Hi there.
In this introduction lecture, I'd like to answer the question What if you can't really accumulate any
advantages?
So there are no tactics, no clear way of attacking, and even no way of subtly improving the position?
What do you do?
Well, advice, which seems very, very sensible, is first, don't accumulate any downsides.
There's a quotation which has been misleading chess players throughout the years as though a bad plan
is better than no plan at all.
In this course, we would argue the opposite.
A bad plan is often worse or far worse than no plan at all.
And that is that has been echoed by I am William Hoxton.
And that's in contrast to Frank Marshall's advice that we desperately need some sort of plan.
Like a plan is better than no plan at all.
So Hartstein indicated the nearest you can come to the full formulation of a plan is to ask where you'd
like to see your pieces in five or six months time.
And Hartstein indicates many games are lost through pursuing bad plans as there are won by pursuing
good ones.
So we might try and improve our worst piece subtly or eliminate the opponent's best piece.
But ideally, we want to avoid commercial pawn moves.
Pawns do not go backwards.
Pieces can go backwards and forwards all day, but pawns don't go backwards.
So if you can play a waiting game and encourage pull moves from the opponent, that'd be great to encourage
a waiting game.
Sometimes that's given the term maneuvering.
Sometimes we might might have to use maneuvering until the opponent is slightly disorganized.
So here is a game from Emanuel Lasker.
So the second official world chess champion.
And what do we mean by disorganized?
Well, on the chessboard, it might mean, for example, that the priorities of the pieces have been
messed up, that pieces shouldn't be where they are.
So here Black's in a defensive posture.
Why it does have this target on E4.
And Lasker talks about this waiting until the opponent's disorganized.
So waiting moves can be crucially important.
And this has been echoed by modern international monitors as international monitors like Ali Mortazavi,
who noted, you know, it's important to sometimes do nothing Well, and it could be several waiting
moves in a row which might slightly improve the possession or not, sometimes just letting the opponent
make mistakes rather than try and blast them off the board immediately.
So you're letting your opponent beat themselves up as opposed to try and actively wipe them off the
board because they might have adequate defensive resources if you try, for an example, for an attack.
So you're kind of waiting for downsides to creep in more or for the existing ones to be more exploitable.
So here is a concrete example from Alaska game.
So Alaska against George Solway.
So here, let's see this game from this position.
White played Queen F2 here.
There's no easy way to proceed the attack if and four which looks as though 96 is really juicy.
On this occasion in this position it's 86 and black's putting up some resistance.
So that parries the threat of G6 which is mate there but 96 underpins the 87 pawn.
And how is White making progress?
Okay, so it's interesting.
Maybe we would be justified with a pull move here, maybe and claim an advantage.
But let's we're actually preferred maneuvering.
So Queen F2, we have rook f eight and now Queen two.
So the queen is slightly more flexible and central and encourages the opponents queen to play four queen
by eight to try and maybe simplify with queen before we have one.
We have Royal Kathy eight and now Rook g48 rook DD one and now Queen before Queen F two.
And here it comes.
This is a committal kind of move.
Queen C free.
It's difficult for the Queen to get back in a defensive posture.
So there is an element of disorganization in terms of the promises of possession to defend the king.
This doesn't seem to be aligned to those priorities.
The queen is trying to be a nuisance.
Now we have Queen H four, which subtly actually threatens e five hair.
Believe it or not, we have 9h6.
If just to demonstrate if a5e5 why this is dangerous, there's things like nine times F six and that
would frighten.
Potentially some some very dangerous ideas.
So, for example, if.
G takes F six, Queen tanks F six, and that's mating.
As example, if Bishop eats, yeah, one should still have an advantage.
But there's some way to go here.
So this position white should have an advantage.
So nice.
H six.
We have a recount for nine of seven.
King H two and now rook ge eight.
This is the start of more disorganisation away from the priorities of King defense.
We have Queen G.
Geoffrey wrote, She ain't so defending the maid and now rook H four And it looks as though this is
a more dangerous case now with the Queen on C three.
This looks as though it's more dangerous for this idea and we have now commit to move G five.
So in Alaska's era, often players were self destructing.
Maybe because of Frank Marshall's quotation, You know, a bad plan is better than no plan at all,
especially commit or pull moves.
Irreversible pawn moves.
We can see that F six is now having to be protected by the Queen.
So this is a major liability, this f six pawn.
This is a very commendable decision.
We have F takes g.
This didn't even need to be played.
Rook g four just looking at f six.
And for example here, Queen E one just get the queen off is the defender of F six is remarkably effective
in this position.
If we win F six now, we're ready to win F six.
This is just a remarkably effective position.
So here, for example, we're going to play nine takes F six.
So it's interesting.
There's there's interesting points here.
And Black doesn't want to necessarily attack the rook to lose D6 and f6.
So it's an interesting position.
But anyway, f Tex G was preferred by Alaska.
We have Rook takes G6, Queen F two and yet another commercial pawn move.
So these weaknesses creeping in are hard to estimate.
Actually, we have four for the United States.
G six check, we have rook F six and 92 hitting the queen, Queen B to rook DD to Queen A one and now
Knight G3.
So black's under great pressure here.
And we have King G eight.
If F takes E four, then nine takes E four is nice.
So this position rook takes nine times 90, takes 36.
That would be a terrible position for blank.
So King G eight, we have E takes F five, Bishop takes F five.
And now a tactic here to try and exploit this position.
94.
So wanting to win a five.
So F five is one and one.
It's advantage is clearer.
It's a much more exploitable position for exploiting Black's weaknesses.
So King for Queen takes default, not minding a transition here to an end game.
So here 95 Rook H five with the idea of undermining the knight with C five so rook f7c5 undermining
E five knight.
So D take C rook takes E five, C takes rook takes D four.
So Lasker went on to win this rook and pawn ending.
So here rook a five rook to a3c5 rooks eight.
Rugby to rugby five.
And now this active move, which doesn't work here because White has rook b seven check after King G
six Rook C six Jack and the Kings King is not moving from their rook.
Six is starting to get too dangerous.
Rook c5k6a46 Rook C Free A6 rook g3 check King H six and now rook jig seven here Black resigns.
So anyway, the key point which is demonstrated in this game is that sometimes we do need to maneuver.
Maneuver is another way of saying like high class waiting moves, waiting for more downsides, or the
opponents be slightly disorganized or the piece is not in the optimal positions if they have defensive
duties.
This Queen excursion adventure into White's position was allowed because we encouraged the opponent
to do something.
We did some maneuvering, which is kind of disguising high class waiting moves which animate, as Ami
believes, the stronger players can play several such moves in a row without compromising their position,
just waiting for the opponents to crack.
So sometimes, especially in modern chess, people are getting better in various ways.
Sometimes you've got to sometimes wait for them to self destruct outside, especially on the longer
time, which was the increment time controls the obvious mistakes.
You know, they're kind of being rolled out.
With things like increments sometimes.
So sometimes the waiting game letting the opponents self-destruct is a key thing.
And we see, you know, maneuvering.
We can think of maneuvering as a high class waiting game in a way.
So it's waiting for committal moves.
If we've got more committal moves, we can see how this makes the position easier to exploit the weaknesses
once this g five this is this is really the start of overcommitment and that's had an alternative way
to play this.
He could have just played even just rook g four here.
So yes, nine, eight, six wouldn't be sufficient because things start dropping off off the hook tanks
rd six and F six to follow.
So this would be a very good position to try and further improve the advantages with F six dropping
off the commercial pawn moves
basically lead to problems.
So Laskas way in a way is much more straightforward.
Just take on G six and try and look at these weaknesses and wait for Black to open up the position even
more for King safety issues.
So we can see that sometimes maneuvering is the positional name given if there's absolutely nothing
to do, if you can't clearly improve a worse piece or make one of the opponent's pieces slightly worse,
there's no subtle way of improving the position at all.
We can look to maneuvering.
That's the secret word we're using for high class weighting modes, letting the opponent self destruct,
especially if they become impatient or panicky.
So commercial moves, we can look forward to those and exploiting those new downsides.
So I hope that's interesting.
We're talking about this scenario.
What if you can't accumulate advantages?
In a nutshell, a waiting game is quite often a great recipe.
So just don't do any plan.
Sometimes that's better than a plan, especially if that plan involves committal weaknesses like pull
moves.
Okay.
And so much.