As a 2050 FIDE player I really loved this analysis. Won't say it is perse for beginners, but the explanation in words makes the ideas and plans very clear to a bigger audience including myself. :p I think it is also fair to not oversimplify when something is just complex and subtle. Thanks for making this video! And pretty brilliant.. the combination of h6! and Lxc5! and Th3! trading imbalances!
Your main point (that at the end of the day good chess moves are played based on extremely concrete details of each specific position - not on overarching positional concepts) is both extremely useful to hear and quite discouraging. It means that calculation skills are critical. It also means that there's no secret sauce to getting better at being able to play positions. For instance, you can teach a beginner the idea to play f5 in the KID, followed by f4, g5, and rawr on the kingside. It's easy to explain. It's easy to implement. It "makes sense" based on chess principles. Silman probably explains it in his book in like 1 paragraph. But if there is no guidebook or hand-wavy rules of thumb for someone to follow, chess becomes incredibly difficult. And that's a tough pill to swallow! I'd also like to add, GM Moranda, in his books "Universal Chess Training" and "Supreme Chess Understanding" (which are designed for 2000+ OTB players), makes exactly the same point you make here. You just gotta be able to calculate well to find the best moves in a position. There are no shortcuts. Maybe calculation work needs to be a bigger portion of everyone's diet at the higher cohorts of the Chess Dojo training program!
Yes, you have understood exactly what I was trying to say. And yes, it is discouraging from that perspective. It’s also encouraging from the perspective that there is always more to discover and we will never be bored. What I learned about playing the h3-g4 variation of the king’s indian- basically none of it applies to the Fianchettoe variation or the Saemisch, etc. So there is all this very very specific knowledge you can learn about one position/opening variation at a time. Also, hoping to provide a little comfort by saying you can make it to master without necessarily having the calculation skills. The old approximative chess ideas that I grew up with are sufficient to get there. So as you say, calculation skill, and this very concrete and non-general approach to chess really only become necessary as one approaches the professional ranks.
Hasn't Magnus stated that calculation is his weakest skill? His father and team assist with research, right? He has incredible recall of all the plans and counters while OTB.
Yeah you will know when David becomes as good as Jesse. Once he starts saying the word boss (sounds like "bows") repeatedly while doing his speed run, that will be the day. LOL
Great video, love the theme of constantly changing plans. I've been getting at this lately by playing lots of openings and going for crazy chess like this as much as possible. Then in the mix in the middlegame, I hopefully have a larger catalogue of ideas and a better history of calculating deeply in game than my opponent.
What a great game ! Congratulations David ! This variation (h3) is very popular nowadays even at club level, but I think it's way too complicated for white 🙂
I love your point around 56:05. I just had an OTB game where I had a pretty classic greek gift sac on h7. During the game it was so tense and I felt like every move it could all fall apart. Stressful but also very fun! In the end I won convincingly. I was pretty proud of the game afterwards.. At home I first analyzed it without the computer and saw some problems for me on different Black replies. Still, I felt like the game would go on - still interesting and not easy to defend. But after having the engine run over it I saw that I blew the advantage twice and was completely lost after one missed reply from Black. This made me consider not to go for such obviously sharp lines because I would inevitably miss some reply that my opponent had. But the point is that I'm not playing against an engine, but a human somewhere around my level. They will also miss the best replies and if they happen to find it, will likely make a different mistake later on. I had fun that game and learned a lot about these positions. Thanks for the video, awesome analysis!
Yes!! You are absolutely right! The analysis after should increase your understanding and skill, so that maybe you could triumph over an even stronger opponent in similar style in the future; it should not lead you to lose your appreciation for the great game you just played, and totally avoid such play in the future.
Kinda nice to know that plan of king walk.from.e1 to g2 i used to do that in kid from white side without knowing the plan.just intutively....feels good😅 Anyways,great analysis and commentary.i will definitely stick around this channel
I like the explanations that strategic goals and features are changing on a move by move basis, I feel like usually people just say that you have to calculate concretely, which always felt less satisfying when trying to understand
Right. It’s not that there are no strategic goals anymore. But you can’t just follow one idea for 20 moves. And because a small detail will change whether a certain strategic idea works or doesn’t work, it will benefit you greatly to do some calculation.
Principles still matter, a lot, but the emphasis in the modern game seems to be gradually shifting a little more towards concrete play - i suspect this might be partly due to the impact of engines on modern chess. New ideas in well known positions can often look anti-positional. This was a crazy game, ty for the awesome explanation. 🍀
51:57 I like the positional domination of the bishop so I tried to find a "grand plan" to make it work... what about Qe2 Qd8 Rg3 f4 Rg4 and now the grand plan is that we're using a rook to trap the bishop AND weaken the queen since she needs to attack g5 to restrict the rook. So we play Kh2 and Rg1, claiming that the rook does double duty... it holds g5 taking a minor piece and some queen power out of play, while also threatening to jump into the attack on the queenside if the queen releases g5 or at some tempo critical moment?
It’s actually a playable option I discovered in analysis later, but that was why I rejected it during the game. You are right to bring the rook back to g1. I don’t think one should overestimate how much that rook is dealing with the Q, as she is totally free to step away. But we do have an option to go Nf3 to free the R, a jump on the c-file, and the black K is much worse placed bc the Bh8 and Ph7 actually take away important square from it.
hi u mentioned you spent two weeks studying the new opening could u share how should we do that! is it moves trainer or just follow the pgn in a study over and over??
Short answer: I spar the variation a lot, with white and black. I talk about the games with my training partners. I analyze the games on my own, then check my conclusions with an engine (sometimes; and if you are under 2200 I recommend you not do this step). Also I looked at a few dozen GM games I found in the variation, including asking myself some questions/briefly analyzing them. No move trainer, no PGN, no study, no book, no course.
Haha, I actually thought this video was going to be about the cryptic "bunny ears" moves -a6, h6, etc that we keep seeing from Gukesh and others on move 4-6
