London Opening In Chess

What is opening in chess ?

An opening is simply the first several moves made in a chess game , there are different opening and with each openings have different variations. There are three phases during a chess game , they are the opening , the middlegame and the endgame. There are many famous opening some are sicilian defense , Queens gambit , Ruy Lopez , etc.. and london opening is one among them . 

Introduction London Opening 

The london opening starts with opening d4 pawn. But instead of playing queens gambit , we will develop the dark squared bishop. Let's look at that with images as examples.

London Opening

London opening starts with pushing the d4 pawn two squares , 

black will play d5 and try to control the center , and we will push our dark squared bishop to f4 , here black could play e5 then we should take it with our d4 pawn or we should take our bishop to g3 square so if the enemy tries to attack our dark squared bishop with their dark squared bishop we should not capture there's , we should remain calm , if he takes ours , then we can re-capture with our h2 pawn . And eventually we will get the h file opened , so that we will get  to attack with queen and rook , we will discuss this later. Now let's focus on the natural development.

exactly like above , then we will try to create a pawn pyramid eventually like below , this helps us in defending the enemy pieces as they cannot place their pieces diagonally to our pawn.

Then we will push our knight to f3 square , and later we will push the next knight to d2 square . To protect the f3 knight .

(g1 knight to f3 square)

(b1 knight to d2 square)

And the last development is pushing the light squared bishop to d3 square , in which the bishop has a control over vast diagonal.

At last you will get a development like below , that almost looks like a gun , it's my imagination.

Now you might have some doubts regarding , what if the opponent push his black squared bishop to attack our dark squared bishop ? In that case you need to push your dark squared bishop to g3 square . So that if opponent tries to attack our dark squared bishop , we can capture his with our h2 pawn and we will get our h file opened.

(attacking our bishop)

(capturing enemy bishop with pawn)

(finally we get our h file opened)

So you may have doubts regarding where will we be using this , and you may be worried having doubled pawns on the g file . But literally we are ones benefitting those . If you look carefully you can see the enemy king can castle , if he is not careful he will tend to castle along the king side , which is a checkmate threat to him. 

So how can we use this current development to checkmate our opponent , first you need to push the knight on f3 square to a safe place , in this case to e5 square , if he tends to move his knight to any other square , we can push our queen to h5 square and on the next move we can checkmate him .

But he will try to block your checkmate idea by playing pawn to h6 .

But don't worry currently you have a more winning position than your opponent , so you're ready to go ,but I need to remind you of one thing that you can't completely rely on london opening , sometimes you've to change opening style to queens gambit . So let me make it clear , you also need to learn about other openings . 

Finally thanks for reading till the end , if you've any doubt regarding london opening ask me in the comments . And if I've made any mistakes in this blog please make sure to correct me using the comment section.

Bye for now and take care of your king !!!