A Crazy Thought
I knew there was a lofty thought bouncing around my mind trying to get out recently. And it finally makes sense to me. I have been focused mainly on sacrifices and activity and it has led me to a crazy conclusion.
It makes no difference whether your position is objectively better or worse!
Yesterday I was reading some of the commentary on BDK's post and katar gave a link to an article by Kevin Spraggett. I am not really familiar with Kevin Spraggett, although I was born in Canada we left when I was 11. But I was so intrigued I read everything he had written on his website. The link I provided above contains the point that knocked me out of my seat.
You will never catch Kasparov in a sound but passive position...he would much prefer an inferior position with some little counterplay!
So I had always thought about this as if the activity is compensation for positional inferiority. And I favor activity to positional aspects anyways so I thought that I had some understanding of this concept. Turns out I haven't even scratched the surface of exploring this deep idea.
My logic from his point to my point goes as follows, and there are other things he says that helped me reach my conclusion:
Chess is about mistakes. If I make a mistake, the evaluation of the position changes. If I play the best move, the evaluation of the position remains the same.
Sooner or later both players will make mistakes. This point is important.
I must seek positions where my opponent is more likely to make mistakes than I am, regardless if these positions are objectively worse, because the evaluation of the position will change when my opponent makes a mistake!
So to continue the Fritz-bashing that wormwood initiated. It doesn't really matter if Fritz says you're down a half a pawn if your opponent (not Fritz, usually not even a master) cannot play the next 10-15 moves without making a mistake.
This means evaluating a sacrifice does not even have to be by objective reasoning (all talk of assume your opponent will play the best move aside), but rather by weighing how well you think you can hold together the resulting position. If you see that you will have a plan in the position after the sacrifice and you can find good resources, then chances are your opponent will err in the melee. An unbalanced position makes it extremely hard to come up with accurate moves. You get the advantage of entering this crazy position at least with some idea of what your strengths are, and often times sacrificing a weakness frees up sufficient forces for a strong initiative.
I am thinking this is part of a larger discovery, I'll keep you posted.
It makes no difference whether your position is objectively better or worse!
Yesterday I was reading some of the commentary on BDK's post and katar gave a link to an article by Kevin Spraggett. I am not really familiar with Kevin Spraggett, although I was born in Canada we left when I was 11. But I was so intrigued I read everything he had written on his website. The link I provided above contains the point that knocked me out of my seat.
You will never catch Kasparov in a sound but passive position...he would much prefer an inferior position with some little counterplay!
So I had always thought about this as if the activity is compensation for positional inferiority. And I favor activity to positional aspects anyways so I thought that I had some understanding of this concept. Turns out I haven't even scratched the surface of exploring this deep idea.
My logic from his point to my point goes as follows, and there are other things he says that helped me reach my conclusion:
Chess is about mistakes. If I make a mistake, the evaluation of the position changes. If I play the best move, the evaluation of the position remains the same.
Sooner or later both players will make mistakes. This point is important.
I must seek positions where my opponent is more likely to make mistakes than I am, regardless if these positions are objectively worse, because the evaluation of the position will change when my opponent makes a mistake!
So to continue the Fritz-bashing that wormwood initiated. It doesn't really matter if Fritz says you're down a half a pawn if your opponent (not Fritz, usually not even a master) cannot play the next 10-15 moves without making a mistake.
This means evaluating a sacrifice does not even have to be by objective reasoning (all talk of assume your opponent will play the best move aside), but rather by weighing how well you think you can hold together the resulting position. If you see that you will have a plan in the position after the sacrifice and you can find good resources, then chances are your opponent will err in the melee. An unbalanced position makes it extremely hard to come up with accurate moves. You get the advantage of entering this crazy position at least with some idea of what your strengths are, and often times sacrificing a weakness frees up sufficient forces for a strong initiative.
I am thinking this is part of a larger discovery, I'll keep you posted.
But what you read makes allot of sense, philosophically and otherwise.
Learning the moves: checkmate
Beginner: material
Intermediate: position
Advanced: activity
Super-duper advanced: knowing which factors are the most important at the time
More seriously:
"If you see that you will have a plan in the position after the sacrifice and you can find good resources, then chances are your opponent will err in the melee."
That's Tal (or Ryba at our club) to a "T." Requires confidence and good nerves, and if you have those you can go far with this kind of play!
I must seek positions where my opponent is more likely to make mistakes than I am
Question: How will you know whether your opponent is more likely to make a mistake than you in a given position? How will you know if it's a position he's comfortable with or not?
wahrheit - Tal certainly is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a concept like this. A lot of his sacrifices were proven unsound after the game or even years later, but that doesn't make a difference.
chessaholic - this is the next quest. But in reality as you get stronger you know where your opponent will struggle and where he will be able to find accurate moves. I think that in reality any position that has significant imbalances in it is very hard to play, and if you go into such a position with a clear idea of why you are creating these imbalances, then you should have an easier time making accurate moves. Of course this is all dependent on the fact that you are not making a serious blunder initially and that the ensuing position is close (not decisively favoring your opponent)