Hi there.
In this lecture, we talk about the accumulation of advantages model later from Steinitz in more modern
chess.
So the immediate world champion after Steinitz.
So Steinitz was the first official world chess champion.
The immediate world champion after Lasker used the whole theories of Steinitz as a formidable weapon
and was actually world chess champion for 27 years.
There was a record number of years later.
Capablanca also used the positional approach, small advantages, and often simplification as a major
tool.
That was Capablanca speciality for reducing counterplay.
It's like, what is the source of counterplay?
The complexity of the position which can be reduced if you take away the opponent's pieces.
They can't really threaten you as long as you're preserving a small edge which can be used to win the
endgames.
Petrosian also was a world champion, heavily influenced by positional chess and also made use of the
hyper modernist ideas like Nimzowitsch so actually accumulated advantages in a very controlled style
using things like restraint, prophylaxis or prevention.
You could call that strengthening the position all the way through with minimal controversy.
And quite often Petrosian had a track record for a lot of draws.
Sometimes Karpov essentially said in an interview in Gibraltar he used precision style but playing for
a win.
So Karpov was a really dominant world chess champion after having been defaulted world champion when
Fischer didn't want to accept the conditions of the match and other future world champions, including
Kramnik and Colson.
Although universal players are also hugely celebrated as positional geniuses.
So Carlsen has a huge determination to grind out games, even with tiny advantages relentlessly like
Fischer was also, of course, a brilliant positional player and known as a universal player.
So this course feeds on classic positional players.
So Adams, like Petrosian and Karpov, is often slowly strangulating opponents counterplay while improving
positions.
And you might think, does that style of play actually result in long grinds?
Actually, sometimes Adams is winning games in less than 35 moves or 30 moves in many of the key British
championships he's played, which we'll see.
That's wonderful to see how positional play can also result in very quick wins, actually.
And this animal metaphor was given for Petrosian, Karpov and and Adams like boa constrictors.
Boa constrictors often are like paralyzing their victims with very little chance.
They're just slowly in this grip, which they can't get rid of.
So, yes, nice animal metaphor there.
Boa constrictor style, especially Petrosian and Karpov were labelled like boa constrictors.
And if we echo Steinitz, he basically said, when you have an advantage, you're obliged to attack.
Otherwise you're endangered to lose the advantage.
Things have changed since then.
Clearly in the future world champions after Steinitz, his idea that actually we can just accumulate
advantages and, you know, just build them up and generally restrain the opponent and not really even
worry about having to attack the opponents, just collapse by themselves, self destruct, implode.
They're just under too much pressure and they break at some point.
Adams has noted that in a kind of podcast interview that he likes games where there's a lot of potential
for the opponents to go wrong.
You know, often deep into a game, they'll make critical mistakes, so we're not actually obliged to
attack.
If you look at positional players and that's what really distinguishes them, they like the idea of
just restricting the opponent and accumulating for its own sake, basically the application of having
to use advantages to attack or play tactics.
Sure is beautiful.
Win and game.
Sure, that's beautiful if it naturally arises.
But these positional players can use waiting moves more than, you know, tactical players who might
have less patience.
They can use waiting moves.
Wait, wait, wait until the opponent makes a mistake and high class way moves.
Just strengthen the position as well as waiting so the opponent's slightly the opponents slightly get
disorganized in their position, have a weakness of the last move.
Concretely, where they blunder a piece, they break at some points.
So it's a very, very effective playing style.
Karpov nearly wiped out even arguably the greatest player of all time.
Kasparov.
Karpov nearly wiped out his spot in a match six zero.
But Kasparov came back in that match and eventually the match was abandoned.
So this style of play is extremely dangerous.
And can dominate potentially dynamic attacking players like Garry Kasparov.
It's a very dangerous style of play in its own right just to strengthen and accumulate advantages or
worsen improving our position, worsening the opponents.
And included in that is their ability to even move make any useful moves.
It's like a repeat until kind of loop until the opponent has no useful moves and the on verge of self
destruction.
So yeah, it's a wonderful goal in its own right to accumulate and strengthen advantages.
Whatever you use that goal for, it will enhance generally your goals.
So an attacking combination is made easier if your pieces are in the right places.
If looking safe enough, there's no backfire as like taking out all the backfires in advance of a tactical
combination or an attack, taking out all the downsides.
First, by strengthening the position positional goals, which we can see as kind of outposts of our
positional campaign.
That sort of talked about as small wins in this course.
We have sections in this course which talk about accumulating small wins.
So that's what we achieve rather than make use of.
But yes, the actual process, the methods that we use are really important as well, which we're trying
to emphasize in this course.
Accumulation of advantages can sometimes be visually apparent.
It can you can see in a game how not just the engine graph after it's just going up and up, but you're
visually sometimes amplifying and transforming advantages like batteries increasing in pressure.
It can be a nice visual, entertaining game to play through and to see that one side really didn't have
much play or the counterplay was drained out.
So I have an example for you, a concrete example.
This is Locke van Whaley against Nigel Short.
So on this occasion, yeah.
Van when he's playing a nice positional game too often the Dutch grandmaster is featured because he
plays the Sicilian defense.
People often feature him on the wrong side of a Sicilian defense.
But here Van really is with the white pieces against Britain's Nigel Shaw in 2010 cause group A and
it made a powerful impression on me.
So at the opening we have a certain pawn structure called the Carlsbad structure, and this gives y
some CFO.
And these elements are important to understand.
Black has a semi-open fold, but because Black's king is usually on this side of the board and the King
side, that semi-open file is often more difficult to use than White's semi-open C file.
So these are small elements of the position to bear in mind.
And in this particular structure, there's such a thing as minority attack.
Now, this game is actually examined in great detail later on in the course.
So I just wanted to give you a gist though, of things.
So here we see ea free Bishop EA, seven, Queen, C2 and Black Horses, Bishop dd, free rookie and
now free.
So this prevents black using G4 Square.
We have fight and our bishop for a five.
So sometimes there's a classic plan for white to have a kind of minority attack and this dissuaded the
minority attack aims to fracture black structure often leaving an isolated a pawn and backward c pawn.
So it is a kind of way of transforming this position, this structure, into a more exploitable advantage.
And that's one of the big beauties about accumulation of advantage.
Very sometimes you are transforming advantages into more practical ones where your resources are able
to exploit the resulting transformations much easier.
So here, White Castle, 96, we have the bishop tucking back Bishop DD six and then when he doesn't
mind the Bishop exchange, this does help for potential outposts on C five and E five later that the
Guardian bishop is gone.
So Rook for one we have Bishop E six, a three, we have rook e, seven a, B one now B four.
So eight times eight times Bishop D seven and they'll be five.
So the minority attack is aiming to transform the semi-open CFO and this structure into another structure,
which is even more exploitable.
We see 94 now, B to C, six, B to C six.
So is this a big deal?
Should this necessarily lead to Black's downfall?
We see Rook B six and now Knight take C three.
One of the points of group B six of Queen f6.
This is kind of preventative for Queen f6 and we often hear that word preventative preventing prophylaxis
in positional games.
Knight takes the five would be possible, so it's preventing any queen of things.
So we see more simplification.
Knight Take C free.
Queen, take C free now Queen F six here.
So without Knight takes D five black is actually threatening.
Bishop takes H three.
Neither of Queen sites are free, so that is address.
But first, Bishop takes G six, Queen six, G six, which is a new friend.
Now Bishop takes H three.
It's important to be able to see the opponents threat.
So Bishop takes H three.
The positional player must see the opponents threats.
The king moves.
We see f six Now, this is a weakening.
It's a concession.
It's weakening.
Basically this seven Frank Now we can imagine with that weakening, that is a new downside creeping
into the position which we might want to try and exploit by eventually doubling or traveling on seventh
rank.
So Rook one has that idea that potentially we can pile on the pressure here.
Queen H five And now again, Nigel Short is just playing for little France.
Bishop takes four, Queen takes off G tanks that's addressed Queen five and now a little threat of rook
takes E three.
So Black summit E file does seem useful, at least for a frets.
Their King g one addresses that rook takes e free.
So now Queen G five again with a bishop takes H three threat.
And now you might wonder, Wow, is this what position play's all about?
We've got to neutralize the opponent's threats.
We've got to respect the opponent's counterplay and minimize it.
So King H two, Queen a five threatens, Queen takes F two, and we have now Knight RD three.
Now, this is dual purpose.
It's not just defending F2.
The knight could come to see five later.
We have Queenie six now Black is on the back foot.
Just waiting is in a waiting game now.
King G one improving the position still further so that there's no checks which could be useful in some
variations.
So for example, we've got B seven and this check could spring black with Bishop F5 and try and simplify,
which might actually help black on this particular occasion with only a small edge to white potentially,
but it's still there.
But King G one.
So that's a small improvement to the position, which is another thing we'll keep hearing these small
improvements to position, not rushing, not hurrying, having the self-control, not to rush delayed
gratification incarnate on the chessboard when we slightly improve our position.
So we're delaying that gratification, putting a lot of pressure on the seven until now.
And now finally we get the pressure on the seventh being built up.
So here, not minding an exchange of a pair of rooks.
We have the eight we have now 9c5.
So this is improving the knight, the Knights better than the Bishop.
White has a significant number of advantages which are being kind of cemented now.
So that backward pawn in front of a back pawn is often a great outpost square.
That's a beautiful knight outpost.
So black's going on the first two rows.
Now that's a good sign.
Queen B six we have H five, further weakening of the position that could come handy later.
Rook C seven We have rook.
Take C seven, Rook take C seven, Queen eight and now Rook seven.
Keeping control.
No checks in sight.
We have rugby seven Bishop F seven and now Queen A seven.
So this amplification on the seventh rank is vivid, white, systematically increasing advantage here.
And now it's time to crown with a combination actually.
So we've got the pressure on the seventh rank and we're kind of optimal.
And this is the point where it's kind of useful to look for concrete combinations and tactics and attacks,
etc., something concrete.
If you're not going to win, you know, sometimes you might win early in the endgame.
So here, guess what?
Won't plays.
Okay, 97 and now we have rookie eight.
And now what's the idea?
Can you see?
Yeah.
Nine takes F six check.
So concrete gain material and also king safety is destroyed and also these pawns are shattered.
So absolutely dismal pawn structure here follows his possessions on its last legs basically now Queen
have five rook g seven check now Queen have seven and here Nigel short resigned so it's it's a one way
street this game it's a one way road it's a bit symbolic of the semi-open C file to be a one way road
as well where we have pressure like our cars going down one way without any cars coming back.
And that concept was emphasized in a classic positional book called Simple Chess by Stein.
The idea of this semi file being like a one way street.
I love the absolute, you know, the metaphors and simple chess.
You know, that's a book worth checking out as well as the classic nimzowitsch my system.
So those are great positional books, which would have something to say about this game in effect.
But yeah, this is a crushing position to Nigel Short resigning if Rook eight we can simply crown things
with Rook Jeffrey concretely threatening now Queen's G seven Checkmate.
And if check that's one of Black's last major checks.
Queen H seven Black's going to get mated now.
So I felt this was a very controlled positional game, relatively modern game 2010.
And yes, the spirit of positional play basically is evident in modern chess.
It's a vital part of modern chess, especially in what we call the closed or semi-closed positions,
where the pawn structure means that there aren't.
There are opportunities for positional gains, for concrete, increasing an advantage because the pawns
are kind of storing the advantages.
They're making sure the game isn't just tactical chaos.
If you imagine a positional without pawns and the pieces just facing each other, you'd have to endlessly
calculate variations positional players within the semi-closed and closed positions, which Paul Morphy
hated.
They're able to have more thematic thinking, thinking about planned structures, transforming advantages
from one to another, because the advantage is not dissipating so easily.
It's more it's it's more permanent in nature as we see in this game.
And it's a beautiful game in its own right to appreciate positional games like this.
How advantages transform or converted and how pressure is just increasingly intensified.
Amplified as I like to say, it's just beautiful stuff to witness.
It has its own beauty, this whole way of playing chess so we don't just have to go straight for the
king.
You know, in romantic style, we've got more options.
As chess evolved, we have more options for winning, as demonstrated by our world chess champions.
So this is a Dutch grandmaster on this occasion.
So beautiful positional game with the minority, the so called minority attack, damaging Black's pawn
structures.
The minority attack in itself is an example of accumulating advantages.
When you're taking a structure and you're transforming it to a worse structure, you can quite often
do that with pawn structures in general to transform and make advantages more exploitable with your
pieces in certain positions.
So sometimes even the act of doubling paradoxically the opponent's pawns might help you get more exploitable
weaknesses.
So the idea of transforming structures in general, the broader, more abstract idea is very, very
powerful to the positional player for manipulating to increase advantages to ones which might actually
be more easy to exploit.
So bear that in mind as well.
It's a very, very beautiful thing to accumulate advantages in a way.
You can look at the beauty of it in many different ways.
Okay, I hope you enjoyed this one very much.