1.b3 & 1...b6 Chess Openings [Nimzo-Larsen Attack]

A lot of you guys have asked me to show how I use the openings that I share with you in my own blitz game, so there you go.

Today I'd like to cover one of my favorite openings for blitz, which is the opening b3.

It's a very universal opening because you can use the exact same setup as black when you're playing b6 on the first move.

And there we go with the first game, I'm playing white, b3, e5, bb2, so here you can already see that this bishop starts to put pressure on black and the pawn needs to be defended.

Now we play pawn to e3, enabling for the other bishop to go out and put some pressure over that diagonal. d5, bishop b5.

Now this knight is pinned down to the king, and therefore this pawn on e5 is in fact undefended and white threatens to capture it on the next move.

Therefore black defends it with the bishop. Knight a3, now white is once again threatening to capture this pawn, because remember this knight is pinned and can no longer move.

It's interesting how this opening, which is similarly kind of covered opening at first when you play just b3 and b2, but you can see that white star is creating threats at pretty much every turn very early in the game.

And it's quite annoying for black, frankly. So black played queen e7, now the center is solidified and white played pawn to d4, just putting even more pressure to this pawn.

Actually in this position, pawn c4 is also good, undermining black center that way.

And pawn d4 is the other way to do that. d4, now this pawn is once again attacked.

Black decided to capture it over here, if the pawn moves forward, the knight does not have to retreat back, you can move it forward.

So, I mean, this knight is pinned once again, so it keeps putting pressure.

In the game, black decided to capture on d4, and here it's funny that Stockfish in this position, strangely enough, recommends to

not capture this pawn at all, but to castle. That's quite nice.

Although I could have captured it with with a knight, bishop or a queen, you know, stockfish says that casting is the best, kind of aiming for, I guess, opening up the e-file and then use it.

Now that's too creative for me, so I just played a more simple move Qxd4.

And it's in style of an opening, because one of the key ideas is just to use the power of this fiancato bishop to put pressure along this diagonal.

And you see that right now Qxd4 is coming. By

the way, these games as well as other games that I'm about to share with you today, these These are bullet games, one minute games, but you can see that when you know common patterns of this opening, it's simple to play these moves, you can do that unthinkingly.

Also the queen from here attacks this pawn on d5, therefore black played knight f6 to defend it, and I played knight to c3, once again threatening to capture this pawn, because I'm attacking it twice and black defends it only once.

This knight is still pinned, still cannot capture the queen. Black played bishop e6, protecting this pawn on d5.

And now there's another pretty cool thing, so there's a move knight to e5. Now why should I play this move instantaneously?

It's because if not, black is ready to cancel perhaps kinside, which will unpin this knight on c6.

And after that it will be too late to try to make use of this pin. Therefore white should hurry and make use of the pin right now.

So knight e5 puts more pressure to this pinned knight. Black

trades off, which is nice for white, because now black does not have a counterpart, his own dark squared bishop, while white's dark squared bishop is still strong.

Black was here sick and tired of this pin and he decided to play pawn to a6.

So I trades off over here and now I cancels queenside.

Now I could have cancelled kingside just as well, but I cancels queenside and you'll see why in a second.

After Black cancels there is a common idea that thanks to this battery of queen and bishop you can actually create a pretty powerful attack against Black's king.

And one of the common idea is to push the pawn forward g4, g5.

Trying to get rid of this knight from f6 so that it clears the path for our battery along this diagonal.

And g4 is quite a cool move, because if he cannot capture it with his own bishop, that would drop the queen.

If instead, like, captures it with the knight, that would lead to a variation similar to what happened in the actual game.

In the actual game, like, did not capture this pawn, but instead played knight d7, trying to get rid of this annoying queen because it's currently attacked.

But you know, white can still use the power of this diagonal, and after a knight takes d5, black actually resigned.

Now what's the catch here? Well, first of all you can see that this knight's sack opens up this diagonal.

Now there is nothing there, and queen takes g zone is coming.

And therefore black wants to stop that and capture white's queen here, and after knight takes e7, chuck to the king,

And after king moves, bishop takes e5, white grabs the knight and white is currently up a piece with a winning position.

In the next game I'm playing black, so I'm playing here pawn to b6.

By the way, if you haven't watched my video about this opening where I cover exactly how you play it as black, I'll drop a link down below and somewhere up there so that you can check it out later.

Anyway, white goes pawn d4, bishop b7. And white decided to play here knight to d2, and it's actually, you know, something that advanced players sometimes play.