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.

Cool?

Wonderful.

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.

But, stick with me for a second.

The exact moves are not ultra important.

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.

Also, the bishop is just very safe here.

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.

It all ties together.

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?

The queen and the bishop together.

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

We're not taking this.

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.

This is how it usually works on YouTube.

You go and play it.

It doesn't work.

You come back.

You're like, okay.

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

Sometimes you might castle short.

Sometimes you might castle long.

In this case, we didn't do that, right?

Now, a lot of things are at play here.

First of all, black played C5.

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

By the way, white has choices even here.

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.

Say that a million times to yourself.

C5, C3.

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.

For example, like this.

Will you ever get this?

I don't know.

Some of my higher rated players might.

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.

That's the Jobaba style London.

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

I am giving you an overview.

I am giving you the selection.

You have the menu.

Now you take it to the next step, right?

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.

Now, if C5 is not played, right?

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.

It's completely okay.

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.

Knight in front of pawn, terrible.

Not good at all.

I need you to finish that pyramid and finish your development.

But C5 is a pretty challenging move.

And oftentimes it will be associated if you don't take it, if you just go for the pyramid approach.

It'll be associated with development right behind.

And if you choose not to capture this pawn, you're gonna need to know how to play this position.

So first of all, counterplay on your B2 pawn.

Do not blunder the B2 pawn.

Just don't do it.

You can offer a queen trade.

This is the most common way to meet this.

And this queen trade is very interesting.

You don't want to take and open up their rook.

It's usually unlikely that you wanna do that.

You actually want them to take you because then you get your open rook.

Now actually you have the advantage.

Queenless middle game.

It does happen.

This is known as the best way, according to theory, to meet it.

And if they play C4, you actually can just slide out of there.

You can slide out of there because now you've overextended their center and this break, E4, becomes very powerful.

Now we're getting into a little bit more intricate kind of analysis of the London system, but that's what you get.

Eight minutes into an overview of the theoretical portion.

But generally, queen B6 and C5 is the most critical way to play.

You can meet it with a queen trade that's usually very decent.

And keen viewers would notice that I've played knight to D2.

Knight D2 is more flexible than actually the move knight to F3, particularly against C5.

And that is because the rook has no breathing room if you leave the knight back here.

So there's a very good line here for black.

If you try the same exact approach, this very tricky move, bishop to F5.

This is advanced London territory, but even the beginners can appreciate that if you take this, your rook gets trapped.

And that is why you need to play knight D2 first.

That's been discovered in the last few years that knight D2 is the critical approach.

Now, another thing, folks, that we've really kind of glossed over, and what I want you to pay attention to before I play any training games, where's this bishop going?

You see, what I need you to do when you play the London is don't just pre-move all the moves and get your pyramid, bam, bam, bam, doesn't matter.

No, actually, every move matters.

Do they play C5 at all?

Do they play it on the second, third, fourth move?

What do they do with this bishop?

What do they do with this bishop?

If the bishop comes out to F5, yes, you can continue in pyramid style with bishop D3, C3, blah, blah, blah.

But personally, I actually very much like that when they leave their light-squared bishop, I like to turn this into a queen's gambit.

I actually abandon the pyramid plan because when the light-squared bishop comes out, the queen, we do the exact same thing they do to us to them.

C-pawn queen, C-pawn queen, boom, down to B7.

By the way, if you're like an 800, 700, what's gonna happen in some of your games is you're gonna win the whole queenside.

Like, you're gonna win everything.

You're gonna win the rook, the knight, the pawn, the pawn.

Trust me.

If you're like 1,300, 1,400, probably not.

But it's the critical way to play.

And you can play knight to C3, you can play queen B3.

You can also play rook C1, just so you understand.

You can also play rook C1 and just focus the game plan on the queenside, right?

But the higher level you are, the chances of you just destroying some of the first 10 moves, not so high.

I know the video's called what it's called.

But you're gonna be battling a little bit longer against some stronger players.

Bishop F5 is a perfectly reasonable move.

These two plans together, C5 and bishop F5, also perfectly reasonable.

But there is a whole class of Londons where they don't move their light-squared bishop.

They just keep it boxed in.

And this is my favorite.

I mean, if you get a non-C5, non-light-squared bishop moving London, oh, it's just, it's all, I mean, the game's all yours.

Pyramid them, develop the knight, develop the bishop.

And the last question really remaining out here is where their dark-squared bishop goes.

If they offer you a trade of dark-squared bishops, let's say knight F3, like knight C6 is not great, but let's say this, this is a big question.

We've addressed the C pawn, we've addressed the light-squared bishop, we've addressed now the dark-squared bishop.

What do you do?

Do not take.

Everything about this opening is about the center squares.

You just lost the battle.

You're never gonna move your knight there.

So then it's not on me.

No refunds in this video.

It's not on me, right?

Don't do that.

You have a couple of options here.

I like rocking back.

Because if they take me, I open up my rook, and then if they castle, oh, it's over.

I'm not castling.

Why would I ever castle?

Let's just go for an attack, right?

You can also just expedite the knight to the middle plan.

It's not the most accurate.

The stronger players will know how to neutralize this.

But trust me, if people here are just autopiloting, right, and just playing like, well, then you're gonna finish your pyramid.

Now if they take you, you fork them, and then you just have everything.

You've won the battle for e5, you've won the battle for e4, boom.