WEBVTT 00:01.530 --> 00:02.430 Hi there. 00:02.670 --> 00:09.660 In this lecture, we talk about the accumulation of advantages model later from Steinitz in more modern 00:09.660 --> 00:10.380 chess. 00:10.470 --> 00:13.470 So the immediate world champion after Steinitz. 00:13.470 --> 00:16.800 So Steinitz was the first official world chess champion. 00:16.800 --> 00:24.330 The immediate world champion after Lasker used the whole theories of Steinitz as a formidable weapon 00:24.330 --> 00:27.330 and was actually world chess champion for 27 years. 00:27.870 --> 00:31.470 There was a record number of years later. 00:31.470 --> 00:38.190 Capablanca also used the positional approach, small advantages, and often simplification as a major 00:38.190 --> 00:38.910 tool. 00:39.090 --> 00:42.930 That was Capablanca speciality for reducing counterplay. 00:42.930 --> 00:45.810 It's like, what is the source of counterplay? 00:45.960 --> 00:51.090 The complexity of the position which can be reduced if you take away the opponent's pieces. 00:51.090 --> 00:57.090 They can't really threaten you as long as you're preserving a small edge which can be used to win the 00:57.090 --> 00:57.960 endgames. 00:57.960 --> 01:07.410 Petrosian also was a world champion, heavily influenced by positional chess and also made use of the 01:07.410 --> 01:15.180 hyper modernist ideas like Nimzowitsch so actually accumulated advantages in a very controlled style 01:15.180 --> 01:18.510 using things like restraint, prophylaxis or prevention. 01:18.510 --> 01:24.180 You could call that strengthening the position all the way through with minimal controversy. 01:24.180 --> 01:27.630 And quite often Petrosian had a track record for a lot of draws. 01:27.630 --> 01:34.470 Sometimes Karpov essentially said in an interview in Gibraltar he used precision style but playing for 01:34.470 --> 01:35.160 a win. 01:35.700 --> 01:42.330 So Karpov was a really dominant world chess champion after having been defaulted world champion when 01:42.330 --> 01:50.760 Fischer didn't want to accept the conditions of the match and other future world champions, including 01:50.760 --> 01:52.200 Kramnik and Colson. 01:52.590 --> 01:57.390 Although universal players are also hugely celebrated as positional geniuses. 01:57.810 --> 02:06.330 So Carlsen has a huge determination to grind out games, even with tiny advantages relentlessly like 02:06.330 --> 02:11.370 Fischer was also, of course, a brilliant positional player and known as a universal player. 02:12.180 --> 02:16.260 So this course feeds on classic positional players. 02:16.260 --> 02:23.880 So Adams, like Petrosian and Karpov, is often slowly strangulating opponents counterplay while improving 02:23.880 --> 02:24.750 positions. 02:24.810 --> 02:30.030 And you might think, does that style of play actually result in long grinds? 02:30.240 --> 02:36.060 Actually, sometimes Adams is winning games in less than 35 moves or 30 moves in many of the key British 02:36.060 --> 02:38.130 championships he's played, which we'll see. 02:38.400 --> 02:44.100 That's wonderful to see how positional play can also result in very quick wins, actually. 02:44.730 --> 02:51.570 And this animal metaphor was given for Petrosian, Karpov and and Adams like boa constrictors. 02:51.570 --> 02:58.650 Boa constrictors often are like paralyzing their victims with very little chance. 02:58.650 --> 03:02.280 They're just slowly in this grip, which they can't get rid of. 03:03.090 --> 03:05.540 So, yes, nice animal metaphor there. 03:05.550 --> 03:11.790 Boa constrictor style, especially Petrosian and Karpov were labelled like boa constrictors. 03:12.120 --> 03:17.340 And if we echo Steinitz, he basically said, when you have an advantage, you're obliged to attack. 03:17.340 --> 03:19.530 Otherwise you're endangered to lose the advantage. 03:20.100 --> 03:22.140 Things have changed since then. 03:22.140 --> 03:30.000 Clearly in the future world champions after Steinitz, his idea that actually we can just accumulate 03:30.000 --> 03:35.040 advantages and, you know, just build them up and generally restrain the opponent and not really even 03:35.040 --> 03:40.200 worry about having to attack the opponents, just collapse by themselves, self destruct, implode. 03:40.350 --> 03:43.190 They're just under too much pressure and they break at some point. 03:43.200 --> 03:49.290 Adams has noted that in a kind of podcast interview that he likes games where there's a lot of potential 03:49.290 --> 03:51.030 for the opponents to go wrong. 03:51.450 --> 03:56.550 You know, often deep into a game, they'll make critical mistakes, so we're not actually obliged to 03:56.550 --> 03:56.970 attack. 03:56.970 --> 04:01.530 If you look at positional players and that's what really distinguishes them, they like the idea of 04:01.530 --> 04:07.650 just restricting the opponent and accumulating for its own sake, basically the application of having 04:07.650 --> 04:10.920 to use advantages to attack or play tactics. 04:11.250 --> 04:12.360 Sure is beautiful. 04:12.360 --> 04:12.960 Win and game. 04:12.980 --> 04:15.510 Sure, that's beautiful if it naturally arises. 04:15.510 --> 04:21.870 But these positional players can use waiting moves more than, you know, tactical players who might 04:21.870 --> 04:22.830 have less patience. 04:22.830 --> 04:23.790 They can use waiting moves. 04:23.790 --> 04:27.750 Wait, wait, wait until the opponent makes a mistake and high class way moves. 04:27.750 --> 04:33.480 Just strengthen the position as well as waiting so the opponent's slightly the opponents slightly get 04:33.690 --> 04:36.660 disorganized in their position, have a weakness of the last move. 04:36.660 --> 04:40.680 Concretely, where they blunder a piece, they break at some points. 04:41.610 --> 04:44.600 So it's a very, very effective playing style. 04:44.610 --> 04:48.240 Karpov nearly wiped out even arguably the greatest player of all time. 04:48.240 --> 04:48.720 Kasparov. 04:48.720 --> 04:52.650 Karpov nearly wiped out his spot in a match six zero. 04:52.650 --> 04:57.090 But Kasparov came back in that match and eventually the match was abandoned. 04:57.090 --> 04:59.970 So this style of play is extremely dangerous. 05:00.480 --> 05:04.690 And can dominate potentially dynamic attacking players like Garry Kasparov. 05:04.710 --> 05:11.250 It's a very dangerous style of play in its own right just to strengthen and accumulate advantages or 05:11.250 --> 05:14.070 worsen improving our position, worsening the opponents. 05:14.070 --> 05:18.700 And included in that is their ability to even move make any useful moves. 05:18.720 --> 05:25.500 It's like a repeat until kind of loop until the opponent has no useful moves and the on verge of self 05:25.500 --> 05:26.460 destruction. 05:27.390 --> 05:33.840 So yeah, it's a wonderful goal in its own right to accumulate and strengthen advantages. 05:34.290 --> 05:37.950 Whatever you use that goal for, it will enhance generally your goals. 05:37.950 --> 05:42.240 So an attacking combination is made easier if your pieces are in the right places. 05:42.240 --> 05:48.180 If looking safe enough, there's no backfire as like taking out all the backfires in advance of a tactical 05:48.180 --> 05:50.850 combination or an attack, taking out all the downsides. 05:50.850 --> 05:57.630 First, by strengthening the position positional goals, which we can see as kind of outposts of our 05:57.630 --> 05:58.960 positional campaign. 05:59.020 --> 06:02.640 That sort of talked about as small wins in this course. 06:02.640 --> 06:08.460 We have sections in this course which talk about accumulating small wins. 06:08.460 --> 06:11.880 So that's what we achieve rather than make use of. 06:12.090 --> 06:16.950 But yes, the actual process, the methods that we use are really important as well, which we're trying 06:16.950 --> 06:18.960 to emphasize in this course. 06:19.740 --> 06:24.120 Accumulation of advantages can sometimes be visually apparent. 06:24.120 --> 06:30.510 It can you can see in a game how not just the engine graph after it's just going up and up, but you're 06:30.510 --> 06:36.330 visually sometimes amplifying and transforming advantages like batteries increasing in pressure. 06:36.330 --> 06:42.330 It can be a nice visual, entertaining game to play through and to see that one side really didn't have 06:42.330 --> 06:45.540 much play or the counterplay was drained out. 06:45.810 --> 06:49.890 So I have an example for you, a concrete example. 06:49.890 --> 06:53.550 This is Locke van Whaley against Nigel Short. 06:54.750 --> 06:57.680 So on this occasion, yeah. 06:57.810 --> 07:03.660 Van when he's playing a nice positional game too often the Dutch grandmaster is featured because he 07:03.660 --> 07:04.920 plays the Sicilian defense. 07:05.100 --> 07:09.630 People often feature him on the wrong side of a Sicilian defense. 07:09.630 --> 07:15.690 But here Van really is with the white pieces against Britain's Nigel Shaw in 2010 cause group A and 07:15.690 --> 07:18.330 it made a powerful impression on me. 07:18.330 --> 07:24.320 So at the opening we have a certain pawn structure called the Carlsbad structure, and this gives y 07:24.390 --> 07:25.680 some CFO. 07:25.680 --> 07:27.810 And these elements are important to understand. 07:27.810 --> 07:33.180 Black has a semi-open fold, but because Black's king is usually on this side of the board and the King 07:33.180 --> 07:39.840 side, that semi-open file is often more difficult to use than White's semi-open C file. 07:39.840 --> 07:42.570 So these are small elements of the position to bear in mind. 07:42.570 --> 07:47.060 And in this particular structure, there's such a thing as minority attack. 07:47.070 --> 07:51.000 Now, this game is actually examined in great detail later on in the course. 07:51.000 --> 07:53.580 So I just wanted to give you a gist though, of things. 07:53.580 --> 08:01.590 So here we see ea free Bishop EA, seven, Queen, C2 and Black Horses, Bishop dd, free rookie and 08:01.590 --> 08:02.640 now free. 08:02.640 --> 08:05.820 So this prevents black using G4 Square. 08:05.820 --> 08:09.510 We have fight and our bishop for a five. 08:10.380 --> 08:15.570 So sometimes there's a classic plan for white to have a kind of minority attack and this dissuaded the 08:15.570 --> 08:23.010 minority attack aims to fracture black structure often leaving an isolated a pawn and backward c pawn. 08:23.010 --> 08:30.300 So it is a kind of way of transforming this position, this structure, into a more exploitable advantage. 08:30.300 --> 08:33.990 And that's one of the big beauties about accumulation of advantage. 08:33.990 --> 08:41.100 Very sometimes you are transforming advantages into more practical ones where your resources are able 08:41.100 --> 08:44.880 to exploit the resulting transformations much easier. 08:45.030 --> 08:51.990 So here, White Castle, 96, we have the bishop tucking back Bishop DD six and then when he doesn't 08:51.990 --> 08:58.740 mind the Bishop exchange, this does help for potential outposts on C five and E five later that the 08:58.740 --> 09:00.090 Guardian bishop is gone. 09:00.300 --> 09:10.830 So Rook for one we have Bishop E six, a three, we have rook e, seven a, B one now B four. 09:11.040 --> 09:13.980 So eight times eight times Bishop D seven and they'll be five. 09:13.980 --> 09:20.070 So the minority attack is aiming to transform the semi-open CFO and this structure into another structure, 09:20.070 --> 09:21.960 which is even more exploitable. 09:21.960 --> 09:26.310 We see 94 now, B to C, six, B to C six. 09:26.310 --> 09:27.900 So is this a big deal? 09:27.900 --> 09:31.140 Should this necessarily lead to Black's downfall? 09:31.320 --> 09:34.640 We see Rook B six and now Knight take C three. 09:34.650 --> 09:36.810 One of the points of group B six of Queen f6. 09:36.810 --> 09:43.320 This is kind of preventative for Queen f6 and we often hear that word preventative preventing prophylaxis 09:43.320 --> 09:44.790 in positional games. 09:44.820 --> 09:49.860 Knight takes the five would be possible, so it's preventing any queen of things. 09:49.860 --> 09:51.510 So we see more simplification. 09:51.510 --> 09:52.890 Knight Take C free. 09:53.070 --> 09:55.440 Queen, take C free now Queen F six here. 09:55.440 --> 09:58.230 So without Knight takes D five black is actually threatening. 09:58.230 --> 09:59.880 Bishop takes H three. 10:00.060 --> 10:03.470 Neither of Queen sites are free, so that is address. 10:03.470 --> 10:07.820 But first, Bishop takes G six, Queen six, G six, which is a new friend. 10:07.820 --> 10:09.530 Now Bishop takes H three. 10:09.770 --> 10:13.610 It's important to be able to see the opponents threat. 10:13.610 --> 10:14.690 So Bishop takes H three. 10:14.690 --> 10:17.110 The positional player must see the opponents threats. 10:17.120 --> 10:18.170 The king moves. 10:18.680 --> 10:21.140 We see f six Now, this is a weakening. 10:21.140 --> 10:22.310 It's a concession. 10:22.520 --> 10:23.300 It's weakening. 10:23.300 --> 10:28.850 Basically this seven Frank Now we can imagine with that weakening, that is a new downside creeping 10:28.850 --> 10:35.340 into the position which we might want to try and exploit by eventually doubling or traveling on seventh 10:35.360 --> 10:36.080 rank. 10:36.080 --> 10:41.930 So Rook one has that idea that potentially we can pile on the pressure here. 10:42.140 --> 10:47.060 Queen H five And now again, Nigel Short is just playing for little France. 10:47.060 --> 10:53.630 Bishop takes four, Queen takes off G tanks that's addressed Queen five and now a little threat of rook 10:53.660 --> 10:54.950 takes E three. 10:55.070 --> 10:58.550 So Black summit E file does seem useful, at least for a frets. 10:58.550 --> 11:02.090 Their King g one addresses that rook takes e free. 11:02.090 --> 11:04.730 So now Queen G five again with a bishop takes H three threat. 11:04.730 --> 11:08.300 And now you might wonder, Wow, is this what position play's all about? 11:08.330 --> 11:10.880 We've got to neutralize the opponent's threats. 11:10.880 --> 11:13.790 We've got to respect the opponent's counterplay and minimize it. 11:13.790 --> 11:21.680 So King H two, Queen a five threatens, Queen takes F two, and we have now Knight RD three. 11:21.680 --> 11:22.760 Now, this is dual purpose. 11:22.760 --> 11:24.050 It's not just defending F2. 11:24.050 --> 11:25.760 The knight could come to see five later. 11:25.760 --> 11:28.970 We have Queenie six now Black is on the back foot. 11:28.970 --> 11:31.700 Just waiting is in a waiting game now. 11:31.700 --> 11:36.920 King G one improving the position still further so that there's no checks which could be useful in some 11:36.920 --> 11:37.730 variations. 11:37.730 --> 11:43.880 So for example, we've got B seven and this check could spring black with Bishop F5 and try and simplify, 11:44.090 --> 11:50.000 which might actually help black on this particular occasion with only a small edge to white potentially, 11:50.000 --> 11:51.140 but it's still there. 11:51.140 --> 11:52.160 But King G one. 11:52.160 --> 11:56.570 So that's a small improvement to the position, which is another thing we'll keep hearing these small 11:56.570 --> 12:02.450 improvements to position, not rushing, not hurrying, having the self-control, not to rush delayed 12:02.450 --> 12:07.430 gratification incarnate on the chessboard when we slightly improve our position. 12:07.430 --> 12:11.420 So we're delaying that gratification, putting a lot of pressure on the seven until now. 12:11.420 --> 12:14.540 And now finally we get the pressure on the seventh being built up. 12:14.690 --> 12:17.570 So here, not minding an exchange of a pair of rooks. 12:17.570 --> 12:22.340 We have the eight we have now 9c5. 12:22.340 --> 12:24.650 So this is improving the knight, the Knights better than the Bishop. 12:24.660 --> 12:29.780 White has a significant number of advantages which are being kind of cemented now. 12:29.780 --> 12:34.040 So that backward pawn in front of a back pawn is often a great outpost square. 12:34.040 --> 12:36.020 That's a beautiful knight outpost. 12:36.020 --> 12:38.390 So black's going on the first two rows. 12:38.390 --> 12:39.550 Now that's a good sign. 12:39.560 --> 12:44.510 Queen B six we have H five, further weakening of the position that could come handy later. 12:44.630 --> 12:46.280 Rook C seven We have rook. 12:46.280 --> 12:51.140 Take C seven, Rook take C seven, Queen eight and now Rook seven. 12:51.140 --> 12:52.040 Keeping control. 12:52.250 --> 12:53.480 No checks in sight. 12:53.930 --> 12:58.280 We have rugby seven Bishop F seven and now Queen A seven. 12:58.280 --> 13:04.370 So this amplification on the seventh rank is vivid, white, systematically increasing advantage here. 13:04.370 --> 13:09.080 And now it's time to crown with a combination actually. 13:09.080 --> 13:13.460 So we've got the pressure on the seventh rank and we're kind of optimal. 13:13.460 --> 13:19.610 And this is the point where it's kind of useful to look for concrete combinations and tactics and attacks, 13:19.820 --> 13:21.440 etc., something concrete. 13:21.530 --> 13:25.130 If you're not going to win, you know, sometimes you might win early in the endgame. 13:25.130 --> 13:26.090 So here, guess what? 13:26.090 --> 13:27.200 Won't plays. 13:30.330 --> 13:33.720 Okay, 97 and now we have rookie eight. 13:33.720 --> 13:35.370 And now what's the idea? 13:35.610 --> 13:36.510 Can you see? 13:37.330 --> 13:37.420 Yeah. 13:37.590 --> 13:39.050 Nine takes F six check. 13:39.060 --> 13:44.370 So concrete gain material and also king safety is destroyed and also these pawns are shattered. 13:44.460 --> 13:52.290 So absolutely dismal pawn structure here follows his possessions on its last legs basically now Queen 13:52.290 --> 13:58.440 have five rook g seven check now Queen have seven and here Nigel short resigned so it's it's a one way 13:58.440 --> 14:04.140 street this game it's a one way road it's a bit symbolic of the semi-open C file to be a one way road 14:04.140 --> 14:10.500 as well where we have pressure like our cars going down one way without any cars coming back. 14:10.800 --> 14:15.870 And that concept was emphasized in a classic positional book called Simple Chess by Stein. 14:15.870 --> 14:18.840 The idea of this semi file being like a one way street. 14:18.840 --> 14:21.810 I love the absolute, you know, the metaphors and simple chess. 14:22.110 --> 14:26.250 You know, that's a book worth checking out as well as the classic nimzowitsch my system. 14:26.250 --> 14:31.110 So those are great positional books, which would have something to say about this game in effect. 14:31.110 --> 14:38.760 But yeah, this is a crushing position to Nigel Short resigning if Rook eight we can simply crown things 14:38.760 --> 14:43.050 with Rook Jeffrey concretely threatening now Queen's G seven Checkmate. 14:43.260 --> 14:46.410 And if check that's one of Black's last major checks. 14:46.410 --> 14:48.540 Queen H seven Black's going to get mated now. 14:49.530 --> 14:55.380 So I felt this was a very controlled positional game, relatively modern game 2010. 14:56.880 --> 15:02.730 And yes, the spirit of positional play basically is evident in modern chess. 15:02.730 --> 15:09.000 It's a vital part of modern chess, especially in what we call the closed or semi-closed positions, 15:09.000 --> 15:12.360 where the pawn structure means that there aren't. 15:12.360 --> 15:18.330 There are opportunities for positional gains, for concrete, increasing an advantage because the pawns 15:18.330 --> 15:19.950 are kind of storing the advantages. 15:19.950 --> 15:22.530 They're making sure the game isn't just tactical chaos. 15:22.560 --> 15:27.000 If you imagine a positional without pawns and the pieces just facing each other, you'd have to endlessly 15:27.000 --> 15:32.550 calculate variations positional players within the semi-closed and closed positions, which Paul Morphy 15:32.550 --> 15:33.150 hated. 15:33.150 --> 15:39.060 They're able to have more thematic thinking, thinking about planned structures, transforming advantages 15:39.060 --> 15:42.120 from one to another, because the advantage is not dissipating so easily. 15:42.120 --> 15:46.630 It's more it's it's more permanent in nature as we see in this game. 15:46.650 --> 15:50.910 And it's a beautiful game in its own right to appreciate positional games like this. 15:50.910 --> 15:56.910 How advantages transform or converted and how pressure is just increasingly intensified. 15:56.910 --> 16:00.510 Amplified as I like to say, it's just beautiful stuff to witness. 16:00.510 --> 16:07.080 It has its own beauty, this whole way of playing chess so we don't just have to go straight for the 16:07.080 --> 16:07.830 king. 16:07.830 --> 16:10.710 You know, in romantic style, we've got more options. 16:10.710 --> 16:18.090 As chess evolved, we have more options for winning, as demonstrated by our world chess champions. 16:18.210 --> 16:22.080 So this is a Dutch grandmaster on this occasion. 16:22.080 --> 16:28.110 So beautiful positional game with the minority, the so called minority attack, damaging Black's pawn 16:28.110 --> 16:28.580 structures. 16:28.620 --> 16:32.970 The minority attack in itself is an example of accumulating advantages. 16:32.970 --> 16:37.500 When you're taking a structure and you're transforming it to a worse structure, you can quite often 16:37.500 --> 16:43.410 do that with pawn structures in general to transform and make advantages more exploitable with your 16:43.410 --> 16:45.150 pieces in certain positions. 16:45.330 --> 16:50.880 So sometimes even the act of doubling paradoxically the opponent's pawns might help you get more exploitable 16:50.880 --> 16:51.450 weaknesses. 16:51.450 --> 16:56.580 So the idea of transforming structures in general, the broader, more abstract idea is very, very 16:56.580 --> 17:02.310 powerful to the positional player for manipulating to increase advantages to ones which might actually 17:02.550 --> 17:03.990 be more easy to exploit. 17:03.990 --> 17:05.850 So bear that in mind as well. 17:05.880 --> 17:10.050 It's a very, very beautiful thing to accumulate advantages in a way. 17:10.650 --> 17:13.410 You can look at the beauty of it in many different ways. 17:13.800 --> 17:17.340 Okay, I hope you enjoyed this one very much.