30 Chess Tips: Positional Chess (Beginner to Advanced)

30 positional chess tips to help you win more games, and if you haven't heard of positional chess before, I recommend watching the first 5 minutes of my intro to positional chess. I'll attach a card for the link to this video right here. And as always, the first 10 tips will be for beginner players, the next 10 tips for intermediate players, and the final 10 tips for advanced players. So let's get into it. The first positional chess tip I have for the beginners watching the video is that you want to control the center 4 squares of the chessboard. And how I like to describe it, how I like to teach it is this. The reason why these four squares are so important or controlling the middle of the board is so important is because if you control the center of the board, then wherever your opponent tries to play, wherever, whichever side of the board that they try to play on your pieces that control the middle are fast enough to either side of the board. From the middle is the fastest way to both sides and so controlling the center will give you a great foundation for the rest of your game. Tip number two is that at the start of your chess games you want your rooks to see each other by move 10, which means that all the other pieces, the knights, the bishops, the queen, and the king need to get out, need to be developed for your rooks to be able to see each other. And what that will look like is of course your pawn up, You will develop your pieces. Get your knights out and you're getting one step closer or many steps closer to your rooks seeing each other. We just have to worry about, you know, the bishop, queen and king. And another bonus tip is that in order to do this by move 10, you will often not want to move the same piece more than once in the opening. So here, this is a common beginner mistake that I see where you move a piece more than once to start attacking right away. And I don't want you, if you are a beginner, to start attacking your king if your rooks have not seen each other yet. And you might think, well, you know, isn't that kind of a boring way to play? I want you, if you're a beginner, the first 10 moves of your chess game in order to set yourself up for success should be boring. Your first 10 moves of the chess game should be boring until you've castled and until your rooks see each other. Until then, don't go on any attacks. So, instead of that knight jumping in, just worry about developing another piece on the chessboard, castle your king, you're going to move your bishop out. Now, if you're hearing me and saying that I shouldn't move two pieces at the same, like, more than once in the opening, of course, if a piece is attacked, for example, you develop your bishop, it's attacked by a pawn, of course you can move it more than once. I just want to tell you that you shouldn't be going on attacks. Using your pieces to jump in or move more than once if it doesn't, if you don't need to. Okay, so now this is what I mean. Your rooks have seen each other and this is move nine. So you'll see that I only moved one of my pieces more than once one time and it took me till move nine to have my rooks see each other. So this is a great opening tip for beginners. It'll help you like get through the opening phase of the game with no problems. Tip number three is that I don't want you to be moving the three pawns in front of your king up the chessboard. These should not be moving up the chessboard. They should stay by your king in front of him to make sure that he's safe. And I teach kids, so if this helps you remember, this is how I teach it to them. Your king wants these safety blanket pawns with his rook pillow. This is how your king is safe, with the safety blanket pawns. And the only one that's allowed to move up at all is the outside h-pawn, is allowed to move up one square. And often it will move up one square to attack a bishop here. But what I don't want you to do, it can be very tempting, you see this, oh I can't move my knight because then I lose my queen, and so you'll push your other pawn up to keep attacking. This is not good. This is not good. It's very tempting to do this because that bishop is annoying, but do not move the pawns in front of your king because it will make your king much less safe and much easier to checkmate you. Tip number four, and it's related to the last tip, it's related to the three pawns in front of your king. You want to actually move up your outside pawn up one before you need to. So if you don't move any of these three pawns, it keeps your king safe, but it allows later, you know, way later in the game, it allows for your king to get back rank checkmated very easy where your pawns are kind of trapping your king in. It can't move anywhere. And so it can be very useful. To move your outside pawn up one so that there's never at no point in the game will you ever get back rank checkmated. And the big point here is that you should create this luft. It's called luft. You should create a breathing pocket, an air pocket for your king to run into. And you should create this luft before you actually need it. Because chances are if you wait until you're about to get checkmated. To create this lift, it will be too late. Tip number five is that you should not be bringing out your queen early in chess games. And I'm not specifically talking about like the early queen attacks. Well, that is definitely covered. That is not good and you shouldn't be doing it. But more importantly, just bringing your queen out in general at the start of the game is not very good because your queen is so valuable that if it's in the middle of the chessboard, it's very easy to attack. Your opponent can develop their pieces and attack your queen. So here, really, you should start moving your queen away. For beginners, I recommend all the way back. But if your queen sticks around in the middle of the chessboard, you can try developing, but you will be interrupted by your opponent making moves and attacking your queen. So if it sticks around in the middle, they can make another move to improve their position, they're taking center control like we went over, and they're attacking your queen, forcing you to move it again. And all of a sudden, the four, you know, you've made six moves in this chess game, and four of them have been with the same piece, your queen. And that is just because your queen is so valuable that if it's hanging out in the middle of the board, it'll be very easy to attack and they will force you to move it. And all of a sudden, you know, it's move seven and your opponent's castled and you have just your queen and your knight active. Tip number six is that if you have a fianchettoed bishop, so here the only reason the g-pawn, if you're, you know, worried about your safety blanket pawns that we went over, the only way That this is okay to move, your g-pawn up one square, is if a bishop is right behind it. And so that makes this bishop, this is called a fianchetto bishop, much more valuable. And so do not just give it away for no reason. Because when you give it away, that bishop that was controlling all of the one color of squares near your king is gone. And now these squares become very weak. It becomes much easier to attack your king when your bishop has gone away. And so now it just looks like you pushed your g-pawn, you pushed your safety blanket pawn for no reason, and this is not okay. The only reason that the g-pawn can come up and it being okay is if you keep your bishop here. So this bishop is quite valuable, and so don't just give it away for no reason. Tip number seven is that throughout your games, throughout your chess games, you should be looking at all of your opponent's pieces, and when I say pieces I mean all of the powerful pieces that aren't pawns. You should be looking at all of your pieces and trying to find which of those pieces are the best piece. And I don't mean the most powerful. I mean the best, the one that can see the most amount of squares on your side of the board. That is how good a piece is. The queen is powerful, but it's not seeing any squares on your side of the board. And another way you can think about it is which one of their pieces, their powerful pieces, are the most annoying to you right now in the position. So, here. For example, this knight, this knight is their most annoying. It is their best piece that they have. And throughout your chess games, as you're looking for these, if they have a really annoying piece or if they have a piece that can see a lot of squares on your side of the board, then you'll want to look to trade off one of your bad pieces or one of your pieces that can't see a lot of squares on your side, on the other person's side of the board. You want to use that to trade off. To make a trade with that really good piece that they have. If they have a piece that's really annoying, and you have a piece that's not really helping out, then you really want to look to try and trade off that really annoying piece. Tip number eight is a few tips in one. I'm going to show you where all of your pieces, where all of your pieces want to be in chess games. Where are they most active? Where are they the best? Where can they see the most amount of squares on the other side of the board? So your knights want to be on outpost squares. These are squares in your opponent's position that you have guarded by a pawn that can't be kicked away by your opponent's pawn. So for example, these are two squares in the opponent's position, but if I jump to this one thinking it's on an outpost, it is a very good square for my knight to be on, but it can be kicked away by a pawn. So this is not quite an outpost. Whereas this one is guarded by a pawn on the other side of the board, but it cannot be kicked away by other pawns. And so this knight is on the outpost. This is where knights love to be. Bishops love to be on the longest diagonal that they can see. So putting a bishop here, for example, will see a bunch of squares on the other side of the board. They have sniper vision all across the board. And so putting them on diagonals that are the most open is where bishops are extremely happy. Similar with rooks, how are rooks able to see the most amount of squares on the other side of the board? It's going to be on open files, and an open file in chess is a file of the chessboard, the vertical, you know, things, this is the B file, the B vertical, and open files are these verticals, these files, that don't have any pawns on them. So pawns will clog up, it will be, it will clog up a file, And so open files without any pawns on them are where rooks really shine, where they can see all the way across the entire chessboard. And queens are a little bit tricky because you want to put queens on squares that they can see a ton of squares on the other side of the board, but you kind of you want to keep them really safe. And so somewhere, somewhere that's safe. Can be in your position, you know, your side of the board that still sees a lot of squares. And that's where queens really want to be. They're so powerful that we need to keep them safe. We need to find a balance between keeping them safe and seeing a bunch of squares to, you know, they're the most powerful. So seeing a bunch of squares on the other side of the board. Tip number nine and related to the rooks activity. So here, for example, we have our rook on an open file. And specifically, if there is only one open file on the entire board, so here this C file is the only vertical, the only file on the entire chessboard that has no pawns on it, and if there is only one of them, you actually want both. of your rooks on the open file and how you get both of them is that you move one of them up slide the other one you know slide the other one under and this is called stacking your rooks and this makes it so that you know anyone that wants to challenge you on this open open file will get bulldozed by your 10 points of material that are ready to take anything so if there's one file one open file in the chessboard you want to stack your rooks on them you want to take complete control And tip number 10 is if you ever get into rook staring contest, rook staring contest, let's say your opponent made this move and now there's a rook, both rooks are staring across the board. You don't want to be the first one to take the other person's rook. You don't want to break the staring contest. You want to make another move. Let's, you know, you want to do this. And the reason is... If one person, whoever breaks the staring contest and takes the other person's rook, then often whoever's other rook was here, so right now this is a great rook, this is a bad rook. We both have a great rook and we both have a bad one. If you give up, whichever person gives up and makes the trade, now that other person can turn their bad rook, recapture, and now turn that bad rook into a fantastic rook. And oftentimes it becomes very hard to challenge that open file now. And so when there is this rook stare off, oftentimes, very oftentimes, I see people not be able to handle this tension, this rook tension, but you don't want to be the first one to take. You want to be taken so that you can replace your very powerful rook with your other one. Tip number 11 and the first one into the intermediate section is positional play really revolves around four positional pillars. And I go over these four positional pillars a lot in that video that I, you know, told you to go watch the first five minutes of at the start of this video. But those four positional pillars are king safety. So here, whose king is safer? This is a very important thing in positional chess. Our king is much safer because our opponent pushed their pawns in front of their king, and this makes a very weak king. The second one is piece activity. So who has more active pieces, more pieces that can see on the other side of the board? Well, we do. We have more pieces that can see on the other side of the chess board. This is another very important positional factor in chess. The third one is weaknesses, and there's a bunch of different types of weaknesses. Essentially, you can have weak pawns, and these are going to be pawns that are by themselves. That don't have any other pawns next to them that can guard them. For example, these two pawns are not weak pawns because they are together. They can guard each other. These three pawns are strong, a strong pawn chain together. But this pawn is a weak pawn. There is also weak color complexes. So, for example, this dark squared color complex right next to the king is very weak also this dark squared color complex is right next to their king so it's a weak color complex we would love a dark squared bishop to hang out here and the third weakness perhaps the most important is weak holes these are weak squares in your opponent's side of the board that cannot be guarded by pawns there are no pawns here that can guard this square this is a very weak square And specifically, you want your knights to be on those weak squares. This is what I talked about if you watched the beginner section. These are knight outpost squares. Squares in your opponent's position that your knight can be on that can't be attacked or challenged by any pawns. And the last positional pillar is space. So how much space that you control on the chessboard. And this is determined by just looking at your pawns. And I want you to think of pawns like a pawn mountain. If you've watched my other videos, then... You know, this is how I like to describe it. Whosoever pawn mountain is taller, you know, you can pretend that all of your pawns, all you and your opponent's pawns are like the peaks of mountain ranges. Who has a taller pawn mountain? Who has more space? Because ultimately, the pawns are like the fences, the guardians that go first, usually, in chess. And so your pawns will dictate how much space on the chessboard that you actually control. Tip number 12 is knights versus bishops, the long debate about which is better. So they're both worth three points of material, but there are different conditions on the chessboard that make one of them much more valuable than the other one. And bishops are much better in positions where there are less pawns on the board because pawns block bishops' vision. And so bishops, if there is a really open position or a position with very little pawns on it. Bishops shine like crazy because for only three points of material, they can see all the way to the other side of the chessboard, whereas knights, you know, they don't care how many pawns are on the chessboard, they are short distance. So bishops are much better on open positions, whereas in closed positions, where bishops are blocked behind pawns, knights shine. In closed positions with a ton of pawns on it. This position, there's not even one pawn that has been traded off. Knights really shine because... Their superpower of being able to jump over pieces, you know, the pawns don't get in their way. In fact, they can actually jump over them. And so, in closed positions with tons of pawns, this is where knights really shine. And you'd much prefer knights over bishops. And so, you know, using this knight to take their bishop in this position would be a horrible decision. Because their bishop, with all these pawns, are horrible. And your knight, with all the pawns, are fantastic. Knights are much better in closed positions, bishops much better in open positions. Tip number 13, while we are on the topic of bishops, is that there are actually good bishops and bad bishops in each sort of chess position. There is a bishop, even if you have two of them, you know, when you have two of them, there are bishops that are more valuable than the other one. And it has to do with what color pawns you have on the chessboard, or Which colored squares your pawns are on. So all of our pawns are on the dark squares. And so, hey, you know, the pawns, they've got all the dark squares covered, you know, don't worry about them. They got them covered. And that makes it so that our dark squared bishop, while still, you know, a good piece is not nearly as important. as our light squared bishop where our pawns we have a bunch of pieces on the board these pawns that can guard the dark squares but this bishop is really the only thing besides the queen that can reliably hit the light squares and so if your opponent plays a move like this and Taking this knight would be a horrible decision. This is your valuable bishop. You have all of your pawns on dark squares, so your light squared bishop is the more valuable bishop, and so you'd be very happy to give away your dark squared bishop. And while we're at it, which of their bishops is their more valuable bishop? You know, take a look at their pawns. All of their pawns are on light squares, and that makes their dark squared bishop much more valuable. Their light squared bishop actually gets trapped many times behind the pawns. And so we can trade our bad bishop, our less valuable bishop, for their good bishop, and this is a fantastic move. We would take this trade all day long. Tip number 14 is that you do not want to give up a good piece for their bad piece. So if you go into your chess games thinking that like Bishops are just better than knights because, you know, a ton of grandmasters prefer bishops over knights and you have this really good knight and you say, oh, I can, I have a chance to take a bishop. Don't just take a bishop. Your knight right now is a fantastic knight. It is in the middle. It's on an outpost. It's doing a lot, seeing a lot of squares on the other side of the board. This is a fantastic knight. This bishop is not good. And so in general, If you have a very good piece, you do not want to give it away. You should almost never give it away for a less good piece, for a bad piece. In fact, you know, you can you can make a move yourself. You can make another move and they're the one that should be, you know, using their move to give up or trade off your good piece. Don't use your move to give away your own good piece. So that is a rule. Almost never will you want to do that. Tip number 15 is about the bishop pair. And if you've been watching chess videos or chess streams, commentary by masters, you'll say that, oh, one side has the bishop pair and that's better. And that is mainly for a couple of reasons. The first one. Is that while one bishop, for example, can, you know, see half of the squares on the board, a bishop pair, you know, six points worth of material can see every color on the chess board. And so the bishop pair often work together to make weaknesses and attack weaknesses. But the important part is that in order for you to actually. have an advantage or use your bishop pair to to have an advantage you need the board to open up so if you have the bishop pair it's generally good because you can attack both squares both colors on the chessboard but you must try to open up the position so that your bishops can actually you know be useful if the position is closed you know with eight pawns 16 pawns on the board And you have two bishops, then like, who really cares? The bishops suck anyways. So the bishop pair is generally good, but you still must open the chessboard, trade off pawns for the bishops to actually be useful. Tip number 16 is that when you are faced with an option, so let's say here, the bishop takes our bishop. When you are faced with an option where you can capture with two different pawns, the rule of thumb is that you want to capture towards the middle of the board. And this is for two main reasons, the first one being that when you capture towards the middle, more often than not, it clumps your pawns together, it keeps your pawns together, and capturing towards the outside of the board kind of splits up some pawn islands. It makes pawn weaknesses. The second reason is that capturing towards the center kind of brings another thing towards the center that can actually control squares near the center. So that's just Generally valuable. So for those two reasons, the general rule of thumb is that you want to capture towards the center. Tip number 17 is that, of course, you know that knight outposts are very important for knights to shine. Like in this position, this is a great square for the knight to be. But really, this is the knight outpost of the position. And this tip is that you actually want to race your knight to that outpost. Even though, so that makes the best, one of the best plans in the position to use a bunch of turns with your knight to reroute it, finding rerouting path, you know, from the square where your knight is to get to that outpost. And it might seem weird to like use a bunch of moves in a row to get your knight to that outpost. But many times, many, many times, it is worth all of those moves to activate and get such a strong and active knight in the position. Tip number 18 is that in endgames, you want to prevent your opponent's king from getting active. And we all know that king activity in the endgames is extremely important. So here, if we get hit with this rook, this rook check with their pawn here, our king has to walk back and our king will not get active. And so the only good move here is to just give up the pawn, not like we could save it anyways, but give up the pawn, give up another one so that our king can get active. It's so important. King activity is extremely important. And on the flip side of that, the main tip for this position is that we want to find ways to cut off their king from getting active. And the way to use this, let's say you played this move in the game, this great move cutting off their king from getting active The reason why it's so good to do this is not just to, you know, laugh at their king for being stuck on the edge of the board, it's to use this time that they are stuck on the edge of the board to improve your own king's activity. And then when the time is right, you know, you can cash in, you can let their king out of the cage, and when they get let out, your king is active because you've been working on it for five moves and their king is just starting to try and get active. So find ways to prevent their king from getting active, and when you do, that's when you improve all of your pieces. Tip number 19 is that all of the weaknesses in chess positions that we were talking about earlier, the weak color complexes, weak pawns, weak squares in the position, you know, knight outpost squares, they all want to be attacked by different pieces. So what I mean by that is weak color complexes are best attacked by bishops just because you know weak color complexes are always a diagonal and so if you have a bishop of that same color complex diagonal then that's the best way to use that weakness to attack and weak pawns especially backwards pawns and if you haven't seen the term backwards pawn before it's just a pawn that can't move forward without being captured and so it's kind of stuck in its position Backwards pawns are best attacked by your heavy pieces. So these are rooks, and these are your queen, anything that can guard the square in front of it. And the reason why rooks and heavy pieces are so good at attacking backwards pawns is because not only can they stop the pawn from walking forward, they can also attack the pawn itself. So heavy pieces are good at attacking backwards pawns, And... Of course, weak holes, weak squares in the position, those are where you want your knights. So knights are best at attacking weak squares in the position. So these are the different weaknesses and the different pieces that you want to use to actually utilize those weaknesses to win your games. Tip number 20 is that if your opponent has more space on the chessboard, we went over space, they have a bunch of pawns in your position and it's quite annoying, the way to fight back is with with pawn breaks. And I always say that the way to find squares, the way to find pawn breaks is to imagine each pawn sticking nails out in your position. And if you can put a pawn on one of those nail squares, then this is a pawn break. So in order to fight back with a space disadvantage, you need to use pawn breaks to trade off those pawns and slowly take away the space that their pawns, that they are controlling on the chessboard. So if your opponent has more space, you fight back. against that with pawn breaks. Tip number 21 is that you will want to actually play on the area of the chessboard that you control more space in. So here for example it might seem like we have a bunch of pieces active near their king side and so hey why don't we want to use our pieces to attack their king? Not necessarily. More times you will want to use your space advantage to dictate where you'll want to play. So, for example, in this position, our space advantage is actually over on the queen side. We have more space, our pawns are telling us that we have more space on the queen side, and this will dictate where you will want to play usually. That is, if you've ever heard the term, you want to play where your pawns are pointing, that is because in this area you have more space. And so a good move here would actually be to Move all of your pieces over to the queen side behind your guardians and start fighting where you have more space on the chessboard. Tip number 22 is that a fianchettoed bishop, if it's extremely active, can be actually more important, more powerful than a rook. So in this position, just because you can take this rook in the corner, it actually It actually would be a mistake to do this. And that's for two reasons. One is that this bishop is extremely active. It's our most active piece on the entire chessboard, while their rook is the least active piece on the entire chessboard. And this bishop is an extremely important defender. It's one of our only defenders near our king. So if we give up this bishop, now there is almost zero defenders near our king, and they have a bunch of pieces ready to attack our king. So this rook over in the corner really didn't matter at all. Tip number 23 is that you can actually make moves that provoke your opponents to create own weaknesses in their position. So what I mean by that is that you can play queen c2, and if you're thinking about this move and thinking, Okay, we're attacking this pawn. I mean, I get it, we're attacking the pawn, but can't they just play g6 and now, you know, we moved our queen for nothing? Well, now they've created weaknesses in their position. Now they have weak dark squares, and they also have a hook. A pawn that we can use to open up their king. And so even though you made a move that's easy to defend, which generally you don't want to make moves that are very easy to defend, if that move is provoking a weakness, especially a pawn push, because these are the most permanent, you know, moves that you can make in chess, and often pawns, you can see all of the weaknesses in the position just by looking at pawns, you can make moves to provoke weaknesses, To then use those weaknesses to win. Tip number 24 is that you can prophylactically defend your weaknesses. And what I mean by that is that you should always be aware of the weaknesses in your position. So here, for example, these are two extremely weak squares in the position. And so you should always keep track of how knights can get into weak squares. And also, these are very weak. This is a very weak color complex in your position. And like we went over, the best attackers of color complexes are the bishop of that color. And so here a great move would be to actually take the piece that can attack our weaknesses, right? And so you can kind of defend your weaknesses by prophylactically defending them, by taking the piece that would be used to attack them. Does that make sense? Tip 25 is that you can give up pawn weaknesses To help liberate your position and free your pieces, many, many times, and in this opening, this is the advanced French, many times you will, if you have a weakness, you will make a bunch of moves in a row that are defending this weakness. You are tying all of your pieces down to defending this. So, for example, we move our bishop back, we are trying to defend this weakness. And, in fact, this weakness is so hard to guard. That the best move for us, the best plan, is to go for this draw here. This repetition of moves. Because our weakness is so weak that we actually just cannot hold on to it. And it's better for us to take a draw. But instead, all the way back, of trying our best to hold on to this weakness. We can free, we can liberate our pieces from that responsibility, and you have to be careful doing this because you're just giving up material. So we can castle here, giving up that weakness, because at the end of it, and we can even give up another pawn, and this is not good, because at the end of it, all of our pieces are extremely active from giving up that weakness. We aren't tying ourselves down from guarding that weakness. You can sometimes voluntarily give it up. If it improves your piece activity, if it frees all of your pieces, and especially if you have a counterattack following, you know, giving it up. So after giving it up these two pawns, this is a position where all of our pieces are active. We have extremely active pieces and their king is in the middle. And you can use these considerations, the king's safety, the four pillars, the king's safety, piece activity, weaknesses, and space. You can use these considerations to... Decide whether it's good for you to actually give up a pawn that's tying up all your pieces. Tip 26 is that you actually don't want to attack backwards pawns themselves. You want to attack and control the squares in front of them. You want to keep their weakness in place by controlling the square that they want to give themselves up in. So make sure that they stay there. And then when you have it so that you control that, making sure it can't push forward, then you can start attacking that piece. This is why heavy pieces are so good at attacking backwards pawns, is because they do both. They guard the square in front of the pawn, making sure it can't push forward, and they attack the pawn themselves. Because if you, instead of moving your knight here, controlling the square, if you just attack the pawn itself, then... It can just move forward and then you kind of look silly, you know what I mean? So you want to first control the movement of that backward pawn. And then you can go attack it and try to win, you know, win the pawn after. Tip 27 is that trades are bad for the side that has structural weaknesses, pawn weaknesses. So, for example, in this position, this D pawn with all the pieces on the board is actually quite strong. It's well defended. It's taking space. We are using it kind of to have piece activity behind it. But... When all of the pieces are traded off, this pawn is actually quite weak. You know, there's no, it's an isolated pawn. This is quite weak. And we have to tie our heavy, our powerful pieces down to this pawn to make sure we don't lose it. And so the more pieces that come off of the board, the weaker and weaker that your pawn, your structural weaknesses, your weak pawns actually feel. And another way to think about it is that when there are a bunch of pieces on the board, we of course need to guard our weakness. But we are only using one of our many pieces, and I have our calculator here. So we have seven pieces on the board, seven pieces, sorry. And we are using one of our seven, that's 14% of our powerful pieces. To guard this pawn, this weakness, right? But when pieces are traded off, something still needs to guard that pawn. And so even if this rook was more active and we just had the knight, this would be half of our powerful pieces tied up to guarding the pawn. So that's another way you can think about it. When there's more pieces on the board, you still have to guard that weakness, but it's less percentage. of your powerful pieces you have to use. Tip 28 is that doubled pawns are not automatically bad for your position. So here, if our opponent takes our bishop, forcing us to double our pawns, It's... we would prefer for them not to be doubled, but they can actually be useful. Doubled pawns, especially in the center, can be useful for us one because they guard center squares they help guard center squares and so you know we have more pawns in the center uh guarding central squares that's important but also because they're guarding central squares they can often be very good at supporting center pawn pushes with the pawns that are next to them and so doubled pawns are not automatically bad and especially doubled pawns in the middle can actually be good because Not only do they do all these things, but also, you know, they can help activate your other pieces as well. Tip 29 is that when you are taking space, when you're moving pawns up the board, if you don't have enough pieces supporting them, then they can actually be a liability. They're overextended. A common example is in the Alekhine's or the Alekhine's defense. They are inviting you. The whole point of it is to invite you to keep pushing your pawns forward. They are spending a lot of moves, moving the same piece, this can't be good. But the reason that it's playable is that they can bring your pawns towards them and then start chipping away at them. And because you don't have enough of your pieces out to sufficiently support the pawns that you've pushed up the board, it's actually quite difficult to hold onto all of your pawns. And that's what makes it a viable opening to play. Because they are chipping away. Notice here that pushing this pawn up hangs this one. And so that tempting move can't be played. You're guarding your middle pawns. They are trying to remove the defenders. to take from this middle pawn and so very often it can just be way too difficult to hold on to these pawns notice here you'd have to if you want to save your pawn structure near the king you have to take with a queen giving back the pawn and so it forces you to make weird sacrifices uh because your pawns are so far up and because you don't have enough pieces supporting them first Tip number 30 is the principle of two weaknesses. So anybody, you know, anybody can guard one weakness in their chess position. It's not pleasant, but you can do it. The principle of two weaknesses says that you actually want to, when you have one weakness that you are forcing your opponent to make sacrifices in order to guard, they're sacrificing piece activity to hold onto this pawn weakness. You want to try and actually create more weaknesses for them. Another weakness is the principle of two weaknesses. And if you can create another one, that's where their position really cracks. So this is a very instructive moment. So here, this pawn is very weak, like we said. And also this pawn is weak if we bring our king up. Now this pawn cannot push forward. And so the opponent tries to take space on this side of the board. And now we can fix. Their weakness. Now our king doesn't have to be here to guard the square. We have used this pawn to fix their weakness and the opponent says, hey you can take my pawn that my rook was guarding but at least I will get rid of my weakness and I will get some rook activity. And here you say, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to create a weakness for myself. You are the only one holding weaknesses here, buddy. So it forces their rook back, of course. And now with this rook tied down and this weakness fixed, we can trade off some centerpieces and go walk over to the other side of the board. I mean, they can't really do anything here. They just have to hold on and pray for their weaknesses to go away. We can go over to the other side of the board. We've created one more weakness in their position. And they're saying, you know what? You can have one weakness. You can have two weaknesses. Just please give me some rook activity. And you say, no. No, you're holding on to this pawn and now all of these weaknesses are going to go down whether you like it or not. And this is just how you turn one weakness into multiple weaknesses. And after this, now the position comes crumbling down and this is an easy, easy win. And that was all 30 tips. I hope you learned something. If you did, I would really appreciate it if you left a like on the video and subscribe for more videos like these. If you want a certain topic discussed or a video on a certain topic. Leave a comment. All right, go win some games.