Rook

Because if you trade the queens, I mean, rook and james are very drawish.

And they have a very active rook on the second rank.

Rook takes f4.

Also activates the other rook, right? Having somebody who's like rook b4 potentially.

And then cashing in on the queen side weaknesses.

I saw it.

Oh, my God.

Is it Rook B8, really? It is Rook B8.

And she shows this beautiful positional style again, like this h3 again, just, you know, space gaining, limiting move as well, just multifunctional, stopping bishop g4s and so on.

already starts from here yeah the space gaining move again she likes to take space and the second point of this move of course is to support knight d4 at some point and look at the knight on b8 the art of burying pieces already starts here slowly queen d2 connecting your rooks yeah very harmonious play actually Rook d1, knight b5.

Yes, black wants to exchange some pieces because they are lacking space, but the problems remain actually in this position.

Because knight e4 is coming soon.

So she is sort of transforming the advantage by training those Queens.

Long-term weaknesses become more exploitable, basically.

And I get a good Rook on the seventh rank, and she will double up very, very soon, yeah? So I very much love this game.

It looks like the Rook might be trapped on C7.

Well to me I always say the same thing and to me playing system has been the only way because as many of you already know I started late And when I started, a lot of my opponents, they already had a very good repertoire.

Like, I remember the top kids at the Chess Academy, they already were playing these complicated lines of the Dragon Sicilian, and to me it was like, I remember seeing some sacrifices on C3, like to the Rook on C8, and then sacrifice.

And to me it was like, okay, if I have to invest time to learn all of this theory, which is very easy to forget, then how am I gonna learn what truly matters, which is the middle game and the end game? So...

Part because of that, but also part because by nature I'm very lazy.

For example, they cannot really go for long-term positional sacrifices like exchange sacrifice.

The Soviet sacrifice, for example, Rook takes c3 to reopen the king.

That's a long-term sacrifice.

You don't see any effect of it, but you still go for it because of the long-term attacks and so on.

The training can be effortful, but the execution when you're in the game should feel effortless.

In contrast, if I give a different type of chess advice, for example, I give advice on where to put rooks.

Rooks belong on open fouls.

That advice does not need to be accessible in your mind all the time.

You just wait till most of your pieces are developed, and then you realize your rooks are still sleeping, and then that's the trigger to think of the advice.