WEBVTT 00:00.980 --> 00:01.970 Hi there. 00:02.360 --> 00:07.430 In this introduction lecture, I want to address, why is positional chess important? 00:07.910 --> 00:10.760 If we don't know the why, it's less motivating. 00:10.760 --> 00:13.700 It's good to seek out the whys, to have conviction. 00:13.910 --> 00:20.000 I want you to have maximum conviction when you study the methods and goals of this course. 00:20.420 --> 00:25.760 So basically, you may have seen my other courses like The Complete Guide to Tactics or The Complete 00:25.760 --> 00:27.140 Guide to Attacking Chess. 00:27.530 --> 00:29.120 Those are very important. 00:29.630 --> 00:34.700 But what if there is no role, no tactics in the position that you have? 00:34.730 --> 00:36.920 There is no easy way of attacking. 00:36.920 --> 00:44.870 What can you do, which is maybe more subtle and would help improve your capability to have tactics 00:44.870 --> 00:47.820 later in your game or attacking potential later in your game. 00:47.840 --> 00:50.120 And even if you don't, you could end up winning end games. 00:50.120 --> 00:51.290 How can we do this? 00:52.100 --> 00:53.930 We could think of it as a metaphor. 00:53.930 --> 00:58.820 We want to serve a lightning bolt at the downsides of an opponent's position. 00:59.120 --> 01:04.370 But we need to increase our electricity somehow to throw that bolt at the opponent's. 01:04.370 --> 01:07.280 Or we need to wait for clearer downsides to strike. 01:07.730 --> 01:13.490 So there is a famous quotation by Survey Atletico, one of my favourites for Chess Quotations. 01:13.490 --> 01:15.190 I will check out his quotations. 01:15.200 --> 01:17.050 So here's one of his great ones. 01:17.060 --> 01:20.180 Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. 01:20.540 --> 01:24.290 So the opponent might have an unprotected piece or a weak king. 01:24.290 --> 01:28.520 And you can look for like ways of exploiting those concrete downsides. 01:28.520 --> 01:29.810 So that's like tactics. 01:29.810 --> 01:31.340 There's something concrete to do. 01:31.370 --> 01:32.090 You do it. 01:32.090 --> 01:37.880 You you actually do increase your advantage or check Mating absolutely wins the game, end of game. 01:38.600 --> 01:39.890 So not even a small win. 01:39.890 --> 01:40.400 You've just won. 01:40.400 --> 01:44.540 The war strategy is knowing what to do when there's nothing to do. 01:44.540 --> 01:45.980 So this is really witty. 01:45.980 --> 01:46.220 Yeah. 01:46.220 --> 01:49.100 When when you haven't got anything clear, there's no clear downsides. 01:49.100 --> 01:50.080 What do you do? 01:50.090 --> 01:52.280 So that's like the missing jigsaw. 01:52.280 --> 01:53.570 Which piece? 01:53.570 --> 01:54.680 Which I hope to give you. 01:54.680 --> 02:00.230 With this course, we need to be able to subtly improve our position. 02:00.230 --> 02:02.450 It's about improving the position slightly. 02:02.600 --> 02:04.130 But how do we do this? 02:04.130 --> 02:06.320 What are the small wins to look out for? 02:06.770 --> 02:10.310 The course structure is in methods and goals. 02:10.400 --> 02:14.990 So that's like the how and and what to look for and celebrate. 02:15.890 --> 02:21.830 So basically another great quotation from task, you know, strategy requires fought. 02:22.490 --> 02:24.680 So that's like the logic of position. 02:26.530 --> 02:27.970 How plan structure could evolve. 02:27.970 --> 02:32.140 For example, there's a lot of thought help piece activity could evolve. 02:32.890 --> 02:33.670 KING Safety. 02:33.670 --> 02:39.280 You're looking at the elements and looking at them logically, where they are now, where you want them 02:39.280 --> 02:42.940 to be and looking at overall, are they in your favor? 02:43.300 --> 02:45.910 So have you got a safer king than your opponent? 02:46.540 --> 02:48.550 And it's the whole mixture. 02:48.550 --> 02:52.360 You might have a better pool structure, but they might have better pace activity. 02:52.360 --> 02:58.150 So it's the whole mixture and the overall, you want it to be slightly better for you and ideally maximize 02:58.150 --> 03:01.610 that overall balance in your favor. 03:01.630 --> 03:02.410 So. 03:03.160 --> 03:05.320 Tactics requires observation, he said. 03:05.320 --> 03:10.360 So that's like very detailed variations sometimes, and sometimes as humans, we don't really want to 03:10.360 --> 03:11.530 think tactically all the time. 03:11.530 --> 03:18.040 There might be a flaw in our analysis, so bear that in mind, Fisher indicated tactics flow from a 03:18.040 --> 03:18.970 good position. 03:19.420 --> 03:23.800 So this is an interesting metaphor about flow. 03:24.490 --> 03:28.240 So it begs the questions, you know, what is a good position? 03:28.240 --> 03:30.400 How do we at least improve our position? 03:30.940 --> 03:35.980 And we're basically saying the tactics and the attacking potential will increase if we can improve our 03:35.980 --> 03:36.700 position. 03:36.700 --> 03:44.530 And even if there's no tactics or attack, the positional superiority can flow into endgames. 03:44.710 --> 03:47.620 Capablanca Capablanca has a role. 03:47.620 --> 03:51.340 Capablanca, a classic positional player, was often winning and games. 03:51.340 --> 03:53.350 His advantages were persist. 03:53.890 --> 04:00.580 The future world champions like Anatoly Karpov would also win in games. 04:01.360 --> 04:05.500 The advantages, even if they're like tiny, can win in the end game. 04:05.500 --> 04:10.870 You don't need necessarily an attack or winning tactics. 04:10.870 --> 04:11.620 You just win in the end. 04:11.620 --> 04:12.550 Games were often past. 04:12.550 --> 04:13.450 Pawns will be winning. 04:13.450 --> 04:18.700 That will be the kind of end game tactics if you want to use the term tactics in end games. 04:18.700 --> 04:26.350 So it also a knowledge of positional play helps us in new and unfamiliar positions. 04:26.350 --> 04:31.810 We can improvise better with positional considerations, our type of moves. 04:31.810 --> 04:37.960 It's nice not to always have to play an attacking move or a tactical move, especially if there isn't 04:37.960 --> 04:38.140 one. 04:38.140 --> 04:38.980 What do you do? 04:38.980 --> 04:45.400 A bad move now You want to play a useful positional move which will reinforce either your tactics, 04:45.790 --> 04:49.090 moves or your attacking moves, or just win end games basically. 04:49.450 --> 04:52.690 And Camp Blanc was great winning end games. 04:52.780 --> 04:58.450 See my Capablanca course he would often simplify and that would be a way of reducing counterplay and 04:58.450 --> 04:59.710 just win games. 04:59.830 --> 05:05.380 So it's not sometimes it's not going out of our way to do anything spectacular. 05:06.430 --> 05:14.440 I would say positional play helps motivate the discovery of finer grained elements and element management 05:14.440 --> 05:20.350 principles and how to convert temporary advantages into more permanent ones to look out for permanent 05:20.350 --> 05:24.700 advantages which you can accumulate even tiny, permanent advantages. 05:25.560 --> 05:30.960 Will accumulate into potentially a winning advantage or a combination or attack or a winning end game, 05:30.960 --> 05:31.710 basically. 05:32.100 --> 05:38.790 So for me, for example, a big discovery in recent years form -- elements from neural networks. 05:39.450 --> 05:42.570 The importance of a bishop without a counterpart. 05:42.630 --> 05:45.000 I see that as not just a weapon. 05:45.010 --> 05:46.980 It's a kind of downside of the opponents position. 05:46.980 --> 05:54.180 So if you can evaluate these patterns and find and grains patterns of how you evaluate positions, you'll 05:54.180 --> 05:59.220 get better at seeing if you're better in a certain position in your mind's eye. 05:59.250 --> 06:08.010 Maybe ten moves down, you evaluate the positions and that motivation for the discovery of the finer 06:08.010 --> 06:08.700 grain elements. 06:08.700 --> 06:14.940 When you go over master games and establish those patterns, that will improve your ability to evaluate 06:14.940 --> 06:17.250 positions and know if you're actually better or not. 06:17.370 --> 06:21.390 So you might have previously thought more your two pawns up here and you've got activity. 06:21.390 --> 06:27.400 But what if they have a bishop without counterpart and that might actually motivate even further calculations 06:27.420 --> 06:30.170 and say, Look, can I do damage of that Bishop, that counterpart? 06:30.180 --> 06:33.770 So the elements also motivate sometimes a deeper investigation. 06:33.780 --> 06:39.630 You're not just taking some basic elements or your material up and your shortcutting or calculations. 06:40.110 --> 06:46.710 So it's actually driving sometimes your calculation, your evaluation can drive your calculation. 06:46.900 --> 06:51.720 And at the end points of calculation, it's good to be very good at evaluating. 06:51.720 --> 06:55.260 If you can't calculate further, at least your evaluation will be good. 06:56.220 --> 07:02.250 So I want to give you a concrete example of an attacking player. 07:02.250 --> 07:06.990 And so the emphasis is not so much on attacking players on the scores, but it's still a very nice example 07:06.990 --> 07:16.440 because positional play was used by Alexander Alekhine to accumulate advantages and he increased and 07:16.440 --> 07:19.110 increased them until there was a beautiful combination. 07:20.220 --> 07:25.410 So this is his game against Yeats in 1922. 07:25.440 --> 07:29.190 Yeats has made some positional errors here. 07:29.190 --> 07:35.280 There are some weak squares and this bishop can't really drive on that side of the road, so, so to 07:35.280 --> 07:35.580 speak. 07:35.580 --> 07:38.400 It's dark squares which are weak here. 07:38.700 --> 07:44.490 And we can see here how Alekhine increased this advantages and it was crowned with a really beautiful 07:44.490 --> 07:45.360 combination. 07:45.360 --> 07:50.400 So the first thing that might be threatening kind of a four to stop might be free. 07:50.400 --> 07:58.260 So if White wants to use five, this is the moment to maybe use the C five square and try and get rid 07:58.260 --> 08:01.200 of the Knights, which is the guardian of C five and E five. 08:01.200 --> 08:04.740 So we see a gradual increase of advantages here. 08:04.740 --> 08:06.330 We see Knight be free. 08:09.840 --> 08:15.960 So now a four is played and we see 95 and now Knight takes C five. 08:15.960 --> 08:19.950 So White's advantage has been increasing and he doesn't mind the Queen's coming off. 08:19.950 --> 08:25.830 He's quite confident that if he possesses this C4 has the knight 25 this will be enough. 08:25.830 --> 08:29.670 So he didn't play D take C five and positioning. 08:29.670 --> 08:32.130 We need to consider things like mobility of pawns as well. 08:32.130 --> 08:36.660 So e five might be useful even though we've got a passport, you know, black might have e five and 08:36.660 --> 08:38.040 generate some counterplay. 08:38.070 --> 08:39.540 We want to minimize counterplay. 08:39.540 --> 08:47.280 So Queen takes C five is actually a very nice solution to the possession and with the Queen's coming 08:47.280 --> 08:48.450 off, that's less counterplay. 08:48.450 --> 08:50.040 But is there enough for White to win? 08:50.040 --> 09:02.880 Here we see Rook FC one bishop a six, knights E five and now we see Rook E to be eight and Alekhine 09:02.880 --> 09:05.460 finds a way to slightly improve his position. 09:05.610 --> 09:09.870 Three He realizes something very powerful about this position. 09:10.260 --> 09:12.450 Let's move on a little bit. 09:12.450 --> 09:12.990 Be free. 09:13.030 --> 09:14.580 Avery H six. 09:14.580 --> 09:19.350 So I wonder if you spot what we can do to increase our advantages here. 09:20.340 --> 09:22.200 What's the key move here, you think? 09:24.640 --> 09:25.040 Yeah. 09:25.060 --> 09:26.850 He makes his actual king. 09:26.860 --> 09:29.240 There's a reversal of values of king safety. 09:29.260 --> 09:33.400 That's another tricky thing about evaluating positions and the mental game. 09:33.400 --> 09:33.880 We. 09:33.880 --> 09:35.800 We give a priority to king Safety. 09:35.800 --> 09:40.330 In the end game, there's a priority for the king sometimes being a fighting piece. 09:40.330 --> 09:43.110 And here king F2, the king in the end game. 09:43.120 --> 09:48.310 It's interesting to consider that reversal of roles, the king's and the aggressive piece. 09:48.310 --> 09:49.720 So H4 is played here. 09:49.720 --> 09:56.710 Rook fighting the King comes to G three and we are subtly increasing our advantages here. 09:56.710 --> 10:01.900 Black They're not trying to simplify with the rooks coming off because the knight will be better than 10:01.900 --> 10:02.290 the bishop. 10:02.290 --> 10:04.300 So we have this rook infiltration. 10:04.540 --> 10:11.770 Bishop B five we have Rook one, C five, Bishop a six and one is making progress here, Rookie ain't 10:12.070 --> 10:15.610 and the king comes F for King J and H five. 10:15.610 --> 10:19.810 So this fixes the pawns now Bishop F one and now G three. 10:19.810 --> 10:23.740 So that's safeguarding our position, strengthening our position further by taking pawns on the other 10:23.740 --> 10:24.790 color to the Bishop. 10:24.910 --> 10:27.310 Bishop a six and now rook f seven. 10:27.310 --> 10:34.090 So the idea of doubling rooks is emerging on the seventh rank, which is a great positional principle 10:34.090 --> 10:38.050 in its own right, both within middle game and in endgames. 10:38.050 --> 10:39.730 So we have the Rooks doubling. 10:39.730 --> 10:44.830 So black is tied down, we see now 97 and now King eight. 10:44.890 --> 10:49.990 And it looks as though, well, how do we crown all this positional play? 10:51.760 --> 10:55.510 So what would you play here and why for 100 points. 10:56.410 --> 10:58.360 So we're now trying to crown the positional player. 10:58.360 --> 11:01.930 We can't really optimize our position further. 11:01.930 --> 11:04.690 We can't really improve our position further with positional play. 11:04.690 --> 11:08.110 But this is where knowledge of tactics can help. 11:08.170 --> 11:11.890 So 96 was played and you might think, Well, hold on, there's a snag here. 11:11.890 --> 11:15.010 Black is skewering Oracle Knight now. 11:16.730 --> 11:18.110 So what do we do here? 11:19.550 --> 11:23.720 Well, once you think once you play and what's the punch line? 11:23.720 --> 11:25.640 There is a funny punch line here. 11:26.430 --> 11:28.430 Okay, 100 points. 11:29.000 --> 11:31.700 We play Rook, takes GS g seven off, the rook takes F six. 11:31.700 --> 11:32.890 What's the punch line? 11:32.900 --> 11:33.890 Are we mating? 11:33.890 --> 11:35.030 Just by checks. 11:37.100 --> 11:44.780 So there's a final insertion, you could say, of a positional move to improve our position ever so 11:44.780 --> 11:48.860 slightly, to make all the tactics work ever so smoothly. 11:48.860 --> 11:56.420 It's like applying WD 40 or something to something which, you know, is rusting, you know, improving 11:56.420 --> 12:00.860 our position ever so slightly makes the whole thing much, much more effective. 12:01.070 --> 12:06.410 So what's what's the move here, which makes all our tactics much, much more effective for 500 points. 12:06.410 --> 12:11.810 So a subtle positional move creeps in quite often into alekhine combinations. 12:12.380 --> 12:18.800 So yes, the positional move is king E5 and there's a big threat against the rook. 12:18.800 --> 12:20.570 And actually Yates had to resign. 12:21.200 --> 12:28.100 If Rook be eight, we're just going to play check and check and take on F6 and we're going to be meeting 12:28.100 --> 12:29.120 the next move. 12:30.350 --> 12:35.000 Yeah, without King E5, this makes the tactics work so much better without King e5. 12:35.000 --> 12:48.380 If we checked and checked and played King f6 sorry King E five here this also it is it is also dangerous 12:48.380 --> 12:48.740 as well. 12:48.770 --> 12:52.220 King five can be potentially played in this move order as well. 12:52.220 --> 12:57.050 This is dangerous here, but it's nice that Alekhine played it in the other move order. 12:57.350 --> 13:01.520 So King E5 is playing an instrumental role that positional move. 13:01.970 --> 13:09.680 So yes, it's basically demonstrated the gradual improving of position and a combination to crown the 13:09.680 --> 13:10.760 positional play. 13:11.810 --> 13:16.310 If Rook have seven, we're just going to take and this is trivially winning. 13:16.310 --> 13:19.190 Basically we can make use of King of six here to checkmate again. 13:19.760 --> 13:23.090 So yes, this was a very very nice game. 13:23.090 --> 13:30.530 Example how outposts and weak squares can be used by king and an endgame king marches. 13:30.830 --> 13:37.610 And so the positional play is looking at these factors like weak color complexes, you know, sets of 13:37.610 --> 13:39.230 squares which are weak. 13:39.470 --> 13:43.520 There's quite a few things demonstrated in this game for accumulation of advantages. 13:43.520 --> 13:49.670 And it was also kind of made more instructive because players nowadays don't usually give such a wholesome 13:49.670 --> 13:51.650 position with lots of positional holes. 13:51.650 --> 13:54.500 So it seems to be, you know, is very good tactical player. 13:54.500 --> 14:02.090 Yates, but he seemed to be positionally, not understanding holes and outposts as much as maybe Alekhine. 14:02.090 --> 14:08.450 So Alekhine really improved his positional play to boost his overall game, became much more well rounded 14:08.450 --> 14:15.950 player but is not all the world champions are great positionally, but we focus in this course on really 14:15.950 --> 14:23.870 amazing positional players which really loved positional play more than trying to go for the attacks 14:23.870 --> 14:24.470 or tactics. 14:24.470 --> 14:31.610 So we see that ingredients more emphatically that we can use on our own games to to really try and strive 14:31.610 --> 14:32.540 for better positions. 14:32.540 --> 14:39.020 But Alekhine is a beautiful role model, don't get me wrong, of positional play, preceding beautiful 14:39.230 --> 14:40.970 combinations and attacks. 14:41.180 --> 14:50.450 But there are other future, more modern world champions like Petrosian, like Karpov and modern super 14:50.450 --> 14:56.570 grandmaster like Adams, which will take a particularly keen interest in, and also Nimzowitsch, who 14:56.570 --> 15:02.990 kind of invented the positional terminology that many modern players take for granted nowadays, like 15:02.990 --> 15:06.500 blockade restraints, prevention or prophylaxis. 15:06.500 --> 15:11.360 As Nimzowitsch liked to call it slightly different meanings sometimes today, but it can be seen as 15:11.360 --> 15:12.250 prevention. 15:12.260 --> 15:14.660 So this game here was pretty controlled. 15:14.660 --> 15:21.830 We see that this is a kind of one way game, so there's less of a randomness to the result of the game. 15:21.830 --> 15:29.450 It was in positional control and is a great example of why positional chess is important. 15:29.450 --> 15:36.080 Important Even if you are a major attacking player or tactical player, we can see how subtly improving 15:36.080 --> 15:41.660 the position increases the thresholds just ever so slightly to the tipping point where if we have an 15:41.660 --> 15:45.680 aggressive king on E5, it just makes everything work beautifully. 15:45.680 --> 15:51.830 So the whole combination is working beautifully because of this idea of offering the knight and in this 15:51.830 --> 15:52.730 king E5. 15:52.730 --> 15:56.360 So yeah, positional chess is very, very important. 15:57.770 --> 16:00.170 It is an essential part of our toolkit. 16:00.170 --> 16:08.210 When there aren't immediate tactical or attacking solutions, they can improve our abilities of our 16:08.210 --> 16:13.790 position to have either tactical or attacking solutions or just win in the end game. 16:13.790 --> 16:19.580 So I hope that's an interesting introduction for why positional chess is important, and I hope you're 16:19.580 --> 16:27.530 inspired for this course to really take each and every lecture seriously and make sure you understand 16:27.530 --> 16:28.910 each lecture before going on. 16:29.090 --> 16:35.300 Okay, This is really a foundational course, a very, very important part of the jigsaw for any improving 16:35.300 --> 16:36.050 chess player. 16:36.320 --> 16:36.920 Okay. 16:37.670 --> 16:38.330 That's very much.