How to dominate with the London System
The London System starts after 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4
This is a set up based opening, our setup will look like this: a bishop on d3, a knight on d2, and pawns on c3 and d3. We will castle.
In the opening, we want to control e5. While doing our setup if they attack our bishop, with something like Bd3, don't trade, but move the bishop to g6. Now if they trade, we recapture with the h-pawn, we get the open h-file and good kingside pressure. If they attack us with the knight he bishop goes to g5.
If they play Nc6, we play c3, easy way to remember this, pyramid of your pawns, to stop it from hopping to b4 and attacking our bishop. If previously they hadn't traded and instead castled, we just develop like normal. If they ever do anything that supports the e5, we must occupy e5 with something Prophylactic, we jump our f3 knight to e5, stopping that e5 push. If they trade we recapture and we can support our e5 pawn with f4.
After they play any random move, we have a plan, castle and support our knight with f4. They have another way to respond to our attempt at the London, and that is the King's Indian Setup, which someone luckily made a blog about
. We want to make this game sharp, we're going to take the full center, play Qd2 and castle queenside. We want to trade their g7 bishop off for our dark-squared bishop.
From their we will try to trade the bishops, and launch a Pawn Storm on the kingside. Back to the 1st variation discussed, if they ever push c5, we play c3, unless c3 has already been played. When they bring the c8 bishop out, we have a good Qb3 move to attack b7. Once we finish development we can hop the knight to e5.
After c5, yeah back to c5, when we play c3, if they push c4 to kick our bishop, the c2 square is free so that's where we move our bishop to. One useful motif to know is the Greek Gift Sacrifice. That being said... You know the opening! Yep, it's that simple! You now know the basics of the London! Good luck, and have fun with this opening.
. We want to make this game sharp, we're going to take the full center, play Qd2 and castle queenside. We want to trade their g7 bishop off for our dark-squared bishop.
From their we will try to trade the bishops, and launch a Pawn Storm on the kingside. Back to the 1st variation discussed, if they ever push c5, we play c3, unless c3 has already been played. When they bring the c8 bishop out, we have a good Qb3 move to attack b7. Once we finish development we can hop the knight to e5.
After c5, yeah back to c5, when we play c3, if they push c4 to kick our bishop, the c2 square is free so that's where we move our bishop to. One useful motif to know is the Greek Gift Sacrifice. That being said... You know the opening! Yep, it's that simple! You now know the basics of the London! Good luck, and have fun with this opening.