Hi there.
In this introduction lecture, I want to head on talk about beauty versus accuracy.
So head on.
Okay, so we had a romantic era in chess.
Which had things like The King's Gambit and the Evans Gambit as opening choices, leading to very sharp
situations where often white, the play of the white pieces could end up absolutely crushing opponents.
And Paul Morphy was one of the heroes of the romantic era and of Anderson.
So the Romantic era had these gambits, which often did work because defensive technique wasn't that
good at the time, and it was also full, ungentlemanly and cowardly, too, to not accept sacrifices.
So maybe that's the opening gambit.
Sacrifice or sacrifices later, maybe it was fought.
It was like cowardly not to accept the sacrifices when maybe they shouldn't or they accepted them later.
Or at least they should have done count the sacrifices.
They should have put more of an effort into king safety and defensive technique.
But in chess history, the evolution of chess style, there was an increase in the defensive style.
And Steinitz is a remarkable character in the evolution of chess style.
He started off his career as a romantic error kind of hack attacker, you know, playing all sorts of
dodgy stuff.
Then there was atonement.
There was a change in his career.
This particular tournament, he started playing in a more dull way, more boring way, accumulating
advantages, for example, entrenching a knight outpost, accumulating the bishop.
He was accumulating advantages.
And when it came to the tactical clash, because he had installed these advantages in the position,
you know, especially in more closed positions, where you can accumulate more advantages more easily
rather than open, more chaotic positions.
So he was accumulating advantages and winning in a more risk free manner.
So his consistency of results shot up.
So he kind of introduced the more scientific era to chess.
So that kind of put an end to the romantic era.
They stopped having so many heroes at the highest level.
The world champion is basically a star, which is very attractive.
He's like world champion and he's also a brilliant communicator in chess, magazines, etc..
So he's communicating these ideas.
You know, Paul Morphy wasn't a fan of the open game.
He even went so far as to include stipulations in matches that at least half the games should begin
with E4 E5 in open games, more open games rather than close games.
So the idea of even default openings was like considered dull by Paul Morphy.
So we have.
So in the romantic era, you know, big names Anderson, Morphy, and also Spellman was considered the
last romantic.
So not British Grandmaster John Spell.
No, this is Spellman esp I.
And he was considered the lost romantic some really beautiful games of chess by Spellman.
But anyway, so the scientific era started off by Wilhelm Steinitz and continued by Lasker, who made
it into a formidable weapon.
Factoring in also the context of games, who is actually playing the tournament situation.
So Lasker took that scientific basis for chess and made it into a weapon to be used for chess as a sport
as well for maximizing results based on the circumstances.
So this scientific error had well and truly been established by these two world chess champions, Steinitz
in Alaska.
It showed that attacks only worked for, you know, generally for a person with the advantage.
The advantage is like the kind of balance you have on the chessboard.
Can you actually afford attacking chess?
If you tried it, would it actually just be easy to defend it and.
Yeah.
Basically in our chess nowadays, though, we're not playing.
We're playing quite a lot of casual chess online.
So the Kings game, it remains a super dangerous weapon for most players online, but they're kind of
put off playing it.
Sometimes I feel, because we're looking at what the Grandmaster is playing one day chess to be respectable,
but there's a whole different goal around that.
Grandmasters in say close tournaments don't want to lose racing points.
They want to be kind of stable and consistent and be invited to the next event without losing tons of
rating points.
In general, there are exceptional grandmasters that don't really care so much and have more shaky ratings,
more of a spectrum of ratings.
But anyway, the romance era isn't really that dead.
You know, in the modern era of chess, where most people are playing fast time limits, it doesn't
really matter if you play a crazy game.
It's game.
It's just fun.
They put opponents under pressure.
They give initiative.
The initiative is very important.
The faster the time control to be putting the opponent under pressure.
So anyway, basically the case with this four quadrant diagram being made is we ideally were especially
on the longer time limit.
So let's quantify this on the longer time limits.
We do generally want high accuracy and high beauty on the shorter time limits.
Then maybe we don't mind lower accuracy, but also beautiful and of course would give us great results
if we play for the initiative.
On the faster time limits, we can also aim just to be putting all our efforts into accuracy and not
caring about beauty is is kind of an optional thing if you want to play more scientifically or more
artistically.
It was Anatoly Karpov that said that basically chances aren't science and sports.
So the art side, the beauty side, the science is like, you know.
LASKAS You know.
STEINITZ And the sport is about the actual results, getting the results in terms you fighting on relentlessly
from seemingly tedious Jewish positions to get the results.
So, you know, you have players that will just grind and grind and grind.
For example, Magnus Carlsen can grind out lots of tedious and games to a win.
So it's also a sporting element just remaining at the ball for hours on end, being physically fit enough
to do that endurance.
So there's that angle of chess as well.
So we're talking about high accuracy.
With high beauty is something to strive for in general.
But the romantic era of relics in terms of concrete openings, we can use them without feeling too much
guilt.
In my view.
If you check my phone numbers going to chess openings, I argue that, you know, you can choose openings
based on the circumstances.
If it's just casual online chess, a priority you might have is just to have a lot of fun.
So gambits, you know, create that opportunity to have a lot of fun, especially the more you know
about a gambling like the Smith Moran game against the Sicilian.
Okay it might be potentially not not the greatest sometimes in terms of theoretical advantage but also
the element of surprise with these things is another factor.
So this is something to think about.
Our romantic era in chess was officially squashed by Steinitz, the first official world champion,
and Lasker after him.
But that doesn't mean we you know, we can't play romantically.
And players like Boris Spassky still played things like The King's Gambit with great success beating
even Bobby Fischer.
So the romantic era relics are still, you know, they're still playable and fun.
You just need to give them a chance to experiment.
And if you like having fun with chess, then fine.
I might point out specifically as an example plan, there's Matador.
So he's definitely of the romantic era.
He played beautiful combinations, but he also had some problems.
He was a restricted player for international tournaments.
They didn't really give him a chance.
And when he did play internationally, he got very good results, like, for example, ahead of Korchnoi
in in one of his few international tournaments, he played in Macau Hotel, described as the happiest
day of his life when he lost to his metamorph.
So in matter, Matloff as a person who created lots and lots of artistic masterpieces on the chessboard
and he just wasn't given opportunity, you know, for the for the international events.
So sometimes, especially in those conditions, yeah, it's, it's tricky.
There is a roof being put on you anyway, even if you, if you didn't, if you wanted to play scientifically,
if there's a roof being put on you for not being given opportunity, that's a different story as well.
The romantic era of the arts generally focused on emotional expression more than technical mastery.
So that is analogous to the chess romantic era, the emotions that were evoked from a game in sacrificing
pieces, the drama of it, the outrageous of event, the emotional expression the emotions evokes when
people look at those games.
Yeah, they they stand the test of time.
These are mortal games.
So there is there is a great argument for artistic play.
So there's these priorities.
You can call them priorities.
But generally for me, even in fast time limit games, I like accuracy to a certain extent, but I do
like, you know, fun attacking openings, which might not be that sounds because most of the time we're
talking about most of the time it might be just acceptable to you, especially if the priority in a
specific tournament is to win quickly to get to the next game that I like quickly, finishing off opponents
to go on to the next game.
So there's a bias to that as well.
The sport sporting bias, you could call it when you factor in, you know, the tournament reward system
as well.
So these are just priorities to bear in mind.
Basically, for me, accuracy generally is a priority and beauty is a secondary priority.
But I do like to play beautiful games as well.
Okay, food for thought here and so much.