move uh with the queen like the queen is attacked you can't take the knight but unfortunately the queen to a5 ends up being a very strong move now they are attacking our king and if we defend it in some easy way, like our knight is hanging, but if we play bishop on d2, they can just play the queen on e5 and unfortunately, we're not going to be. able to keep our horses, we can imagine them trading the queens taking the night and ruining our lives, but it turns out that there is potentially a good option here for white, where you have the opportunity to sacrifice yourself for a tremendous amount of compensation now before I I'll tell you exactly what I thinkyou should play I want to show you what Stockfish thinks you should play and also the two main human moves which are the castles and the knight to h7 and the point of the knight to d7 has a lot of points.

Another point I would like to reveal is that you see on both lines if White should castle if White should take h7, you will see an issue that Black has available that I think we should take into account. before deciding what to do with white in this move, now for example stockfish says castle, the most popular is castle, let's see if there are castles, now we see what black is up to along you. Now we have this move of the knight to e5. A secondary point of the knight reaching d7 is that he has the opportunity to harass our bishop on d3.

It is also very good for Black that protects f7, but on any line where we are going to lose. our bishop, if the material is the same and Black has both bishops, we probably won't have as much opposition as you can imagine. The bishop takes h7. This is the dry fish line that says to exchange the queens because otherwise White will exchange the queens, which would be advantageous, but now, after the knight to f6, suddenly the bishop is trapped in the sense that wherever Come on, Black will be able to take it and finish off the two bishops at the end of the game, so this is something we can't do.

I don't want to do it if we can avoid it now. The other problem with this position is that if we play the knight takes h7, it is something very similar. In this case, Black actually has two options: he can go to c5 or e5, so whichever way he decides to do it. wow even if we get this, in this case black will be able to damage our structure by taking d3 and after this recapture we could have taken d3 with the queen or whatever, it doesn't really matter, we have this objective in the open half d file, so that at some point our d-pawn could become a weakness that we will have to take care of and defend for the rest of the game.

We don't want to do any of this. We want to make the next line and there is a secondary line by stockfish but it allows for some surprising sacrifices and again it is this case after the bishop to c4 where most players will make a mistake and it is particularly useful to be on c4 now suddenly because now the knight is not is going to be We can harass our bishop in the same way and if e6, which is the most popular move, we will be threatening all kinds of sacrifices that Black now has to consider in every move, like maybe we do this, maybe we do this . maybe we accept this and our opponent has to be cautious in every move and we can have fun trying to calculate them and see what we come up with now after castling we again reach a very critical position.

I think this would be incredibly difficult for a human to play as the computer from now on, it's really impossible. I think well, I'll show you what the computer's move is at the end, but I think they're both very reasonable moves that your opponents could make. Try it and in the only seven games that have been played, the bishop to e7 and the g-knight to f6 are the moves people would make. I mean, it's all very sensible. The e7 bishop is very sensible, he is attacking the knight for the second time, so now Black is just threatening to take and here is an incredible move for White, we are looking of course for sacrifices on one of these two squares and on There is actually one and his bishop takes e6, this is the move that turns out to work very well for White because now, if the bishop takes g5, for example, we will be able to play, not the bishop takes f7, which was played in the only game that has happened, but this reveals the main point of what we are doing with these sacrifices. is that we are going to have the queen h5 at some point to win this bishop on g5, but we have given up a bishop to get here, so we have actually lost a piece, a better way to continue after our knight is taken is play queen on h5 pinning this pawn attacking this guy for another time and now if g6 for example tries to make our queen go instead of plundering on f7 we can take d7 and this way we are not losing. a piece and at the end of the day the material here is going to be the same but we are preventing white from castling and it is getting a little more difficult to develop this knight and the rook is getting to e1, we should be able to get the night out very quickly bring all our rooks into the game maybe we can get to the 7th rank very quickly something like this should be very good for white now the computers will play f6 and the line will continue something like this which also prevents black from castling on the queenside and the line will continue, but this is a fantastic achievement for white, okay, so let's go back to the bishop on e7, okay, maybe not the best thing black can do, what about the knight from g to f6 and here again we come to Look around and try to find sacrifices that possibly work and again the lucky news for us is that it is the same thing, which makes it very easy for us to remember that here we can play the bishop takes e6, which has never actually been played in the database. and the fact is that after this recapture we return with our horse that we have sacrificed uh oh a subscription for up to five people no thanks um in this position we can already say that we have more than enough compensation for the two pawns that we have sacrificed and we have this column e open which will be very useful soon, but we are attacking the queen for now and the queen should probably consider taking control of the c7 square if it ever gets too far from c7.

We're also going to introduce this fork, maybe at some point Black would love to be able to move this bishop, but then we'll hang up this g-pawn. It seems that things are getting very awkward for Black. Now, objectively, this is fine. For Black, however, I think it would be a bit tricky to play this in a real game. I can easily imagine someone going to b6, it seems like a totally normal move, but the e2 queen and the computer are already very happy with White's position, you know? Black and White have to play some weird stuff like the queen on b4 to get back to e7, just allowing us to do this fork now if we want, but maybe kick the queen a little bit, it's all kind of weird crazy which I think will always end up favoring white.

It's much easier to play. It is very difficult for Black to find the right moves, but there is an exact continuation after the queen to a5 if you play the bishop to d2 and we are just trying to get the queen to move. away from the c7 square, well there is exactly this queen move to f5 attacking us and what is really interesting about this line is that the computer wants Black to sacrifice again and you can see that Black has material advantage, but maybe Black should consider just giving away that rook by playing for something like the bishop on d6 and suddenly, okay, Black is one less piece, but suddenly there are a lot of pieces potentially getting closer to our king, so probably We should be pretty safe, we should probably have this guy guard. the square and maybe bring a knight to protect us, we need to be a little more careful here, but as long as it's zero zero and there are people sacrificing, uh, I don't know, this should be a lot of fun for White, although again A little bit of careful now, what is the real best way for the opponents to continue when we get to this position after the knight to d7?

This was the move stockfish wanted. I'm suggesting bishop to c4 and after e6, castle the move. In my mind, the computer actually wanting to play seems absolutely absurd, it's this move from pawn to h6 and we saw earlier that this was absolutely horrible, you're really begging us to destroy e6, huh, and that's fine, so yeah, why No, will I go in? for this and we'll keep the dry fish here so you can see how crazy this gets after f takes e6 the queen to h5 to check that Black will be forced to play king to e7, where can you guess what the white in this? position is, uh, it's an absolutely lovely move, the bishop takes e6, a fantastic smash em up type move, uh, that you can play here with white and if I were looking at this from Black's point of view, I would be terrified, this It's absolutely terrifying, but maybe the queen. e8 which lines up the king and queen on the same column, which as a human I can't do that or the rook is going to reach the e column, but that's okay, maybe if you're a computer you totally can, but another El point is that if they take this bishop rook to e1, this will lead to all kinds of checkmate.

Now I don't want to go through all the lines, if you do, you will only lose material if here is the bishop to f4 and this will lead. for a checkmate the line that is perhaps most interesting is uh queen to f king to f6 where you should probably know only one maneuver and that maneuver is queen to f3 forcing the king to go to g6 and now hitting him with king to e4 not letting let the king escape and if you go back to some kind of square they will just checkmate you, so the king will have to raise and obviously if you see the king raise like that, you will know that checkmate is close. corner and actually this is where it's best to give up your queen, but if something like g5 you can imagine that rookie three is going to end the game, immediately, thanks for following me.

I'm not live on Twitch right now, but thanks to christopher, I appreciate it, but coming back to this just for one last try, this is how black can get a very small advantage after the bishop takes c6, they can play the queen to e8 and now we just need to move our queen somewhere, I mean we can. go wherever, but okay, if it was here, which is what I think he said, we can move our queen somewhere else and that's okay, I'll let you judge for yourself if you think the opponent would be happy here knowing that's okay. , our next move is something. like rook to e1 uh, even if you attack our bishop, we can exchange it, we can move it back, we can do whatever, if you think your opponents can survive this position, then I guess you shouldn't play this tactic, but I don't .

Would you still play it even if this crazy line exists? Let me know in the comments below and I'll see you in the next video. Bye, subscribe. Goodbye if you feel trapped like a queen. No mistakes, just sacrifice. And look, sadness may never be a chicken when you lose.