WEBVTT 00:00.880 --> 00:01.660 Hi there. 00:01.690 --> 00:07.720 In this lecture, I'd like to talk about the focus on attacking the opponent's king in this course. 00:07.840 --> 00:14.650 So the focus of this course is essentially how to get the attacking positions, which lead to very juicy, 00:14.650 --> 00:18.940 beautiful, iconic combinations sometimes in most games. 00:19.150 --> 00:23.690 So these are often based on checkmate combinations at the end. 00:23.710 --> 00:30.730 Some of the most brilliant games of all time are based on really beautiful combinations such as Paul 00:30.730 --> 00:32.470 Morphy's offer a game. 00:33.280 --> 00:36.490 The thing is about such beautiful, iconic games. 00:36.490 --> 00:40.150 Sometimes people just play them over for that beauty. 00:40.180 --> 00:44.050 It's good to actually take a practical perspective, in my view. 00:44.110 --> 00:49.660 If you are a player, a chess player, wanting to improve, to ask, you know, what are the details 00:49.660 --> 00:55.800 that which led up to the combinations, what were the attacking ingredients used? 00:55.810 --> 01:03.610 So in the pool Morphy opera game, which started off like this Paul Morphy with the white pieces against 01:03.610 --> 01:06.340 two players in consultation. 01:07.330 --> 01:10.570 Paul Morphy in the opening got very good position already. 01:10.600 --> 01:18.040 Here he has what I'd say is a bishop of our counterpart, and that forms a major section of this course 01:18.040 --> 01:20.290 where we have a bishop without a counterpart. 01:20.320 --> 01:26.770 That to me is a major ingredient, and it's also brought out to me in games of neural networks where 01:26.770 --> 01:33.310 sometimes a neural network has emphatically sacrificed pawns to amplify that ingredient. 01:33.970 --> 01:41.950 So we are when we when we want to do successful attacks against stronger and stronger opponents, we 01:41.950 --> 01:43.920 don't want to be too unsound. 01:43.930 --> 01:49.840 And in fact, we have to respect the accumulation of advantages model, which the first official world 01:49.840 --> 01:54.040 champion, Muhammad Steinitz, kind of viewed. 01:54.160 --> 01:56.680 So he viewed chess as a kind of science. 01:56.680 --> 01:58.900 There's a balance between the two sides. 01:59.230 --> 02:05.380 And what we are particularly keen on is emphasizing the attacking ingredients here. 02:05.530 --> 02:10.780 So what do the advantages specifically include? 02:10.870 --> 02:18.250 So this is, for me, an attacking ingredients, and it's already made use of with this concrete France 02:18.250 --> 02:20.170 here on F7. 02:21.250 --> 02:28.780 So this is just a a great example of an iconic game where now a very accurate move here is looking at 02:28.780 --> 02:33.550 B7 and F7 and it causes an issue for king safety. 02:33.550 --> 02:35.480 Another ingredient has been triggered. 02:35.500 --> 02:39.580 The king in the center and that is an entire section in itself. 02:39.580 --> 02:45.310 If you can encourage the opponent's king to remain in the center a bit too long, then you've got a 02:45.310 --> 02:48.100 greater basis for compensatory play. 02:48.100 --> 02:55.720 Later, we see C3 C6 and again, you know, this lack of development, peace development. 02:56.770 --> 03:08.140 So, okay, we have Bishop G5 B5 and you know, this leads to a remarkable combination here, which 03:08.440 --> 03:12.820 some of you may have seen before, but let's look at the combination as well. 03:12.820 --> 03:17.410 So we're all going to look at not just the ingredients, we are going to play the game and look at the 03:17.410 --> 03:18.010 combinations. 03:18.010 --> 03:24.430 Well, Knight takes B5, so it's exploiting the king and the sensor is exploiting actually also pieces 03:24.430 --> 03:28.600 that are kind of asleep, which in itself is another attacking ingredient. 03:28.750 --> 03:33.610 So the more we can appreciate the attacking ingredients, the better. 03:33.610 --> 03:39.640 I mean, this game has been analysed in much greater depth in this course, so this is not meant to 03:39.640 --> 03:40.990 be a detailed analysis. 03:40.990 --> 03:47.800 I just want to show you how some of the sections of the course relate to attacking gradients, which 03:47.800 --> 03:52.300 you can see in in some of the most iconic attacking games. 03:52.300 --> 03:58.810 So C takes B5, Bishop takes B5 check, so the king is still in the center and Paul Morphy castles. 03:58.810 --> 04:07.070 Queenside So these guys are kind of largely asleep and it facilitates now an amplification of pressure. 04:07.090 --> 04:12.100 Rook takes these seven exploiting the absolute pin against the king, and the other rook is brought 04:12.100 --> 04:17.560 in knowing that basically it's very difficult for black to influence these seven with a dot square bishop 04:17.560 --> 04:24.790 and a bishop and this rook still on H eight so ends up with a brilliant combination here of the bishop 04:24.790 --> 04:32.440 takes the seven check 967 and for the aspect of combinations, I do have a course called The Art of 04:32.440 --> 04:36.010 Checkmate and for the aspects of concrete tactics. 04:36.010 --> 04:40.810 I do have a course called, you know, the complete guide guides tactics, but this course is really 04:40.810 --> 04:47.470 on the ingredients build up, which lead up to the combinations because you might that might be a kind 04:47.470 --> 04:50.050 of jigsaw piece that you might feel is missing. 04:50.050 --> 04:54.790 How do you exactly get those positions where you get the combinations? 04:54.860 --> 04:59.660 You've got to carefully build them up through the accumulation of advantages you've got to. 05:00.070 --> 05:00.610 With. 05:01.950 --> 05:10.830 You know, good accuracy to get these advantages usually from the opening phase and make sure they can 05:10.830 --> 05:11.430 be used. 05:11.430 --> 05:14.940 You know, these ingredients can be used for amazing combinations later. 05:14.940 --> 05:21.500 So here, once play finishes off with a beautiful mating combination, so can you say, well, that 05:21.510 --> 05:22.680 is 100 points. 05:24.810 --> 05:25.220 Yeah. 05:25.230 --> 05:26.670 Queen Bee eight check. 05:26.670 --> 05:27.390 So nine. 05:27.390 --> 05:27.720 Thanks. 05:27.750 --> 05:28.500 Bee eight. 05:28.560 --> 05:30.090 We have the eight checkmates. 05:30.960 --> 05:38.250 So we're going to look at iconic games and you'll see in the sections I say C's mean number of collections 05:38.250 --> 05:41.010 are a very popular site called Chess games. 05:41.340 --> 05:45.420 Com which is one of my favorite sites for looking up most of the games. 05:45.420 --> 05:52.440 And we're going to try and reinforce the ingredient section so we can train on each particular ingredients. 05:52.440 --> 05:58.680 So it could be bishop of our counterpart, It could be things like Queen in Siberia, it could be, 05:58.680 --> 06:00.210 you know, pieces of sleep. 06:00.240 --> 06:07.860 There are ingredients we want to kind of focus and get our examples together and really train on the 06:07.860 --> 06:12.090 ingredients so we can get that going much more in our own games. 06:12.090 --> 06:19.590 So here, if we focus on the points I wanted to make in this particular lecture, so we really basically 06:19.590 --> 06:23.130 are focusing on KING Attacking versus general attacking. 06:23.130 --> 06:24.690 You could attack on the Queen side. 06:24.690 --> 06:26.100 You could be trying to win material. 06:26.100 --> 06:28.500 This is not really the main focus of this course. 06:28.500 --> 06:30.780 This is about attacking the king. 06:30.780 --> 06:34.140 It's not really about aggressive play as such. 06:34.170 --> 06:37.200 It's more about attacking the king. 06:37.800 --> 06:40.020 We don't need to play aggressively. 06:40.020 --> 06:42.000 We can kind of play scientifically. 06:42.130 --> 06:44.370 As long as we get a checkmate at the end. 06:44.400 --> 06:48.090 We don't have to fill ourselves with aggression or anything. 06:48.090 --> 06:54.480 No, it's about objective attacking chess, which has been seen at the highest levels of chess and past 06:54.480 --> 06:58.740 world champions, you know, notably Alexander Alekhine and Garry Kasparov. 06:59.010 --> 07:03.330 So these these were players who really love to attack the opponent's king. 07:03.420 --> 07:03.870 So. 07:03.870 --> 07:10.410 KING attacking for me is often much more attractive for the wins it can produce with beautiful combinations 07:10.830 --> 07:11.970 online. 07:11.970 --> 07:16.470 If you have a choice between attacking and defending, I would choose attacking most of the time because 07:16.470 --> 07:19.110 one defensive step in the opponent could be, you know, checkmate. 07:19.110 --> 07:24.120 It's harder to defend accurately, especially on the fast the time limits. 07:24.330 --> 07:28.770 Also there's the most popular format online is not a traditional Swiss stone. 07:28.770 --> 07:31.080 You have to wait for all the games to finish for the next round. 07:31.080 --> 07:32.700 It's these all you can eat almost. 07:32.730 --> 07:35.910 You can win a game and you get another game immediately. 07:35.910 --> 07:43.350 So if you study attacking plans, you're you're getting that mindset of kind of finishing off games 07:43.350 --> 07:47.010 quickly so you can rack up the points and win lots of tournaments. 07:47.010 --> 07:54.030 I'm one of the tournament, you know, top ten leaders, Li Chess for winning a record number of tournaments. 07:54.030 --> 08:01.050 And I just love quickly finishing off opponents through attacking chess in one day. 08:01.050 --> 08:03.420 Chess, the beauty agenda can make it worth it. 08:03.420 --> 08:08.790 So you're not just spending all of those hours just for a point on the scoreboard to increase feed rating. 08:08.790 --> 08:11.430 That's a very mercenary way of looking at chess. 08:11.460 --> 08:16.110 If you can create art as well as win, that's even better in my view. 08:16.710 --> 08:19.320 But yeah, we have to be practical sometimes. 08:19.440 --> 08:24.990 And if there is something like high risk, like sacrificing Ukraine, I wouldn't recommend that Generally, 08:24.990 --> 08:27.660 if there's an easier, much simpler way of winning. 08:27.660 --> 08:31.500 So you've got to balance, you know, the pragmatism of it to the art. 08:31.500 --> 08:36.420 But art can be a beautiful agenda if you can create a masterpiece. 08:37.470 --> 08:40.890 So there is a kind of downside of sacrificial attacks. 08:41.040 --> 08:48.540 The romantic era of chess had a certain element of what I'd call much more risky vein of attacking chess. 08:48.630 --> 08:54.270 This course is more on the solid, you know, the accurate and solid, but still attacking chess. 08:54.270 --> 09:00.270 If you imagine four quadrants, we really want high accuracy and high solidity. 09:00.540 --> 09:03.210 That's kind of synonym accuracy and solidity. 09:03.210 --> 09:05.160 And we want to be able to attack the opponent's king. 09:05.160 --> 09:08.610 And the greats like Alekhine and Kasparov demonstrated you could do that. 09:08.610 --> 09:11.700 You don't have to play romantic era gambits. 09:13.080 --> 09:19.140 But also Boris Spassky did actually literally play romantic era gambit, The King's Gambit, and he 09:19.140 --> 09:23.040 beat all sorts of players, including Bobby Fischer with The King's Gambit. 09:23.040 --> 09:28.320 So sometimes the romantic era isn't completely dead, but that's that's another subject. 09:28.320 --> 09:35.280 But yeah, we're focused here on on kind of solid, accurate, attacking chess against the opponent's 09:35.280 --> 09:35.610 king. 09:35.610 --> 09:38.460 That's really the focus of this course. 09:38.820 --> 09:42.180 So we want to be able to scale up to stronger and stronger opponents. 09:42.180 --> 09:46.410 I don't want to give you any like small like ceiling. 09:46.410 --> 09:54.090 I want you to be able to have confidence that you can beat anyone basically at any time online or offline. 09:54.210 --> 10:01.830 So, yeah, there's a you know, basically it's a it's a great mindset to have, in my view, especially 10:01.830 --> 10:02.820 for online chess. 10:02.820 --> 10:07.740 You know, you win on time sometimes or may because the opponent might even, you know, they have to 10:07.740 --> 10:10.440 spend time to find accurate defensive moves. 10:10.440 --> 10:14.100 So that's why this is not this is not the complete guide to defensive chess. 10:14.100 --> 10:16.260 I think there's a lot of perils for that. 10:16.260 --> 10:22.800 But if you do like defensive chess as a means of not losing, check out my my Tigran petrosian course. 10:22.800 --> 10:23.850 But I do pick out his. 10:23.890 --> 10:26.260 Wins rather than his draws in that course. 10:26.260 --> 10:28.690 But he really didn't lose much at all. 10:28.720 --> 10:33.110 Tigran Petrosian also Capablanca didn't lose much. 10:33.130 --> 10:39.910 That's another role model for more positional super solid, not minding end game transition chess. 10:39.910 --> 10:43.340 But in this course, yeah, we're taking that bias and running with it. 10:43.360 --> 10:44.740 It is a bias. 10:44.740 --> 10:47.210 And you might think, Oh hell, hold on. 10:47.230 --> 10:51.010 Isn't chess about playing the position in a scientific manner? 10:51.070 --> 10:57.550 Well, yeah, but when we're playing against humans generally with emotions and humans are not good 10:57.550 --> 11:01.660 at relentlessly playing accurately like a hundred moves in a row, like an engine can play. 11:01.690 --> 11:06.310 So when you wake in your opponent's king, the potential for slipping up it becomes like dancing on 11:06.310 --> 11:06.940 ice. 11:06.970 --> 11:08.050 I don't know about you. 11:08.050 --> 11:12.400 I wouldn't last more than a minute trying to dance on the ice. 11:12.400 --> 11:13.900 I would usually fall over. 11:14.120 --> 11:20.230 So the need for accuracy, you know, we're not we're not accurate creatures, basically. 11:20.230 --> 11:26.020 So if you can get attacks which give you great potential for winning through one slip up from the opponent, 11:26.020 --> 11:28.070 that's where you want to be, in my view. 11:28.090 --> 11:33.150 So attacking players also create a kind of independence of losing material. 11:33.160 --> 11:38.920 So losing material could be like just losing a particular battle, but you might still win the war. 11:39.850 --> 11:44.200 So that's like this classic book, you know, Win Friends and Influence people, which you may have 11:44.200 --> 11:46.280 read or may not have, you know, read. 11:46.450 --> 11:47.650 It's worth checking out. 11:47.650 --> 11:52.900 But basically sometimes, you know, in in win friends and influence people, you don't want to kind 11:52.900 --> 11:59.080 of win a little battle with with someone, a colleague at the expense of your future you know relationship 11:59.080 --> 12:00.610 with over like years. 12:00.910 --> 12:09.730 It's good to win friends and influence people rather than like get people hating you because you you 12:09.730 --> 12:13.140 did something to annoy them to to win some silly debates. 12:13.150 --> 12:18.250 So in chess, the silly debate could be like, well, we'll take this pawn, take this night, I'm going 12:18.250 --> 12:19.590 to make your king. 12:19.600 --> 12:24.070 You want to think about the overall battle, the the overall battle. 12:24.070 --> 12:25.690 The overall battle is called the war. 12:25.720 --> 12:27.580 You don't want to think about individual battles. 12:27.580 --> 12:28.830 You want to win the war. 12:28.840 --> 12:33.700 So sometimes it's acceptable to lose material in attacking chess. 12:33.700 --> 12:36.880 But of course, yeah, we do want to play soundly as well. 12:36.910 --> 12:40.720 There needs to be an element of great soundness. 12:40.750 --> 12:45.040 It's the soundness which will make us more scalable for stronger and stronger opponents. 12:45.040 --> 12:52.120 We want to play accurately from the opening accumulate advantages ideally and checkmate beautifully 12:52.120 --> 12:53.560 ideally in my view. 12:53.560 --> 12:59.980 So that's why we have a focus on this course On attacking the opponent's king in, you know, in a solid, 13:00.130 --> 13:01.750 generally accurate way. 13:01.750 --> 13:07.480 But we do give ourselves some slack when I say that there's some independence of losing. 13:07.480 --> 13:09.940 So if we did lose material, there's some slack. 13:09.940 --> 13:14.380 Because if we do have pieces around the opponent's king, it may not matter. 13:14.380 --> 13:19.120 We lost to Rook over here or a knight over here or your whole queenside, especially if you're a King's 13:19.120 --> 13:20.080 Indian defense player. 13:20.590 --> 13:24.280 You wouldn't mind if you lose your queenside because you're checkmate opponent. 13:24.280 --> 13:30.160 So there is an aspect of independence of losing material which is very attractive in my view. 13:30.160 --> 13:35.770 There's the aspect of putting the opponent for the need for accuracy and using lots of time potentially 13:35.770 --> 13:37.120 that's very attractive as well. 13:37.120 --> 13:43.390 So from a practical point of view, attacking chess, I found, is a formidable weapon and improving 13:43.390 --> 13:45.910 my enjoyment of chess considerably. 13:45.910 --> 13:49.330 And so I've even, you know, my nickname is King's Crusher. 13:49.330 --> 13:51.910 So there is a kind of bias in my nickname. 13:52.120 --> 13:54.100 And you could say, Well, hang on, hang on. 13:54.100 --> 13:56.200 Any bias is a weakness, right? 13:56.200 --> 13:56.860 That's true. 13:56.860 --> 13:59.050 But as I say, we're not computers. 13:59.050 --> 14:04.010 There are universal players in chess to study like, you know, more universal like, you know. 14:04.030 --> 14:04.960 Lasker. 14:04.960 --> 14:14.380 Capablanca Fischer The universal dream is a good dream, especially if you, you know, become a grandmaster 14:14.380 --> 14:15.310 or something one day. 14:15.310 --> 14:18.070 You don't want to have an obvious bias. 14:18.100 --> 14:25.150 It's generally a solid game, but this bias is useful for reaching the top as been as has been demonstrated 14:25.150 --> 14:28.120 by Alekhine and Garry Kasparov. 14:28.120 --> 14:33.220 I mean, Kasparov completely dominated his peers for a huge number of years as well. 14:33.220 --> 14:37.810 Champion in brilliant style, brilliant, attacking, you know, crushing style. 14:38.020 --> 14:43.420 So okay, I hope that introduces the focus of the course and I hope you really enjoy it. 14:43.990 --> 14:44.800 Thanks so much.