Hi there.
In this lecture, I'd like to talk about structure.
So that is another kind of real world metaphor.
On the chessboard, the pawn structure is kind of the more permanent structure, which sets the tone
of the game quite often.
Now, in the romantic era, pawns were often just sacrificed to just liberate the pieces.
Furious gambits.
It was all about the pieces.
So later, with Steinitz, the official world chess champion, he appreciated that the advantages could
be accumulated in positions, especially in more closed structures.
So the pawns all of a sudden made outposts.
Good.
You could use the pawn structure and acquire assets like the bishop pair and just accumulate your advantages
systematically.
So the pawns acted as a kind of storage device, virtual storage on the chessboard, as opposed to the
romantic era where pawns were quite dispensable just to maximize the attack in terms of piece power.
Okay, so it was Philidor.
So earlier than the romantic era who coined the phrase The equivalent of pawns are the soul of chess
and.
They are very, very important.
Are they the be all and end all?
What relation to attacking chess do they have?
Well, first of all, we don't need to literally occupy the center with pawns.
The hyper modernists like Richard Ratti kind of gave great examples where he beat Capablanca with one
knight, F3, for example, and started through, you know, beating very strong players, persuading
the idea that you don't actually need to literally occupy the center just as long as you can control
the center from afar.
So I think how bishops came into fashion from the hyper modernist, for example.
Pawns can be removed for peace activity that still holds true.
So why are dynamic pawns in particular nice ingredients for attacking chess?
So when I talk about dynamic pawn structures, ones which seem to have tactical liabilities built in
so double pawns, isolated pawn hanging pawns, backward pawns, these are kind of negative, aren't
they?
But there's a major upside they can create often peace activity.
It's the compensation we need to look at.
We mustn't hold grudges.
So especially on the chessboard, something which seems to be terrible.
Look at the up sides.
Don't hold grudges for the dynamic pawn structures there actually are attacking friends and there's
the notion of structure versus piece activity.
So the more dynamic a structure, the more peace activity, and you might end up dissolving completely
the pawns to liberate the pieces.
There's also an irreversibility concept.
Pawns don't go backwards.
So in that sense, they are super important.
Bad pawn moves around the opponent's king could mean irreversible damage weaknesses you can tap into
the common advices don't generally move pawns in front of your king.
You're creating irreversible damage.
They just don't go backwards.
They're the only piece on the board that doesn't go backwards.
The pawns, once they go forward, they can't go backwards like a knight can go backwards and forwards
all day.
Okay, so there are king safety implications both for the defender and the attacker to be aware of In
terms of pawns.
There are constraints on our attacking pieces.
We can control the center with our pieces.
We don't need to occupy with pawns necessarily.
Pawns can liberate the pieces sometimes and other soulful quotations.
If we consider sole aspects of chess to generally have a major ingredient, a major factor for successful
attack.
It's interesting to note historically other notions of what is the soul of chess which play on the doors,
you know, pawns of the soul of chess.
So Fred Rosenfeld, in the Joys of Chess, indicated that beautiful combination play is the soul of
chess.
And if that's the case, well, we've got good bets on all the attacking players in this course, including
Alexander Alekhine and others, for beautiful combinations.
So we're seeing the soul of chess in this course, You could say from that era is the soul of chess.
Well, for me, it's the opponent's errors.
It's the downsides of the opponent's possession, which fill me with excitement.
That's the hell for accumulating, you know, microscopic advantages sometimes, or small advantages.
You're looking at the downsides of the opponent's position in great detail.
Be super nerdy about that.
So apparently pretty Sarah Lemieux said that downside centricity, in my view, tempo is the soul of
chess.
Now, basically, you might think, oh, well, this is what it's about tempo.
And a lot of chess goes on about tempo.
A lot of the times win games, gaining tempo.
Well, if you imagine here's a basic example.
You get two moves in a row, you might have a win.
If you have two moves in a row.
It is dangerous to gain tempo in chess combinations.
You can often gain a tempo against the opponent's queen, for example, and that could give you an absolutely
winning attack.
It might mean another piece in the attacking party.
So tempo is a very important ingredient as well.
So we're saying, look, if you look at these soul quotations, they're actually really important ingredients.
Funny enough for attacking chess.
Now, another one is is more subtle.
A counterattack is the soul of the game.
According to Blackburne and Korchnoi, Viktor Colston was a great counter attacker.
Attack is the best form of defense, many argue.
Now, if you think about this, why would counterattack ever be better than straightforward attack?
Well, for Korchnoi it works.
It really unbalance the positions.
It meant the opponent's resources were committed.
It's like they're a fixed target.
The opponent's position is now a fixed target rather than the moving target.
They moved all these pawns to attack you.
Their pieces are all over there.
They've abandoned their king.
It's like in football, you know.
They got too excited.
The defendants haven't come back and there's a big counterattack and the opposing team scores a goal.
So it's like lack of defense over commitment, overstretching, you know, weaknesses are being created.
So counterattack is even it's often more powerful than than straight forward attack.
You're getting the opponent to first commit themselves.
It worked for Korchnoi and he's he was nearly a world chess champion.
You know, on a day or two, you know, he would have beaten Karpov in their first encounter match.
So, yes, there is that important principle of counterattack and generally provoking weaknesses.
As I mentioned, pawns don't go backwards and I like provoking weaknesses.
I have great success with the Knights tango with both white and white and black, trying to provoke
weaknesses for irreversible pawn moves.
So the notion of counterattack tempted the opponent to commit themselves.
They become more of a fixed target.
As any chess assassin knows.
If the opponent's like more of a fixed target, then it's easier to to know the expectations of where
the resources are if they're overly committed, especially Queen in Siberia, the Queen's come to munch
one of your your pawns on the Queen's side.
They commit their queen.
They've got other pieces on your queenside.
Who cares?
You got a counterattack coming.
So counterattack is a lot of fun.
But this is central to our course attack, too.
To paraphrase the great fables, Maxim is the soul of chess.
So, Chernov, one of my all time favorite authors, Irvin Chernov and Fred Reinhold, said that.
So we get lots of soulful examples in this course.
Basically, on all of these aspects of soul.
We've got lots of examples.
Now I have a special isolated Queen pawn example, so that's what I consider a dynamic pawn structure.
So this is Robert Byrne against Bobby Fischer, and this really shocked the US grandmasters at the time
watching this game.
So this is a 1963 US championship round three and you'll see this game in much greater detail in the
course.
But yeah, I just want to show you that E5 was played.
So Fischer accepted the so called Isolated Queen's Pawn, but you can see the dynamics of play have
been improved.
The Rook now has got a nice semi-open file.
I absolutely love semi-open and they're like one way roads.
So yeah, semi final was very important for the attacking player.
Often you play game it's just to get some fouls which are quite dangerous they're more dangerous for
the opponents so here that essentially dangerous semi-open phone let's see what happens here we have
the wrong rook being used this one week in F2.
It was actually you know actually white should have played the other rook.
So after he's a bit more of a weakness, let's put that in red.
A juicy target weakness.
So, yeah, as I say, if you want to check the detailed analysis, you should see the effects of the
other rook instead.
But here we see Knight D three, Queen C two.
And now guess what?
Fischer plays for 100 points.
And I remember being inspired by this particular Bobby Fischer game.
I won a tournament in Halifax with six out of six once, but one of the key games in the final rounds.
I took inspiration from this game.
There's a really great dismantling operation which undermines the opponent's pawn structure here.
So can you guess what that is?
100 points.
Okay, so it's actually 9/10 F2.
So we have King takes nine G for check, kanji one nine takes E3.
And the grandmasters were thinking, What is Fischer doing?
You know, they assume he's going to take the rook and it's going to be better.
But guess what?
This dynamic structure, one of the points I've made above.
Is that sometimes?
The pawns can be removed for peace activity quite often.
So they can actually, you know, you can make the dynamic structure to some extent disappear.
You're maximizing the liberation of pieces.
I put Max liberate pieces if you check the notes there.
So here bear that in mind, because fish are actually doesn't say the rook he plays.
Knight takes G2.
Now the isolated queen's pawn is a roadblock here.
It gets in the way.
We want this special, but the bishop's without a counterpart.
That's a great ingredient in its own right.
But liberation of pawns, That's a great ingredient.
Open up the peace activity.
And now all of a sudden, we've got gigantic France.
We've got this bishop coming across right across the center.
No, we don't need to occupy the center.
We're controlling the central squares.
We're still respecting the center with this move.
Boy, fishes move.
And it gets a really vicious attack.
Now, Bishop b7 Czech King F1 and spectacularly after Queen D seven White resigns.
Without further ado, without further delay, I move 21 spectacular finish.
Now one of the points here if DB five Queen H three track and here does a crushing blow with tempo.
Tempo is one of the souls of chess.
If you got two moves in, this would be great to get a bishop on E three.
How can we?
We need two moves, right?
But we get a tempo on the Queen.
So tempo is the soul of chess.
That's a magic ingredient here.
Gaining tempo and then Bishop e free.
So we've got the two moves in there and this is just checkmate.
Forget take in the Queen.
That is checkmate.
So you can see a lot of souls that play here in one game structure, dynamic structure in particular,
dissolving pawns, gaining a tempo, exploiting errors, beautiful combination, counterattacking to
some extent.
So it's a beautiful example.
And you might think, well, hold on, what about Queen F two?
We have Queen H three, check, King G one.
And guess what?
Beautiful move we have here.
So tempo as the soul of chess comes to our rescue in this final commentary phase, if needed here.
So what is a brilliant move here?
We've got potentially this killer common square on G2.
If only the Queen wasn't there protecting G2.
So guess what is played in this variation which wins this tempo?
Gaining rookie one check was rather deflection.
It creates a weakness on D4, but with tempo, Black is obliged to do something about that.
Black's only legal move.
Basically Rook takes E1.
So if Queen takes Queen G2 and now Bishop takes D4 and you can see this very, very nasty move and once
had it really once going to get checkmated.
So that's a beautiful operation.
King G1, Queen H Free And there's too much pressure here.
Bishop H Sex.
Oh, we've mentioned that.
D e to Queen H free Czech Queen G2 is Checkmate Knight C two Queen H free Czech queen takes H two is
quite interesting.
So this possession where the king in the center.
That's a great attacking ingredients.
This is too much for white to bear.
This would take out the escape square.
You can see the team taking responsibility here for the escape squares.
One member of the team taking that role, which makes all the checks much more effective in general.
Checkmate.
So here Bishop takes after a Queen G one check.
And here there's a beautiful finish in this variation.
Can you say what that is for?
100 points?
So Rook takes E to check.
King takes the E to Queen E free check.
So what we're saying anyway, what I want to say with this introduction here in a nutshell, is, yeah,
pawn structure, pawns in general.
They're irreversible.
There's that aspect.
They their liberation, there's that aspect.
So they are kind of major soul of chess.
They determine quite often the plans quite, quite a large extents, especially in the more closed positions,
not so much the open game, but the more closed positions.
Quite often there's thematic plans based on certain types of pawn structure.
Check out my My Complete Guide to Pawn Strike The Ultimate Guide to Pawn Structures course.
If you want more detail on on the pros and cons of different pawn structures.
But if we're taking a whole class of attacking ingredients as the term soul.
So that's a powerful words in the English language, meaning the spiritual immortal parts of something
where really saying, Blimey, what is the most important, significant part of chess, the most influential
part.
And we're saying here that these other soul quotations actually back up.
Our course here.
We've got a lot of beautiful combinations.
We want to exploit errors to accumulate advantages.
We want a passion for exploiting errors.
In my view, we want a passion for tempo.
Gaining.
Yeah, get two moves in a row, especially against the weakened king.
That's a knockout blow.
That's a knock out combination.
Counterattack is not the soul of the game.
It's, you know, the opponent's, like, committed.
They're more of a fixed target.
Yeah.
If we're going to be a king assassin, it's nice to know that the opponent's pieces are somewhere or
their pawns are committed.
They can't go back.
We're counter-attacking.
Let them use up some resources first.
You can even win with black.
You know, with openings like the Sicilian defense, the classic counter-attacking opening.
So counterattack is a very, very powerful notion.
And in general, in general, you know, attack is often the best form of defense, as the quotation
goes.
And, you know, Chernov Rosenfeld thinks in general attack, to paraphrase the physical maximum is
the soul of chess.
So we're really directly looking at the soul of chess in this course is an absolutely amazing course.
I've really enjoyed doing this course for you.
And this is just an intro video of having gone through many of the beautiful game examples, and this
is one of the more beautiful presented in the course, in my view, which shows the power of, you know,
the isolated queen pawn dynamic structure, how it can be dissolved to liberate the pieces.
And, you know, Bishop of our counterpart as well, there's quite a few attacking ingredients here
and in the variations and tempo is something I've probably understated.
But yeah, to get combinations working together, that combination or crown of your previous attacking
efforts, often your combinations need to work with tempo gaining.
So okay, I hope you've enjoyed this example and the whole philosophy that we can use soulful ingredients
for our attacking chess.
And it's not just pawns of the soul of chess, but these other ingredients.
Okay, that's very much.