Whats your top opening recommendations for black

Good content But maybe try and explain a few ideas slower and in more detail. A bit of information overload. But thx for posting

My balls are itchy

Of all the Najdorf lectures, this is one of them.

I only play the bongcloud opening. Best opening ever !

Hey, great video. as a 2100 lichess rated player, I've been drilling the 100 endgames you must know and yeah I feel like I am barely better at actual endgames, how do you suggest actually training them, especially for someone who plays aggressive openings and rarely reaches the endgame in my games ?

No training = no improvement, simple as that. Same in every sport. I play golf. My handicap was dropping very fast as I learned how to play and was training a lot, then it stopped aroud 20 it was becaming more and more difficult to improve so I gave it up and started playing just for fun. There's always a plateu and law of diminishing returns, where each hour of training will yield less and less gains and it takes HUGE amount of time and systematic & organized effort to achieve the "holy grail" level in given discipline e.g. HCP 0 in golf or FM title in chess. And even this holy grail does not put you in the best, coz best golfers have even lower HCP and in chess there are IMs and GMs and super-GMs. At certain point individual talent also helps, but it just moves the plateu level a bit further.

Silman's complete endgame course Is the greatest endgame book

Nice topic Sam 👍 I think at least basic end games you should know how to win or draw - rook pawn end games. I have messed up several rook end games where either I could have won or at least hold it.

So, after all that, what did the IM teach you? All I'm seeing is your game post-mortems.

Chess is scary.

Good stuff mate. I have the Dvoretsky book still in its plastic wrap with every intention to one of these days actually read it…

Never said what to study to get good at endgames if not DEM/100 EYMK!

Thanks for that!

Please summarize the key points you are trying to teach us.

Endgames make me cry. Are endgames harder than openings? For me, yes. But for the master level too?

I want to learn the QG and Catalan but there is so much theory.

thank you! Highly instructive!

IMs are bad at chess, just take their pawns for free

Amazing!

So, what should a player rated 800 do to get better?

The better you get, the harder it gets to improve yourself and your opponents get more difficult also. Or, another way to look at it is that the closer you get to perfection, the harder it is to see your faults.

One caveat for lichess blitz players rated 1600 - 2000, this is not as "easy" as it looks and I would suggest practicing first with lots of blitz games against a weak lichess Stockfish level like Stockfish 3 or Stockfish 4 depending on your strength. Those Stockfish engines blunder a lot thus giving you a lot of practice crushing it with your opening ideas sure, but even those weak Stockfish levels can still sometimes be tricky enough to beat you if you're not careful. Once you're confident you can crush those Stockfish levels consistently in blitz then you'll be ready to use the Catalan effectively at the lichess 1600 - 2000 blitz level.

😂 Girlfriend dumped him after she found out he plays the London!

That Bob example lowkey cracked me up 💀

Meh. I'd wager basic value plays a pivotal role here. It's even like your experience in highschool right, there were tournaments going on, you probably had some friends where chess was a huge part of the relationship; there were so many emotional factors working if your favor to develop good habits. Of course basic effort and attention is important, but I'd wager for a lot of the cases you're describing, these people don't actually want to get better, and oftentimes they aren't even aware of that.

Very high quality recap even if the quality of the game itself left a lot to be desired. One small suggestion would be to cover the gruesome end in a little more detail. Just very practically, not all your followers are 2100+, so the finish may have seemed obvious, but surely not so much so that it merited only seconds. Also, even at 2200, miracles certainly happen, people have bungled much more winning positions, so maybe the recap maybe a slight hint that you're not feeling totally in the zone, where you may have tried more desperately to find ways to make his task even 1 or 2% harder and give him a chance to go wrong.

I'm 2000 and play the caro-kann as well, really interesting video !

I am happy to call myself a member of the Catalan Cult.

Played the Catalan to improve by about 300 elo

I was curious about what to do when black plays an early Bf5 ( move 2 ? ) when I'm going for a Catalan setup. In this game, it seems you don't fiancetto your own bishop on g2 then. I'll try and search for more games. Thank you for sharing, as always.

There are different brain “hacks” you can use. If someone needs to memorize a bunch of facts, they can use mnemonics for example. To see the different possibilities on a chess board, you can start practicing expanding your awareness. Close your eyes and imagine a random number (or a letter) in the darkness in front of your eyes. If you can easily “see” two, or three numbers/letters next to each other, then try to expand that to four or five. Don’t “count” them left to right. Visualize them all at once.

Anderson Sandra Young Joseph Miller Sharon

I am 1900

I have been loving these Catalan videos, do you suggest getting a course on it? Like srinath or Alonzo’s on Chessable? Or just learning it and ideas as you play more and more

play against computer 2500+ for a month or two. you lose every game. then go back to playing humans, see how you improved.

Kris Chan is an incredible name to have lol

as someone who haven't tried catalan, yes, this brilliant opening is not for those braindead london player

Great series of videos! Sam Shankland Neo Catalan Lifetime Repetoire on Chessable gives modern update on Wojo move order kzbin.infoANX9xSh4mws

Nobody is willing to just state plainly that innate IQ largely determines your ceiling. Chess is all abstraction, working memory, it’s straight up IQ. Plain and simple. Crystallized knowledge or lack thereof creates play in the joints, but the parameters of individual potential are set.

Can you post what you consider your best game period

I just go after my opponent's king when I play. I'm hardstuck 1100 but at least I enjoy it

Gyattalan

never playing the jobava london again

13:35 This is a critical try in g3 slav but through the 3.g3 move order black doesn't have to allow this, they can play 3... Bf5 4. c4 e6 5. Nc3 h6 and they'll transpose to the less critical g3 slav lines So both 3... Bf5 and 3... c5 are good ways for black to play in this move order

vow, another Catalan video :), keep them coming. thanks Sam

Very cool opening!

He talked for over three minutes before he said anything useful. Then I stopped watching.

KZbin can make you 1600 elo fide. After that it's only yourself.

Interesting video and nice being included, and I agree with a lot of what you said. I just don't totally agree with everything said in the c4 moveorder. While it was listed as a con that one has to play the normal flank pawn opening stuff, but the Moveorder opens up a lot for white. The symmetrical English in my opinion is in style not so far away from the catalan with the strong diagonal bishop and more often that not having a space advantage and slight tempo advantage against black. The reverse sicilian is not something for everyone, but i play the Sveshnikov with black and the sicilian is pretty much the only opening that i have played against e4 since the first year where i learnt chess, so obviously I am not scared of this. Additional value, and for me to of the crucial points, one why I originally played the wojo move order and one why i now play 1. c4, is because you dodge the slav and more importantly the Grünfeld. The only positions where I have the feeling that black can try and play super aggressively is the KID, which I have learned not to fear. Most things that apply to 1. C4 apply to 1. Nf3 too, to a lesser extent, although I probably hat 1. ... d5 as an answer like 60% of the time, which after 2. d4 made a catalan far more likely than in the English. In the end, if ones goal is to reach the catalan as often as possible, then I would not recommend 1. c4, but i feel comfortable with more or less every line i play and in that, i have the feeling that my positions are slightly more enjoyable.