Hi there.
In this lecture, I just want to talk about a four quadrant model.
It's when you have two variables that you're really interested in having.
So generally in this course, we do want to have attacking chess.
But at what price?
It can't be at the price of lower accuracy in our games.
Otherwise, we'll simply stop our games scaling up to stronger and stronger opponents.
We want to be able to play accurately and also have an attacking style.
So to do that, we need solid openings.
For example, not risky romantic era openings like the King's Gambit in general, but for faster time
limits.
Sure.
You know, all the gambits are working much more effective on a faster time control in general, because
the opponent has far less time to defend.
The importance of having the initiative is much greater because you're calling the shots on a fast dynamic
game and you want your opponent to use lots of time.
So the four quadrant model in general, though, the more serious the game is, you want to have a solid
game from the outset.
So less of the unsound gambits, for example, that could be described as attacking, but it's attacking
an unsound at the same time and you'll be, you know, becoming unstuck even on faster time controls
against stronger opponents.
They're going to find weaknesses very quickly and defend accurately, and it's going to be much harder.
So what we really need, we want to gravitate to the top left quadrant here, basically the top left
quadrant, We want a king attack style and we also want high accuracy.
So how can we guarantee we learn from role models that have that they're highly accurate but also kind
of dangerous in the attack?
Well, we can look at the world champions that favored an attacking style.
Now, Paul Morphy was a kind of unofficial world champion, and he is very, very instructive for the
open game.
But his opponents were much weaker than in the later generations.
He was so much head and shoulders above his his peers.
So although Paul Morphy is an attacking player, a legend, and so is Anderson as well in that era,
and they played absolutely brilliant attacking games.
Paul Morphy's games often were very accurate.
So, yes, both of those players were, especially Paul Morphy is worth studying, especially in the
open game.
But later on we have Alexander Alekhine, who definitely had a love for combinations.
It's that love of combinations and attacking chess in general, which makes him a great example to learn
from from his game examples.
And that's why the first player of the course is Alexander Alekhine.
We really do want a king attacking style, but with high accuracy and kind of normal kind of modern
style openings in general.
For example, Ruy Lopez As opposed to King's Gambit or some other weird gambit, you know, classic
openings and seeing how attacks can emerge from you.
Positional play quite often to gain advantages.
And the advantage is they kind of make sure we've got balance in our possession and attack in general.
If we're moving resources kind of artificially to one, you know, section of the board, we don't want
to be totally off balance, for example, or center crumbling at the same time.
So attacks need to be made with high accuracy.
There needs to be enough reassurance reassurances in the position that the attack is going to be successful.
So we really do want accuracy in general and a king attacking style.
And I believe we can learn a lot from Alekhine because Kasparov was also learning from Alekhine's examples
as well.
So both of these players proved that this style of play could be effective all the way.
Now you might ask, well, what about Mikhail Tal?
He did also prove this kind of style of play, but he was quite interested in complexity sometimes for
its own sake in some of his games.
So he wasn't world champion as long as Alekhine and Kasparov either.
So yes, he's also another brilliant attacking player, but because of the complexity bias added on,
it makes the examples also a little bit harder to understand.
Sometimes some table games are just just enormous complexity, millions of variations, it seems, you
know, in some some of Tal's games.
But yeah, we really want examples.
We can learn from them.
So for me, a solid foundation representing this King style kind of bias and a bias is using energy
in a certain direction.
So we need balance, we need stability, but still have that underlying bias when opportunity arises
and it's justified to go for the attack.
It's like, you know, a karate kind of move, but you don't want to be off balance.
Balance is very.
Very important on the chessboard.
So that's why things like central control are so important.
A good opening is important to have a stable kind of solid position and ideally accumulating advantages,
which affords us the luxury of attacking operations without worrying too much of vicious counterattacks
with the attack not failing.
So, yes, we want to attack from a position of balance, from a position of solidity, quality openings,
quality accumulation of advantages, ideally.
So, yes.
So you can think about this.
That's the quadrant we want to end up in a king attacking style bias, but with high accuracy so we
can be whatever opponents online or offline potentially.
We don't want to put a limit on our chess improvements, but still we want to retain a little attacking
style preference, basically.
Okay.
Because basically biases do represent fundamentally weaknesses.
If you have a bias, ideally we'd be playing like machines.
Well, ideally inverted commas.
So you just be playing the position and a good world champion for that for really, really high accuracy
is actually actually.
Emanuel Lasker.
He was really a kind of play the position plan people felt at the time.
He had all these different styles.
He was actually just playing the position quite logically without too much of a bias in any direction.
But also, you know, Capablanca was also a kind of play the position player with, for me a slight
difference.
He did simplify when he had even, you know, a very small advantage.
So simplification was a big thing for him.
But we're interested in attacking chess in this course.
And so Alexander Alekhine, who kind of served as the kind of role model because Garry Kasparov is,
is kind of a basic foundational role model in this course.
It's all about accuracy and an attacking style.
We want to have both.
We want to have everything there.
Okay.
And so much.