Hi there.
In this lecture, I want to talk about the elements of possessions and how they trade off against each
other.
So many chess websites kind of agree that there are four key elements of a possession when you evaluate
possession.
So.
KING Safety is an absolutely major one.
Checkmate ends the game.
So.
KING Safety is all important.
And that's one of the big focuses of this course.
But there's also, of course, material.
So if you're handed a possession, you look for king safety and material and you try and judge, you
know, if someone is material down, you you try and say what what compensatory features have they got?
Maybe their king is safer than the opponents.
So these two can trade off against each other.
And the same with pawn structure and activity.
Sometimes you can look at, say, double pawns and be very negative about it.
But then if you consider the activity around the double pawns, maybe the opponent has active rooks.
So it's not all bad for them.
And the same with you.
If you carry structural defects, what is the compensation for those structural defects?
And of course, there are more elements to the possessions and the ingredients of this course.
Many of them are smaller ingredients, so such as bishop without a counterpart.
So when you evaluate a position, you could say, well, this player has got a bishop without a counterpart
and, you know, maybe it's exploitable.
So there's a slight tradeoff with all the elements.
So to consider them as a whole, it's very, very interesting, this balance.
That's what makes chess really, really interesting, that there's even smaller elements that can trade
off for each other.
So basically, yeah, all the attacking patterns and ingredients of this course could be very, very
useful for your attacking evaluation of positions.
And it's apparent that Alaska made use of finer grained elements than than those identified by Wilhelm
Steinitz, the first official world chess champion.
So Steinitz had a quite, quite a simplified model of positions, it seems, from his writings.
But there are actually finer grains elements.
And Lasker also saw how those finer grain elements could be traded off for each other.
It's good to identify the elements of the ingredients of positions like form pawns.
So you might be sacrificing some material elsewhere on the board to get a form pawn.
And I've done this several times and the form pawn is fairly deadly, especially if a queen comes and
it just helps.
Checkmate.
So that's that's an example.
If you have these signposts, these attacking signposts which relate to King's safety, these small
elements that you can identify, that's going to be useful to you from an attacking perspective.
So yes, King's safety verses material is an absolute classic one.
And here let me just show you a concrete example.
This game is analyzed in greater detail in the course.
It's alekhine against Morocco.
See?
So here Alekhine's actually got a structural issue.
He's got an isolated queen's pawn, but he creates practical chances in this position.
He just goes for the king with Knight G4 He lets de forces go, he lets it go.
If he had played a move like Bishop F2 trying to hold on to that material.
So he's not.
If he's not trading off the material, then Black gets a really comfortable blockade on the isolated
Queen's pawn here.
So this pawn isolated there.
And this position is just it's just better for black, it's just slightly better for playing.
So Knight G4 is really going for the king offering the isolated pawn It is actually taken, which is
actually a mistake.
Engineers consider this as a mistake.
Might be D5 just holding the position down.
Reinforcing F6 is a safer king Knight takes H6 check.
This position would be better for black.
Black has no real king safety issue here it seems it's got a nice blockade on D5 and the king should
be safe enough.
Okay, game on from there.
But the king should be much safer than what happened in the game.
So Rook takes D4.
So we see this trade off example where double pawns are inflicted around the opponent's king, which
is an, you know, a kind of situation you should recognize as kind of a very weakened king sometimes.
So weakening H six that's isolated.
This diagonal is a bit weaker.
And the queen taps into this with 94 first.
So Rook 88 was played.
Knight takes f6 check King F eight.
Yeah.
The problem is, if Black had tried to play F5 here then 96 check anyway.
And here Queen E Fray is very interesting.
So for example, this position, this actually Bishop takes her five 8/8 Queen H three and you can see
how King Safety dangers are emerging.
Kanji 795 Check.
The knight and Queen could actually cooperate for at least a perpetual check.
So there's a bailout there.
So Black didn't want that.
So Rook 88 Knight takes F6 check here.
King F eight minus H seven, check King E seven.
So it seems well, black's got pressure on the default but again material being offered for king safety
F5 just offering the bishop now rook eight to d6 if rook takes D3, we see the king safety aspect being
highlighted f6 check and then we can take on D3.
That's simple enough.
So eight to D six b4.
So this is cute to get the queen off the D5 square.
Sometimes that's useful.
We have Queen saying b4 and the E5 square more crucially so the Queen can come into E5.
So that pawn being traded off essentially for king safety with Queen e5 now.
So that's the kind of weakness of the last move as well being tapped into with B4 encouraging the Queen
away from E5.
So in this position, 97, Queen H eight, and the Queen and Knight coordinating with the pawn in beautiful
ways, Rook takes D3.
There's also the mistake.
As I say, this game is analyzed in much greater detail in the course.
If you find Morocco, see it as the keyword.
So here the game ended with F6 check coming up.
F6 chick ends the game.
So what is endgame?
If Knight takes f6, Queen takes f6 Jack and here Knight F8 is a cute checkmate.
So yes, F6 ends the game If King D can you see what won't place?
Okay, Queen.
Thanks.
You ain't Jack King, ain't rook.
Kate is champ, mate.
So we see here there's an important concept in our trade off scenarios of material versus king safety,
especially if you've got an isolated queen's pawn instead of making all the pieces passive to support
the pawn.
Certain pawn structures, the dynamic ones.
There is a risk that if you play too passively with them, yeah, it's straining all your pieces from
an attacking perspective as well.
You want the opponent kind of to be passive with their pieces.
So again, you can go for their king sometimes.
But here.
Yeah.
It's just thrown out of the position with Knight G4 Without further ado.
So we see this trade off examples, a simple trade off example where in fact the material.
Yeah, what do we do with it?
If we try and keep the material, we pacify our pieces.
So he went for it.
Alekhine actually went for it with Knight G4 So yes, he's a great master of attack.
He knows to trade off other things, but there are other smaller elements that are being traded off
in many of his games and we try to identify those elements or ingredients.
So think about trade off theory.
It's one of the more powerful theories in general.
It goes across multiple domains that often you're trading off something for something else.
So here the trade off of the pawn worked out in this particular example, Sure, there were better moves
for black, but yeah, it's a practical weapon to make use of that.
Sometimes you trade off material for king safety or sometimes you trade off how neat your pawn structure
looks for piece activity or mobility, which could have implications for king safety.
If your pieces are all of a sudden looking at the opponent's kings, you've given away a pawn in the
center and your, say, your bishop's blasting down.
So I hope you get the idea.
There are elements of possessions.
The fundamental elements of possessions are those for so KING safety, material, pawn structure and
activity.
Those are the absolute essentials.
But we're looking at spicier ingredients in this course and how they can be traded off for each other.
So think about trade off theory a little bit.
When you see sacrifices of material, especially or pawns, what is being traded off for?
What it's interesting to consider and it makes one a more kind of dynamic player instead of doing plain
rhythm moves just to protect your material all the time.
Think about this trade off theory.
Okay, So I hope that's interesting.
Food for thought.
That's so much.