PositionalDecisionMakinginChess Excerpt
PositionalDecisionMakinginChess Excerpt
Making in Chess
by
Boris Gelfand
with invaluable help from Jacob Aagaard
Quality Chess
www.qualitychess.co.uk
Contents
Key to Symbols used
4
Preface 5
Foreword by Jacob Aagaard 9
1 Playing in the Style of Akiba Rubinstein 11
2 The Squeeze
59
3 Space Advantage
95
4 Transformation of Pawn Structures
135
5 Transformation of Advantages
209
I Cannot Leave My House! Interview with Jacob Aagaard 2012 265
Name Index
Game Index
Opening Index
278
282
285
10
White to play
Boris quickly and confidently made his next few moves, and would not have spent any time
explaining them had I not asked him why he played as he played. The explanation was short,
clean and crisp. It was also incredibly illuminating. See more on page 116.
This has been one of the most interesting projects in my career and I want to thank Boris from
the bottom of my heart for agreeing to work with me on it.
Jacob Aagaard
Glasgow, April 2015
48
1988
I see myself as a well-educated player and am always happy when I am able to play games that
show this. The following game is quite interesting from this perspective. In it I managed to play
the entire game based not only on one idea, but on the same idea as the above game. The b7/c6pawns are fixed and vulnerable and I managed to get a knight to a5.
Alexander Morozevich is a highly creative grandmaster from Moscow. He has always gone
his own way and tried to reinvent the game of chess, which at times is very impressive, but at
other times has been a liability for him. He played in the World Championship tournaments
in 2005 and 2007 and peaked in the world rankings in 2008 where he was placed 2nd.
He has not done as well in recent years, but is still often found either just inside or just
outside the top ten. It is well known that Morozevich played a lot of training games with
49
50
28...xb2 01
51
52
13.d2!
The knight is headed for a5, as planned.
Whites play in this game is all about timing.
If he castled at this point, 13.00, Black would
have enough time to play 13...g4, when after
14.d2 xe2 15.xe2 the knight is poorly
placed on e2. Black plays 15...xc5 16.dxc5
xc5. White is potentially still better here, but
Black has managed to get three pawns for his
piece and has good practical chances. If White
wastes time and does nothing, Black will still
be able to improve his position.
Another point concerning this variation is that
Black has managed to change the course of the
game. I was very happy to have the b7-pawn as
a target, so why should I allow my opponent
to escape this path so easily? This is one of the
main things I learned from Rubinstein.
13...e5
This is how he planned to play, but in my
analysis for this book, I found it not that easy
to prove an advantage against:
13...a5
The first moves I checked turned out to be
very tricky.
14.b3
This looks like it wins a pawn, but Black has
an avalanche of tricks.
14...c2 15.xa5
15...xb6!
If White takes the knight, Black gets ...b4
in with an advantage.
16.d2 c4! 17.xc4 dxc4 18.00 d3
19.fc1
The position still looks difficult for Black,
but if we dig deeper, we can see that it is
actually complicated. White should be
careful not to fall for some crafty tricks like:
19...fb8! 20.a4?! d5 21.xc4? xc4
22.xc4
15.e1!
I am not sure if this is too subtle, as this
move does lose a tempo when Black takes
the bishop on d1 on the next move.
The key idea is that after 15.d1 d3
16.e1 e4! Black is managing to make
things a little murky. White is probably still
better, but as said, I want to keep things
under control.
15...e5 16.d1 xd1
16...d3 17.b3 is entirely in Whites
favour.
17.xd1 a6 18.b3 fa8 19.a4
53
15.b3
54
18.f3!
This is the key move. Rather than trying
to prove the advantage immediately, White
should improve his position as much as
possible. At the same time the rook will
be passive on b8 and Black will struggle to
find squares for all his pieces (the concept of
Space Advantage is crucial to understanding
Rubinsteins games and we shall have a look
at this concept in Chapter 3).
17...c2!?
Black probably has to provoke this concrete
action. This is his one chance to give up a
piece for three pawns. He should not have
been given the chance, but sometimes we
make mistakes. We can only reduce the
amount of mistakes we make, not eradicate
them entirely.
55
56
20.f3
While it is not possible for White to retain
all of his pieces, it is important to hold on to
the valuable bishop.
20...dxc3 21.xc3
It is not clear if Morozevich overlooked
something or if he just lost patience. Black has
not managed to solve the problems with the
b7-pawn with his tactical operation. Actually
they look more urgent than ever.
+
+m
B b
+
22.fc1 d3 23.xb7
Whites strategy has succeeded entirely.
Nothing really happened in the rest of the
game. We were a bit short on time and there
21...e4
White wins in all lines:
21...ab8 22.xf6 gxf6 23.xb7! and Blacks
position collapses.
57
25.d1
25.d6 is also good, but the active idea in
the game looks nice.
25...e2 26.d7 g4
After 26...e7 I had planned 27.xe7 xe7
28.e1! with the point 28...xb7 29.xe2
xc5 30.e8 f8 31.b4 and White wins.
27.c7 c4 28.xa6 h5
28...xc5 29.xc5 xc5 30.b7 b5 is of
course a completely winning position for White.
58
the most innovative ideas; they do not see how much preparation it requires between tournaments
to be creative. Luckily this does not in any way diminish his achievements in this area; being
creative at home is very difficult as well, as anyone who has ever tried can testify.
My own playing style does not usually bring as much enthusiasm from the chess fans as that
of Morozevich, but in the struggle between dynamics and statics, sometimes someone has to
take the more conservative side. I do not personally think this makes the games dull, though I
am aware that at times the real battle is going on under the surface, making it harder for some
people to comprehend. Hopefully the more verbal explanations in this book will help unlock the
thought process behind this kind of strategic game for a lot of people.
In general I would like to add that I am a strong believer in the value of a chess education built
on thorough knowledge of the classics. Any attempt to emulate the engines and their 2,000,000
moves a second is doomed to fail. We need to supplement calculation with all other weapons
available. And one of these is intuition, which is strongly rooted in pattern recognition.
When you have uploaded a lot of chess patterns to your brain in your childhood, you will
often have a very strong suspicion regarding what the right move is in a position, even though
you have no idea why...
Moscow 2012