You Want Water? Go to a Lake or a Deep Well

Hello!

I hope you are alright, that everyone is in good health and good spirits. Certain points about chess keep coming to me; certain points of wisdom or philosophical points about our game which have come to me over time. By time I mean 50 years of playing chess and loving this game.

My favorite player is GM David Bronstein, who tied a match for the World Championship in 1951.

                 GM David Bronstein

In His book "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", 

...Bronstein recommends studying the game of the great Masters (who were really Grandmasters before the title was invented) to improve your own game.

Why some elite players like Nakamura do not necessarily give importance to this, Magnus Carlsen does, and probably most of the elite Indian players, since they have coaches who do value the contributions of the great players of the past. In Bronstein's case, he studied the games of Masters from the 19th Century assiduously; and there's a reason for this: the Soviet system was based on coaches that, yes, spotted talent and nurtured it, but also coaches who loved chess and its traditions, its history, the legacy of the great players. So Bronstein was acquainted with the culture of chess, the richness of ideas put forth by the great players of the past.

In Russia, Chigorin was the pioneer, the trailblazer. His contributions to opening theory are numerous!

Mikhail Chigorin (1850-1908)

He devised whole opening systems, formations which had such a sound strategic and positional idea, they are still in use today! Take, for example, the Chigorin System in the Ruy Lopez (for the Black pieces):

Like Chigorin, Akiba Rubinstein was also a pioneer; many of his opening ideas are also used by players today; their soundness has stood the test of time.

So, here is the first major thought which gave birth to the title of this blog:

1) Each of the great Masters of the past is a deep well, which has a richness that can transmit chess intelligence and knowledge to us.

The second point that I wish to make is that these great players were complete; they were Masters of not only tactics, but position as well. They could attack, they could defend, and play all phases of the game at a very high level. But the writers of chess books, in order to make money, would sometimes offer us an over-simplified (and therefore, false) version of what a player was.

For example, we were fed things like "Morphy was a tactician" or Rubinstein was a "positional player". The truth is that, without a solid positional foundation, no player at this level can hope to build sound attacks! In other words, if you do not complete your development, if you do not have a sound strategy in the centre of the board, you probably will not succeed at the highest level.

Regarding Morphy, who we are told "was a tactician", he was regarded by both Capablanca and Alekhine as a great positional player!

Akiba Rubinstein, who was world no. 2 player in 1912, is regarded as just a "positional" player. The game we will look at tonight seeks to shatter that myth, and to show he could attack like the best.

2) All the great Masters excel in all areas of the game. The notion that a player is only "positional" or only a "tactician" is inherently false.

The third thing I wish to share today stems from the previous two. 

We all have our favorite players. Since each of the great Masters of the past has a richness of chess ideas, strategies and concepts, it follows that:

3) Studying the games of your favorite Masters of the past can only improve your game; it is one of the ways to chess mastery.

Nowadays, with the popularity of chess increasing, the tendency is to emphasize tactics as the means to improvement, and this is partly true: it is hard to realize a strategic plan if you leave your Queen hanging!

Yet here the contradiction lies: you can be better at tactics, but tactics are just short-term solutions. If you do not know what your goal is, what vision you are trying to manifest, then tactics by themselves cannot  guide you. For that, you need understanding; and organic understanding of the characteristics of the position; a deep positional sense. The great Masters of the past had it.

Here is a position for today's game. Wild, isn't it? It is one of Rubinstein's most famous games. Please take a moment to enjoy the wild beauty of this position.

And now, we have Rubinstein's game, commented by Hans Kmoch:

Peace.