King 8--Open Files

Today, my favorite piece is the rook,
and you're about to find out why!

At the beginning of the game,

we focus a lot
on knights and bishops.

But after they're all gone, the rooks
become the most important piece.

In this chess position, all of
the rooks are blocked by pawns.

Now, rooks may have
a lot of friends on the chessboard,

but I can guarantee you one thing:

pawns are NOT a rook's best friend.
Rooks basically hate pawns!

Because pawns are always
clogging up the action.

What we need to find is an
"open file."

Let's first define what it means.

An "open file"
is a file that has no pawns on it!

Now, there could be pieces on it,
but not pawns,

because pawns almost never leave
a file unless they're capturing.

In short, ChessKids, you want
your rooks to be on open files.

That's the party zone!

So in this very basic chess position,
no matter whose move it is,

it's a race
to get to the open file first.

If you're White,
slide your rook on over!

Now, the beauty of the open file

is you can come charging
all the way down the board--

maybe create a
back-rank checkmate,

maybe just gobble up some pawns!

If Black doesn't realize
what's going on,

and plays some
random chess move,

your rook can
dive all the way to e7

and you're going to act like PacMan,

gobble, gobble,
eating all of those power pellets!

Of course, the smartest move
for Black was to challenge you.

If you play Re1, Black should
actually do the exact same thing.

Now we have a staring contest,

and I would not be
the first person to blink!

Because if you capture
the Black rook,

he'll come over and capture yours,
and he will control the open file.

He's going to come down
and play PacMan with your pieces,

or, if your rook goes off somewhere,

he could even give a
back-rank checkmate later on.

Let's look at a slightly more
complicated chess position.

Here, what's the open file?

Aha! It's a trick question.

There are no files
that don't have pawns.

All the pawns are
still on the chessboard!

So here's what you want
to do, ChessKids.

When you don't have any open files,

you want to figure out which file
is about to become open,

and go ahead
and place your rooks there.

So one option for White
is to open up the f-file.

I know, I know, I didn't give White
permission to move his f-pawn,

but if he wanted to anyway,
if he was disobeying my advice,

you could play pawn to f3,
and if this pawn ever captured,

your rook could take back.

Now, this not an "open file"--
we call this a "half-open" file;

but that's still a pretty good
place for your rook to be!

A "half-open file" is when there's
a pawn only of the enemy's color,

and that's still not so bad.
Here, black's pawn

is the only pawn on the f-file.

But I have an even
better idea for White.

If I was White, I would go for a
different pawn advance.

I would want to push my c-pawn.
That way, I don't weaken my king,

and I really challenge Black's center.

So, a good way to prepare this move
is to move the rook to c1.

Now, I know the rook
is not ON an open file,

but that file could very well
become open in a couple of moves.

Let's just give black some
random chess move;

now when we play the move
pawn to c4,

if Black captures, we capture back--
we have ourselves a half-open file,

and our rook is about to
capture this pawn on c7.

Of course, Black could have
defended his center

by playing pawn to c6,

but now if we take,
and he takes back,

we in fact do have our open file.

Our rook can charge all the
way up the chessboard

and start doing some damage.

In fact, if Black played
this move Rc8,

I probably would not even
capture the free pawn.

I love open files so much
I would bring my other rook to c1,

and now we have what's called a
"battery."

We have two pieces working
together. In this case,

the battery is on the c-file.

That's a very dominating position
for White, and in fact,

it brings us to the last
part of our video today.

In looking for historical examples

of top players that
have used open files,

there was no better player
at using open files than

José Raul Capablanca.

Apologies! FunMasterMike
does not speak very good Spanish.

He was World Champion
in the 1920s,

when he had tons of games
where he dominated the open file.

Let's take a look at one of those.

In this chess position,
it's very easy to see:

his rook is already on the
only open file of the chessboard.

But what's better than
one rook on an open file?

Well, yeah! Putting a battery of
TWO rooks on the open file!

So he played the move Rh4,
with the simple idea

of swinging the other rook
behind the first rook.

Now Black got worried--
understandably so,

and he started running away.

Then, Capablanca
put his other rook on h1,

and he did have a battery.

Now Black is preparing himself
for a possible rook invasion,

and plays Ng8 to guard
his king from the side.

Okay, White plays Qf3;
Black took; White took back--

of course, the rook
has to run away now;

and Capablanca made
a TRIPLE battery!

Some players would call this
"Alekhine's Gun,"

when you put a queen
AND two rooks on the same file.

Of course, Alekhine and Capablanca
were kind of rivals,

so, it's funny that Capablanca
is using Alekhine's idea.

Okay! Black is getting worried

about the queen and possibly
even this bishop teaming up,

so he plays Ra7
to defend his knight,

and the queen
creeps in further to g6.

Now Black is getting super worried
about the rooks diving in.

In fact, this move Rh7 looks pretty
hard to deal with on the next turn.

There's going to be
a double-attack on g7,

and Black is doing all he can
just not to get checkmated.

So Black puts one of his knights
on h6 to block off the open file,

but White just takes anyway!

The pawn takes back,
and he takes with the bishop.

And now Black's got a big problem.

If he takes the bishop
(it's usually a good idea

to get rid of the attackers),
the rook will take back,

and look at how the rook
and even the queen

are enjoying these two open files.

Good luck trying to stop the move
Rh8 on the next turn!

That just looks like we're going
to skewer the king and the queen.

In fact, it's probably going to be
mate pretty soon, too.

Let's just give Black some sort
of random chess move;

we'll play rook check (Rh8+),
and when he runs away

I won't even take the queen;
I'll play Qg7#,

and that's a good example
of using those open files.

For historical accuracy,
I'll show you how the game ended:

instead of taking the bishop,
we had Ke7;

then the queen crashed through
on her own open file;

the king ran away;
we take the knight;

the king runs away;
we make ANOTHER skewer;

Black tried to trade, but
now we play the very cool Bf8.

That forces black to take us,

and THEN the rook
makes use of the open file,

skewering the king
and the other rook;

White is up way too much material

and went on to win
in a couple more moves.

And our final example

is my favorite, favorite,
FAVORITE Capablanca game--

look what he does here!

He moves his king up to put
both of his rooks on the h-file.

You see these two pawns
about to capture?

That's right! Everything is going
to be loaded up on the h-file,

but let's fast-forward
a bunch of moves here.

Oh my goodness!
Look what he's done!

He's transferring everything
to the a-file;

not only that,
he put his pawns in a "v" formation.

"V" is going to be "victory" here!
Let's see what he does on the a-file.

And here we go!

It is Alekhine's Gun in the
proper form on the a-file:

the queen behind the two rooks.
But he's still not done!

He has put every
single piece on the a-file!

Not really the subject of our
lesson, but pretty enough

and he's about to crash
through on the b7 pawn.

So Black captured;
he got his bishop back,

and now a very nice
sacrifice to end the game:

rook takes knight, destroying the
defense of the c6 pawn,

and after take and take
it is a "family fork":

we're threatening ALL of Black's
big pieces, and Black resigned

because we're going to be
taking one of those rooks,

capturing on a6,

we're going to have two extra pawns,
still in the v-formation;

what an exciting way
to close out our video on open files!

He shifted from the h-file
all the way to the a-file;

I think in basketball we would
call that a crossover dribble.

Simply great stuff from our
former World Champion.