Hi there.
In this lecture, I'm going to show you again, this is a part of the game from a high level Grandmont
game, Luke Machain against Magnus Carlsen.
I was there actually to witness this game.
So Bangui's Colson seems to be under pressure.
There's a dangerously installed bishop attacking Bishop.
His queen's just been attacked.
What do we want to do here?
Do we want to go after a pawn when our king is attacked?
It seems no, in fact, Magnus Carlsen tries to simplify the position, he tries to take off a lot of
the attacking pieces.
Ideally, he'd want to take off this piece.
So it's not France anything.
His first move is actually queen desex.
In fact, he felt that of the Queen Bee five, a move like, for example, bee free might be sufficient
and the queen's kind of not going to be exchanged for anything.
And why it's attack.
It's kind of dangerous to say.
Bishop, thanks.
You know why still got a vicious potential attack.
We've all sorts of friends and a dreaded form --.
Why call form --, -- site --, for example, like this.
And it could be really dangerous, this position and a lot of threats.
Parry, it's very, very scary stuff.
So instead, Magnus actually sticks around.
He wants an exchange of queens.
Generally, when you're being attacked, you want to exchange of queens.
And, you know, for example, the champions of the past, you know, Mekaal Tower was a great hacking
player and people would want to try and get the queens off as soon as possible as against Mikoto so
they wouldn't be creating all the threats.
So to do with, again, a certain type of probability, not not so much a win or draw property, just
not not having your king slaughtered.
Probably.
Birthe, you try an exchange of attacking pieces if you don't want your king slaughtered, which I guess
is not losing the probability of not losing so quickly if you can exchange off pieces when you're under
heavy attack.
That's one of the climactic conditions of a chess board where you don't really want to go pawn hunting.
And, you know, hey, if the knight moves with an exchange of queens, right.
So we're going to simplify.
And in the game, in fact, there's a clever little trick that Magnus played here.
And as you get better tactically, you able to play these tricks to to help simplify.
Sometimes you do need a tactical trick, as Magnus calls them.
And I hope by the end of the course you will have a few tricks up your sleeve and be a little bit more
of a tactical monster.
That for me is a huge priority.
If you get that within your first few weeks and months of playing chess, you've succeeded if you become
more of a tactical monster in a good sense.
So here you know, Magnus, here's a tactical monster and he manages to simplify this position, taking
off these attacking pieces by this next move, which just basically equalises 965.
And one of the points is he's kind of undermined the support for the six pressure.
So if quintets, you know, we simplify with sex as an example.
So the opponents here.
You know, it's probably pretty annoyed if Bishop takes then that things like Ninety-four hitting the
queen and then we're going to be taking off this bishop.
So we're kind of simplifying again, we've taken off the attacking piece if you can take off the opponent's
attacking pieces.
So this is a case you're not necessarily losing in material where you might even be losing material.
You've got to balance these things.
You might be losing material.
But if you're kings' about to be mated, it's good sometimes to exchange off the opponent's attacking
pieces in general.
So this clever little trick is react to a bishop takes a no man's place if sex -- bishop and knight,
this is a fork.
And in fact, the end result is of the bishop saying that Magnus has exchanged off a dangerous attacking
piece.
And also structurally in terms of Paul's structure, this pool structure is more fragmented and all
the attacking dreams are wiped out of Paul McShane here, because, you know, Magnus just grinds this
out.
If you know your attack fluffers up against Magnus Colson, he's a brilliant and game player and he'll
just beat you in an end game.
So we see actually, just for the record, the game carrying on like this with more simplification.
So there's no attack to speak of.
So the more you can master and games, by the way, as one of the key fundamentals, your game opening
game game, the more you'll be happy to kind of defend sometimes and simplify our opponents attacks
and just win the end game.
The stronger you are in and games in a way, the better, you know, defensive player.
If he can just simplify our opponents attack and their Magnus's like taking off all the pieces and he's
still able to maintain, you know, winning prospects because this is Magnus Carlson, you know, our
world chess champion.
Even back in 2012, he was absolutely super strong.
And he marches this king to this pawn, which is kind of vulnerable.
And he groynes this game out.
You know, he creates a pawn soon.
And, yeah, the king kind of aggressive in the end games more usually because it's less chance of being
mated.
I know this is beyond the point initially, but I'm just just want to show you End-To-End, an example
that essentially all of that attack from earlier was clear that and here the opponent resigned because
Magnus is going to be creating a pawn.
So if we go back earlier, you know, sometimes you want to just take out the opponent's attacking pieces.
And, you know, Magnus stuck around with the queen, kind of x raying the opponents queen.
So ready to exchange of queens.
That's the kind of X-ray of the opponent queen.
So generally, yeah, if you're on the defensive, the opponents codpieces, especially installed around
your king, if you can find some resourceful way of getting rid of these attacking pieces for simplification,
then the attack, you know, has got less venom.
It's like you're taking out the venom of the danger.
It's not as dangerous if there's less attacking pieces generally.
So Queen is sticking around.
And then a fantastic simplifying tactic, 965 her.
So very, very clever stuff, and if you want to look at a master generally of counterattack and sustaining
attacks, you know, Victor cautiously is one of the great kind of uncrowned kings of the game.
You'll see you'll hear me rather mention his name, because only a few times in this course and, you
know, he could, like, defend against the most dangerous attacking players of all time.
And he have actually a fantastic track record against Mikoto, who was a world champion, you know,
known for his amazing, commendatory and attacking chess.
But, yeah, he came unstuck again exclusively on quite a few occasions.
So there is an art defense.
And when you exchange pieces, that's part of the art of defending your king.
There are many elements of the opposition to manage.
It's not just the material Barat balance, it's pawn structure, it's king safety.
And in your early evolution as a chess player, you can think of it like element management, I state.
But no, I prefer to think about, you know, the what the opponents downsides, but the undertones.
For me, there are elements on the chess board to manage.
You don't want terrible king safety.
You don't want a terrible power structure.
You don't want to be down in material.
But all of these things are in balance.
And sometimes, yeah, you need to use simplification as a tool sometimes to improve your relative king's
safety if you're taking out the attacking pieces.
So bear that in mind as you develop and improve your chess.
That is a kind of the art of capturing can be used in this wider element management where you want to
manage your king's safety sometimes by simply taking out the attacking pieces.
One attacking piece could could create lots of threats for the next few moves.
So if you can simply take out that attacking piece, then there's less to worry about.
You want to minimize the counterplay, the hassle, the worries that the opponents presents.
So simplifying in particular, there are you know, they're attacking potential.
They're attacking pieces around your king is a great thing you can do.
So this is, you know, an interesting example I felt to show you kind of end to end that if you can
do that, you can still win potentially in games.
That's also a motivation for you.
You know, if you start using games as well as conscientiously as the openings of mental games, then
you have more of an urge, maybe also to sometimes simplify your way out of quite dangerous looking
possessions.
OK, that's a much.