The Advantage Of Two Bishops | Bishop Pair Strategy EXPLAINED

Hello Students,

I am sure you have many times heard about the advantage of the bishop pair. In today's video I will explain you the strategy behind it so that you could understand and use this powerful advantage in your own games. If you would like me to expand on this and show you more examples in follow-up videos - let me know below. 

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/6dGDJmX3bh8

Happy learning!

Very informative video. Thanks Coach.

Kestony, thank you for another great video.  Enjoyable and informative just like your lessons.  I'm almost ready for another one of those, by the way, and I will reach out soon.  Thanks!

Great video, I love how you speak English too.

@anjum_samuel Thank you Anjum!

@David_Mary Thank you. I am looking forward to our next class.

@MorningGlory84 I am happy to hear you love my accent. I hope it's easily understandable though!

I don't usually watch embedded videos but I made an exception for myself this time. 

Great video! I can tell you did your research on this and prepared the materials thoroughly. If I didn't have a strong coach that forced me to learn the two bishops advantage (I like knights), I would have learned a lot here.

I actually have a couple examples. A few weeks after my coach showed the steinitz game to me I actually won a game in the exact same structure, although my opponent was only rated 1400.

Here's another example of the bishop pair, which I'm not sure if it is in your video (didn't finish it)

@Kestony I can understand you perfectly.

@B1ZMARK Thank you for the compliment and sharing an instructive example!

In a B+N vs B+B position, The idea of putting pawns on the same color as the opponent's lone bishop is interesting.

On the face of it, it's wrong... first of all when you do this, your opponent's pawns tend to end up on the opposite color, meaning this strategy will tend to help your opponent's lone bishop be more active than otherwise. Another downside is putting pawns on the same color as their bishop gives that bishop potential targets, especially in the endgame.

However I think it might be a good rule of thumb for a few reasons. First of all one innate advantage of the bishop pair is it often has the ability to decide when a pair of minor pieces are traded. By placing pawns in this way, the player with the two bishops ensures they have attractive BxB trades in the future (since otherwise they might end up with a "bad" bishop). Secondly, as a sort of corollary to giving the B+N side targets in the endgame, putting pawns on the same color sometimes allows you to restrict their bishop in a middlegame, which can be seen in the game B1zmark posted. Third, by choosing to enhance your unique bishop, you may have opportunities to exploit a weak color complex (seen somewhat in both the Steinitz and B1zmark-posted games).

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I'm not sure I'll follow this rule all the time, but it seems pretty good, and I'd never heard it before, so thanks.

Very educative