The first two chapters covered the Queen’s Gambit and the London System. While these have mirrored black versions, they are primarily considered openings for white because white makes the first move and can control how the game starts.
But what I am about to teach you in this chapter is a method for black to try and gain control of the situation. The Scandinavian Defense looks like this after white plays E4 and black does D5.
This picture is taken from black’s perspective because if you are playing as black in the real world, the pieces will look like this from your perspective. The idea behind this is offering white a chance to take a pawn. This is similar to the Queen’s Gambit, but it is different because after white takes it, we can capture the white pawn with our queen!
At this point I know what you’re thinking. You’ve probably been told it is a bad idea to bring your queen out early. Generally, this is true, but if you’re smart about it, you can keep your queen safe and hopefully still get your other pieces active. What will happen 95% of the time is that white will attack your queen with a C3 knight right away. When this happens, you want to move the queen to A5.
Now at this point, white could literally do almost anything but the queen is safe for this turn. White will most likely move their other knight into the game and form some kind of plan. What you must do as black is the move pawn to C6.
There are 3 main reasons why C6 is the best move. First, it provides your queen an escape route if she does get attacked later on. Second, it prevents white from putting the king in check with a bishop to B5, and third, it doesn’t block your dark squared bishop from getting out later on.
If you find yourself in this situation of the image above, at this point you need to watch white’s moves and see what they are planning. You made it through the opening and now it’s time to play some chess. As stated before, the goal of an opening is just to open the game and then you still have to put your soul into ever move if you expect to win. However, I think this gives a really good start!
I also made a video on this opening which is a good place to see an example game of how this will play out in a real live chess game.
If there is anything I need to add to this post or you want to challenge me to a game of chess, comment on this post. I am looking for challengers who can play games with me when I stream live for an interactive experience. Even better is if you are a Twitch streamer so we can collaborate and grow our channels together.
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