Hi there.
In this lecture, we're going to talk about the foundations of modern positional chess.
So who laid the foundations?
There was such a thing as the romantic era in chess where attacks were kind of hit and miss.
People would play gambits like The King's Gambit, which today is thought to be unsound but often get
spectacular attacking combinations.
And it was a way of winning games, and it did create that beautiful age.
There are a lot of celebrated games.
The immortal games of chess are quite often attacking masterpieces which are not that positional in
nature.
But Steinitz was the kind of innovator who recognized that the attacks.
Why are they successful and why are they unsuccessful?
He recognized that chess actually can be viewed scientifically, that successful attacks, often when
the opponents.
Is under a disadvantage or we have accumulated advantages and in fact is much more likely to be successful.
So he wanted greater predictability for a tax being successful and recognized the elements of chess,
which we still use today.
And of course, we're aware of many, many more game examples, so many, many more fine grained elements.
How elements are managed converting, converting elements from one element to another.
If we can recognize the elements of a chess position, we know which side is better.
So even beginner players recognize usually material balance as an element of possession of the position.
So we start off with equal material.
But there's other more discerning elements like king safety, like the activity, the relative activity
of the pieces, like the pawn structure, like we can strong squares and the concept of space, more
abstract elements of space and the responsibility that entails central control.
When we think about the center, which side has central control, the hyper modernist preferred to view
control as opposed to occupation.
We can both occupy and control the center or just control the center from afar.
Within Ghetto Bishops, for example.
So these elements are the starting points for the discussion of which side is better.
But what if you have better king Safety?
The opponent has better pawn structure.
It's the overall number that we can give to positions.
Engines literally give a number for who is better, but we've got to kind of think in our head who is
better overall.
So elements are in conflict with each other.
And Jeremy Silman introduced the concept of imbalances that each opening is actually a way of getting
different imbalances in a position.
For example, if you play this in in defense, if your opponent plays a sin in defense, you might have
certain advantages, but the opponent has their advantages to work with.
So it gives a route for both sides to win.
Black could potentially win on the central pawn majority if they get to an end game and they have things
like the semi-open CFO and what has the same default.
And so each opening can be seen as giving elements of interest to both sides.
And it's up to you to prove that your elements are better than the opponents.
Now, I like to consider the overall elements and think what are the actual kind of downsides of the
opponent's position.
So it might not be that they've got triple pawns.
It might be because they've got an unsafe king.
You've got to really determine factoring in the elements, sort of neutralizing each other from the
position you have, who is overall better and what are the real kind of exploitable downsides.
We've got to actually be able to exploit downsides with our pieces in a particular position.
We are playing in a particular position position.
So I like to think about downsides as the overarching way of considering element management.
I did many years back think of element management, but I just had a lot more fun.
Thinking about downsides and downsides can be concrete downsides, like an unprotected piece, in which
case you might have tactical solutions or an unsafe king, but it can be more abstract, profound downsides
of the opponent's position, like a weakened structure or weak square.
And you can use positional methods to exploit, for example, weak square or establish an outpost.
So to establish the downsides is talking, relatively speaking, of the elements for both sides.
And I absolutely love that.
And it scored me so many tournament victories online and brilliant games over the board.
This concept of the downsides model, but it's based on the elements of the position.
And the more we can appreciate the elements of position, the better we're going to be able to judge
the actual downsides of the opponent's position.
So we're looking critically at elements like a weak king and weak squares.
Is it really an exploitable downside?
Maybe it's not.
In some cases.
Maybe you need to wait more.
You might need to use the methods given in this course of positional play, like waiting or provoking
more weaknesses or waiting for the opponent's position to become more disorganized before you try and
exploit downsides, or just in strengthening your position slightly, improving your position while
waiting.
So that's waiting in a high class star.
If you can slightly improve your position and waiting for downsides which you can exploit.
So the downsides model to me is is absolutely vital, as in this course as it is in the complete Guide
to tactics course or the attacking course.
It's just what downsides are we most interested in?
And also in this course, the accumulation of advantages.
Some advantages are just temporary in nature.
So quite often in positional games, the nature of the advantage is the pawn structure is like a storage
device.
You can actually have more permanent storable advantages.
And Steinitz in a particular tournament, Vienna, 1873, kind of showed the world a new way of playing
this.
This game is regarded as the early kind of example of positional chess.
Steinitz was playing against Adolf Einstein, who is a great romantic player and romantic era of chess,
brilliant combinations, combinations and tactics.
So this game in Vienna, 1873, round seven, Steinitz chooses a D opening quite often D four or C4
lends itself very well to more storable permanent advantages in a position.
So it's more about the pawn structure and plans rather than the chaos of tactical positions like The
King's Gambit.
And also there's no element of risk.
We're not committing a pawn, maybe unsettlingly so.
Launchers are built by Steinitz in this game.
It starts with Queen's Gambit declined.
And even if we take an engine view, it's a very nice like mountain climb without too many hiccups.
It's very controlled chess.
And that's the kind of game we really want to play, where we play in a reliable fashion.
We're not like in a gambling casino.
We're on a chessboard with ruthless logic if we want it to be.
So there's the ruthless logic of the pawn structure, of stored advantages, of accumulating, advantages
of kind of using the pawn structure as a way of maintaining more permanent advantages in possession.
So here, after 1987, Steinitz took on de five takes and we have the so called hanging pawn structure
here, actually.
So hanging pawns with the adjacent files, potentially black could make use of these but white plays
Queen A and we have 94 already.
This is a mistake.
And black is heavily penalized for this mistake.
If H six Bishop H four black could have played default.
And this position blacks using their kind of favorable imbalances from the opening this potential to
open up the bishop and inflict structural damage and this situation should be about even so black not
managing their elements quite optimally.
And now white is establishing a big advantage with bishop takes E4.
We have D takes E4 now Rook for one.
This is a really clever point.
If one played Bishop takes E seven, then it's only a small edge to play with.
This is less favorable than the game continuation.
For example, this position is less favorable than what happened with FD one.
So we have an element, a greater element of simplification, so it's much more controlled and then
it takes G five, Queen takes G five, Rook takes these seven.
So the bishop's on the fire.
We have the rook protecting the bishop.
If Bishop c eight we have rook D five tempo gainer and we can play Queen A four and you can see that
that pawn advantage for white, relatively speaking, it can be picked up and white's increasing the
advantage advantage ruthlessly.
So Rook FP eight We have Queen bee free, which is a nice tactic in a way.
It hits B seven and F seven.
So Bishop C six, Queen takes F seven check and H four to try and nudge the Queen away from G seven
because that would be checkmate.
If Queen takes G7 without the Queen protecting G seven, Queen G four and now taking another pawn.
So accumulating more advantage.
In the possession.
We have a couple of rooks coming off.
Rook takes Be2, but Black's not been given that much counterplay.
The bishop is kind of blunted by its own pawn.
And we see Queen take C five.
OC Queen E six and our Rook RD 1h6 and Rook dd six, Queen and seven, which does look at F two.
This needs to be addressed.
Otherwise why don't we mate it?
But a clever move here.
What do you think?
Why you should play here.
400 points.
Yeah.
91.
It hits B2 and Vertex F to Lovely and we're still attacking C six.
So Black's losing material.
Rookie two is played.
If Rook be one we can play Queen take C six knowing that our rooks guarding D one so rookie two And
now a nice move to avoid any hassles with even rook e one guess what is played here and this is a hallmark
of positional chess players as well.
Patience no hurry, good self control accumulate advantages gradually.
Less controversially it's like slow and sure climb up a mountain.
So what?
Be a nice move here.
Yeah, slightly improving the position, kicking off one with tempo tempo gainer again, Black resigned.
So if Rook takes a two, yes, we can take on C six and there's no controversy that hasn't got any attacking
a chance.
Really.
We can play Queen D five hitting the rook and finding Route D a black would have to go back.
And we just got an absolutely winning position here to go go from here.
So it was a very nice control game, which is a big contrast to some of science's crazy King's Gambit
adventures.
Whereas King's sometimes unsafe in the opening, it's much more double edged.
This was more single edged.
We want as a positional player to get into the single edged mindset, not allowing counterplay, having
complete control of the position at all times, ideally being able to slightly increase our superiority
over the opponents, and that will culminate in either an attack or winning material, you know, winning
tactics, winning material and just winning end games generally if it goes all the way.
So basically, we have a lot to thank Steinitz for.
Unless Lasker basically took Steinitz his scientific approach and made it into a much more formidable
weapon, also factoring in the opponent and the tournament situation, etc., and having finer grains
elements and knowing how elements interchange with each other.
So Lasker, in Kramnik's view, became the first 2700 player.
But in terms of innovation, Steinitz is the great innovator.
He is the great scientist, which the elements and that consideration of elements of the position that
we take for granted nowadays and how we assess positions and imbalance.
Fearing from SILMAN, I like to think of the downsides of the opponent's position, taking all elements
into consideration.
What are the real kind of exploitable downsides?
So basically, yeah, but it all started from Steinitz taking this idea that chess doesn't have to be
complete chaos.
The pawns enclosed in semi-closed positions, which often boards the likes of Morphy to tears, it would
often request certain games and the match to be one if we hated the close games.
But it's in the closed.
In semi closed positions, we can often accumulate advantages in a much more reliable manner with less
counterplay from the opponents.
I mean, we see in this game that the bishop was blunted, for example.
So the pawns are doing quite significant long term damage to certain pieces like blunting a bishop here
on the pawns, blunting the Bishop on Be7 really didn't have much attacking coordination.
So we're talking about a way of playing kind of less risky chess and future world champions, basically
took aspects of Lasker and honed in on them.
Lasker was considered a style of all styles he could play, positioning tactically and everything.
But certain world champions, particularly like Petrosian use prevention in particular, kind of became
a specialist on prevention and hardly lost any games.
Karpov liked to say in this Gibraltar interview.
He liked Petrosian but use that style to win.
So you have this combination of making it very difficult to be beaten, but still using that style to
try and grind the opponent down.
Even it's in some long end games to copy off.
Karpov was a very pragmatic player, steadily improving his positions and even using microscopic advantages
and said that he preferred tiny advantages to ones which might offer the opponent's counterplay.
So we're talking about this spirit of very controlled play and detailed knowledge of even tiny advantages
as long as we can accumulate them, that's the key.
So the accumulation of advantages is principle and philosophy and control.
Chess and restricting opponent's counterplay is all part of that.
Because how can you increment the advantages?
If the opponents got loads of counterplay?
You need to calculate loads.
We don't want those scenarios.
So ideally we want positional control, chess, one way street chess and modern positional players,
which I totally admire, like Michael Adams, they they can be over 2700 for many, many years, record
number of years because they have this fundamental fundamentally solid basis to their chess you know
karpov's dominant for so many so many years.
So the positional way, the whole foundation of the positional way was seen in examples of Johann Steinitz.
So he himself a brilliant romantic player, transitions to be this more scientifically oriented player.
So, yes, I hope you take inspiration from this.
Maybe check out even more Steinitz games.
You know, the sites like chess games come to check out Steinitz.
But this tournament in particular, according to Wiki and other sources.
Vienna, 1873.
Some interesting real positional games, the start of positional chess, basically.
And, you know, this is one of those key games which triggered the start of the scientific revolution
of chess.
Okay.
I hope this is inspirational food for thought and so much.