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savings and more inspiring flavors. for

14:00

time, and as I got older and as

14:02

my own kind of linguistic skills improved, I

14:04

realized that, yeah, this is kind of hard

14:06

to read. So

14:08

that's when I kind of came up with the idea of these

14:11

translations, they're either word

14:14

for word, which is problematical

14:16

for many reasons, because you

14:18

can't just do a translation of German, do English

14:21

word for word, except expect nothing to be lost

14:23

in the feeling of it, or

14:26

they take out some things that

14:28

they consider maybe politically incorrect or

14:32

not modern enough, and then it

14:35

becomes a very subtle thing, like what do you take out and what

14:37

do you live in, right? So kind

14:39

of for a long time I was thinking

14:41

that, you know, yeah, they're right, the book is hard

14:43

to read, and yet there's so much good in the

14:46

book, you really should have a better translation,

14:49

but I was thinking about it for a long

14:51

time, but then, you know, all these

14:53

different translations came out of the 21st century, it's like

14:55

I'm not going to write another translation, but three are

14:57

out there already, but then when I

14:59

listened to Ben's podcast

15:01

with Christoph,

15:04

I am Christoph Selecke, known as

15:07

Chess Explained, it

15:09

was a book recap, you

15:11

know, I didn't, frankly I didn't expect it

15:13

to be as negative as it seemed. Christoph

15:17

came in hot, yeah. But

15:19

it was valuable because he's German, right? And

15:22

he actually said in the podcast that like if

15:24

he were to recommend it to a German person,

15:27

he would actually prefer, he would actually recommend

15:29

them to read it in English because the

15:31

German, the original German was very dense, right,

15:33

very hard to understand. And

15:35

then I realized that, you know, you also

15:37

have chess problems with it, various problems

15:40

in the, you know, analysis of

15:42

variations, but that's true for every

15:44

book, right, even Fisher's book has

15:46

many mistakes, but it

15:48

can't, you know, you don't want a textbook to

15:51

have like mistakes in

15:53

the analysis because the

15:55

reader now, in the current age, right,

15:58

everybody is armed with these computers and they start turning

16:00

on their engine, and the engine says

16:02

something different. And then the reader's

16:04

thinking, well, OK, what am I supposed to do?

16:08

What do I believe and what do I not believe? Very

16:12

confused. And at that

16:14

point, you need a very strong player to explain

16:16

to the reader that, yeah, OK,

16:19

this is strategically correct, just the wrong,

16:21

maybe the slightly wrong example, or the

16:23

explanation is, or one variation is slightly

16:26

wrong, but the idea is correct. Or,

16:28

yeah, this idea doesn't really work, which

16:31

sometimes is the case. So that

16:33

needs to be corrected as well. And then

16:35

all these historical illusions, you know,

16:37

he wrote this book in 1925. He

16:41

had just emigrated from Russia.

16:44

He had fled, I think, if

16:46

I'm not mistaken. He kind of like feigned

16:51

insanity or something and fled. Maybe

16:54

I'm going to do that. Oh, yeah, there was a famous story

16:56

about he pretended there was something. He thought there was a fly

16:59

on his head in order to get out of line. So he

17:01

just fled. He

17:03

escaped. And you know, a lot

17:05

of, he was probably from a, I

17:07

don't know, maybe he was, whether he was from a well-to-do family

17:09

or not, but I think he was. The

17:13

new communist regime was not going to be to his liking. So

17:16

he fled, and he's

17:19

got a lot of political things

17:21

to talk about. And the original

17:23

has a lot of political illusions, which

17:25

are currently, like for example, you mentioned

17:28

one of them about the newspaper and

17:30

the agrarian party or something. Like

17:32

nobody understands what that even is. So

17:35

there's a lot of politically

17:37

motivated or let's

17:39

say, you

17:42

know, culture. The culture, culturally motivated, the culture

17:44

is very different then. You know, you're in

17:46

a world where you just had revolution. You

17:48

have between two world wars. The

17:51

Nazis were coming to, you know, the

17:54

Nazi and communists were both, those

17:57

two regimes were both starting

17:59

to become a... important, right? And he's

18:01

kind of living in those times. You have to be very

18:03

careful, because a lot of the stuff that he writes is

18:05

going to be affected by that. So you've got to take

18:08

that out, or at least

18:10

make it seem more modern, right? So

18:13

that's kind of how the idea came about. Yeah,

18:15

and I highlighted that exact metaphor

18:18

that you shared about the pond

18:21

with energy. And it reminded

18:23

me of the good things, rereading

18:25

this book. Because my experience with this book was it

18:27

was one of the first chess books I read when

18:30

I was probably about 13. And

18:32

some of the stuff really did stick with

18:34

me, like the seventh-ranked chapter in particular. So

18:36

I started playing chess when I was 12.

18:40

About a year later, I was playing for my

18:42

school. And we were

18:44

in the city championship. They had like schools

18:47

would travel to other schools and play. And you would

18:49

stack up the boards, one to four, kind of like

18:52

the Olympiad, except for kids that were not that good

18:54

at chess. And you would play

18:56

against the other team. So we had the city championship my second

18:58

year. I was probably rated about 1,200. And

19:01

my coach at the time did

19:03

something that he never did, because I

19:05

was very closely rated to a kid who was

19:07

a year older to be

19:09

the fourth board on this team. So

19:12

he had us play a board match to see who

19:14

would get to go to the city championship. And he

19:16

was teaching us through my system at the time. And

19:19

he taught us the seventh-ranked chapter like

19:22

the week before. And unfortunately, if

19:24

this were a fairy tale, I would tell

19:27

you I used the seventh-ranked chapter to crush

19:29

the opponent. But it was actually the other

19:31

way around. The kid I

19:33

was playing got double-worked on the seventh and

19:35

just crushed me. And when you're that age

19:38

and you're trying to get better at something, it

19:40

was just heartbreaking. I was so disappointed I didn't

19:42

get to play. I eventually

19:44

did get revenge against that kid. And

19:46

actually, a few years later, probably six

19:48

years later, I brought it up. He

19:50

didn't even remember that this happened, whereas

19:52

for me, it was like this traumatic

19:54

event. But anyway, the combination of the

19:56

seventh-ranked chapter with that lived experience of

19:58

then being on the receiving end was

20:00

one of the things that pleasant

20:03

part of my system and obviously when I did

20:05

the podcast with Christophe we talked about how

20:07

I was very glad to be done by the time I got to

20:09

the end of the book. But here

20:12

all the metaphors like they come much

20:14

quicker because it's such a breezier read.

20:18

I mean of course there's

20:20

the past pawn. Does

20:23

anyone here like have any famous quotes? It seemed

20:25

by the way when we did a poll it

20:27

seemed like the majority of people had read my

20:29

system. Can anyone think of like a famous quote

20:31

or analogy from my system? Chris. Past

20:34

pawn is like a criminal that should be

20:36

kept under lock and key. Exactly yeah probably

20:38

the most famous quote of them all and

20:40

good job projecting Chris for the mic. You're

20:43

a pro. And what's interesting is that

20:45

he calls not just past pawns but

20:47

almost any pawn that is liable to

20:49

move. Not

20:51

necessarily in that chapter but even in

20:53

that chapter there's pawns that are not

20:56

past pawns but there still are criminals

20:58

right. Yeah and then there's restrained blockade

21:00

destroy. Destroy right. Yeah talking about isolated

21:02

pawns and past pawns and

21:04

blockades are like prep school for positional play.

21:06

Was that from the prior editions? The

21:09

term prep school I made sure that that term was used

21:11

still in the 1920s. That's

21:14

kind of an Americanized term but he said

21:16

he said something like preparation for not

21:19

prep school he said preparation for positional play.

21:21

Yeah he did say that. And when he's

21:23

like rhapsodizing about the king in the endgame

21:25

and how the role of the king changes

21:27

he says the monarch can't relax at home

21:29

reading reports from the front lines. Yeah that

21:31

was in there. Yeah another good one. So

21:34

yeah there's just it's just

21:36

so much so much more readable

21:38

so congratulations Alex and I would like to hear

21:41

a little bit more about your sort of triangulating

21:43

with the editions because

21:45

you're in a unique position to do it you

21:47

know a bit of German which would like

21:49

that's like above and beyond you know the

21:51

call of duty but then there's all of

21:53

the English translations which as you write about

21:55

and credit you also took a look at

21:58

them to see so. one,

22:00

importantly, as well. Because, and

22:02

the reason the Russian was important is

22:04

not only because I read it first,

22:06

but also because that translation is at

22:08

least claimed, we can't prove it anymore,

22:11

but the claim is that he worked

22:13

with the translator together. You

22:15

know, the translator there was Ilya Mysalis,

22:17

he was a Russian master, am I?

22:19

No, you're right. He was a Russian

22:21

master, but

22:24

more of a kind of a literary person

22:26

than, you know, many languages. I think he

22:28

was in charge of one of the Russian

22:30

publications, like 64, and one of the other ones,

22:33

and he was translating and

22:36

working on it with a lot of other authors, and

22:39

he did the first tran-

22:42

he did that Russian translation, and

22:44

you know, again, according to the Soviet, you know,

22:47

introduction, Nimsovich kind of

22:49

like blessed it, and I

22:51

don't know how they were working, like by mail or whatever,

22:53

because they didn't live in the same place, but that's

22:57

important, and Nimsovich wrote a lot of things

22:59

for, you know, Russian- a lot

23:01

of other things kind of with

23:05

the Russian reader in mind. So the Russian translation

23:07

is important because as important

23:10

as, to me, as important as the English ones ever

23:12

as reference, not that I'm using one,

23:14

or I mean using- I'm taking- starting with

23:17

the original, but if

23:19

something was left out of the Russian one, probably

23:23

means that Nimsovich was okay with that being left out,

23:26

because he supposedly, you know, worked

23:28

on it. So all these translations

23:31

are important. Again, I

23:34

know German grammar reasonably well, and I know it well enough

23:36

to understand that the New and

23:38

Chest translation was the- was almost

23:41

precise to the original German, and it claims to

23:43

be, whereas the others were not

23:45

as precise. So

23:50

the thing is that the first few

23:52

chapters, like the first part of

23:54

the book is called The Elements, they're

23:56

not as dense in general. That The

24:01

language there is easier, better, that's

24:03

where the past pawn metaphor came from, that's

24:05

where the king, I think, the

24:08

king in the, going to

24:10

the center, that's in the end game section which is chapter,

24:12

which is in that first part. It's

24:15

the second part that's mostly problematical. If you

24:17

just had the first part of my system,

24:19

I think that people probably would not be

24:21

as troubled with it because

24:24

that one doesn't have a lot of junk. The

24:27

second part, which is smaller, but

24:29

in many ways more important because the first

24:31

one is, some of the first part is

24:33

mostly for beginners

24:35

to starting

24:37

out kind of intermediate people, right? Like

24:41

some of those positions are very simple. The

24:43

second part of the book, positional play, is

24:46

very complicated and that's

24:48

where he gets into these long

24:51

historical digressions and

24:54

that's where he gets into the arguments

24:56

with Tarish and

24:58

other people and the

25:02

positions are also very complicated. So what I

25:04

did there is that

25:06

second part cannot even be

25:08

called a translation. That's basically a complete,

25:11

the chapters aren't even the same.

25:13

Yeah, I noticed that. Right? The

25:16

chapters actually move from place to place. So I just took parts

25:18

of it and kind of rewrote it with

25:20

using, but the rewrite was using

25:22

his language for

25:24

the most part, sometimes not, but

25:26

the second part has many changes, but

25:30

it's smaller and it's, I think

25:33

it became, some of

25:35

the examples were removed because they're

25:37

no longer applicable.

25:41

Most of his stuff was correct, but in the second part

25:43

of the book, he's going

25:45

close to the edge of his comfort level.

25:48

Like when you talk about overprotection, right? He

25:51

kind of understood what he was talking about, but

25:53

he's getting a little ahead of himself and some

25:56

of these positional concepts, like Nimsovich is...

26:00

widely known as like the master of positional play. What people

26:02

don't, a lot of people don't realize is he actually started

26:04

out as like a wild, like what I call a wild

26:06

animal. He started out as an attacking

26:08

combinational player. If you read his book, How

26:10

I Became a Grandmaster, which I

26:12

think is available in English, I'm not sure, but he wrote

26:14

it for a Russian audience. It

26:16

kind of like describes

26:19

his progress from beginner

26:22

to grandmaster. And

26:25

that's the book where he talks about

26:28

how his whole debate with Tarej started,

26:30

or his being enemies with

26:32

Tarej started. He

26:35

talks about how he was just a combinational

26:37

player and he didn't learn positional play until

26:39

later. I think he tried to form a

26:41

system, but he was

26:43

getting a little ahead of himself. So I think in

26:45

the second part of the book, I'm trying to kind

26:47

of bring it back to like, this is what he

26:49

really knew, okay? This is

26:52

where he was comfortable with, so this applies.

26:54

The stuff that he was less comfortable with,

26:56

especially in the last chapter, it's called, in

26:58

various translation, different things, maneuvering usually it's

27:01

called. That's completely wrong

27:03

because it's not maneuvering.

27:05

It's, there's a German

27:07

word, lewiran, which means it's actually

27:10

called, it's a nautical term, you

27:12

have a boat, it's called tacking.

27:14

You kind of like go one way and

27:17

then the other way with the wind. I

27:19

don't really understand it, but so I

27:21

just called it principle of playing against two weaknesses,

27:23

which is basically what it is. And

27:26

I'd call it changing tack, which is an expression that comes from that

27:29

as kind of what he was talking about. But

27:33

that chapter is like a third of its

27:36

former size because most of his examples didn't

27:38

apply. He was trying to investigate

27:40

things that were so new and

27:43

were complicated, not just for him, but for

27:45

anybody to understand. So I kept the examples

27:47

that still work, that still work today, you

27:49

check, everything was checked with the computer. The

27:53

ideas were still there, but they're

27:58

a little bit simpler. and

28:00

less controversial. So

28:03

basically the second part of the book underwent

28:06

a massive revision, whereas

28:09

the first part of the book is

28:11

much closer to the original. Yeah, and when

28:13

I read the second part a few years,

28:15

reread it a few years back, it was

28:17

that part that really dragged, as I mentioned.

28:20

We'll be right back with more discussion

28:22

of the new edition of my system

28:24

with Grandmaster Alex Fishbein. So what we'll do...

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29:47

Welcome to the family. 18

30:00

plus terms and conditions apply. We'll open it

30:02

up to see if you guys have any questions

30:04

in a minute or two. But just to

30:06

summarize for now, and then I have a few

30:09

questions we may come back to, the

30:11

highest compliment I can really pay this book is like when

30:13

I read it now, it just reads like a modern book,

30:16

which is not the case with the other

30:18

translations. And as I mentioned

30:21

in the podcast with Christophe, there's something

30:23

very unusual in chess where the

30:25

idea that if you ask someone for a book

30:28

recommendation, the first thing they would recommend is a

30:30

book that's 100 years old. And

30:32

obviously there's other classics not quite as

30:34

old like Zurich 1953 and my 16

30:37

memorable games, which hold up didn't

30:39

need your fast tracking as much. They

30:42

hold up pretty well and they are quite

30:44

instructive. But I would even go so far

30:46

as to say like, you know, the stuff

30:48

that like quality chess is putting out new

30:50

in chess, like the books that have come out

30:53

in the past 20 years are more instructive pound

30:55

for pound than those books as well. So

30:57

for sure, for this book to now sort

30:59

of fit in and like be updated, you

31:02

know, I'm one older book that has

31:05

gained new life recently, possibly in

31:09

part due to a few people praising

31:11

it on perpetual chess is simple chess by

31:13

Michael Steen, very good positional primer.

31:16

And this kind of fits in that mold.

31:18

I would I still probably prefer simple chess

31:20

just because it's an absolute classic. And it's

31:22

very short and very well done. But this

31:24

is right there with it. And it's something

31:26

I would definitely recommend. So

31:29

so well done, Alex. Thank you very much for

31:31

the compliment. I really appreciate it. One thing I

31:33

should mention is this is important in

31:36

terms of dealing with the differences between the original

31:38

and the new and how

31:40

that the important

31:42

thing is if you kind of if

31:45

you just write the new and the old and the

31:47

new, and then every time there's a

31:49

change, you kind of put some kind of

31:52

footnote or italic, you know, it

31:54

becomes it starts reading like it's

31:56

two books, right? So so

31:59

I use a little device, which I

32:02

use a little sneaky device, which I

32:04

haven't seen used before. But

32:09

when there's a variation, when

32:11

there's a problem in the variation, but

32:14

the idea is good. There's

32:17

just a problem in one of the variations. I just

32:19

put the correct variation in, as if you wrote it.

32:22

The appendix, and then the

32:24

old one, the old variation, which was not correct,

32:27

is mentioned in the appendix. If you want to go

32:29

over the appendix, there's like 40 items there. They

32:32

mentioned what was there before in some cases. Sometimes

32:35

they just mention, okay, he didn't have this

32:37

line. I just added this line.

32:40

Because you don't want to have the whole book

32:42

flooded with footnotes. It just becomes a mess.

32:45

So fortunately, he didn't

32:47

have a lot of variations. He

32:50

actually had many more verbal explanations

32:52

than complicated 5, 10-move variations. When

32:56

they were wrong, and it is important to note that, I put in

32:58

the appendix. In a few

33:00

cases, there is a big difference.

33:05

The whole theme doesn't really

33:07

work, or the whole narrative

33:10

has to be amended. Because

33:14

he was evaluating the position in a certain way,

33:16

it's not quite correct, which is fine. Because

33:19

a lot of the ideas still make sense. You

33:21

don't throw the game out, because many

33:24

of the ideas work. It's

33:26

just the narrative has to be changed. Those

33:29

cases, there are about five or six of those. There

33:32

I did have to add some italics. So now

33:34

you kind of, in those five or six examples, for

33:36

the whole book, 200 pages, maybe five or six such

33:38

examples, you have kind of the old, and then you

33:40

have the new and italics. That's

33:44

important to kind of keep, I was trying to

33:46

keep the book kind of flowing freely so

33:49

it doesn't appear like it's somehow

33:51

mangled. Yeah, it's tough. And

33:54

an interesting reader, if you really want,

33:57

but to do this, you're probably going

33:59

to probably have to be an advanced

34:01

player as well. If you'd read

34:03

the original, you didn't

34:06

go back and see what changed if you want,

34:08

and you can figure out,

34:11

and it's very interesting to figure out how

34:14

positional chess understanding changed from his

34:16

time to now. Like

34:19

the over protection part, some of the

34:21

isolated pawn parts. I

34:25

learned a lot by writing this book, actually,

34:27

or rewriting this book, whatever it is, whatever

34:29

you call it. My rating went

34:31

about 50 points from the time that I started working

34:33

on it to the time I finished working on it.

34:35

I don't think it was a coincidence. Because

34:40

for me, all these concepts are basically second nature,

34:42

as I mentioned. I read them when I was

34:44

eight or nine years old. For me to reevaluate

34:46

this adds a

34:48

lot of new ideas, and

34:52

it's just a kind of infusion

34:54

of chess knowledge all of

34:56

a sudden, for me. And you got

34:58

rid of those. Being a grandmaster and knowing

35:00

this stuff already. And you got rid of

35:02

those crazy diagrams that Christoph and I couldn't

35:04

understand. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the schemes, right?

35:07

Yeah, no, I got rid of that. And

35:10

also, there's

35:12

some things, sometimes the order of

35:14

things change. Like the games might

35:16

be in a different order, the games might follow

35:19

directly. Like he had a lot of text

35:21

and then some examples, some

35:23

more text, a couple of diagrams, a

35:25

couple of text, more text, pages and

35:27

pages, and then illustrative games. What

35:30

I'm trying to do instead is, okay, there's

35:32

some text, and here's an illustrative game, full

35:34

game, right? And here's some more text and illustrative game.

35:37

So in the hope

35:40

that that reads more, just

35:44

kind of easier to read, right? Then

35:48

having, I mean, one of those translations, I think the first one

35:50

actually had all the games at the end, which is terrible. Maybe

35:54

at the very end, right? Okay,

35:58

well let's see if we have questions. So

36:00

if you have a question, you can raise

36:02

your hand and then either attempt

36:04

to speak loudly or if you

36:06

want to come up and ask, you're welcome to as well.

36:09

And again, it can be about my system or anything

36:11

else. All right, Chris. I

36:14

guess the most obvious question to ask is,

36:17

does this give you any ideas? Well,

36:20

I guess this question is for Alex. Does

36:22

this give you any future ideas on

36:25

other books that can use this treatment? I don't

36:27

think there are any other as divisive as this,

36:29

but there are definitely some that are really good that

36:31

could use a boost. Yeah. Or

36:33

really good. Yeah. Well, actually,

36:35

one person already mentioned, I don't want to necessarily

36:38

say out loud to

36:40

everybody in the world which one it is, but one person already

36:42

mentioned one of the books. I

36:44

could think of one. Yeah. Well,

36:47

here's the thing. If it's a tournament book, like

36:50

it annotated games, then no. I

36:53

don't think so. Because, like, let's say,

36:55

Alakine's annotations, he had many mistakes, right?

36:58

Almost every game is filled with mistakes in the analysis.

37:00

But the thing is, you put something through an engine.

37:03

You know, we can't just be engine monkeys, right?

37:05

It's important to understand how people thought, right?

37:07

And you want to keep that. So

37:10

if you were to revise something like that, I

37:14

don't know. It's

37:16

as valuable. Those books, why do

37:18

we even read those books? Why would we read something from

37:20

the early 20th century when

37:23

we can read something from the modern times

37:25

where people have so much

37:27

more wealth of understanding and cleaned

37:30

up all the misconceptions? Because

37:33

it's interesting how people

37:35

thought then and how chess progressed. Like,

37:37

when I read those books from the 1920s, like

37:40

one of my favorites is Alakine's 1924 and 1927

37:45

tournament, New York 24 and 27 tournament books,

37:47

right? What's interesting to me

37:49

is I put them through an

37:51

engine, and I see where he went wrong.

37:54

Now, why is that interesting? Because my

37:57

chess understanding is mostly

37:59

based on intuition, and so were

38:01

these people from the early 20th

38:04

century. They didn't have technology at

38:06

their disposal. They were basically thinking

38:08

as people, thinking more intuitively than

38:11

even players now do. So,

38:14

Alakine, and same thing goes

38:16

for Caboblanka, for Lasker, for

38:18

Nimsovich, right? They're looking at the position

38:21

through the lens of how you learn

38:23

chess, and

38:27

this is how you approach the position. Since

38:30

we have gathered all of

38:32

that knowledge over the last 100 years, we tend to

38:34

think the same way. We tend

38:36

to, humans tend to think the same way. So,

38:38

if I see where Alakine went wrong, that

38:41

tells me where I might have gone wrong, where I

38:43

might go wrong. So, if I see, for example, that

38:45

he doesn't understand, didn't seem to understand how much a

38:48

bishop is stronger than a knight, let's say, and

38:51

made some typical mistakes, that gives me

38:53

a hint to what typical mistakes I

38:55

might be making in my own chess

38:57

games, because I learned from Alakine, and

38:59

people still learn from him. Same thing

39:01

goes for Bobby Fischer, and you'll

39:03

learn from these guys, figuring out where

39:06

they went wrong is very valuable, because it tells you

39:08

where you're gonna go wrong. So, I

39:10

don't know if it makes sense to revise people's

39:15

annotations to games. If

39:18

it's a textbook, though, then it's different, right? How

39:20

many textbooks are there? This is a textbook, right?

39:23

Zurich 53 is not a textbook. Six and a Rol Games

39:25

is not a textbook. You

39:29

can't have a textbook that is

39:31

wrong, but to have historical document,

39:36

I mean, do you wanna have footnotes

39:38

saying, okay, this is actually correct? Maybe

39:41

there's an idea. Maybe there's an idea to kind

39:43

of take some of these books and figure

39:47

out what these

39:49

great players would have thought now, with

39:51

the benefit of the computer, but the way they

39:53

approach the game. Maybe there's an idea like that.

39:57

Other questions? Yes. So

40:00

you said that you

40:03

basically had to rewrite

40:06

parks. Yeah. And

40:09

obviously, chess has progressed a lot in a hundred years,

40:12

and there's positional concepts that

40:14

would have been left out of the original book. Did

40:17

you kind of stick to

40:20

what he tried to

40:22

explain completely? So any of these more

40:24

modern ideas, you try to rewrite parks.

40:27

Nothing is added. Nothing is added.

40:29

That's the idea. This is Nimsovich's book.

40:31

It's not Fishbine's book. Nothing is added

40:33

to my system. Things got subtracted. Things

40:35

got removed. But no

40:38

new concepts are added. Some

40:40

things were changed a little bit. Like

40:42

overprotection, for example, gets a new treatment.

40:44

It's described a little bit differently. And

40:46

you can see in italics. When

40:48

I'm saying something that is

40:50

an important concept that Nimsovich did not

40:52

write and maybe would not have written,

40:54

even if given the opportunity with a

40:56

computer, that's in italics. But there's

40:59

not that much of it. So

41:01

it sticks to the original. It doesn't

41:03

add new. I mean, he

41:05

says in his own foreword that I

41:08

didn't cover all the corners of physics. I think

41:10

he says all the corners of chess strategy. The

41:13

book is going to have some flaws, because it doesn't

41:15

elucidate all the corners of chess strategy. But

41:18

what he does have is

41:21

extremely ubiquitous. It's

41:24

amazing. Almost every game that you play, there's going

41:26

to be a Nimsovich idea. I mean, many of

41:29

you have probably seen

41:32

this blunder that

41:35

Ding Blundering made in two a couple of

41:38

weeks ago against Carlson. People

41:41

probably don't realize that. Almost exact

41:43

mate is in my system, except it was

41:45

a rook sacrifice there instead of a queen. It

41:48

just shows that these ideas just show up all

41:50

the time. So are

41:52

these ideas going to be enough to get you

41:54

to be a grandmaster or master? They'll

41:57

take you really far, because there's a very

42:00

They're all ubiquitous. Can I ask a quick follow-up?

42:02

Yeah. So when I

42:04

was younger, I think a lot of the

42:06

concepts that are in this, like, you

42:08

know, Brooks on the 7th, you know, and

42:11

files, this kind of basics were what I

42:13

thought of as positional play. And

42:16

now I think of space and

42:19

different concepts. Can

42:22

you maybe list some things that you would consider, sort

42:24

of like, basics of

42:26

positional play that wouldn't have made it into

42:28

this, because they were... I

42:31

think that wouldn't have made it at

42:33

all. He does talk about space. Maybe

42:37

not at as much length. In

42:40

the context of the positions with... If you

42:42

want to talk about space, I think the

42:44

best chapter would be the one on pawn

42:46

chains. You know, the

42:51

pawn chain gives one

42:53

side of space advantage on one side of the board.

42:57

I think people didn't appreciate how

42:59

strong the two bishops... There is a

43:02

chapter on the two bishops, but it's very short. It

43:04

was short in the original. Two

43:06

bishops in the endgame, how strong they are. But he

43:09

has that also. I

43:12

think that prophylaxis

43:14

is mentioned here,

43:17

but it's only a very limited application of

43:19

it, which

43:22

is to prevent opponent's pawn

43:24

moves. But

43:26

actually, prophylaxis is used for many, many things.

43:29

And his next book, The Praxis, gives

43:32

a little bit of an insight

43:34

into that. So, I think Karpov, in

43:36

the 1970s, introduced prophylactic

43:38

thinking as a basic positional

43:41

concept. I

43:44

think Karpov's games are great

43:46

to look at in that vein,

43:51

to learn positional chess. You

43:54

know, things like... I don't know if

43:56

this is positional chess or not, but attacks on opposite side.

43:58

Opposite side casting, he has none of that. right?

44:02

Pawn sacrifices for attack, right?

44:06

That's a positional thing. That's, I don't

44:09

think that's attack. That's not like understanding

44:11

value of material versus initiative,

44:13

right? He doesn't have very

44:15

much, he has a little bit of that, but that's

44:18

Tal, you know, that's Kasparov,

44:20

right? You

44:24

know, the, I don't

44:27

know, there's other things. This is not going to get

44:29

you, this is not going to be everything

44:32

you need, but this is,

44:35

you know, when you talk about pawn structure, you know,

44:37

this is probably the best book to read in that

44:39

sense. Any

44:43

other questions? Yes.

44:59

I read that book at the age

45:01

of 11 and frankly

45:03

I don't remember very much. I know

45:05

I read it. I was 11 years

45:07

old. It was one of the first books I read when I

45:09

came to this country and

45:13

I think I'm just gonna leave it at that.

45:15

I don't, I think he, well

45:17

he thought that the praxis was not as good as, he

45:20

thought, he found the praxis to be like a relatively

45:22

poor book versus my system. I'm

45:24

not sure I agree with that. I

45:26

think the praxis was actually a very deep and

45:29

interesting book, so I don't know. I'd

45:32

have to reread that book again to have to form a

45:34

more informed opinion, but

45:37

I did read it a long time ago. Yeah,

45:42

the blockade, yeah, that's a pretty short book. Some

45:44

of the blockade is, some of the games are

45:46

the same, a couple of games are the same,

45:48

like for example the immortal Tzuxuan game is in

45:50

both, the one against Amish. So

45:55

that book was only like 10 games.

45:57

It's pretty short. that

54:00

add up quicker than a guest registry. In

54:02

that case, I pronounce you lucky. Play

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for free at luckylandslots.com. Daily bonuses are

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apply. See website for details. Well,

54:15

if you guys think of any other questions, feel

54:17

free to raise your hands. But as we start

54:19

to wrap up Alex, let's just spend a couple

54:21

of minutes on perpetual chess improvement, because I was

54:23

honored that Alex actually read my book and he's

54:25

told me a few things about it. So, Alex,

54:27

I'd be love it if you could

54:30

share with people, maybe a couple of things you agreed

54:32

with and a couple of things you disagreed with. First

54:34

of all, great. You know, congratulations

54:36

to the book. It's a fantastic book,

54:38

in my opinion. Thanks. Now, um,

54:42

I'm coming from a little different perspective, right?

54:44

Because most

54:46

of my improvement came when I was very young. Right.

54:49

I don't think the book is aimed for 10 year

54:52

old kids. It's not aimed for grandmasters for that

54:55

matter either. Probably right. Yeah. So, so my, so

54:57

my, um, I'm not going to have the same.

55:00

I liked a lot of the advice I've, I

55:03

really thought was, was very, um,

55:05

you know, astutely written and very

55:08

sharp. And I think like one, one, one thing I

55:10

liked the most maybe is very simple.

55:13

And yet nobody else talks about it. You

55:15

have to play in tournaments. If you want to improve, you

55:17

have to play in serious tournaments. 60,

55:20

at least 60 games a year. I think, frankly, I think

55:22

it should be more than that. I've already

55:24

played about 60 games this year, year to date,

55:26

five months, maybe all close

55:29

to 70, I think with this tournament. Um,

55:31

I try to play at least a hundred games a year, have

55:35

a good full-time job. Uh, but you

55:37

know, if you want to improve playing

55:39

in serious tournaments with long time controls,

55:42

not blitz games. I mean, blitz games are important too. And

55:44

don't, you know, I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that.

55:46

I do that to play lots of

55:48

blitz games also, but more than

55:50

people can, people can't even imagine, but,

55:52

but, you know, serious tournaments, at least

55:54

an hour game time control. Um,

55:57

why? One

55:59

of the. reasons that you put in the book,

56:01

a very simple reason. And

56:04

yet, the first time I read

56:06

it is, it

56:09

just forces you to be more responsible for your

56:11

games. Because you're not going to go to a

56:13

weekend tournament or like this, a five-day tournament. It

56:16

costs thousands of dollars just to come here. I

56:18

mean, it costs thousands of dollars just to eat

56:20

here. Just for a cup of coffee. Just for

56:22

a cup of coffee, right? So you know you're

56:25

spending a lot of money. You're spending time away

56:27

from your family or other things that you're doing.

56:30

You're going to be more serious about those nine games

56:32

or seven games that you play. You're going to take

56:34

them more seriously because you don't want to blow up,

56:37

blow your vacation on something. So

56:41

you can see them. I can see players in

56:43

these tournaments tend to play better, more serious. My

56:47

opponents seem to be tougher than in

56:49

these weekend Swisses that are game 45

56:52

or something. So playing

56:55

a lot. One other thing I liked,

56:57

keep things in perspective. Your

57:01

journey is the important thing. It's

57:05

not about like, you have

57:07

to be realistic about your

57:09

goals. But the

57:13

enjoyment of the process is the most important thing. The

57:18

advice on openings, I

57:20

think, what was it? Openings don't matter until

57:22

you're 1,500. Yeah.

57:26

I think, yeah, I tend to agree with that.

57:28

And I think that openings should be studied. There

57:33

should be no memorization. I mean, I'm a

57:35

grandmaster. I

57:38

can count maybe on one hand the number

57:40

of times actually like memorized, tried to memorize

57:42

a line. Like seriously, like

57:45

just on one hand. Usually, it's, Mitch

57:48

sometimes tells me to do that. Like he

57:50

tests me with some variation. Usually,

57:55

I go through the lines. I put

57:58

them in my notebook. I

58:00

try to play speech-esque games with them. I

58:02

don't let go down and try to memorize moves. But

58:06

the ideas are much more important, understanding

58:10

what the concepts are. What

58:15

else? Why any disagreements? Not

58:19

a lot. The only

58:21

one maybe is this idea of maybe some of

58:23

the books, like for example, the Red Scan Game

58:25

Manual, right? Right, which is that you have a

58:27

personal relationship with the course. The fast track of

58:30

that too, or Help Right. Is

58:33

that something that a lot of

58:35

people say, well that should be for only

58:37

for really strong players. Well, but

58:42

I guess you don't wanna sell yourself short ever in life,

58:48

and in chess also. What's

58:50

wrong with reading a book

58:52

that's maybe a little more complicated,

58:54

but then that's the height of

58:57

chess maybe

59:00

you'll understand some things, you'll

59:02

learn some things, right? Like

59:05

I wouldn't wanna be, when I was eight years old, I

59:07

wouldn't wanna be told, yeah, this is too complicated for you.

59:09

Like don't read it. No, I mean, you should have the,

59:12

I don't know, it's just a personal, maybe it's a personal

59:14

thing. You should have the philosophy of, you know, I'm willing

59:18

to take on everything. Okay, this is a little bit harder,

59:20

but okay. I can

59:22

understand it. I can understand some of it,

59:24

and then you, I'm not saying you should read that book

59:26

cover to cover, no way, right? But

59:30

nothing wrong with having that in the

59:32

library as well. Okay,

59:35

well thank you for the kind words, and if we

59:37

have any other questions, we can get to them, but

59:39

otherwise I think we will wrap up.

59:41

But in closing, yeah, much needed. I mean,

59:44

much quicker read. I think 50%, about 50%

59:46

I would say, of the time it took.

59:51

I read the other versions digitally more

59:53

recently, and this I read in actual paper,

59:55

but it's gonna be on forward chess, correct?

59:57

It's a good idea. Yeah, and it's actually.

59:59

Actually, it would be, I mean, obviously you

1:00:01

guys here, like Alex is happy to

1:00:04

sign them. It's a good reason to get a

1:00:06

paper copy. But for people listening at home, it's

1:00:09

a pretty good book for something like Forward Chess

1:00:11

because there's a decent amount of actual chess. It's

1:00:13

on there already, I think. Yeah, okay, great. Well, thank

1:00:16

you, Alex. This has been a lot of fun. Thank

1:00:18

you. And thanks to everyone for coming and

1:00:20

for listening at home. Who

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called upon you to do a service

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