Under 800 Rated Watch This

A lot of people ask me, hey Yena, I'm stuck at this rating, what can I do to improve? Well, today I'm going to be focusing on every single one of you that is rated under 800 to tell you exactly what it is that you need to do to improve and gain rating. I'll be playing two 5.5 Blitz games where I'm playing as people in this rating range and I'll be talking you through my thought process and what mistakes my opponents are doing so that you can spot them in your games. So I'll go ahead and start the first game. I typically don't recommend people playing Blitz games in this rating group. I think it's better to play 10 or 15 minute rapid games as it gives you a lot more time to think and I think that's better when you try to improve. But for the sake of the video, I'll play a little bit faster games. So I'm starting with D4. You always want to start with your central pawns at this range. Because you'll be a lot easier holding control of these four most important pieces of the board. So you want to start with your central pawns and after that, you want to bring your knights out and then your bishops and then castles. Why? Because you want to develop as quickly as possible so that you can use all your pieces for the rest of the game. Now, you don't want to bring out your queen early on because if you do so, then you'll very, very, very easily be attacked and the queen will be very vulnerable. Because it's your best piece, you want to leave it out. I was about to pre-move. That's another thing to not do. Do not pre-move, guys. You don't want to bring it out early on. So now my opponent is attacking this pawn. Well, it is defended by the queen but because we want to bring our pieces out, I'll go ahead and bring my knights out and develop them. Like I said, we want to do that towards the center. We don't want to have the knights on the rim because there's a saying that is knights on the rim are grim and it's because the knights on the rim from the A and H file, they can only go to four squares whereas on another square, the knight can go to eight squares. So now my opponent's knight went over here and this is a really bad move because in this position, I can just simply go. I can either go a3 or c3 and I can kick this knight away. I'm going to see which one of them I do. I think actually that I'm going to go ahead and go a3 and I'm going to kick this knight away and I don't know where the knight is going to go. The knight is going to go back. So my opponent just lost one turn by going back and forth. I gained this move but now I'm actually going to kick it out even more. Like I said, we want to take as much center as possible. So if you can push, push as long as your pawns are safe. Now my pawn is safe because the pawn is protected by the queen. So now this knight will have to move somewhere else. Where will the knight go if the knight goes back? I just forced my opponent to do a little dance with the knight and now the knight is back in the starting position. My opponent just lost so many moves. So what I'll do now is that I want to develop the rest of my pieces. So I'll go with my bishop right over here just because I want this bishop to be in an open diagonal. In a diagonal where there's no other pawns or pieces that are blocking it because that's where bishops are the best. Now I will go ahead and castle. Castling is really, really, really important. Do that before you start doing any other crazy stuff. Keep your king safe and after your king is safe your other pieces can start doing their stuff. Now my opponent went h5 and this is a really bad move because my opponent right now is not developing at all and their dream of the h-pawn pushing, pushing, pushing doesn't work because it's going to take way too long. You cannot attack if you don't have your pieces out. So I mean you cannot attack with simply just one pawn. So we are now going to be attacking them. My opponent is leaving the king in the center which is something that you should never do. So I'm going for a check. Now the bishop is going here blocking the check and I will simply attack this bishop again. Because this bishop is pinned by my rook the bishop cannot capture mine because then I would take the king. So now my opponent went f6 and f6 there's a little saying that goes never go f6. We can see now that after my opponent went with this pawn here and with this pawn here this square over here is super weak. So I have a light squared bishop in the prime position. I'm going to put my bishop over here. I'm checking my opponent's king and now my opponent will never be able to castle which is super awesome because the king will be really unsafe if it doesn't castle. So we already have an advantage now that the king cannot castle. So I was actually provoking my opponent to play this move because I really wanted them to play f6. Now in this position I will simply go back with my bishop. Let's see where I go. I was going to go back with my bishop here to f4. At first I was thinking about going here but I actually want to put my bishop in a place where it can go to several diagonals and bishops on the rainbow they're a little bit green too because there's only like these two diagonals it can go to. Here there's a lot more places that it can go to. So let's see c5 okay so I don't really understand why my opponent is not bringing their princess out there right now in a big need to do so but I'm not complaining. So I was just going to develop my knight and now this knight still cannot go here so I'm wondering where my opponent is going to put the knight. This is you know a huge advantage right now for white and we can see that this dream quickly ended there wasn't anything going on. So well now that all my minor pieces are developed which is what we want to start with developing our minor pieces so our knights and bishops I can finally develop my queen. So I will choose to go with my queen over here because I'm actually threatening a checkmate here. So I'm just placing my queen in a place where I think that it'll be useful later on and I think now the best move that my opponent has is to block everything with the knight here on d5 which you know it's fine if they do I'll just have to exchange somehow and then we'll keep it going. So this pawn right now might become a little bit weak but I don't really ever want to capture it because then my own queen is going to be captured and unsafe but we can see the difference between my king and my opponent's king is my king is right now behind three pawns and my opponent's king is super duper duper unsafe. Let's see if my opponent finds this blockade it's typically it's really good to have your knight in the center and yeah my opponent didn't find it typically it's really good to have your knight in the center and especially you know doing a move like this which both improves your own knight but also stops me from you know going up in this diagonal would have been amazing but my opponent didn't find it and I'm thinking now I'm thinking now about I want to go queen over here I really want to do this move um but there might be knight here which actually I'm not so happy about the fact that I'm putting my queen in the same diagonal as my bishop but because my opponent went b6 I feel like I feel like it indicates that they might want to you know bring their bishop out this way so I think that I'm gonna wait a tiny little bit before I do this and I'm gonna go knight over here because I want to put a knight right over here I want to bring more pieces towards my opponent's king and maybe at some point it might I'm seeing this force the king and the rook they're almost next to each other so there's always this force idea so yeah here we go I thought that my opponent would move their bishop there and now I can go queen over here and now the queen is not in the same diagonal as the bishop I wouldn't recommend you putting your queen in the same diagonal as the bishop or the same file as your opponent's rook because there might be a lot of uh there might be a lot of tactics that will make this very uncomfortable so I never really recommend it and now actually guys I'm not seeing any way for my opponent to stop the checkmate it's knight here and I'll be able to capture it if queen here I capture the queen so I think we're checkmating the maximum whoops do not pre-move once again oh my I lose so many games by pre-moving please do not pre-move but yeah I'm just doing it right now to show you moves but yeah um don't pre-move so queen of seven is what I want to do right now um but yeah I I think that this is uh I think this is a pretty big scene and uh in what I've been in what and what I've seen in players in this rating group that a lot of times they won't really like notice attacks like for instance this attack going here and here is quite subtle um but it's fatal I mean I'm checkmating the maximum so yeah it was really important to to do this blockade before I think that my opponent is right now just thinking uh seeing if there's any way of stopping the checkmate but like I said I'm not seeing any way so after this I can simply capture and now after capture is back I'll be able to go here I guess my opponent can go knight h6 but I'll be winning a full piece so this is definitely really different I think my opponent is going to go knight h6 so I guess this is the only way of stopping it which was nice that they found but a full piece is really good I mean should be just winning to be a full piece up so um we will we will see here we will see here what they do we can also see that my opponent went bishop b7 and this diagonal was actually not right for the bishop because my pawn was simply blocking the bishop so the bishop had no future in this diagonal which is also something that um we always need to think about where exactly do our pieces thrive like where is the uh in the position what is the best diagonal what is the best file when it comes to rooks what is the best file when it comes to bishop what is the best diagonal when it comes to knight what is the best square we always need to keep those things in mind because a lot in chess yeah there we go it stops there but I'll just go back and I'm correcting this a lot in chess is about trying to find the best square for every single one of your pieces if you're able to place your if you're able to do that then you will I mean moves will come naturally tactics will be there tactics will be there you know like things will just unfold so much nice more nicely and it'll be a lot easier for you to come up with plans as well in this game I wasn't really able to show you a lot of middle game plans because it really quickly became uh a checkmate I so that my queen is in this exact same position um but in the next game I'll try to show a lot more middle game plans but I hope that this is still instructive and you know how to come up with an attack why is it that I'm doing that okay now my opponent is resigning that's good um I had a few mini heart attacks here by by dropping my piece to the wrong place I don't really know why uh why I was doing this but anyways guys we won there's nothing to do to stop the queen over here I mean I'll be capturing on h6 and then I will do checkmating which will be super duper awesome so there was nothing that my opponent can do biggest mistake that my opponent did not blocking this but I mean also the opening my opponent played really really weirdly we can see here what happens when we don't develop quickly and when we just you know try to focus on one really uh on one plan without developing there's typically no attack if your I actually kind of want to deactivate pringles but uh do not do it though if you play a lot of blitz please have your pringles activated but okay so knight over here I'll bring my knight out I'm actually typically a Sicilian kind of girl but I'm playing this because I don't think that Sicilian is a good opening if you're under 800 rated I think that it's a really complex opening that you definitely want to be higher rated for so once again we're bringing our pieces out pawns first knights bishops castles and then queens and rooks simple formula guys simple formula so we have right now a Ruy Lopez so I will just simply go d6 to uh to defend to defend my pawn and then after this I'll bring my knights out and then on the castle I'm just going d6 because um I mean there's a lot of theory here but I mean the idea of this is just defending my pawn is detected I know that there's a lot of things you can do but for the simplicity of it I'm just going to do this over here so we'll see now what my opponent chooses to do a lot of times I try to go d4 I believe in this sort of position okay my opponent is taking first and c6 which makes sense to destroy my pawn structure now my pawns are doubled which is not you know uh amazing and now my point is going to be d4 so I will go ahead and I think I'm actually going to do a move I actually think that I'm going to do this move over here because I'm pinning the knight and now this knight cannot really work so now it captures I can first capture the knight and I can just simply capture it back and my pawn will not be uh will not you know be taken back so I can simply capture over here if I if I took back here immediately then there might oh actually you know what I'm going to capture here immediately I just realized if queen takes rook takes and knight takes over here there is a checkmate so I'm just going to do like this actually just because I don't really want to change the bishop for this knight if I don't have to as then the queen would be able to capture back and I wouldn't even return my opponent's pawn okay my opponent fell for the checkmate my opponent fell for the checkmate oh no yeah here we go tactics always really important to think about and if you're taking you know if you're taking materials and if you're doing these sort of meals before your castle always look out for tactics because otherwise these things can happen okay guys this is so short that I'm going to give you one more game because I really want to talk about you know middle games and I feel like you know both games have ended too quickly so e4 I'm going to go e5 again uh once again pawn's up in the center nice out defending let's see what my opponent opts for okay my opponent's going for the same move as before so I will go d6 simply wow we're seeing the exact same game okay we are seeing the exact same game I'm going to go bishop g4 there's no way that my opponent will do the same thing right there's no way my opponent will fall for the same trick I think I just found the way of winning at 500 and chop I literally I literally won two games in a row with the exact same trick guys I literally figured out the way to winning please try this out and let me know in the comments down below if you guys can win using this this is actually insane okay guys I need to go for one more game like these games are finishing so quickly guys I hope that you all remember this checkmate now okay I'm getting the white pieces okay let's do this so I'm gonna go e4 now I'll play a different opening e4 e5 I'm gonna bring my knight out um and once again we're doing the same thing we're bringing pawns to the center and uh then we're bringing our knights up just like before now we cannot get the same thing as what happened before so now my opponent's going queen e7 and this is a big mistake because the queen is now blocking this bishop and now it's going to be really hard for my opponent to develop and get their pieces up so this is a big mistake I'm just going to bring my knight out I'm going to be happy but like I said guys pawns, knights, bishops, castle and then queen and rook do not go with your queen and rook before I'm not really going to care about what my opponent is doing I'm just going to bring my bishops out develop and I'm going to be really happy this queen is right now blocking my opponent's bishop so my opponent can castle and I can only say thank you I'm happy so now my plan will be to go d3 and bishop d5 because I might want to put up a knight right over here I always love pinning my opponent's knight because when I'm able to do so there's always you know a little bit more tactics now my opponent's knight do not move because I will be able to capture the queen so I'll bring up my knight this is always good to do when you when you're pinning I'll bring up my knight because yeah now I'm also threatening to take on q7 I'm threatening the queen and if the queen goes up over here there is this royal fork which would be amazing do not fall for it do not fall for it like I said never put never put queens in the same diagonal as your opponent's bishop and always look out for forks especially when your opponent's knight is entering you know your side of the board which I would call this part right so I would say five to eight is black side of the board one to four is white side of the board okay good my opponent went up over here okay so before anything else I will go ahead and now my opponent should probably kick away my knight but if my opponent kicks away my knight I'll simply take this and uh I will start trying to get as much center as possible so so far so good my opponent went h6 so we're gonna go bishop h4 I don't want to take over here because then I'll make the life of my opponent a lot easier by exchanging everything no we want to keep the tension we want to keep the tension which means that I want to make sure that my opponent still cannot move the knight I still want to pin so this is another common mistake that I see a lot of beginners doing moving up the pawns in front of the king so unless this king is going to castle this side this is a terrible maneuver at this rating uh and actually in general typically um so okay the idea was of course that you know my opponent didn't want um my bishop to pin the knight and I've seen actually this like I've seen a lot of people doing this because they think that pins are so annoying which is also another reason for doing pins at this rating range but um this is really bad because when the king castles this way the king is gonna be really vulnerable so we need to think two steps ahead and we need to think that this king has to castle at some point if the king stays here gonna be super unsafe and if the king castles then once again super unsafe because of uh because of the pawns being up so so much not protecting it so now my bishop is under attack I'll go back with it and I think at some point they're gonna want to go h5 and h4 to trap my bishop um but I'm gonna go h3 pretty soon oh now my now the queen went back so I actually think that this I actually think that my opponent wants to castle this way and what I'm going to do is that I'm just going to try to get my center typically they say that you know the best way of counter-attacking is to attack yourself so I'm just going to go ahead and push as much as I can over here now if takes and takes I'm giving up this pawn but the idea is simply um the idea is simply that one this one is also going to be under attack but two I can go ahead and bring up some more pieces uh so I'll be able to go working one and attack so I'll go ahead and capture back with the queen over here because I don't want to destroy my pawn structure I want my pawns in front of the king to be nice and safe like this and not take some takes well I'll have a fantastic center so knight of six okay so here I believe I'm winning a pawn I've talked about this in previous videos always look first thing that came to mind was well text but then capture and I'm right now analyzing what happens if I capture this one in the center and I saw that after pawn takes and pawn takes I will have this attack over here and I'll be threatening this pawn with two pieces so that is what I'm going to do we can also see the issue that this bishop is not developed yet so the works are not queen f5 check let's see where the king goes the king probably has to go somewhere over here if the knight goes back yeah then then I was gonna perhaps capture an f7 but now this is even worse and this is the moment where my opponent really should have taken some of their time to think because now I have bishop takes e5 check and I'm checking the king but at the same time I am right now threatening this knight with two pieces the bishop and my queen but not only that after this I'm threatening the queen and the rook and all of my opponent's pieces are falling apart and all of this well it started with my opponent not developing but then it came down to me just calculating a little bit of tactic following my method of checks captures and attacks which I've talked about in another video and now my opponent even gave up the queen this is now this is not really going down for my opponent so I actually feel kind of bad but yeah now that it's really going down for my opponent my king was under attack so before I do my own sort of threats or whatever I realize you know what is my opponent threatening my opponent was threatening my queen over here so I take this back so I'll now be able to capture the other rook and now all of my opponent's pieces are pretty much gone um okay so my bishop is under attack I'll go ahead and put it back over here now that I'm up so much material what I really want to do is that I want to change as many pieces as possible so we'll take and take and then I'll go ahead and uh yeah just go ahead and bring this bring this up so this and this but I hope that this is instructional for you in uh in the sense of uh in the sense of trying to figure out you know what what what I've been trying to do um and what it is that my opponent has done wrong so I mean I'm even going to promote after king here I can go check and after king moves I can bring my queen up here I can even do this um I'm simply just you know the rook can capture my queen but then I'll be making a queen I just want to change all of my opponent's pieces because they're not going to have any other pieces to play with so I'm going to now bring in my rook and it's time to checkmate so got to make sure that there's no sort of cellmate but because my opponent has so many pawns there's no risk for it so I'm just going to try to cut or take away as many squares for my opponent's king as possible um so here I will just go with a check if the king goes here then there's a checkmate and if the king goes here then I have a check and if the king goes there here I will simply bring in my next rook to not capture it because it's a 10 and I'm just going to bring in now all of my pieces I have a queen and two rooks it's amazing that is what we're that's what we're doing there's no risk for any cellmate and actually in this position my opponent disconnected which probably means that you know they left the game uh because they tilted or whatever um which a lot of people do which I think is kind of bad like just we're fine oh no they were oh no they abandoned there we go all right everybody so these are some of the tricks that I that I do and you know some of the ways that my opponents at this rating range have gone wrong I hope that you guys you know learn something from this video and especially please do not fall for that rook checkmate I did in game two and three like guys that was absolutely insane that was absolutely crazy thank you so much everybody for watching this video let me know in the comments down below if you want me to do this sort of videos with different rating groups um you know thousand rating thousand one thousand five hundred etc etc have a really wonderful day I'll see you all in the next video