Hi there.
In this lecture, I want to talk about the course structure and the game selection.
So it is important to see that the course is organized in terms of patterns.
Patterns?
For me, they're less prescriptive.
They're not saying, you see to you, you must do this or you must do that.
They're not laws, they're not principles which you must follow.
Basically, if we think about patterns, we keep them as general advice, and it's up to you whether
to apply a pattern or not.
Is it actually appropriate for your game sessions?
So advice needs to be taken as general guidance.
You are the driver of your game positions.
You need to work out what is truly exploitable.
Just because the opponent has double pawns doesn't automatically mean you're going to win.
Maybe they're not that exploitable.
Maybe you've got to distinguish between what looks bad, positioning, what is actually bad.
You've actually got to do the work in your game positions and you need to work out the overall advantages
which determine who is actually better in a given position.
So we give examples for the patterns in the first three layers of this course feature, Michael Adams,
who's been over 2700 for many, many years, was nearly an official world chess champion because he
was organising these knockout times.
He nearly won one of those.
There's Anatoly Karpov, who has been a world chess champion.
There's Aron Nimzowitsch, who wasn't really given the chance to be world chess champion through Alexander.
Alexander Alekhine chose Bogoljubov instead to play twice instead of Nimzowitsch.
Even in a particular year, Nimzowitsch had fantastic results coming first in certain Tillmans So anyway,
so we're not biased necessarily to just world chess champions and the players after this will be from
other great positional players.
Again, we have players like Rubenstein.
He wasn't a world chess champion, but he's definitely worth looking at for his positional examples.
And we can look at these players most celebrated games quite often, or their most important tournaments
where they did really well in.
Now, the idea of looking for games which are really collected sites like chess games com is really
nice in principle, but positional games, by their nature, they're not as sparkling or brilliant as
tactical or attacking games in general.
So we can't really be led by looking at the most collected games that might not serve our particular
goal, which is to examine how the truly great positional players often manage their positions.
They often manage their positions in a fairly quiet, relatively quiet, unspectacular, low risk manner.
Low risk doesn't usually link up too well with being in lots of people's game collections.
People are dazzled, for example, by Queen sacrifices.
If you want to put chess on YouTube, usually it's the titles which have queen sacrifice in them and
this is a positional course.
We've got to look at the other side of the coin to have a more holistic view of chess.
It's nice to be good at chess with its various skill sets, and if we're just biased by looking all
the time at the most brilliant games, we're going to lose insights, valuable insights into chess.
But positional games do have their own beauty, and it's nice to feature the classic positional games,
which are still in many people's collections.
Often people like a good Zugzwang for example, and Nimzowitsch is immortal.
Zugzwang is in a lot of people's collections and it's usually the more historical games have had time
to soak in into chess culture and be celebrated.
So they often have more game collections.
But we can't be driven by this.
We want to look at modern positional players and for me it was exceptionally important to look at Michael
Adams because for me I've had first hand experience of how he's dismantled players so elegantly and
calmly that I just had to make him a key player, even though he wasn't an official world chess champion,
even though many of his games are not yet in many collections, relatively speaking, to, say, Anatoly
Karpov or to say Nimzowitsch.
And the further we go at, you know, especially the world chess champions, people often bias their
selection of games to the past official world chess champions.
So Capablanca.
There's going to be a lot more game collections generally than Nimzowitsch because Nimzowitsch was never
an official world chess champion.
Lasker.
Because he was world champion for so long, perhaps a lot of his games should be in more game collections,
but maybe people just took less for granted.
He was just so long as world chess champion.
So anyway, the key point I wanted to make here is that we need to get the positional insights.
And if those positional insights are from games which are hardly in any game collections, those games
will still be chosen.
It still could have been, for example, in a notable tournament of a great positional player.
So I like looking at Adams's notable tournament, like his British championship victories.
And we get a lot of positional insights, which otherwise, if we had that bias for looking at the most
celebrated games, we wouldn't get get those insights.
So we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As the social scientists favorite expression goes, we want to show the gritty games as well, which
maybe not.
They're not so celebrated at all.
They show the importance quite often of being extremely resourceful.
When you're faced with dynamic compensation as a positional player, sometimes you do want to let the
opponents self destruct or have dynamic positions.
We've got to see how we handle that because we're going to be in those situations quite often.
So concrete games, concrete analysis of games, rather with modern engines like Stockfish, with the
neural network capability, really help appreciate more the more profound moves of positions which in
the past may be engines which are more analytical in nature, only prioritized tactics well, and combinations
not so much the longer term aspects of possession.
But now with neural networks, we can learn a lot of positional play and a lot of opening theory more
than ever before from modern engines.
So it's a delight to actually put these games through the test of modern neural network based engine
technology and to see what really happened with potentially best play from both sides, to see the kind
of scalability of the play with greater scrutiny.
Would there still have been the same game results?
We also explore not so fashionable patterns of positional chess.
And for me, it was an early delight to see and be reminded that, for example, Michael Adams would
often imbalance from the opening were things like the Marshall Gambit, which is, you know, since
his and other players use become one of the most respected gambits going with the black pieces, so
much so that a lot of modern grandmasters they play anti Marshall Gambit lines or they avoid the royal
affairs altogether.
So yeah, this is trying to be a more modern view of positional chess and, and often looking at relatively
uncelebrated games, but games which we can really learn this particular kind of you could say more
secret arts than the art of dazzling sacrifices and combinations.
So now the example I'd like to show you here is the imbalance pattern.
This is a marshall Gambit game position.
Vasily Evans was playing against Michael Adams in 1991.
Tarrasch went round six and from this position Adams played F five.
So a positional player with Gambit.
Are you outraged?
Hopefully not, because, you know, if you're playing a player like Vasily, eventually you need to
get every advantage going.
And if you can get an advantage for playing the Marshall Gambit.
Or very pliable possession where you've got no bad pieces.
You know, from positional perspective, we actually have got a great position.
We're just the pawn down there.
But as Alphazero has indicated in many games, you know, sometimes material can be sacrificed for authority
in the position.
So here I've played Bishop Tex G.
For we have Queen G for Bishop D two and now Rook G six.
White is under severe pressure here already.
King G2 f four This looks very natural to play a free queen.
H five and now g four is played.
And you might think, Well, isn't this asking for some tactical combination if Rook 81 The thing is,
Black has that F4 square to use with bishop and four So for example here then it's a disaster.
94 is happening.
The extreme example for winning the queen or winning the rook.
If the queen had moved.
So it's under pressure.
So G four was played.
Rook Sorry.
And now Queen H four is played.
So here we have rookie two and Adams is invited to play rookie Tex G for in effect, which he does play.
So he sacrifices a rook and plays a free check.
Now positioning things have been altered here, although still white is a pawn up from a positional
perspective.
Black's authority on the possession has slightly increased.
We have King H a a great preventative move.
Well, taking out the sting rather you could say, of Queen E six Check if Rook have to, Queenie six
check.
This is a disaster.
The knight's holding h two.
So King H eight is an initial precaution.
And now another precaution move prevents the move for back row issues.
H six And here now the time is ready for a more attacking move.
Bishop f for we have bishop e one.
If Bishop takes F 496 F for this position, Queen takes G four check and Queenie two is very dangerous
for white and not just for being mated.
Basically there's great scrutiny on the queenside as well.
Black could undermine the pawn chain with Queen.
Text B two with advantage now overall.
So Bishop E one was right, Queen G five.
So it's quite vivid that at first the man shook.
His pieces are largely on the back row.
So we have H three, Queen, G six, Rook D one and Bishop B eight.
Rook D2 and now Queen Bee one.
So this is setting up painful pins potentially with this invasion to the ape.
Frank Bishop f22.
The night being pinned.
This doesn't look good for King G.
Eight.
A nice waiting move, saying what White is doing, why it's approaching.
It seems a kind of zugzwang If the rook moves to e two, we've got nine and four forking queen and rook
as example.
What does why actually do?
Why?
It's kind of stuck here.
So b four is played.
This doesn't look like a great move because it weakens C free.
But what else?
It's very difficult to.
Do something, do nothing.
Rather like King H one, for example, F for and Queen takes F one.
That's devastating.
The King's got to hold on to the F one night here.
So why is under great pressure with this nine and full front?
So be free.
And we see now first bishop and for.
Rookie to are now taking out C three.
So now it's equal on pawns but still black has huge pressure rookie six and now is even a pawn up equal
on pawns again if Bishop E one.
Looking at the Queen, the simplest is just to take be free here with advantage.
So Rook takes C six.
So Adams has used the martial gamut to gain advantage.
Now after queen tanks be free, Rook takes a six so again equal on pawns.
But the qualitative value of the pieces is much better for black.
92.
Check King H one.
Bishop B eight.
We have Bishop e one and now this paralyzing move, Queen RD one and Emergent resigned here.
So if he plays, for example, the kings away from the knight so if Bishop F2 we have.
For example.
And four.
And how does one play this?
It also stops any check that I have for.
But say Queen G, free Queen takes F one check.
And if king if the queen goes to G 196 H free is nasty.
And look at the pressure on F two.
So yes, off the Queen d11 is really paralyzed and resigned.
So I do like the imbalance patterns, imbalances, giving up material positional gambits.
Adams Also a bit of a fan of the Benko Gambit.
That's fun for me.
And by having another player like Adams, we see some very fun openings compared to Anatoly Karpov and
maybe stayed away from some of the imbalance patterns we see from other positional players.
So this course is a little bit on the spicy side as well for a possession, of course, showing sometimes
some dynamic games as well, showing basically positional players aren't totally averse.
For dynamic sacrificial play.
If there's fairly low risk in playing such a way, it's often about risk appetite.
In general.
And it's just nice to see the meat in potato games as well as the more celebrated games.
So I hope we're going to learn a lot about positional chess together and some surprising revelations
as well.
OC.
I hope you really enjoy this journey of exploration of positional patterns.
In this course, which largely you'll see is about control and pawn structure.
But there are other interesting patterns as well to to explore how so much.