00:00I like, you know, old chess saying that goes, tactics is knowing what to do when there is
00:24something to do, while strategy is knowing what to do when there's nothing to do.
00:30Of course, it's a bit of an exaggeration because there's always something to do, but while we
00:36are looking at the tactical solutions, it's something immediate, something almost instantaneous.
00:47We assume it's sharp.
00:49When I say sharp, it's maybe both sacrifices, something that deserves the balance of the
00:54position, and you can see an immediate outcome, it goes one way or another.
00:59Strategies is, of course, it's a long term.
01:02So strategies is actually seeing the outcome of so slow maneuvers and also anticipating,
01:10you know, what you can do to disturb opponents' plans.
01:18Some great positional players of the past that you may even call inaction heroes because they
01:25knew exactly how to paralyze the opponent's activities.
01:28And by doing so, of course, building up step by step, slowly their own advantages.
01:34So that's why when you look at the position, you have to identify, first of all, whether
01:40this position requires tactical solutions or you have to forget about the tactics for a
01:47while, not to push too hard, not to rush and to start, you know, playing positionally, building
01:53it up and, of course, watching for some opportunities if your opponent gives you such a chance.
02:01There is no general strategy for the game of chess because it depends very much on who you are and
02:15who your opponent is.
02:16We're all different.
02:20We could be more comfortable making aggressive decisions, playing, you know, with a big picture,
02:28with dynamic style.
02:30It's more like myself.
02:31We could be more cautious, very vigilant, playing, you know, slower game, gaining small
02:40advantages and waiting for opponent's mistakes, more like carpal's chess.
02:43There's nothing wrong with either approach.
02:46It's very important to realize that no matter what you do, it should fit your personality.
02:52Don't try to play the game that goes against your natural instincts.
02:58This is the most important lesson from the game of chess.
03:02Remember that at the end of the day, game of chess is about making decisions, as anything
03:06in life.
03:07Trying to force yourself to play the game that doesn't fit your natural instincts, your
03:13personality, it's counterproductive.
03:17I would say in many cases, suicidal.
03:19And decision-making, when you play chess, is as unique as your fingerprints or DNA.
03:25And unless you know who you are, it's very difficult to identify what is the best strategy for you,
03:32will be whether at the chess board or elsewhere.
03:37And of course, when you know who you are, when you understand what kind of game you want
03:41to play, you should also look at the opponent.
03:44Because your opponent, that's more difficult to actually understand, because you have to
03:48look at the games your opponent played, certain decisions he or she made before.
03:54But if you can get the best of this knowledge, recognizing the strengths and the weakness of
04:00your opponent, then you can start thinking about designing the game that will be beneficial
04:05for you and will be most annoying for your opponent.
04:10I followed this wisdom when I played Eritory Karpov, and I did well.
04:15I succeeded in almost regularly changing the game to the character of the position that, you know,
04:26fit me better than Anatoly Karpov.
04:30Now, I failed to follow the same logic when I played Vladimir Kramny.
04:36I don't think that in the year 2000, when I lost my title match against him in London,
04:42I was an inferior player.
04:43But in the match, I tried to play his game, and I failed to take myself away from the psychological
04:53trap, playing positions where Kramny was much more comfortable.
04:59I think it's not that I couldn't play them.
05:02Actually, I won one game later on in this endgame against Kramny a year later.
05:07But during the match, when you deal with psychology, one player against another one, you have to
05:14be comfortable, and you have to make your opponent uncomfortable.
05:17And while you never know exactly what your opponent is comfortable or not, because in many cases
05:24when you are talking about sort of amateur chess or a club level chess, your knowledge of your
05:31opponent is highly limited.
05:32But you know exactly who you are.
05:35And if you play the game that is not making you feel comfortable, if you don't enjoy it,
05:42if you don't feel that the game can unleash your creative potential, then you're already on the losing side.
05:51I hear questions about tips all the time.
06:01So what can we do to get better?
06:04So how can we learn this and that?
06:07And at the end of the day, I'm afraid I will be quite conservative in my advice.
06:12I'm not going to reveal any secrets by saying you have to practice.
06:16You keep practicing until learning these patterns becomes intuitive.
06:24Strong chess players, they realize patterns and they can immediately see opportunities because
06:31of these patterns.
06:34I remember that my great teacher Mikhail Batvinnik used to say that the difference between players,
06:40when you look at weak players, stronger players, strong players, top players, world champions,
06:49at the end of the day, it's about number of positions, or you may say number of patterns
06:53he or she can recognize.
06:56Because more patterns you can recognize, so better you can vary the tools at your disposal.
07:02You can immediately see, without wasting your time, that this is something that worked in a
07:08similar position, and if I do it here, you know, with some adjustments, that can work also here.
07:14Realizing these patterns, recognizing, you know, what is the best way to achieve your goals,
07:19that's what gives you an upper hand facing the opposition.
07:29Mikhail Batvinnik, as one of my greatest tutors, former world champion, I remember Batvinnik
07:36kept telling me, Gary, you know, calm down, so this is, just don't rush.
07:42So sometimes, you know, you have to stop, just take a deep breath, and let opponents make a move.
07:48So it's always important to remember that sometimes your opponent can make a mistake,
07:55so you should offer him a chance to make a mistake.
07:57It's a bit naive concept, but I know that, for instance, these days, playing simultaneous
08:03exhibitions, I learned one rule, and that's why I have pretty good results, even being retired,
08:08playing simultaneous exhibitions and not losing since 2001.
08:13If you don't see an immediate, you know, win, an immediate breakthrough, just make a few
08:20quiet moves.
08:21Let your opponent play.
08:23Give them a chance, without creating, of course, weakness on your side.
08:27Give them a chance to weaken their position.
08:30That's one of the lessons from my early days.
08:38You have to see the big picture, but you have to feel what is the right spot where you have
08:43to concentrate.
08:44Also, you have to feel the climax of the game.
08:49That's one of the lessons I remember from Boris Pasky, another great world champion, who
08:54helped me with his unique advices.
08:58His theory was that the strength of the player at the current moment, it's his or her ability
09:04to identify the climax of the game.
09:07Because you have so much time available.
09:10In the good old days, we had two and a half hours for 40 moves.
09:16Now it's less time.
09:18But still, you have X amount of time, hours and minutes, allocated for completing all the
09:25moves.
09:26And you have to understand how to spend this time.
09:28You have to understand what is the right moment for you to spend more time.
09:32Sometimes you have to play fairly quickly, because this moment is not a crucial one.
09:42Because not every move, they have the same value in terms of identifying the course of
09:49the events.
09:50Some of the moments are absolutely vital.
09:52It's like reaching the crossroads.
09:55And if you miss your right turn, it will be like in the roads of Arizona.
10:02The next one will be 50 miles.
10:04So it's very important that you recognize this is the moment.
10:08I have to concentrate.
10:09I have to use more time.
10:11I have to find the move, because this move will decide which way the game goes.
10:15Knowing the right moment of the game, the climax, it could be more than one during the
10:21game, because human games are not that steady.
10:23It's always ups and downs, so you can make a mistake, make an accurate move, and an opponent
10:28can return the favor.
10:30So sometimes the game has few of these vital moments.
10:33And I learned it with my experience.
10:37It's not that I knew it from the very beginning.
10:38I had great intuition.
10:40I could smell, you know, that was the right moment for me just to concentrate.
10:44I'm not sure that even when I won the title, world title in the match against Karpov, I was
10:52comfortable identifying all these right moments.
10:56There's always something for me, something new for me to learn.
10:59But of course, you should remember that you make a move, opponent makes a move, and anything
11:10can change.
11:11So that's another beauty and the danger of the game of chess.
11:15It's not only you who is in charge.
11:19It's you can think you're on the driving seat.
11:21Opponent could have a different opinion.
11:23So you should remember that it's a game that is transparent from both ends.
11:30And if you have your plans, you should try to make sure that opponent doesn't realize
11:36what the danger is coming from too early.
11:41Some of the ideas are quite open and apparent.
11:44Some of them could be hidden.
11:47Sometimes you can make, you know, move on one side of the board by, you know, by disguising
11:52your true intentions.
11:54That's already involved psychology.
11:58Because you have to remember that, you know, some of your plans may not work out if opponent
12:05prevents them from happening.
12:07So that's why maybe having kind of destruction, psychological destruction on the other side
12:12of the board could help you to move forward more effectively.
12:17Even if you waste time by doing something in the secondary front, but destructing your opponent
12:26and subverting his or her attention might be extremely productive.
12:37In many cases, you don't have a winning or losing move.
12:43So you look at the moves that some of them are probably more solid.
12:49They're more up to demand of the position, which means, you know, if you are under pressure,
12:55you better, you know, defend yourself without making aggressive moves.
12:59Because the problem is that some of these moves that are logical and you may call them positional,
13:07they're expected by your opponent.
13:09And if you want to change the nature of the game, if you want to make it sharper, if you
13:15want to create something that's less comfortable for your opponent, then you move on with the
13:23moves that are not perfect by pure chess standards.
13:29One of the greatest experts on such moves was the second world champion, Emmanuel Oskar,
13:35who always believed that chess was a fight.
13:38It was all about winning.
13:40It's all about playing an opponent.
13:43And moves, except those moves that were winning instantly or the moves that were very obvious,
13:50like in the opening.
13:51But in a normal game, in the middle of the game, the choice that you make should be based
13:58exclusively on making your opponent less comfortable, guaranteeing that the type of the position
14:07that you're playing is something your opponent doesn't expect, doesn't feel comfortable of
14:12playing with.
14:13And Lasker was the world champion for 27 years.
14:19And one of the reasons of his longevity on the top of the world of chess was his ability
14:25to adjust his own play to the psychological deficiencies of his opponents.
14:34Sometimes you can probably play against your own instincts to make an opponent even less comfortable.
14:44But when I say against your own instincts, we're talking about very strong players.
14:50Because if I say I'm not comfortable playing positional endgame or quiet position, that means
14:57I'm not as comfortable as Karpov or Kramnik, but I'm still pretty good at that.
15:01So it's a conscious decision.
15:06You have to decide whether you would like to undermine your own strengths by making a opponent
15:14less comfortable.
15:16Maybe you have some interesting ideas in the opening that could take a opponent off the known
15:25path and that it's worth trying, even if this opening is not the one that you like most.
15:34But if we talk about chess on amateurs or semi-professional level, I would not recommend to go against your own instincts.
15:44You know, it's all about you.
15:46What I think is useful, try if you can to solve it at the chessboard, a real one, not at the computer screen.
16:04I know it's difficult because most of the time we spend on the computers.
16:06But if you want to make real improvement, real progress, try to stick with chess pieces.
16:13It's psychologically, it's easier.
16:15Because when you play the game, you play it with real pieces.
16:19And you better just feel them.
16:21Again, it's in pure psychology.
16:25But psychologically, it's more difficult to combine the computer, the knowledge from the screen,
16:33and apply it at the chessboard.
16:35But I also remember another story, so from my own experience, when I played a computer match in 2003,
16:43it was a deep fritz, and I played on the 3D screen in New York.
16:48In the game two of the match, I got a very good position with black pieces.
16:57And looking at this position at the 3D screen, I haven't realized, you know, that it had a very strange effect.
17:05It's not just a computer, but it's 3D.
17:08It looked natural, but it's still not exactly natural.
17:12And at one point, I blundered my central pawn.
17:16Just simply blundered pawn on E5.
17:17And I remember that when we analyzed this game with my coach, say, Yuri Dohojan,
17:23Yuri said, Yuri, here is a position at the chessboard.
17:28No computers, just real chess pieces.
17:31Do you see the geometry?
17:33I said, yes, of course, you cannot do this because your rook on F8 will be hanging,
17:37so that's why the pawn on E5 will be lost.
17:39So the moment I could see the position, touch the pieces, I knew exactly that it's not going to work.
17:46But on the computer screen, I just lost the touch with reality.
17:50So that's why, from my own experience, advice.
17:54You want to learn, you want to improve your chess,
17:56try to make sure that you solve everything at the chessboard.
17:59The same conditions that you will be playing with at the real tournament.
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