Hi there.
In this introduction lecture, I want to zoom in on some key points about Michael Adams, who I regard
as a classic positional player in general.
So first of all, I think I find rather that reliability is an important factor.
When I present games, I have greater enthusiasm if I know the players involved.
So I hope that enthusiasm is carried across.
When I look at many examples of Michael Adams games, especially in British chess championships, where
I might know his opponent as well.
I think relatability is key and this is actually maybe a secret, actually, of of chess and chess improvement
in general.
If you can be more into the game examples you're trying to study because you might actually have seen
the players in question, maybe that helps.
It's more meaningful rather than x, y, z versus blah, blah, blah.
And you might never have heard of either.
But yeah, the personal factor is significant in my view.
So Adams also significantly was over 2700.
For many years, he nearly won one of the world championship knockouts one year too.
So he could have been an official world chess champion for for.
I feel that not studying Adams is like not visiting the London tourist attraction.
So I'm based in London.
It's like never going to visit the tourist attractions.
Sometimes you do need to inspect your own local resources and opportunities and not just take them for
granted, especially if there is a reliability factor.
Now I am Ali Mortazavi.
I also have known in the past.
Great guy.
He has really infused about Adams on the perpetual chess podcast, saying atoms control for possessions
could last for hours on end.
He describes him as an unbelievable, classic positional chess player.
He will just dominate from the opening with a vice like grip.
He could control possession with seemingly infinite precision forever.
So we have this aspect of control in what Ali Mortazavi says, and control is an important thing.
It's an important pattern.
We'll see.
A lot of the patterns in this course relate to possession control.
So he would just beat people or they would just beat up themselves.
So Ali Mortazavi tried this style, but apparently things got out of hand.
So we need to learn how to manage counterplay as best we can.
And in Adams's own perpetual chess podcast, he talks about quite often seeing things further as good.
So even if you have double pawns, see a bit further, be open minded to the details of the position.
There could be opportunities in your particular position which overall principles override principles.
So you need to be the driver.
Basically, I believe he's saying you need to look for the specific opportunities available to you in
a given position.
And as I know with my own personal game with him, just because the opponent has, say, double pawns
or you have seemingly an attractive knight.
You've also got to think about the overall battle of elements.
Overall, it's a good idea to be overall better, even if you have double pawns of your opponent as
an attractive knight.
What if you dominate the E4 like you did against me?
So positional understanding needs to factor in the elements for both sides and say, Look, are you
actually better here?
Are the advantages actually exploitable, etc.?
Adams Also has great plus scores, funny enough against vastly immature and Veselin Topalov.
So these are great players, super grandmasters.
And yeah, Adams's advice is be true to your style.
So sometimes players are choosing openings which might not actually fit their style.
And, you know, for example, Shirov has also been long lasting in the top 100 list as well as Adams.
So it's not necessarily that Adams is a positional player, but more that the super grandmasters which
tailor their openings, etc. to their style, they're maximizing their strengths, they're building
on their strengths and minimizing the weakness that they have.
So that's like the Botvinnik School of Chess Botvinnik would take grandmasters, see what their strengths
are, try and absolutely maximize those out and minimize any weaknesses.
It's a more profitable exercise to treat people on their own merits to do that because it and it also
means potentially they're more aligned.
They're going to enjoy that more if they're playing to their strengths rather than continue trying to
be just a generic, well-rounded player, which anyone could try to be in general.
But if someone has specific strengths, build on those.
So personalization and we see opening choices.
Adams's repertoire is very much quite often like Anatoly Karpov.
So positional choices has been encapsulated in the openings, and I'll show you an example game now,
another example game and Michael Adams Positional authority game, full control, lean into juicy targets.
So Adams was playing against Gavin Crawley in 1999 British Championship Chess Championship.
By the way, I remember crawling once he was leading this chess four piece tournament, which was the
least peaceful tournament I've ever played in, and he was leading to it.
He had to go to a job interview one day, but I think that messed things up a little bit for him.
But he was a great, absolutely great player as well, you know, is a great player as well.
International Master Game and Crawley.
So we see Adams with the white pieces against Gavin Crawley.
So E4 we have Crawley playing a five, Bishop C four so we have six RD, Fraser Fraser Already this
is a quiet junkyard piano and but there is an element of positional control creeping in here.
And actually modern grandmasters have taken up this with great resurgence in recent years because the
Royal Palace will, especially with the Berlin defence, seems to be quite drawn ish.
So this kind of resurgence of interest in in the piano is very interesting.
So rookie one Bishop E six like BD two Black Castles.
B four.
Bishop A seven.
We see Queen B free.
And Black goes with an aggressive plan to try for F5 later.
We have no F1 Bishop G4.
The Queen comes back and you might think, Hang on, isn't Black getting a really aggressive game of
F5?
The thing is, after H three we see f five and a great strengthening move here.
It's faith, which is real key to.
So yeah, very interesting situation.
This game is analyzed in detail in the course, so I'm just going to do a light observation analysis
here.
Queen F 693 and already why it's getting a kind of light squared.
Bishop Without a counterpart, which I do consider a dangerous imbalance, dangerous weapon in its own
right that why has this bishop power But this bishop in particular could be dangerous later.
Although right now, statistically a lot of pawns are on dart squares.
But the positional control aspect is interesting.
We see Bishop takes free, so giving white the bishop hair Queen G six.
Now he takes her five, rook takes her five, and now Queen G for Queen f6.
And we see the bishop now is going to tuck away quite neatly on G two.
So Bishop D five we have 94 and now Bishop takes F four.
It's difficult to tolerate that night.
So sometimes, yeah, giving up the bishop power is the right thing to do.
You can't be that principle that you can never give up the bishop power if there's this menacing knight
on F4.
If bishop free, then you know that menacing knight could actually be quite meaningful here with only
having a slight advantage.
So taking that out simplifies Rook takes up for Queen E to have eight G free and this gives a nice parking
spot for the bishop on G two which now threatens G takes F four.
I'm putting the pawn there.
We see the rook going back.
Yeah.
It's not an advantage for black to give white two rooks for the Queen in this particular case.
Sometimes it might be, but in this particular position it's not very convincing.
So we have rook have six H, four Queen five Queen E three Queen DD seven.
We have Rook a two.
And this build up on the file I felt was instructive.
So I think a five makes things worse.
But white was better anyway, if Knight five a fine white is getting a grip on possession with advantage.
So a five we have B 598 and now D four.
If white can get rooks on the seventh, they'll be juicy targets to exploit.
You know, it's about exploit ability, not just sitting prettily on a file.
We're going to try and convert that into rank pressure because it creates greater levels of exploit
ability targets.
So Queen takes DD four.
So there's already an emerging rookie seven possibility we have 96 Queen G for 95 queen's come off and
now this invasion on Summit Frank we have Knight C five rook take seven rook takes F two and both rooks
double.
So it's kind of pigs on the seventh as they're sometimes called by yes or so on pigs on the seventh,
because they eat quite a lot.
It's very exploitable at the targets.
So we have rook D two rook tanks, G seven and L 96 We see now rook gf7.
So here y actually missed an opportunity.
There was the idea of taking an takes b seven as well.
That's good as well for white, but Rook seven is clear as well to some extent.
So rooks come off.
B six we have rook B seven and you can see that, yeah, this bishop is absolutely amazing for supporting
past pawn potential royalty.
One King h2c5 rotates B six So this past pawn potential, this is a very dangerous weapon.
Now indeed, this past pawn we see Knight takes a four check with King g7b6b1b7d5.
Bishop takes D 519 take three.
But now Rook G king of six and this is the end of the game.
White has very pleasant choices here, and an easy one is Bishop H one not even give the bishop so queening
next move so soon.
So for example here queening So an interesting control game.
One of many examples we're going to go through in great detail in this course.
So yes, classic positional player.
I felt this had a lot of interesting points to make this game, converting far pressure to rank pressure.
It's about exploits ability levels of exploits ability can you know does doesn't mind losing the bishop
PAC the knight was kind of pesky and annoying sometimes we do have to give up the so called Bishop power.
The Bishop power is just the weapon.
We need to look at what's going on overall in the position and overall exploits ability basically.
So we're going to get a lot of amazing lessons and examples from Michael Adams in this course, So I
really hope you enjoy his game examples as well as all the other classic players we're going to visit.
Okay, So much.