Hi there.
In this introduction lecture, I want to show how Alexander Alekhine is often a know man.
You might have seen a film by Jim Carrey called Man is very Funny.
If you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out, in my view.
Very, very funny.
But on the chessboard, you really want to be a no man to the opponent or woman saying no to the opponent's
kind of threats.
You know, you should be really interested in the opponent's downsides of their position.
Like here, you can see there's communication difficulties in Black's position because of the central
pawn wedge.
This is Alekhine against Fletcher in 1928.
Why a significant advantages here?
Black does seem to have a threat of bishop A6 which might need to be parried.
And it looks like I'm fortunate actually for this diagonal Alekhine has something in mind here, just
based on the opponent's downsides.
Alekhine is a great no man, he says.
No, he says, knows the opponent's France.
So here he actually plays Knight H4 and he has something spectacular in mind after Bishop.
A6 So maybe US lesser mortals than Alekhine would kind of move the Queen somewhere and accept the loss
of the exchange.
But Alekhine is a great no man saying no all the time.
And guess what he plays here.
He's more interested in the opponent's downsides than the threats of the opponent.
He doesn't like to be pushed around and his previous play, you know, these pieces do mean something.
These weaknesses do actually mean something.
And when we construct great attacking positions, we often generating opportunities to say no to the
opponent's threats, that we're not going to be simply pushed around.
And that's the same if you checked my Art of Checkmate course, quite often covering key escape squares
of the opponent's king, or, you know, the other downsides as well, like unprotected pieces, it
means something.
It really does mean something.
But it's up to you to use those kind of advantages to not be pushed around.
So here, guess what?
Alekhine plays for 200 points.
So he's a no person to the opponent in general.
He gets great attacking positions and can afford to say no.
And here is a case in point.
So where do we want to move on, Queen or do we want to move our queen?
Is there something else?
Okay, so I'm going to show you if we move on Queen, they are going to take on F1 and okay, we've
got some compensation here.
But it's even this position is even the bishop and she comes to h free and it's technically even.
No, he plays actually something quite spectacular.
He plays Queen takes E4.
So this is a very, very nice sacrifice.
Now the opponent took on E4.
Before we get into that, there's an interesting possibility here.
Just ignoring it.
Bishop takes F1.
What would you play here?
Would you assume that you have to move the Queen or take on our five?
What would you assume here in this position?
So in this position, we can also say kind of no to moving the queen.
We can actually just play King takes F1
and keep all our pressure on our five.
I'll show you why the combination is shown in the main line of the game.
I'll show you why in a moment.
Why F text is not working.
So we've actually taken two minor pieces here for a rook, which is great news.
And after 97 we can simply play Queen C for to protect A2 and we're material up with a winning position.
So, okay, let's return to the main line of the game then.
So what does happen after F takes E4, which was played in the main line of the game?
So, so Queen takes E for F takes E4.
So what happens here?
And the point is Bishop takes E4 check and you can see it's the weaknesses around the king.
Which are the downside here?
Well, especially F7 and G6, we have G6 check King H7 and now Knight takes F8 and it's a double check.
So the king has to move.
And by taking out F8 once this is basically just a force mate now because of Knight G6, check King
seven we can use that F seven square without any rook takes F seven.
So we play 95 check here.
King H and now Knight F7 is checkmate.
So, yeah, a sweet combination in the end.
But the key point I wanted to make about this, like in the real world, it's good to have teamwork
with colleagues.
That's good, for example.
And there's teamwork on the chessboard with your pieces.
But also you don't want to be distracted in general by people asking you to do stuff in the real world.
And that's kind of leverage than chess.
Your opponent is asking you to move stuff, to recapture stuff.
So sometimes instead of a recapture or a pairing a French, you've got to look at their downsides.
They might have an unprotected piece, they might have weaknesses around their king.
So instead of being pushed around, look at those other opportunities.
You've kind of earned those opportunities from previous play quite often.
So here, this is just a brilliant demonstration.
Alekhine is a bit of a no person, I should say person.
So yeah, it's the opposite of Jim Carrey saying yes to everyone.
His alekhine's actually saying no to a lot of opponents when they flatten things in his possession.
He's looking for the attack.
He's looking for the mating combinations.
He's a no person.
So I hope you got the point here.
That's quite often we are actually creating from attacking opportunities that we're trying to create.
We're creating the ability to say no to the opponents.
So that could be I'm not just going to simply reCAPTCHA, I'm not just going to simply parry your threats
under a do something more exciting, more in my benefit.
So it's based on the opponent's downsides.
You're looking at your opponents downsides.
Your moves become more downside centric rather than being pushed around by the opponents.
Okay, I hope that's fairly clear in this game.
Example from one of my own games.
This is the Mega A-Team battle in 2022, the 44th edition.
My opponents are very strong player.
Over 2700 kind of tries to extinguish my attacking opportunities.
They play actually Queeny for now, the immediate instinct and reaction is to move the Queen.
They're threatening our queen, Right?
But I managed to actually take time here to observe something.
The opponent does have downsides.
There's a default downside of the opponent's position.
The king has no air.
Right?
So I played an unexpected move the opponent wasn't expecting here.
And I was even, you know, way before this, a few moves before that's looking at, you know, this
sector of the board for game ending downsides, not just on the queenside side but looking around the
area of the king for combination play.
Anyway, I was happy to find a great move here.
Can you see what I played in this position for 100 points.
So instead of parrying the opponent's France.
I took it to be about the opponents downsides, the weak background.
So I was a no person.
It's good to be a no person if that if becoming a no person makes you more downside centric.
You're looking at the opponents downsides of their position and it could be know weakened.
KING It could be weak.
King Squares, It could be an unprotected piece, but they're making a threat to are you going to be
pushed around all the time?
I wasn't on this occasion.
I played bishop for.
And this is beautiful because the two rooks are now working against the eights.
He has to lose his queen.
He actually tried to confuse the matter with 92.
So, yeah, if he thinks I'm just exploiting the downside, you want to be more downside centric and
that's how you win games.
You exploit downsides quite often.
So he's trying to confuse matters with Knight D2, and I simply just took on D2 renewing the idea.
I want to just exploit his downsides.
I did take time out for this capture and here of the Queen takes her free rook, takes e8 check.
I'm mating the next move.
So yeah, I'm very strong.
I am opponents you know above 2700 taken down through that downsides.
So sometimes being a no person the opposite of Jim Carrey in the yes man movie being a no person to
the opponents threats and sometimes it's you know recapture you've got other opportunities to explore,
especially if you set up attacking positions.
You're going out of your way to set up attacking positions.
It's like reaping the rewards.
You shouldn't be pushed around all the time.
Maybe sometimes, but sometimes there are bigger fish to fry.
There are bigger opportunities on the chessboard.
So I hope that's also making things clear about this intro lecture about being a no person on the chessboard.
Okay.