Ziatdinov Part Three

"A chess master should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk." -- Alexander Alekhine.

Students sometimes lament that they cannot apply their knowledge during a game. They cannot apply their "knowledge" because they really don't have any knowledge! What they have instead are shortcuts to chess language, what I call "chess magic spelling" (like "open the position if you are more developed", "the two bishop advantage", "don't move the queen out too early", etc.). These shortcuts are useless generalities. Chess can only be expressed with concrete variations. This often-ignored concept is so crucial to mastering chess that it bears repeating with emphasis: chess can only be expressed with concrete variations!

Imagine a musician who had never heard music, only descriptions and theories of music; Imagine a dancer who had never physically performed a pleat or twirl, only read instructions on how to dance. How is a chess player who relies on ideas expressed in words and theories any less ridiculous? A musician makes music, a dancer dances, and a chess player calculates variations!

Please do not ask from chess more then it can give! Strategy, paradoxical ideas, tactics, opening theory, etc., comprise the theoretical science of chess, but are not part of the concrete game. A concrete, real game is BAM! BAM! BAM!

A practical player needs help applying his BAM! BAM! BAM! in a real game with positions that are not clear. The way of penetrating such positions is to study chess as one would study any other language, using only "chess words" -- moves or chains of moves, not through description like "I have pressure in the center" or "I am attacking on the king side." Weak players believe in chess "rules" like they believe in The Bible. They can be helpful, but I try to teach that rules are only rules, not laws. A law has no exception; you cannot break it even if you want to. Rules, however, are meant to be broken!

There are only four possible evaluations of a position: 1-0, 0-1, 1/2-1/2, and unclear. Many players take issue with this proposition -- they want to over-intellectualize things, to believe they can evaluate a position beyond being unclear. They are fooling themselves. Furthermore, terms like "white is better", "black is better", and "the position is equal", has no application in pawn endings whatsoever. Instead, there is only "white wins", "black wins", or "draw".

How does a slight change in a chess position alter the outcome of the game? This is an important question in many mathematical theories. A system's behavior depends on its specific parameters.

If solutions look alike for a different value of parameters, those values are called "normal", but if there is a special value of parameters, the solution becomes different; this phenomenon is called "bifurcation". For example, if the speed of a rocket orbiting the Earth is more than a certain velocity, the rocket will fly away from the Earth and never return, but if its speed is just right, the rocket will orbit the Earth. There is a third point of bifurcation in when the rocket will crash back to Earth. Finally, there is a special speed at which the rocket will move in a circular orbit, and one in which its orbit will be elliptical. The point is that a small change in parameters creates a big change in results.

For example, take this position:

What happens if white's rook is shifted from f1 to f5? We get completely different practical results; f5 is a point of "bifurcation". The position of the white rook acts as a parameter for this K+R+P v K+R system.

In chess, only points of bifurcation are interesting.

Real chess, interesting chess, starts when you have a choice between two or more tactically sound moves, and you try to determine and evaluate their strategic differences. This only occurs in unclear positions. You can ask the opinion of masters (but never take it as a final verdict), and build up your own opinion that you are ready to protect with concrete variations. If the position has a clear solution, it is not chess but just a puzzle that can be solved with Fritz.

To cope with unclear positions depends on how many "chess words" are in your vocabulary, not on how many "rules" you know and follow. Therefore, you must study concrete positions with concrete moves. Do not try to find the "King's Way of Geometry" (from a famous answer of Aristotle to one of the Persian Kings) -- geometry must be learned as geometry, chess as chess, regardless if you're a king or a beggar, there are no shortcuts; mastery takes time and effort.

Don't believe that if you didn't find a solution that you must have missed it; just admit you don't know it. If Capablanca were to play your position, he would probably solve your problem, but in 99 cases out of a 100, a solution does not exist in unclear positions. If you lost, it most likely isn't because you failed to find a solution in an unclear position, it's because you blundered.

I am sure Capablanca made his strategically classical moves based on calculations, but those calculations were so fast he wasn't even aware of them. He had trained his ability to calculate from four years of age (when he first figured out how a Knight moves and pointed out his father's Knight-move mistake). People said that Capablanca knew thousands of endgame positions by heart, by hand: a big vocabulary. His chess calculations functioned much like how the human brain controls digestion, breathing, and the beating of the heart -- it is unconscious, like choosing words. In chess, we say that it is "intuitive".

In MY GREAT PREDECESSORS, VOL 1, Kasparov makes a strong case that Capablanca lost the World Championship to Alexander Alekhine because Alekhine played more concretely in the endings (where precision is more important) than his Cuban rival. Capablanca had become used to defeating his opponents relying on generalities rather than concrete variations. He could not get away with this against Alekhine, and paid a big price for his laziness.

I do not know exactly how the brain works, but I do know what kind (and amount!) of calculation a computer processor has to make just to show you the window on your computer screen. It leads me to believe that our brain makes at least the same amount of calculations to solve a chess problem. Moreover, I think the difference between right and left-brained people is that right-brained people are thinking faster, and left-brained people think so slowly that they can control their thinking process.

In short, I want to say that the only way to improve your chess is to study concrete positions with concrete variations, and get the feeling that you know a key position completely. This will give you as much pleasure as I got when I memorized a collection of English poetry and could read it without any mistakes; I haven't forgotten a word. Do not forget your chess words!

At the non-master level, do not pay too much attention to your results; winning and losing is not important. The most import thing is to learn where your pieces belong on the board and to not believe that every position has a best move or plan.