Hi there.
In this lecture, I'd like to talk about Alexander Alekhine as a combination of attacking player, a
role model.
So there are various quotations which are very flattering for Alexander Alekhine from other world chess
champions.
Emanuel Lasker, the longest world chess champion, said Alekhine grew out of the combination.
He's in love with it.
Everything strategic is only a preparation for him, almost a necessary evil.
The stunning blow, the unexpected frost.
This is his element.
His imagination catches fire in the attack on the king.
That's a great compliment, really.
There's also a comment from Mikhail Botvinnik, the kind of father of the Soviet chess school.
Alekhine is dear to the chess board, mainly as an artist.
Typical of him are deep plans, far sighted calculation and inexhaustible imagination.
However, his main strength, which develops from year to year, was his combination of vision.
He saw combinations with great ease and accuracy.
For this reason, alekhine's combinations possess such staggering, crushing force.
Yet this truly was an amazing gift.
Another quote from another world champion, Vasily Spins.
The name of Alexander Alekhine is basically, it's illuminated by the brilliance of his chess combinations.
Alekhine possessed an exceptionally rich chess imagination, and his skill in creative in creating combinations
of complications is incomparable.
It should be mentioned that Alekhine had a mastery of technique, and his striving for combinations
was not an end to itself, but stemmed logically from the demands of the position.
And one of his contemporaries, Rudolf Spearman, said, I can comprehend alekhine combinations well
enough, but where he gets his attacking chances from it and how he infuses such life into the very
opening that is beyond me.
Alekhine himself said he had to work long and hard to eradicate the dangerous delusion that in a bad
position he could always or nearly always conjure up some unexpected combination to extricate himself
from difficulties.
So yeah, the combination.
Is ideal if it's from a good position.
So I was always kind of evolving his game to lead up to that combination.
And from a modern super grandmaster level, Aronian has mentioned this aspect.
Levon Aronian considers Alexander Alekhine to be one of the strongest and most exciting players ever
in terms of always evolving Alekhine really had to evolve his game to defeat Capablanca in a world chess
Championship match, which was completely unexpected.
It lost a lot of games against Capablanca, never beat them and managed to beat him in the World Chess
Championship match.
So what does it mean to be born out of a combination?
That's my question for Laskas quote.
It's like I'd say.
I mean, my understanding interpretation is like he improved his game more and more.
In terms of kind of relevance for creating those beautiful combinations.
So yes, in a way, yeah, he is like a foundational master for us to also follow that kind of method.
We want to be good tactically and combination, good at combinations, good finisher, but we need to
get those good positions with the relevant attacking ingredients.
So hopefully this course instills some of the key ingredients that we can observe from Alexander Alekhine
game examples.
So we want to evolve that kind of what that's called infrastructure relevant, but you could also call
it the set of ingredients relevant for creating attacking positions in the first place.
So yes, we want understand the attacking ingredients more and more.
So yes, he is a kind of role model.
You see his games in a lot of tactics and combinations, books.
So let's have a look at a concrete combination, one of many beautiful ones.
The staggering thing about this particular one, this is Alexander Alekhine against Von Fels in 1916.
It was a blindfold simultaneous display, believe it or not.
And here Alekhine played like a bolt from the blue.
Can you see what he played for?
100 points?
What would you play in this position?
Okay.
He played actually seven.
Yeah, It's in the Queen now.
The king took you can see this game analyzed in detail in the course.
If the Queen had gone to see Queen 66 is dangerous for black.
For example, Bishop Kf8, we've got a smothered mate, Patton.
It's kind of dangerous.
So the king took.
And here, guess what?
And the Queen played.
Yeah.
It's even the completely outrageous ones.
Queen takes 86 check.
So we have King Jesus.
If King takes 86, 95 is checkmate.
If King if eight point G five black has 95 to stave off mate for a moment, but off, the bishop takes
85.
This is getting desperate.
Blacks shedding material.
Whites going to be crushing it with Knight takes age seven check to win the Queen.
So yes, we have King G6 instead.
And now a beautiful move here.
G4 We have Bishop E4 trying to defend against the various threats, but Knight H4 is checkmate.
This is one of many, many beautiful eyes on alekhine combinations.
But how did he get this position in the first place?
Yeah, so I'll show you that game lead up.
If you if you go and look at the game in question.
I just wanted to show you the beautiful bit there, the combination in this intro video.
But the course does try and focus on how we got there.
How on earth were the attacking ingredients emerging for this position in the first place?
But yes.
So to recap here, this introduction lecture is just how alekhine impressed it seems Many other champions
and contemporaries for his combination skills in particular and his imagination, which kind of helped
him look at these incredible possessions and combinations.
Take them seriously.
Yeah.
So it's a very, very exciting he's a very, very exciting player to follow and try and understand.
And you can see thoughts to see why.
Garry Kasparov was very fond of looking at games of Alexander Alekhine and how he used, for example,
quite a lot of sacrifices in the opening for the initiative to gain some attacking potential.
That's one of many tools that Alekhine used.
Okay, so I hope you got something out of this little introduction here and these quotes relevant for
combination.
Thanks very much.