Hi there.
In this lecture, we see Michael Adams against Vatican Ravikumar.
This is a 1989 always about monsters.
13 position round three.
So e four from Adams.
See?
Five 9396 default C takes default.
Now, you might think this is not a very positional opening, but you can play positionally with 1e4.
It's how you play it after.
So here we have Bishop G five, Queen A five.
So Black is offering double pawns in exchange for having the Dancewear Bishop accountable and to the
bishop pair the two bishops and Adams accepts that offer.
Bishop takes f6g takes and now might be free.
The energetic Queen G five.
So this is disrupting for white to castle queenside later if Queen C seven white can actually play hare
Queen H five celebrating the lack of a knight on f six putting pressure on F seven.
And for example, this position should be in White's favor overall.
So we have Queen G five, we have 95 and this is awkward already for black.
For 97 the king comes to defend c seven.
It's a bit strange looking F for Queen H six, Queen dd two, E six and nine, c3a6 and white castles
Queenside King c7g free.
We have B eight King B one.
Bishop E seven.
Bishop G two.
So why has completed development?
The rooks are connected.
It looks pleasant enough at the moment.
Rook D eight We have Rook H one Bishop F eight so blank is now putting the rooks together and now actually
a rook left.
So this gives the idea that rook d three or later rook C free might be useful.
We have B six and Queen F two.
So this kind of probes this side of the board.
We have Bishop D seven, rook ed3.
So White's pieces look harmonious, organized black has the bishop hair.
How to crack Black's position.
Now we have Knight E two, King B seven, Knight RD two giving the idea that maybe 94 is on the cards,
which hits B six and DD six.
So trying to hit these weaknesses hard.
Queen H five And now an interesting little tactic and the service of positional play to try and put
the black queen away from the action.
Can you see what Adams plays?
This is a very neat touch, this move.
Okay.
G4.
So now Queen takes G4 is played.
If it's ignored with Queen a5y could harass the Queen would not be free.
Knights C Free.
Bishop F one.
So first thing Rook takes DD six.
So this position is highly unpleasant for the Queen.
The Queen is kind of trapped, so black would have to lose lose material for the queen to escape.
Very unpleasant indeed.
So the queen actually took on G4.
We have the bishop free.
And the point is the Queen's put in the corner over there.
So maybe f five.
The Queen can have some influence, but it doesn't look great.
We have Rook be free.
King C seven defending b6c for pressurizing B six again, B five.
And now 93 rook designs and here G3 is played rugby 7c4.
This is an interesting position, an interesting moment.
Perhaps Black could have just played b4.
It seems very logical and it's difficult for wanting to improve the position.
It's only a slight edge overall for whites.
So fortunately I mean for Adams that B4 wasn't played.
If we have a look at this C4, it turns out here tactically Knight G five is a stunner.
So E takes a 595 check.
And the dynamics here are very interesting.
The Queen shut out of the game with these pawns.
So it looks like a very interesting pawn formation.
And the point is white can make progress with 9b6.
Take out the light squared.
Bishop and White's making progress here with the Queen kind of in Siberia.
This is just a fancy variation, but it shows this in particular.
Black starts to crumble after this opening move.
So Queen takes F4 would be impossible here because the bishop takes C six check winning the queen.
And if King C eights rookie free, even though once he's done the king safety factor is massive here.
This is a very very dynamic difficult to calculate situation where even here it's difficult to exactly
see sometimes how to continue.
But here actually rook tanks D5 is a crushing threat.
So now it is it is fairly clear if the rook gets out of the way of King takes the attacks crashing through
here.
But yeah, this takes a towel like attacking intuition, this kind of thing where we can see outcomes
much later on through the piece sacrifice.
So that would be a very, very dynamic move.
So instead C four was played understandably B4 was was very useful to black hair, but we have rook
bibby eight rook C1 and yeah, it looks just like a terrible position for Black's king now.
It looks absolutely terrible.
The king over there, the queen over there, it looks absolutely terrible.
Knight a5c takes B five check.
King Now the Rooks double.
And now here.
He takes B five the the actual some of the official game scores for this game are a bit weird having
rook tanks be five allowing rotating out which is just impossible.
So let's assume a takes B 590 1f5 that this version of events happened E five opens up the Queen on
this diagonal and we have D five and our knight H five, Queen H six and now Rook takes eight and here
after Queen B six check, that's end of game.
So in this position we're winning a piece and that Knight's supporting our four point line is just winning
a piece here in the end.
So you might say, well, this was an attacking game.
It wasn't a positional game.
The thing is the opening choice after it's what happens.
After Adams went for structural damage, the positional player in general, like an Adams or cop off,
they prefer to have nice pawn structures.
They're more static players looking at the static benefits of pawn structures rather than dynamic.
So the dynamic is opening up pieces, getting an attack.
This is more like static and structural that the slower aspects of the position which we can build up
slowly emphasized here.
But it so happens that King Safety was a major factor.
And.
ADAMS Primarily he's playing the position, whatever your whatever you are, you're leaning.
If your positional tactical, you're playing the position.
And if this is the position and it's shown in this game that Adams is playing to the finesses of the
position, for example, putting the Queen back in the box with this G4 move, it's a very accurate
looking move to put the Queen in a bad place and then go concretely for the King later.
Okay, there was an interesting piece sacrifice that was missed instead of C4, and this may have been
a cause of regret.
I remember at the time of the game Adams had some regret about this game and maybe it was it was this
move rather than a more attacking move like Knight G5.
But this requires a real attacking intuition, this kind of move to open up the king.
So yes, it seems anyway, black really played a bad move there.
Rugby eight just letting things be opened up and still not closing things up.
So yes, strange play from black.
Indeed.
Very strange, provocative play.
Just perhaps trying to open up lines against the white king and the diagonal, but I'm not sure we should
talk about this game too much because the game score does not seem correct.
But some interesting ideas nevertheless, to an extent.
I hope you enjoyed it so much.