WEBVTT 00:00.930 --> 00:01.710 Hi there. 00:02.010 --> 00:07.050 In this introduction lecture, I just want to talk about the game selection criteria that I preferred 00:07.050 --> 00:08.280 throughout this course. 00:09.090 --> 00:13.770 I like iconic games, and when I say iconic, you can actually kind of measure it. 00:14.220 --> 00:16.980 Chess games come as a great site for master games. 00:17.010 --> 00:23.430 I like to look at games that are in more than 60 collections, ideally as a general rule, because that 00:23.430 --> 00:25.380 means why are people collecting this game? 00:25.380 --> 00:26.460 Is it special in some way? 00:26.490 --> 00:27.870 Usually they are. 00:28.200 --> 00:35.160 And the most iconic games of all time, like Bobby Fischer's Game of the Century or the Paul Morphy's 00:35.160 --> 00:39.480 opera game, these are in the most collections, as you might suspect. 00:39.600 --> 00:46.800 That's often a good guide to the iconic games, so they inspire and encourage for the attacking patterns. 00:47.600 --> 00:51.710 I've chosen the ones that are in particular attacking games. 00:52.310 --> 00:59.600 I've also looked at the more notable games, according to Wiki, throughout chess history as well. 00:59.810 --> 01:05.120 And often those are in more than 100 collections and shinny. 01:05.510 --> 01:10.940 So one of the points is also to reach out the nuances of the great attacking games you may have seen 01:10.940 --> 01:11.450 before. 01:11.600 --> 01:12.440 Just make sure. 01:12.470 --> 01:18.900 Did you get all the attacking ingredients or were you kind of just looking at the final combination? 01:18.920 --> 01:23.780 There's a great temptation just to kind of forget the rest of the game, but we're really interested 01:23.780 --> 01:28.700 in how to get there, how to get these attacking positions where these beautiful combinations arise 01:28.700 --> 01:29.210 from. 01:30.320 --> 01:31.970 They don't just arise from thin air. 01:32.930 --> 01:35.480 So we want to sort of see the magic behind that. 01:36.530 --> 01:43.790 And, you know, absolute classic games like Retief versus Alekhine, one of the queen's greatest masterpieces. 01:43.820 --> 01:47.060 It's nice to see all the nuances when we go in detail. 01:47.780 --> 01:51.290 So the attacking players that are most often in mating combination books. 01:51.290 --> 01:57.960 So our time, for example, is featured quite a lot in my Art of Chat Main course. 01:57.980 --> 02:01.970 It's no coincidence statistically he features there quite a lot. 02:02.420 --> 02:10.880 So the attacking player preferences and even if there aren't examples right now, my ambition is to 02:10.880 --> 02:13.430 evolve this course as a kind of work in progress. 02:13.490 --> 02:20.360 And I will take from the engine world alphazero especially, you know, that's like one of the first 02:20.360 --> 02:26.630 hard hitting like neural networks which defeated a version of Stockfish in spectacular style out of 02:26.630 --> 02:27.710 this world style. 02:28.220 --> 02:32.660 So I would like to eventually get examples from the engine world. 02:32.840 --> 02:38.060 So Stockfish, Leila those would be poured in to the course from time to time. 02:39.260 --> 02:44.360 And we have a reassurance there when the beats that a traditional engine, there's a reassurance that 02:44.360 --> 02:51.860 actually this attacking theme has real substance to it, like form pawns or bishop about a counterpart. 02:51.890 --> 02:55.220 So some of the attacking themes, I'm actually drawn from the engine world. 02:55.520 --> 02:56.420 So sadly. 02:56.570 --> 03:00.820 Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, my good friends, wrote this book, Game Changer. 03:00.830 --> 03:04.240 There are some game changing, attacking principles of interest. 03:04.250 --> 03:09.350 We should really try and observe from the neural network world in particular. 03:09.350 --> 03:11.660 So it isn't just brute force calculation. 03:12.110 --> 03:20.690 So in terms of traditional human world champions, the attacking ones for me personally, Alexander 03:20.690 --> 03:25.220 Alekhine, Mikhail Tal Petrosian, you might think is totally defensive. 03:25.260 --> 03:28.770 He didn't win many games, but when he did go on the attack, sometimes they're absolutely brilliant. 03:28.790 --> 03:35.060 We can learn to attack from a position of defense for trying to provoke the opponent to have lots of 03:35.060 --> 03:35.450 weaknesses. 03:35.450 --> 03:39.530 So he's interesting as well for me, and he's made some magnificent combinations. 03:39.650 --> 03:45.740 Boris Spassky is a more obvious attacking player and had much better results in instalments than Petrosian 03:45.740 --> 03:47.680 when Chosen was even world chess champion. 03:47.690 --> 03:50.450 So Spassky is a, you know, classic attacking player. 03:50.480 --> 03:52.040 People only remember Petrosian. 03:52.640 --> 03:58.520 People only remember Spassky for he losing in the 1972 match against Fischer. 03:58.520 --> 04:02.310 But he is a great attacking player to learn from Veselin Topalov. 04:02.330 --> 04:08.240 Vishy Anand of course, Garry Kasparov, arguably one of the absolute greatest players of all time. 04:08.240 --> 04:09.850 So you've got other attacking players. 04:09.860 --> 04:14.360 Paul Morphy, an unofficial like world champion who was basically the best in the world for his time. 04:14.360 --> 04:17.510 There's Matloff who is kind of restrained in opportunity. 04:18.260 --> 04:24.170 He was a magnificent commentary player, absolutely beautiful combinations and even positional queen 04:24.170 --> 04:25.190 sacrifices. 04:25.190 --> 04:30.590 Tönnies is Spassky's trainer for be nice to look at Polish how he influenced Boris Spassky. 04:30.620 --> 04:34.040 Aronian, who's a fan of Alexander Alekhine, are the greats. 04:34.040 --> 04:35.700 Geller, who went on to do coaching. 04:35.700 --> 04:41.990 He had a brilliant career and he even, you know, was was one of Fischer's kind of he could victimise 04:41.990 --> 04:43.350 Fischer, even Geller. 04:43.370 --> 04:44.700 BRONSTEIN Very crazy. 04:44.840 --> 04:47.180 A kind of uncrowned king of chess. 04:48.260 --> 04:49.260 Joe Bova. 04:49.310 --> 04:51.710 Very creative, aggressive grandmasters. 04:51.710 --> 04:54.980 Same with Nakamura, one of my favorite super grandmasters. 04:54.980 --> 05:01.610 And from presenting Nakamura games like his H for Attacks against the Pits, I've adopted some of his 05:01.760 --> 05:04.070 opening sequences with great success. 05:04.430 --> 05:10.400 Shirov Judit Polgar, Rudolf Spillman, who was nicknamed the Lost Romantic. 05:10.400 --> 05:12.650 So we want to pay tribute, especially for me. 05:12.650 --> 05:15.740 I like to play personally tribute to more of my observation. 05:15.740 --> 05:19.640 Sure of because in the Lloyds Bank Masters, they came and they conquest. 05:19.790 --> 05:22.070 Many of the British grandmasters. 05:22.070 --> 05:28.370 Most of actually actually won the Lloyds Bank Masters in 1994 with nine and a half out of ten. 05:29.210 --> 05:34.940 So this is what I mean by the benefits of attacking style for Thomas, where you need to rack up the 05:34.940 --> 05:35.750 points. 05:35.840 --> 05:41.480 Even with Black, he was playing very exciting openings and trying for the win and great attacking chess. 05:41.480 --> 05:44.300 Let me give you just one game example of that. 05:44.300 --> 05:46.670 So a British grandmaster he encountered. 05:46.890 --> 05:48.790 What happened in 1994. 05:48.820 --> 05:53.100 From this position, you can see the game in great detail. 05:53.110 --> 05:54.700 It's analyzed in much greater detail. 05:54.700 --> 05:56.130 I'm just going to give you the gist. 05:56.140 --> 06:00.160 94 was played and he got a kind of form pawn. 06:00.490 --> 06:07.150 So it looks like counterintuitive, doesn't it, to block up the rook, But it's the kind of emphatic 06:07.150 --> 06:09.100 marking of the dark squares of interest. 06:09.100 --> 06:15.700 So Bishop G5 and Black has some issues here which we're trying to solve be solved with Queen B6 offering 06:15.700 --> 06:24.070 the F6 Knight Now here a clever move 94 which is better than Bishop takes F6 and now Bishop takes f6 06:24.070 --> 06:26.890 here Queen A4 And now what? 06:27.010 --> 06:31.570 This is a representative like pawn sacrifice to gain time for the attack. 06:31.570 --> 06:34.420 Nine C3 So we have Bishop take C3. 06:34.420 --> 06:35.620 Bishop take C3. 06:35.620 --> 06:40.930 So even with H two hanging, what he has done is mark out these dark squares with the form pawn. 06:40.960 --> 06:46.480 So you can see there's an attacking ingredient and attacking signpost here which is worth the pawn. 06:46.540 --> 06:54.910 If Queen takes a to bishop, take C4 so there's no naughty threats of Queen one mating, for example, 06:54.910 --> 06:57.310 that Knight is taking out that square D2. 06:57.310 --> 06:58.690 It was Queen C4. 06:58.690 --> 07:03.190 You know, this position has strong attacking prospects for white as example. 07:03.190 --> 07:12.220 So the pawn wasn't taken and we see actually B3 encouraging the ball to be taken here but now rook D2 07:12.220 --> 07:14.740 and this point stranded so all of a sudden. 07:14.740 --> 07:14.990 Yeah. 07:15.100 --> 07:21.580 Finesses the position it's difficult it seems to get onto the dance squares right now but this is potentially 07:21.580 --> 07:22.330 stranded. 07:22.930 --> 07:31.090 We do have an imminent D6 to F6 as well but so there's two kind of major downsides. 07:31.090 --> 07:31.810 It's not just the king. 07:31.840 --> 07:38.680 The knight is about loose Queen, a free Czech bishop B two queen E7, and it's the knight being loose 07:38.680 --> 07:40.000 which is victimized. 07:40.000 --> 07:41.320 They were Bishop E too. 07:41.680 --> 07:44.980 So the no longer has Knight takes F1 as an option. 07:44.980 --> 07:52.420 So there's there are options for one of either a four at some point or queen F2 to embarrass the knight. 07:52.720 --> 08:01.480 So we have f we have D takes e4, F takes E4, Queen takes C4 and now Queen G trying to get onto that 08:01.480 --> 08:07.360 diagonal so you can see an amplification attacking strategy, trying to amplify this bishop on those 08:07.360 --> 08:09.280 raw sensitive dark squares. 08:09.280 --> 08:13.090 95 and the game was finished off brilliantly here. 08:13.330 --> 08:16.870 So can you see how for 100 points so more is which. 08:16.990 --> 08:26.500 Yeah, just coming here to UK to London where I live and destroying some of the British grandmasters. 08:26.500 --> 08:28.450 This is a compensatory finish. 08:28.630 --> 08:30.490 The rook takes D5. 08:30.520 --> 08:32.350 We have Queen St's d5. 08:33.730 --> 08:38.050 If Queen takes E2, there's just Queen f6 and here King B one. 08:38.260 --> 08:40.600 And how does Black defend this position? 08:40.960 --> 08:42.340 There's also options. 08:42.340 --> 08:44.080 Bishop A3 Potentially. 08:44.080 --> 08:51.250 So we have Queen tanks, D5, Queen F6, King F8 and now Bishop C4 and Black resigns. 08:51.250 --> 08:59.050 What happens if Queen D7 then indeed Bishop a free check and black's going to get checkmated for example, 08:59.050 --> 08:59.650 like that. 09:01.210 --> 09:01.690 Yeah. 09:01.990 --> 09:07.510 So there's brutal finishes, a brutal game in general which is shown in this course, but I would like 09:07.510 --> 09:11.230 to get other examples and they might not be in many collections. 09:11.230 --> 09:18.100 Sometimes I use the 60 collection rule as a general rule, but some of these attacking players had these 09:18.100 --> 09:20.380 magnificent tournament results. 09:20.530 --> 09:25.150 You know, like nine and a half out of ten in Lords about Masters, you know, this was a tournament 09:25.150 --> 09:31.630 I really admired loads of 2500 years from coming, you know, sometimes unsigned. 09:31.630 --> 09:33.610 So it was a really fantastic tournament. 09:33.640 --> 09:36.250 It's really fantastic to see attacking players in particular. 09:36.250 --> 09:42.250 For me on the demo boards, it really fills me with excitement to see how Kings could be demolished. 09:42.610 --> 09:49.390 So anyway, so you get just a general idea of the game selection criteria in this course. 09:49.390 --> 09:52.690 I like the iconic games, but I will choose other games. 09:52.690 --> 09:57.160 There might be simpler examples as well in fewer collections but simpler to understand. 09:57.160 --> 10:02.590 So that's a kind of priority for examples in general, simpler to understand, to empathize with, and 10:02.590 --> 10:07.480 to recognise mistakes that our opponents also make and how to punish those mistakes. 10:07.960 --> 10:14.770 But we also, you know, check the classic world chess champions and the aspiration for the courses 10:14.770 --> 10:23.110 is to get examples from each of these sources as appropriate for an attacking style of chess type game. 10:23.350 --> 10:28.000 So I hope this seems exciting and interesting and inspirational. 10:28.000 --> 10:37.570 So be inspired and it's fun to see beautiful games whilst learning the art of attack here in this course. 10:37.690 --> 10:39.940 Okay, that's very much.