WEBVTT 00:00.870 --> 00:01.750 Hi there. 00:01.770 --> 00:07.530 In this introduction lecture, I want to zoom in on some key points about Michael Adams, who I regard 00:07.530 --> 00:10.620 as a classic positional player in general. 00:11.070 --> 00:17.490 So first of all, I think I find rather that reliability is an important factor. 00:17.490 --> 00:21.960 When I present games, I have greater enthusiasm if I know the players involved. 00:23.190 --> 00:27.060 So I hope that enthusiasm is carried across. 00:27.390 --> 00:33.120 When I look at many examples of Michael Adams games, especially in British chess championships, where 00:33.120 --> 00:35.280 I might know his opponent as well. 00:35.580 --> 00:42.870 I think relatability is key and this is actually maybe a secret, actually, of of chess and chess improvement 00:42.870 --> 00:43.770 in general. 00:43.860 --> 00:50.220 If you can be more into the game examples you're trying to study because you might actually have seen 00:50.220 --> 00:52.650 the players in question, maybe that helps. 00:53.550 --> 00:58.440 It's more meaningful rather than x, y, z versus blah, blah, blah. 00:58.440 --> 01:00.870 And you might never have heard of either. 01:01.140 --> 01:05.910 But yeah, the personal factor is significant in my view. 01:06.570 --> 01:10.170 So Adams also significantly was over 2700. 01:10.170 --> 01:14.940 For many years, he nearly won one of the world championship knockouts one year too. 01:15.210 --> 01:18.190 So he could have been an official world chess champion for for. 01:19.500 --> 01:24.600 I feel that not studying Adams is like not visiting the London tourist attraction. 01:24.600 --> 01:25.710 So I'm based in London. 01:25.710 --> 01:29.700 It's like never going to visit the tourist attractions. 01:29.700 --> 01:36.480 Sometimes you do need to inspect your own local resources and opportunities and not just take them for 01:36.480 --> 01:41.610 granted, especially if there is a reliability factor. 01:43.140 --> 01:45.260 Now I am Ali Mortazavi. 01:45.270 --> 01:47.230 I also have known in the past. 01:47.250 --> 01:47.940 Great guy. 01:48.990 --> 01:57.720 He has really infused about Adams on the perpetual chess podcast, saying atoms control for possessions 01:58.020 --> 01:59.820 could last for hours on end. 01:59.850 --> 02:03.840 He describes him as an unbelievable, classic positional chess player. 02:04.230 --> 02:07.990 He will just dominate from the opening with a vice like grip. 02:08.010 --> 02:12.240 He could control possession with seemingly infinite precision forever. 02:13.050 --> 02:19.930 So we have this aspect of control in what Ali Mortazavi says, and control is an important thing. 02:19.950 --> 02:20.970 It's an important pattern. 02:20.970 --> 02:21.750 We'll see. 02:21.930 --> 02:26.490 A lot of the patterns in this course relate to possession control. 02:27.120 --> 02:30.480 So he would just beat people or they would just beat up themselves. 02:30.750 --> 02:34.170 So Ali Mortazavi tried this style, but apparently things got out of hand. 02:34.170 --> 02:37.380 So we need to learn how to manage counterplay as best we can. 02:38.190 --> 02:46.030 And in Adams's own perpetual chess podcast, he talks about quite often seeing things further as good. 02:46.050 --> 02:51.250 So even if you have double pawns, see a bit further, be open minded to the details of the position. 02:51.300 --> 02:56.790 There could be opportunities in your particular position which overall principles override principles. 02:56.790 --> 02:58.200 So you need to be the driver. 02:58.230 --> 03:03.000 Basically, I believe he's saying you need to look for the specific opportunities available to you in 03:03.000 --> 03:04.020 a given position. 03:05.040 --> 03:11.700 And as I know with my own personal game with him, just because the opponent has, say, double pawns 03:11.700 --> 03:13.630 or you have seemingly an attractive knight. 03:13.650 --> 03:18.030 You've also got to think about the overall battle of elements. 03:18.060 --> 03:23.940 Overall, it's a good idea to be overall better, even if you have double pawns of your opponent as 03:23.940 --> 03:24.870 an attractive knight. 03:24.900 --> 03:27.540 What if you dominate the E4 like you did against me? 03:27.540 --> 03:36.360 So positional understanding needs to factor in the elements for both sides and say, Look, are you 03:36.360 --> 03:37.570 actually better here? 03:37.590 --> 03:40.530 Are the advantages actually exploitable, etc.? 03:41.700 --> 03:47.540 Adams Also has great plus scores, funny enough against vastly immature and Veselin Topalov. 03:47.550 --> 03:51.630 So these are great players, super grandmasters. 03:52.170 --> 03:56.340 And yeah, Adams's advice is be true to your style. 03:56.340 --> 04:01.470 So sometimes players are choosing openings which might not actually fit their style. 04:01.890 --> 04:08.430 And, you know, for example, Shirov has also been long lasting in the top 100 list as well as Adams. 04:08.430 --> 04:14.370 So it's not necessarily that Adams is a positional player, but more that the super grandmasters which 04:15.090 --> 04:19.920 tailor their openings, etc. to their style, they're maximizing their strengths, they're building 04:19.920 --> 04:24.630 on their strengths and minimizing the weakness that they have. 04:24.630 --> 04:29.670 So that's like the Botvinnik School of Chess Botvinnik would take grandmasters, see what their strengths 04:29.670 --> 04:34.400 are, try and absolutely maximize those out and minimize any weaknesses. 04:34.410 --> 04:42.240 It's a more profitable exercise to treat people on their own merits to do that because it and it also 04:42.240 --> 04:44.340 means potentially they're more aligned. 04:44.340 --> 04:50.460 They're going to enjoy that more if they're playing to their strengths rather than continue trying to 04:50.460 --> 04:55.950 be just a generic, well-rounded player, which anyone could try to be in general. 04:55.950 --> 04:58.190 But if someone has specific strengths, build on those. 04:58.200 --> 05:02.580 So personalization and we see opening choices. 05:03.760 --> 05:08.900 Adams's repertoire is very much quite often like Anatoly Karpov. 05:08.910 --> 05:19.860 So positional choices has been encapsulated in the openings, and I'll show you an example game now, 05:19.860 --> 05:26.420 another example game and Michael Adams Positional authority game, full control, lean into juicy targets. 05:26.430 --> 05:32.730 So Adams was playing against Gavin Crawley in 1999 British Championship Chess Championship. 05:32.730 --> 05:39.870 By the way, I remember crawling once he was leading this chess four piece tournament, which was the 05:39.870 --> 05:45.060 least peaceful tournament I've ever played in, and he was leading to it. 05:45.060 --> 05:50.130 He had to go to a job interview one day, but I think that messed things up a little bit for him. 05:50.130 --> 05:55.370 But he was a great, absolutely great player as well, you know, is a great player as well. 05:55.380 --> 05:57.120 International Master Game and Crawley. 05:57.120 --> 06:00.510 So we see Adams with the white pieces against Gavin Crawley. 06:00.510 --> 06:08.340 So E4 we have Crawley playing a five, Bishop C four so we have six RD, Fraser Fraser Already this 06:08.340 --> 06:15.240 is a quiet junkyard piano and but there is an element of positional control creeping in here. 06:15.240 --> 06:23.610 And actually modern grandmasters have taken up this with great resurgence in recent years because the 06:23.610 --> 06:28.110 Royal Palace will, especially with the Berlin defence, seems to be quite drawn ish. 06:28.110 --> 06:34.800 So this kind of resurgence of interest in in the piano is very interesting. 06:34.800 --> 06:38.570 So rookie one Bishop E six like BD two Black Castles. 06:38.580 --> 06:39.330 B four. 06:39.330 --> 06:40.380 Bishop A seven. 06:40.380 --> 06:41.820 We see Queen B free. 06:42.990 --> 06:46.680 And Black goes with an aggressive plan to try for F5 later. 06:46.680 --> 06:48.630 We have no F1 Bishop G4. 06:49.050 --> 06:54.090 The Queen comes back and you might think, Hang on, isn't Black getting a really aggressive game of 06:54.090 --> 06:55.020 F5? 06:55.050 --> 07:01.440 The thing is, after H three we see f five and a great strengthening move here. 07:02.880 --> 07:05.700 It's faith, which is real key to. 07:07.990 --> 07:10.230 So yeah, very interesting situation. 07:10.240 --> 07:16.420 This game is analyzed in detail in the course, so I'm just going to do a light observation analysis 07:16.420 --> 07:16.930 here. 07:16.940 --> 07:21.380 Queen F 693 and already why it's getting a kind of light squared. 07:21.400 --> 07:27.130 Bishop Without a counterpart, which I do consider a dangerous imbalance, dangerous weapon in its own 07:27.130 --> 07:31.990 right that why has this bishop power But this bishop in particular could be dangerous later. 07:32.470 --> 07:36.220 Although right now, statistically a lot of pawns are on dart squares. 07:36.220 --> 07:39.010 But the positional control aspect is interesting. 07:39.100 --> 07:43.450 We see Bishop takes free, so giving white the bishop hair Queen G six. 07:43.510 --> 07:49.750 Now he takes her five, rook takes her five, and now Queen G for Queen f6. 07:49.750 --> 07:53.620 And we see the bishop now is going to tuck away quite neatly on G two. 07:53.620 --> 07:58.360 So Bishop D five we have 94 and now Bishop takes F four. 07:58.480 --> 08:00.580 It's difficult to tolerate that night. 08:00.970 --> 08:04.180 So sometimes, yeah, giving up the bishop power is the right thing to do. 08:04.180 --> 08:08.680 You can't be that principle that you can never give up the bishop power if there's this menacing knight 08:08.680 --> 08:09.670 on F4. 08:09.670 --> 08:15.730 If bishop free, then you know that menacing knight could actually be quite meaningful here with only 08:15.730 --> 08:17.560 having a slight advantage. 08:17.560 --> 08:26.020 So taking that out simplifies Rook takes up for Queen E to have eight G free and this gives a nice parking 08:26.020 --> 08:30.010 spot for the bishop on G two which now threatens G takes F four. 08:30.040 --> 08:32.530 I'm putting the pawn there. 08:32.710 --> 08:35.410 We see the rook going back. 08:36.850 --> 08:37.360 Yeah. 08:37.360 --> 08:43.690 It's not an advantage for black to give white two rooks for the Queen in this particular case. 08:43.690 --> 08:47.290 Sometimes it might be, but in this particular position it's not very convincing. 08:48.580 --> 08:56.440 So we have rook have six H, four Queen five Queen E three Queen DD seven. 08:57.100 --> 08:58.330 We have Rook a two. 08:58.330 --> 09:01.720 And this build up on the file I felt was instructive. 09:01.720 --> 09:04.240 So I think a five makes things worse. 09:04.570 --> 09:11.230 But white was better anyway, if Knight five a fine white is getting a grip on possession with advantage. 09:11.440 --> 09:15.160 So a five we have B 598 and now D four. 09:15.160 --> 09:20.020 If white can get rooks on the seventh, they'll be juicy targets to exploit. 09:20.020 --> 09:25.000 You know, it's about exploit ability, not just sitting prettily on a file. 09:25.000 --> 09:29.380 We're going to try and convert that into rank pressure because it creates greater levels of exploit 09:29.380 --> 09:31.060 ability targets. 09:31.060 --> 09:32.800 So Queen takes DD four. 09:34.690 --> 09:44.800 So there's already an emerging rookie seven possibility we have 96 Queen G for 95 queen's come off and 09:44.800 --> 09:52.750 now this invasion on Summit Frank we have Knight C five rook take seven rook takes F two and both rooks 09:52.750 --> 09:53.410 double. 09:53.410 --> 09:58.930 So it's kind of pigs on the seventh as they're sometimes called by yes or so on pigs on the seventh, 09:58.930 --> 09:59.950 because they eat quite a lot. 09:59.980 --> 10:01.780 It's very exploitable at the targets. 10:02.050 --> 10:10.930 So we have rook D two rook tanks, G seven and L 96 We see now rook gf7. 10:12.100 --> 10:14.860 So here y actually missed an opportunity. 10:14.860 --> 10:17.620 There was the idea of taking an takes b seven as well. 10:17.620 --> 10:22.270 That's good as well for white, but Rook seven is clear as well to some extent. 10:22.720 --> 10:23.830 So rooks come off. 10:23.830 --> 10:30.310 B six we have rook B seven and you can see that, yeah, this bishop is absolutely amazing for supporting 10:30.310 --> 10:32.110 past pawn potential royalty. 10:32.110 --> 10:37.690 One King h2c5 rotates B six So this past pawn potential, this is a very dangerous weapon. 10:37.690 --> 10:48.820 Now indeed, this past pawn we see Knight takes a four check with King g7b6b1b7d5. 10:49.330 --> 10:51.800 Bishop takes D 519 take three. 10:51.820 --> 10:55.360 But now Rook G king of six and this is the end of the game. 10:56.740 --> 11:05.530 White has very pleasant choices here, and an easy one is Bishop H one not even give the bishop so queening 11:05.530 --> 11:07.960 next move so soon. 11:08.170 --> 11:12.880 So for example here queening So an interesting control game. 11:13.540 --> 11:18.670 One of many examples we're going to go through in great detail in this course. 11:19.000 --> 11:21.400 So yes, classic positional player. 11:21.400 --> 11:28.810 I felt this had a lot of interesting points to make this game, converting far pressure to rank pressure. 11:28.900 --> 11:35.530 It's about exploits ability levels of exploits ability can you know does doesn't mind losing the bishop 11:35.530 --> 11:40.720 PAC the knight was kind of pesky and annoying sometimes we do have to give up the so called Bishop power. 11:40.750 --> 11:42.190 The Bishop power is just the weapon. 11:42.190 --> 11:48.760 We need to look at what's going on overall in the position and overall exploits ability basically. 11:48.760 --> 11:56.770 So we're going to get a lot of amazing lessons and examples from Michael Adams in this course, So I 11:56.770 --> 12:03.190 really hope you enjoy his game examples as well as all the other classic players we're going to visit. 12:03.640 --> 12:06.010 Okay, So much.