Why You Keep Losing | 15 Chess Principles You MUST KNOW

1. Knights before bishops. 2. You should try to defend and develop at the same time. 3. The principles are guidelines, but there are exceptions. 4. The best attacking piece is the king's bishop. 5. Place each piece on the best possible square as quickly as possible. 6. Don't move your pieces more than one time in the opening. 7. Castle early (better on king's side). 8. Two pieces are worth more than a rook and a pawn. 9. Develop all pieces before attacking. 10. Deal with threats first before continuing development. 11. Each pawn you move in front of your castled king weakens your position. Try to keep all 3 as long as possible. 12. Developing a piece that ALSO attacks is a good move. 13. Open lines are to the advantage of the player with more development. 14. The best defender of white's king side is the knight on f3. 15. Whoever controls the center has better chances of attacking.

That principle with the three pawns and the f3 knight, and how moving them gives chances to the opponent, that was new and very valuable information to me. Thank you Nelson!

Nelson, you are the best chess channel and ACTUALLY teach very efficiently, rather than make a big show. Bravo!

I've gone from 900 to 650

As an intermediate player I can say that you can do A LOT if you just focus in not blundering. Especially in quicker games, if you don't screw things up, chances are that your opponent will do that eventually

That last part there really shows that the best defense is a good offense, a.k.a. counterattacking.

One thing that you didn't mentioned about weakening the king side through moving pawns forward is that it can potentially for lower elo players be a weakness to keep the 3 pawns unmoved. I haven't been back-rank checkmated myself much, but I've done it multiple times in the elo range of 1300 - 1900. People in this elo tend to forget the crucial danger of getting checkmated on the back row so they continue what they do, thinking they have an advantage but suddenly they get checkmated or forced to sacrifice pieces to avoid the back-rank mate. It's probably obvious to higher elo players how to avoid the back-rank checkmate, even if you didn't move a pawn, but to lower players they are either unaware of the danger or forget it. I'm not particulary good at seeing these kind of lines where you abuse the weakness, so it often prevents me from doing stuff like sacrificing bishop to create attack. And it rarely happens to me as well when I weaken the king pawns. It is great advice, though just to keep in mind the potential of back-rank mate that people like me and lower elo players tend to ignore.

This is going to be a great series for the channel. Every two weeks to start is probably fine but I will definitely be looking forward to the next one. Great job!

What a fabulous idea for a series. I have just blown the dust of the book, which I have in the old descriptive notation. Your video lessons will compliment the ideas of the book and bring it more up to date. Great work Nelson, very much looking forward to game 2 - thanks

Love the new series Nelson! You present the chapter in a really instructive way.

This is a really nice distillation of chess wisdom, thank you! I've played many games where I'm on the receiving end of these attacks and I didn't really know what I'd done wrong. This is a very helpful collection of simple ideas.

Thank you Nelson, we're moving up the ranking slowly, from beginner to (almost) advanced. I'm holding my own against 1000 ELO Bots. I find your videos most informative.

You did a good job on this video, Nelson. Logical Chess-Move by Move by Irving Chernev was the very first chess book I bought, way back in the early 70's, I still have it, and enjoy going through the moves, one at a time. My other favorite chess book is entitled: "Chess World Championship 1972 Fischer vs Spassky by Larry Evans and Ken Smith. The unique thing about this book, is that it takes you through the '72 World Championship, one game at a time, with a diagram for every move, and an explanation for each move. I feel these types of chess books are really valuable for the average chess player, and answer many of our questions on why certain moves were played. Keep up the good work. Ray

This is so cool. Years ago when I got back into chess and needed to learn better this was one of the books I picked up at my local bookstore. I really like the idea of telling the "why" behind the moves. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Nelson is a natural-born teacher. Many thanks for clear, concise, easy-to-follow lesson. I'm never overwhelmed with too much, too fast information as with many other Youtube presenters.

Thanks Nelson, this series is a great idea! So I had read the 1st game in the book, and as I did I thought that black's attack, although very strong, was a bit premature because black's king was still in the center.. I had an eye for moves like Bxf7+ or Qa4+! Even without seeing the perpetual in full, I would not have resigned with white after Bxf2.. nothing to lose at going for a few checks to see where they lead to 🙂

Thank you!!! Great of you to go over this book

Great timing! I was given this book for Christmas and hadn't got around to reading it yet!

Great first video in this series! Really enjoyed reading the first game and then watching your analysis of it. Thanks for the great insights as always. I feel every week might be a bit better since each game isn't too long to study, but will be watching regardless!

Finally got over my anxiety to play real games after doing 2k puzzles, from review it seems the middle game is my weak point, when there's a lot of options to choose from. Thanks for all of your videos you explain things very well