WEBVTT 00:01.300 --> 00:02.240 Hi there. 00:02.260 --> 00:07.030 In this lecture, I want to talk about the course structure and the game selection. 00:07.450 --> 00:13.360 So it is important to see that the course is organized in terms of patterns. 00:13.780 --> 00:14.460 Patterns? 00:14.470 --> 00:17.120 For me, they're less prescriptive. 00:17.140 --> 00:21.490 They're not saying, you see to you, you must do this or you must do that. 00:21.490 --> 00:26.050 They're not laws, they're not principles which you must follow. 00:27.520 --> 00:36.010 Basically, if we think about patterns, we keep them as general advice, and it's up to you whether 00:36.010 --> 00:37.720 to apply a pattern or not. 00:37.720 --> 00:40.270 Is it actually appropriate for your game sessions? 00:40.780 --> 00:43.660 So advice needs to be taken as general guidance. 00:43.660 --> 00:46.270 You are the driver of your game positions. 00:46.270 --> 00:48.580 You need to work out what is truly exploitable. 00:48.580 --> 00:52.270 Just because the opponent has double pawns doesn't automatically mean you're going to win. 00:52.330 --> 00:54.370 Maybe they're not that exploitable. 00:55.000 --> 01:00.580 Maybe you've got to distinguish between what looks bad, positioning, what is actually bad. 01:00.580 --> 01:06.790 You've actually got to do the work in your game positions and you need to work out the overall advantages 01:07.750 --> 01:12.550 which determine who is actually better in a given position. 01:14.170 --> 01:20.110 So we give examples for the patterns in the first three layers of this course feature, Michael Adams, 01:20.110 --> 01:26.650 who's been over 2700 for many, many years, was nearly an official world chess champion because he 01:26.830 --> 01:28.870 was organising these knockout times. 01:28.870 --> 01:30.340 He nearly won one of those. 01:31.540 --> 01:35.050 There's Anatoly Karpov, who has been a world chess champion. 01:35.320 --> 01:39.880 There's Aron Nimzowitsch, who wasn't really given the chance to be world chess champion through Alexander. 01:40.150 --> 01:46.300 Alexander Alekhine chose Bogoljubov instead to play twice instead of Nimzowitsch. 01:46.840 --> 01:54.940 Even in a particular year, Nimzowitsch had fantastic results coming first in certain Tillmans So anyway, 01:56.230 --> 02:03.460 so we're not biased necessarily to just world chess champions and the players after this will be from 02:03.460 --> 02:05.080 other great positional players. 02:06.280 --> 02:08.440 Again, we have players like Rubenstein. 02:08.440 --> 02:13.420 He wasn't a world chess champion, but he's definitely worth looking at for his positional examples. 02:14.440 --> 02:20.350 And we can look at these players most celebrated games quite often, or their most important tournaments 02:20.350 --> 02:21.610 where they did really well in. 02:21.970 --> 02:28.930 Now, the idea of looking for games which are really collected sites like chess games com is really 02:28.930 --> 02:36.190 nice in principle, but positional games, by their nature, they're not as sparkling or brilliant as 02:36.190 --> 02:38.650 tactical or attacking games in general. 02:38.800 --> 02:47.710 So we can't really be led by looking at the most collected games that might not serve our particular 02:47.710 --> 02:54.940 goal, which is to examine how the truly great positional players often manage their positions. 02:54.940 --> 03:02.650 They often manage their positions in a fairly quiet, relatively quiet, unspectacular, low risk manner. 03:02.950 --> 03:10.330 Low risk doesn't usually link up too well with being in lots of people's game collections. 03:10.330 --> 03:14.170 People are dazzled, for example, by Queen sacrifices. 03:14.500 --> 03:22.420 If you want to put chess on YouTube, usually it's the titles which have queen sacrifice in them and 03:22.420 --> 03:23.740 this is a positional course. 03:23.740 --> 03:29.200 We've got to look at the other side of the coin to have a more holistic view of chess. 03:29.710 --> 03:37.540 It's nice to be good at chess with its various skill sets, and if we're just biased by looking all 03:37.540 --> 03:44.110 the time at the most brilliant games, we're going to lose insights, valuable insights into chess. 03:44.230 --> 03:50.680 But positional games do have their own beauty, and it's nice to feature the classic positional games, 03:50.680 --> 03:54.100 which are still in many people's collections. 03:54.130 --> 03:59.020 Often people like a good Zugzwang for example, and Nimzowitsch is immortal. 03:59.020 --> 04:05.110 Zugzwang is in a lot of people's collections and it's usually the more historical games have had time 04:05.110 --> 04:09.550 to soak in into chess culture and be celebrated. 04:09.550 --> 04:12.640 So they often have more game collections. 04:12.640 --> 04:15.070 But we can't be driven by this. 04:15.460 --> 04:23.170 We want to look at modern positional players and for me it was exceptionally important to look at Michael 04:23.170 --> 04:30.880 Adams because for me I've had first hand experience of how he's dismantled players so elegantly and 04:30.880 --> 04:39.040 calmly that I just had to make him a key player, even though he wasn't an official world chess champion, 04:39.040 --> 04:45.790 even though many of his games are not yet in many collections, relatively speaking, to, say, Anatoly 04:45.790 --> 04:48.040 Karpov or to say Nimzowitsch. 04:48.820 --> 04:55.660 And the further we go at, you know, especially the world chess champions, people often bias their 04:55.660 --> 04:59.020 selection of games to the past official world chess champions. 04:59.020 --> 04:59.950 So Capablanca. 05:00.070 --> 05:06.330 There's going to be a lot more game collections generally than Nimzowitsch because Nimzowitsch was never 05:06.330 --> 05:08.130 an official world chess champion. 05:08.760 --> 05:09.480 Lasker. 05:09.480 --> 05:14.610 Because he was world champion for so long, perhaps a lot of his games should be in more game collections, 05:14.610 --> 05:16.830 but maybe people just took less for granted. 05:16.830 --> 05:19.320 He was just so long as world chess champion. 05:19.350 --> 05:25.260 So anyway, the key point I wanted to make here is that we need to get the positional insights. 05:25.410 --> 05:31.650 And if those positional insights are from games which are hardly in any game collections, those games 05:31.650 --> 05:32.650 will still be chosen. 05:32.670 --> 05:38.480 It still could have been, for example, in a notable tournament of a great positional player. 05:38.490 --> 05:43.380 So I like looking at Adams's notable tournament, like his British championship victories. 05:44.160 --> 05:50.490 And we get a lot of positional insights, which otherwise, if we had that bias for looking at the most 05:50.490 --> 05:53.460 celebrated games, we wouldn't get get those insights. 05:53.460 --> 05:55.920 So we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 05:55.920 --> 06:01.830 As the social scientists favorite expression goes, we want to show the gritty games as well, which 06:01.830 --> 06:02.670 maybe not. 06:03.150 --> 06:05.110 They're not so celebrated at all. 06:05.130 --> 06:09.150 They show the importance quite often of being extremely resourceful. 06:09.150 --> 06:14.310 When you're faced with dynamic compensation as a positional player, sometimes you do want to let the 06:14.310 --> 06:18.760 opponents self destruct or have dynamic positions. 06:18.810 --> 06:25.080 We've got to see how we handle that because we're going to be in those situations quite often. 06:26.220 --> 06:35.160 So concrete games, concrete analysis of games, rather with modern engines like Stockfish, with the 06:35.160 --> 06:42.090 neural network capability, really help appreciate more the more profound moves of positions which in 06:42.090 --> 06:50.110 the past may be engines which are more analytical in nature, only prioritized tactics well, and combinations 06:50.140 --> 06:53.850 not so much the longer term aspects of possession. 06:53.850 --> 06:59.280 But now with neural networks, we can learn a lot of positional play and a lot of opening theory more 06:59.280 --> 07:01.380 than ever before from modern engines. 07:01.380 --> 07:08.310 So it's a delight to actually put these games through the test of modern neural network based engine 07:08.310 --> 07:15.330 technology and to see what really happened with potentially best play from both sides, to see the kind 07:15.330 --> 07:18.930 of scalability of the play with greater scrutiny. 07:18.960 --> 07:22.050 Would there still have been the same game results? 07:22.650 --> 07:28.080 We also explore not so fashionable patterns of positional chess. 07:28.410 --> 07:33.660 And for me, it was an early delight to see and be reminded that, for example, Michael Adams would 07:33.660 --> 07:38.970 often imbalance from the opening were things like the Marshall Gambit, which is, you know, since 07:39.120 --> 07:45.780 his and other players use become one of the most respected gambits going with the black pieces, so 07:45.780 --> 07:51.870 much so that a lot of modern grandmasters they play anti Marshall Gambit lines or they avoid the royal 07:51.870 --> 07:52.920 affairs altogether. 07:53.760 --> 08:04.170 So yeah, this is trying to be a more modern view of positional chess and, and often looking at relatively 08:04.170 --> 08:10.680 uncelebrated games, but games which we can really learn this particular kind of you could say more 08:10.680 --> 08:15.150 secret arts than the art of dazzling sacrifices and combinations. 08:16.760 --> 08:21.300 So now the example I'd like to show you here is the imbalance pattern. 08:21.300 --> 08:25.200 This is a marshall Gambit game position. 08:25.320 --> 08:29.940 Vasily Evans was playing against Michael Adams in 1991. 08:31.770 --> 08:36.620 Tarrasch went round six and from this position Adams played F five. 08:36.630 --> 08:39.320 So a positional player with Gambit. 08:39.330 --> 08:40.770 Are you outraged? 08:41.100 --> 08:46.380 Hopefully not, because, you know, if you're playing a player like Vasily, eventually you need to 08:46.380 --> 08:47.790 get every advantage going. 08:47.790 --> 08:51.240 And if you can get an advantage for playing the Marshall Gambit. 08:52.810 --> 08:56.680 Or very pliable possession where you've got no bad pieces. 08:56.950 --> 09:01.690 You know, from positional perspective, we actually have got a great position. 09:01.690 --> 09:02.890 We're just the pawn down there. 09:03.970 --> 09:09.700 But as Alphazero has indicated in many games, you know, sometimes material can be sacrificed for authority 09:09.700 --> 09:10.780 in the position. 09:10.780 --> 09:13.810 So here I've played Bishop Tex G. 09:13.810 --> 09:19.480 For we have Queen G for Bishop D two and now Rook G six. 09:19.480 --> 09:22.180 White is under severe pressure here already. 09:22.180 --> 09:27.790 King G2 f four This looks very natural to play a free queen. 09:27.790 --> 09:30.550 H five and now g four is played. 09:31.510 --> 09:37.180 And you might think, Well, isn't this asking for some tactical combination if Rook 81 The thing is, 09:37.180 --> 09:44.300 Black has that F4 square to use with bishop and four So for example here then it's a disaster. 09:44.320 --> 09:45.760 94 is happening. 09:45.970 --> 09:49.600 The extreme example for winning the queen or winning the rook. 09:49.600 --> 09:50.680 If the queen had moved. 09:50.680 --> 09:52.150 So it's under pressure. 09:52.150 --> 09:53.560 So G four was played. 09:53.560 --> 09:54.670 Rook Sorry. 09:54.670 --> 09:56.800 And now Queen H four is played. 09:58.490 --> 10:09.650 So here we have rookie two and Adams is invited to play rookie Tex G for in effect, which he does play. 10:09.770 --> 10:13.210 So he sacrifices a rook and plays a free check. 10:13.220 --> 10:20.570 Now positioning things have been altered here, although still white is a pawn up from a positional 10:20.570 --> 10:21.680 perspective. 10:21.980 --> 10:25.360 Black's authority on the possession has slightly increased. 10:25.370 --> 10:27.920 We have King H a a great preventative move. 10:28.340 --> 10:34.250 Well, taking out the sting rather you could say, of Queen E six Check if Rook have to, Queenie six 10:34.250 --> 10:34.760 check. 10:35.060 --> 10:36.340 This is a disaster. 10:36.350 --> 10:38.090 The knight's holding h two. 10:39.290 --> 10:43.670 So King H eight is an initial precaution. 10:44.930 --> 10:50.210 And now another precaution move prevents the move for back row issues. 10:50.210 --> 10:56.020 H six And here now the time is ready for a more attacking move. 10:56.030 --> 10:58.730 Bishop f for we have bishop e one. 10:59.600 --> 11:06.770 If Bishop takes F 496 F for this position, Queen takes G four check and Queenie two is very dangerous 11:06.770 --> 11:10.460 for white and not just for being mated. 11:10.460 --> 11:14.780 Basically there's great scrutiny on the queenside as well. 11:14.780 --> 11:16.750 Black could undermine the pawn chain with Queen. 11:16.760 --> 11:20.930 Text B two with advantage now overall. 11:20.930 --> 11:23.840 So Bishop E one was right, Queen G five. 11:23.840 --> 11:27.830 So it's quite vivid that at first the man shook. 11:27.830 --> 11:30.530 His pieces are largely on the back row. 11:30.950 --> 11:36.920 So we have H three, Queen, G six, Rook D one and Bishop B eight. 11:38.240 --> 11:39.950 Rook D2 and now Queen Bee one. 11:39.950 --> 11:46.420 So this is setting up painful pins potentially with this invasion to the ape. 11:46.430 --> 11:48.170 Frank Bishop f22. 11:48.170 --> 11:49.100 The night being pinned. 11:49.100 --> 11:51.470 This doesn't look good for King G. 11:51.470 --> 11:52.100 Eight. 11:52.490 --> 11:57.050 A nice waiting move, saying what White is doing, why it's approaching. 11:57.050 --> 12:06.710 It seems a kind of zugzwang If the rook moves to e two, we've got nine and four forking queen and rook 12:06.740 --> 12:07.220 as example. 12:07.220 --> 12:08.270 What does why actually do? 12:08.300 --> 12:08.480 Why? 12:08.480 --> 12:11.390 It's kind of stuck here. 12:12.530 --> 12:13.940 So b four is played. 12:13.940 --> 12:16.550 This doesn't look like a great move because it weakens C free. 12:16.550 --> 12:17.210 But what else? 12:17.210 --> 12:18.590 It's very difficult to. 12:20.380 --> 12:21.670 Do something, do nothing. 12:21.670 --> 12:26.020 Rather like King H one, for example, F for and Queen takes F one. 12:26.020 --> 12:27.010 That's devastating. 12:27.190 --> 12:31.450 The King's got to hold on to the F one night here. 12:31.450 --> 12:35.620 So why is under great pressure with this nine and full front? 12:35.620 --> 12:36.760 So be free. 12:37.780 --> 12:40.390 And we see now first bishop and for. 12:42.960 --> 12:44.850 Rookie to are now taking out C three. 12:44.850 --> 12:55.860 So now it's equal on pawns but still black has huge pressure rookie six and now is even a pawn up equal 12:55.860 --> 12:59.300 on pawns again if Bishop E one. 12:59.970 --> 13:04.080 Looking at the Queen, the simplest is just to take be free here with advantage. 13:04.080 --> 13:05.370 So Rook takes C six. 13:05.370 --> 13:08.010 So Adams has used the martial gamut to gain advantage. 13:08.010 --> 13:13.860 Now after queen tanks be free, Rook takes a six so again equal on pawns. 13:14.280 --> 13:18.930 But the qualitative value of the pieces is much better for black. 13:18.930 --> 13:19.500 92. 13:19.500 --> 13:21.510 Check King H one. 13:21.810 --> 13:23.250 Bishop B eight. 13:24.520 --> 13:31.150 We have Bishop e one and now this paralyzing move, Queen RD one and Emergent resigned here. 13:32.230 --> 13:41.560 So if he plays, for example, the kings away from the knight so if Bishop F2 we have. 13:42.940 --> 13:43.390 For example. 13:43.680 --> 13:44.530 And four. 13:44.560 --> 13:47.980 And how does one play this? 13:48.760 --> 13:51.310 It also stops any check that I have for. 13:51.310 --> 13:54.280 But say Queen G, free Queen takes F one check. 13:56.020 --> 14:02.080 And if king if the queen goes to G 196 H free is nasty. 14:02.080 --> 14:03.670 And look at the pressure on F two. 14:04.390 --> 14:10.960 So yes, off the Queen d11 is really paralyzed and resigned. 14:11.860 --> 14:18.790 So I do like the imbalance patterns, imbalances, giving up material positional gambits. 14:18.790 --> 14:21.310 Adams Also a bit of a fan of the Benko Gambit. 14:21.580 --> 14:24.040 That's fun for me. 14:24.040 --> 14:30.760 And by having another player like Adams, we see some very fun openings compared to Anatoly Karpov and 14:30.760 --> 14:37.150 maybe stayed away from some of the imbalance patterns we see from other positional players. 14:37.450 --> 14:45.670 So this course is a little bit on the spicy side as well for a possession, of course, showing sometimes 14:45.670 --> 14:51.310 some dynamic games as well, showing basically positional players aren't totally averse. 14:52.240 --> 14:54.250 For dynamic sacrificial play. 14:54.460 --> 15:02.530 If there's fairly low risk in playing such a way, it's often about risk appetite. 15:03.690 --> 15:04.710 In general. 15:05.550 --> 15:12.060 And it's just nice to see the meat in potato games as well as the more celebrated games. 15:12.060 --> 15:21.210 So I hope we're going to learn a lot about positional chess together and some surprising revelations 15:21.210 --> 15:22.020 as well. 15:22.240 --> 15:23.130 OC. 15:24.410 --> 15:29.240 I hope you really enjoy this journey of exploration of positional patterns. 15:30.610 --> 15:35.380 In this course, which largely you'll see is about control and pawn structure. 15:35.380 --> 15:42.070 But there are other interesting patterns as well to to explore how so much.