Hi there.
In this lecture, I want to talk about stability and balance and their impact for attacking chess.
So to make a metaphor out of karate balance is important if you want to throw a punch.
You don't want to be totally off balance that you fall over dinner time.
Q So balance is important in general and stability of position.
So sometimes you don't want your position falling apart when you try and attack with your pieces and
neglect everything else.
So Sun Tzu in The Art of War said basically the good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the
possibility of defeat and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
So sometimes, yes, reinforcing those potentially losing downsides first before playing an attack or
even a specific move is important in chess.
I like to call it weakness of the last move if the opponent plays an aggressive move.
So they move a rook to attack your queen, but they've left their back row.
That's that's a very common one.
Even grandmasters have been having, you know, back row possibilities recently online, at least.
You know, that's a very common one where resources are applied to attack you.
But instead of just focusing on, like, a terrified bunny.
Oh, what do I do to parry that rook?
You ask, what is the weakness of their last move?
You're testing.
Have they actually incurred a lack of balance?
Shouldn't they have reinforced their back row first?
Maybe they should have made air for their king.
So without doing the reinforcement of the potentially losing, Wing says they've gone on to the attack.
And yet you have to remove the bias of the glamour, of the shock, of the terror, of the fear of their
move, and look at the weakness of the move.
It tests the stability and balance of the attacking actions.
So that could be at the micro move level, but it could be in general than if you want to attack your
pieces on the King side, are you abandoning your queenside in openings like the King's engine attack?
A great use of the king's engine attack is when you can get a good grip on the center.
And as an example, I'm going to show you soon where Fischer was white and he's kind of what I call
over protecting the E5 point, which is something Nimzowitsch talked about.
Strengthening a strong point naturally makes your pieces kind of develops coordinated like a team,
and able to operate on the kingside without too much penalty as well as restraining things like F6 sometimes
because potentially E6 could come under fire.
So the act of over protection of a central point is an interesting example in a more general sense of
your position being reinforced strong.
You know, go from a very good position of strength before going on to the attack.
We've seemingly offside moves.
So yeah, it's a very, very interesting idea that sometimes attacking moves needs to be prepared with
ridiculous king moves like you can imagine a move like King H to sometimes to avoid a check on the back
row and then you can move a knight and now it's not checked.
So sometimes it even quiet moves which seem to, you know, do nothing.
They prepare attacking moves they give us they stability and balance to be like the good fighter of
all you know putting ourselves beyond the possibility of a check, for example, which could ruin our
accommodation.
We do a quiet move which puts us in a position of stability and balance before doing attacking moves.
So when we question the downsides of the opponent's position, even, you know, especially a move level,
but in general, we're questioning the stability and balance of the opponent position in general.
A queen in Siberia of the opponents, Queen in Siberia.
Offside.
It's away from the king.
Is it out of balance?
You could really be questioning that by maybe offering the queen even more material to be sucked in
on your queen side and you go on attack on the king side.
So you've exploited a lack of balance that they've created.
They they might have.
You had a lot of resources attracted to obliterate your queenside, but they're off balance.
They might have neglected their king.
So we have this balance of attack in defence, and it's especially lost if the opponents are moving
pawns in front of their king.
Irreversible decisions of the chessboard moves.
They think they're attacking you.
You don't have to necessarily look at the threats that they're creating or just allow them because you
can counter attack strongly at the weaknesses that they've created.
I like to try and get opponents off balance with provocative openings like the Queen's Knights Tango,
to get people to commit their pawns and get them off balance, get weaknesses in their position, which
can later exploit.
So yeah, this idea of stability and balance to me go together and pieces.
Or awake, centrally focused influenced.
Ideally ideally strong central squares which nimzowitsch called over protection.
But nimzowitsch had other tools like restraint and blockade, which is basically like locking up, for
example, the queenside.
You see this over and over again, not just in Nimzowitsch, but in Fischer Games where in the King's
Engine defense, which you might not think is an attack opening, but if the Queen signs frozen, then
the attack can run freely without the usual obliteration on the queenside.
So this question of locking down the vulnerabilities first, then going on to the attack with great
freedom is a beautiful idea.
So in this Fischer game example, Fischer has got the strong point.
But has he neglected his queenside?
The opponent's got extra space on the queenside.
So this is Fischer against certain.
My concern in 1967, the Susa interzonal round three.
So here Fischer first attends to the queenside trying to lock down frees the queenside so that there
aren't dangerous possibilities.
Now, if he didn't do this, then there is a possibility that A3 could inflict a certain amount of issues.
For example, here Black could spring into that C square potentially.
So this position, there might not be enough attack to justify things here because black control is
quite a few key squares.
Black actually might have the advantage here.
The attack might be absolutely nothing.
So Fischer first reinforces his queenside with a free and makes sure that that C4 isn't such a bad liability.
We have A5 This is actually an inaccuracy, but I don't want to show the detail.
I just want to give you the gist.
The general idea here without too many variations.
So let's see.
93 Bishop A6 Bishop H3.
Okay, we have the fault and this does permanently weaken the E4 square.
So when you weaken squares, it is like you're potentially taking your opponent out of balance and not
controlling the key E4 square now.
And this E4 square could be used later with advantage we see G five so quite often such a night excursion
is not afforded by the position.
But here this is a great King's engine attack position.
We've got strong central control and the knight has also that E4 square to pivot to if needed.
95 Bishop goes back, We have Bishop takes G5 and now we've got a bishop without a counterpart, which
is very, very dangerous.
And here the Queen is free to go in.
There's no key defender on on f6.
That's a beautiful thing about protecting E5.
The E5 is knocked out the defender, which means the soft spot H seven is softer than usual.
Rook FC eight We have 92 nine C3 and now Fischer goes in with Bishop F6.
We have Queenie eyes.
So this is a wonderful attack position.
If it had been taken, let me just show you that that form pawn is a great ingredient for the attacking
player.
And here we have a very strong attacking move afforded by this protection.
Good rooks being X-raying these these squares we actually have.
What do you think white plays here for 100 points.
Yeah.
We actually have Bishop F5 mating for that and if it is rookie seven using that hook of the form pawn
and this position, then we can kick out the queen or win the queen and it's going to be in our advantage.
So there's beautiful variations there.
So Queenie eight not taking the bishop, but now 94 G6 Queen G5 Knight takes E4, Rook takes E4, and
now Black is still interested in this queenside attack.
Trying to show is white actually off balance.
But there's enough attack potential now after H5 to justify this even dropping D3.
We have C takes D3, it's justified.
We're off balance.
It's like we're collapsing on the queenside.
So you might think, Well.
KING Why, why, why are you showing this example?
Look, it's off balance, it's collapsed.
But the thing is, checkmate ends the game.
So even if we haven't baton haven't locked down our bases first and they are getting seemingly demolished,
we are winning time in chess.
And, you know, several moves in a row.
The opponent munching material, we get several moves in a row.
It's in effect like gaining tempo, right, if you have several moves in a row.
So Rook for this is a very dangerous position.
Now for black we have Rook seven.
If D take C two, it's too slow.
Black's actions h takes and this position is far too dangerous.
So for example, HG Rook is checkmate.
Or if F takes, Rook takes h seven and this position Black's actions are too slow here because here
we can even go with this is great variation.
We go with Queen C seven kind of hijacking that C file of black's and amazing there bishop without a
counterpart as well is exposed as an ingredient of the attack now.
So Rook seven was trying.
Bishop, G2, and you might think, well, we're gaining time.
We're gaining time for multiple moves in a row with all this munching.
Right.
But how exactly is it exploited?
Because after Queen H six isn't the snack Queen fight, and this is where our tactical and compensatory
prowess comes in.
It's completely justified this position with this next move.
Can you see what it is for 200 points?
What does Bobby Fischer play here?
Queen Sykes, 87, is running a check now.
The black had to resign.
So after King takes H seven, H takes G six.
Check.
Black is getting mated.
If King takes G six, Bishop e4 is checkmate.
If King Rook is checkmate.
Now, this isn't the most emphatic over protection example.
I can I can show you.
There are lots of nimzowitsch games and Bobby Fischer games where he's played the Kings in defense or
Nimzowitsch has played the nimzowitsch inion and the completely made sure that there's no queenside
operations and then they've gone on to the attack.
So they've had even more visual extreme balance and stability before going on to the attack.
But it's something to bear in mind that when we think about central influence or just having a position
which is beyond the fair, it's going beyond the notion of central influence.
We're putting ourselves beyond the fate.
This is a great principle which, you know, the neural networks kind of emphasized.
So stability and balance, putting yourself beyond the possibility of defeat and then taking that opportunity
for the attack later, it doesn't backfire so much.
And if it backfires in terms of material grabs, all of those material grabs the like, we've gained
tempo in effect, We've got quite a few moves in the row while the opponent is grabbing our pawns.
So anyway, stability and balance.
The key thing, it links up to this idea of putting yourself beyond the feet.
It's like you go and park your car.
You usually lock your car before going off to the shops, you know, so you reinforce your bases before
going shopping.
Otherwise you might find your cars not thereafter, you know, So things like that.
It's all in the art of war, you know, put yourself beyond the possibility of the fate prophylaxis,
prevention, so you make sure that you are in a kind of stable and balanced place before you do an action,
which naturally takes you a bit off balance that you're not with your car, you're going off balance.
In a crying move, you're going off balance.
It's good to be stable first before going off balance on chessboard.
Make sure you're exploiting the opponent's weakness of the last move.
Remove that bias of fear and terror.
Are this GM 2800 is threatening my Queen.
What about that back row?
Ask that question.
What what downsides is there in that position?
And you never know.
You could you could crush them unexpectedly.
You know, they've underestimated you.
So don't just look at the the effects of the actions.
Look at what they've left behind.
Look at their lack of stability and balance for the counter attacks.
Okay.
I hope that's kind of an interesting food for fall introduction lecture.
So look out for this notion in example games as you go through the course.
Okay, that's much.