Name: How to WIN with the London System!
Uploaded: 2025-04-01T00:52:15.000Z
Duration: 29 min 39 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this chess openings video on the London system.

Transition words & phrases

The London has become unbelievably popular from beginner, intermediate, advanced, up to the title player level, because it's super easy to learn and the plans are pretty flexible.

In this video, I'm going to spend about 15 minutes showing you how to play it, and then I will play two practice games against my subscribers, and you should know that I also have a London course that if you'd like to check it out to take your knowledge to the next level, in the description on my website.

I've also put the moves that I'm about to show you in the description.

You can copy-paste those moves into any analysis board on any chess website that you wish, use an openings database, analyze with an engine, and so on and so forth, to take your understanding of the game to the next level.

So, the London system begins with the Queen's pawn, two squares to d4, and for black, the two most common responses are just the mirror image d5 and knight to f6.

For anything else, like some gambits that immediately target your pawn, like the England gambit, which is wildly popular, shout out to the video of Gotham Chess, one of my favorite creators, you're gonna have to fill in the gaps a little bit, okay?

So, if you get hit with something you don't know, it's gotta be out there, and you can research it.

So, we're gonna begin with d5, and the London is really this bishop coming to f4.

You can do it after knight to f3 and then bishop to f4.

Personally, I like to commit bishop to f4 right away, because I don't really know if my knight is gonna go here all that much.

There might be some move orders where it does not.

Now, what I'm gonna show you is a typical position that you are after in the London.

Then, we are going to show black's most challenging responses to the London, and I'm gonna kinda tell you a little bit about how to study this.

So, let's say the player's just developed.

You're going to play e3, completing one side of what we call a pyramid on this over here, and then the pyramid will be complete like this.

You wanna, by Illuminati fans, by all means, you know, rejoice.

So, the other battle is gonna be for the e4 and e5 squares.

You already see that we're controlling this square quite well, and as we continue to develop our pieces, the e5 square is very much up for grabs.

In my hypothetical example, black is attacking us with a flank pawn, c5, that is the most challenging response to the London system, because it immediately creates queenside play with the queen and potentially the knight, because our bishop has abandoned the queenside.

I'm more so getting to the critical position of our opening.

The bishop on d3, the light squared bishop, stands inside of the pyramid, okay?

Targeting the enemy king, if the king ever goes short castle.

And the reason we've played this side of the pyramid is so that if the opponent were to play something like c4, then we can just slide back.

So, our position actually very much makes sense.

We also repel the enemy forces on this side of the board with our pawns.

That's why all of this opening kind of makes sense.

And if we sufficiently control this square on e4 with the bishop and the knight, and we sufficiently control this square on e5 with the pawn, the bishop, and the knight, black's counterplay is sort of killed in the center.

And the game plan of the London is to, yes, you can just castle, and that's fine.

But the central game plan I like to employ is mobilizing directly into the middle, okay?

Which opens up our queen to then potentially rotate through that available square and target that king side with the bishop, right?

And if the knight were to take us, now, by the way, I just hope we're clear.

This is just to plant and then create our attack.

But if we are to be taken, we are going to remove this knight from the defense of the king, bring in our pieces, and sometimes we won't castle at all.

Yes, you can, but you can also just go directly after this attack.

This is the perfect kind of London in a nutshell.

But you've only been watching this video for about four minutes.

You are not yet ready to do it as much as you want to.

There's a lot of things we needed to go through to get to this position, and openings are all about variation, right?

If we go all the way back to the beginning of this position, black played this move, C5.

Yes, you can complete your pyramid and play knight to F3 and bishop to D3.

In fact, oftentimes, C5 in the London, the best response, the second that you see C5, C3.

However, some of my more advanced players watching, maybe 13, 1400, that's not the only thing you can do.

In the London, you can also meet C5 with actually taking it.

If you're prepared, because if the opponent tries to win the pawn back, you can hang on to the pawn.

If they try to do this, you can defend it with the C pawn.

And it's not so, there's a very nasty trap here, by the way.

If black plays the move B6, just looking to undermine your pawns, right?

There's bishop takes B8, a nasty, nasty trap.

The idea being you would like to give this check.

And once you do, the pawn pushes through and the game is over.

Beginners, the games can be a little, there's a little bit more variance in the games.

And then C7, of course, by the way, on the next move and we discover check, right?

So, D, C5 is actually a little bit venomous.

If you know what you're doing, there's a whole nother class of moves where the knight comes to C3.

You can play the Jobaba London as early as this position and try to play knight to B5.

I'm not a huge fan of knight C3, although I have played it.

But the idea is to go for the C7 pawn with the bishop, fried liver, kind of just on the other side.

But I believe in the pure form of the London.

If C5 is not played and instead knight to C6 is played, this is terrible.

Because black now has no activity on the queen side whatsoever.

And if you just play normal with C3, bishop D3 and get that little knight D2, knight F3 action, plant that knight into the middle, you're gonna be good to go.

Do not be afraid of trading the light-squared bishop.

Make forward progress, control these two center squares.

And if you're not gonna be able to launch an attack, what you'll do further down the line is maybe expand in the center with pawn to E4.

But if you win the battle for the center in the London, you will have an advantage as the game progresses, as the game goes on, whether you are attacking or not.

Now, let's kind of slow it down a little bit.

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How to WIN with the London System!

approach

decent

critical

nasty