Let's play the Bishop's Opening
Let's learn the Bishop's Opening! It's one of the trappiest openings I've ever seen, and you'll pretty much always be winning in the first few moves. First step: pawn to e4.
Let's continue with the Bishop's Opening
I'm gonna let you take a wiiiiild guess at why it's called the bishop's opening. No, it's not because we play our knight on the second move. Bishop to c4.
Black is attacking our e4 pawn. The boring way to play would be knight to c3, defending our pawn. But are we boring? NO! Pawn to d4, counterattacking black.
Black took our pawn - but now we can take theirs and put black in a lot of trouble: pawn takes e5.
It looks like black is going for some weird reverse-fried-liver-attack on us with a fork on f7, but this doesn't work because we have a fork of our own: queen to d5. Now we're hitting the knight on e4 AND threatening checkmate on f7.
Black is worried about a pawn on our side of the board, meanwhile we are 1 move away from CHECKMATING him on his side of the board. Simply sidestep our king to f1.
OK, black finally dealt with the checkmate threat, but now we can win a piece: queen takes knight on e4.
A pawn for a knight? That's a good trade
Black just gave us a pawn for literally no reason, but I won't complain! Bishop takes pawn on d5 and now we have a free pawn AND we're attacking the undefended knight.
Ya know what I could really go for right now? A queen. Notice that the black queen is only defended by the black king. We can deflect the king away from his queen by sacrificing our bishop on f7. After that - free queen!
Black reaaaallly doesn't want to lose their queen. Good thing we can force them to! Dark-square bishop check on g5.
Two ways to win the queen. It really doesn't matter which you choose but the computer slightly prefers taking with the bishop so.... bishop takes queen on d8.
Don't you just love free queens?
This was black's best response to the bishop's opening. Don't worry though, we still have a couple more tricks up our sleeve: first, knight to f3.
Well, now we're TWO pawns down... let's win one back AND win a tempo with queen takes pawn on d4. Black has to either retreat or defend their knight now.
Black chose to retreat their knight, but they did it the wrong way! That means we win the game now. All we have to do is castle. You'll see why in a second.
So why did we castle? We don't even CARE about taking the knight back. Now we have the killer rook to e1 check.
Black had to block the check on the king, but now the g7 pawn has no defender! Queen takes pawn on g7
The rook is safe... for now. Bishop to h6 and black has no way to defend it.
With black's bishop pinned to the king, black's rook is lost. There is no good way to save it. The best black can do is try and get their king to escape before checkmate but honestly, they have no chance at winning this game.
Black had a chance to take our e4 pawn, but now that offer is expired. Pawn push to e5.
Hey knight! Wrong way! Pawn to h3 kicks it out.
Black's knight just sacrificed himself for... literally no reason. Don't be scared. King takes knight. Black has no follow-up.
Our king will be safe back down on f1
That was black's plan the whole time? They sacrificed their knight to win a pawn?? Hey, I'm not complaining. Queen takes pawn on c2.
Points to black for the cool (but meaningless) sacrifice
Dang... black played slow and safe, and now they've basically shut down all our opening tricks. From this position, I recommend knight to f3. This transposes to a sideline in the Philidor Defense (course coming soon!)
Black shut down a potential knight-to-g5, but that move was a little TOO slow. With 2 pieces developed to black's 0, let's crash open the center with pawn to d4.
Alright, should I show you a crazy line? This is the Bishop's Opening after all. Three sacrifices in a row. Ready? First sacrifice: pawn to c3.
Second sacrifice: bishop to f7
Third sacrifice: Knight to e5. If black takes, we win their queen.
Black didn't take, so we don't win the queen. But do you know what we DO win? THE KING! Forced mate now. First: Queen to h5 check.
Then we finish black off with queen to f7 CHECKMATE
But hey! At least black didn't lose their queen right :D