spirituality in chess

dear friends i wish to explore some of the ideas pertaining to certain spiritual or philosophical ideas and how they may be understood to assist with the process of development in chess. this has partly been inspired by my friend black beetle, an atheist and philosopher and partly by the need to explore ideas and principles to gain understanding. the ideas themselves need not be complex, infact the simpler the better and can be taken from any source (biblical, philosophic, etc etc), but should have at least some tangible expression both spiritually and practically, for example, we read in the field of martial arts

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

thus the principle is one adaptation and fluidity, but how does this apply to chess?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
dear friends i wish to explore some of the ideas pertaining to certain spiritual or philosophical ideas and how they may be understood to assist with the process of development in chess. this has partly been inspired by my friend black beetle, an atheist and philosopher and partly by the need to explore ideas and principles to gain understanding. t ...[text shortened]... friend.

thus the principle is one adaptation and fluidity, but how does this apply to chess?

Originally posted by black beetle
Ah ye lang leggedy beastie Rabbie I was sure that one day you would like to tease this miserable patzer atheist black beetle big time;
OK, there is no any kind of “sealed knowledge”, the Immortal Game is a game of perfect information🙂

For starters, it seems to me that this approach of yours is false (and correct at the same time!) due to the fact t ...[text shortened]... ny and Strategical Initiative amongst else;





I think that now we may start talking
😵

Originally posted by black beetle
Ah ye lang leggedy beastie Rabbie I was sure that one day you would like to tease this miserable patzer atheist black beetle big time;
OK, there is no any kind of “sealed knowledge”, the Immortal Game is a game of perfect information🙂

For starters, it seems to me that this approach of yours is false (and correct at the same time!) due to the fact t ...[text shortened]... ny and Strategical Initiative amongst else;





I think that now we may start talking
😵

Originally posted by divegeester
Phew, I fold.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
beetle ok i was having a little fun but also these are some excellent points that you make, a little advanced for this patzer, but maybe, just maybe, as water drops on a stone and eventually makes an indentation, some of this wisdom may reach.

can you elaborate on point eight, for this is very interesting, for it seems to the king of the patzers t ...[text shortened]... expansion when our opponent retracts, the ducking and diving so eloquently described by Fischer.

Originally posted by black beetle
Oh it's no need to offer diagrams at the Spirituality forum, however this concept is simple:

At my game 5671924 against our friend Ulysses, when he left early from the Semi-Slav theory, I had very fresh in my mind your post about a position described by Mr Emms, that notorious one at which we were exchanging variations like lunatics with the now gone ...[text shortened]... re of the fact that in dynamic openings the so called “advantage of the first move” is hidden😵

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Yes beetle, tis a beautiful game (5671924), and its true these pawns control a huge area and here is the spiritual/philosophical truths coming to the fore for example that in chess it can be demonstrated that 'truth is relative' and 'related to the position', also very famously illustrated in a Fischer/petrosian game where Fischer exchanged an active ...[text shortened]... heck out the beetle/chaudri game and hopefully it also contains some excellent 'truths'!

Originally posted by black beetle
Clear;

Therefore the aspects of Dynamism as Suba poses it, they are just the prerequisites in order to start Digging once your level is advanced; on the other hand, my personal synthesis is that you cannot be a “scholar”/ a “master”/ a good philosopher and not to stand with enormous power down on the ground with your strong legs.

It seems to me t ...[text shortened]... xact point at which one has to proceed with the philosophical concept of spiritualism I reckon😵

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
awesome! yes! it seems to me the same as the difference between physics and engineering science, (applied mechanics we called it in school), both were concerned with mathematics and formula, however the physics seemed to me to be concerned with ideas (to me anyway) it was almost conceptual, however the engineering science, because of it being applie ...[text shortened]...
Chaudry must be put to the sword, he is but a mortal and thus must have mortal weaknesses!😉

However the main core of my personal thinking is related to the concept of Clearing Policy (impurity).

It seems to me that the ultimate aim of the chessplayer is to become able to Understand all the abstract ideas of the Immortal Game in a so deep level that he will be able, while evaluating the position, to conceive instantly (seemingly “out of the blue” ) the exact kind of the plan that he has to apply. Then, normally it would be easy to find his way through specific algorithms using the techniques required, due to the fact that his tactical ability is very sharp because he trains constantly (he does his chores, that is). Whatever causes problem to the chessplayer and forces him to act not this way, it must be fully understood and dismissed; over here Kasparov once stated that although he was a world champion for two decades, often he remained sleepless at night due to several issues he was unable to understand.

But the way the chessplayer has to follow in order to succeed to his journey to understanding, is to bow to the exact requirements of each positions -and he does it through the study of the patterns. This is the reason why the illustrious Greenpawn, a tiger amongst men, worked his @$$ in order to bring up his excellent “Mastering Chess, A course in 21 Lessons”, for the student has to be aware of this truth the soonest possible if he wants to dig the Immortal Game.

So the chessplayer has to Win at first the Form, because the Form of each pattern is the agent that blocks his way and denies his evolution to a higher level of Understanding. This is the Lesson of the Form;

BTW the Eastern philosopher warriors were well aware of the fact that the understanding of the Form and of the nature of the Human through the evaluation of the mind is the sole way for the non-organized consciousness to achieve a non-dividable unity. Therefore they knew that the Form causes the birth of an entity that is different than the Shapeless existence of the Pure Energy Entity, which is mistakenly considered as “God”. Of course you understand that such an entity is the Human too amongst else.

Well, these philosophers used to believe that, if his Form brakes too soon, the Human fails to grasp the essentials he had to learn and therefore he has to get again the Form, and he has to return and to return until his consciousness achieves an Understanding that cannot be spoiled even from nirvana; it seems to me that I could claim that the patzers are returning all the time🙂

I tend to think that the chessplayer cuts his way through the Understanding of the Form, and that in addition he has the power to adjust this Form for his own merit, just like the Human does in order to survive, because this is the nature of the Human: isn’t it crystal clear that the Human changes the environment for his own merit from the very first moment of his existence?
😵

This is War. And it all starts from the most essential Strategy: Development.
From his very first move the White sets the pace, he sets the rhythm of the game by means of reaching with his chessmen the desired battlefield. In fact the White offers a shape of the essence of the fight by sacrificing his control of a square in order to build a position aiming to stream the accumulated force of his pieces directly to the heart of the opposite camp.
For example, with 1.d4 he wants to establish a central control whilst building up a convincing attacking force.

Development whilst ignoring the strategy and the tactics of our opponent is not development but confusion; we should pay full respect to the reactions of our opponent and act accordingly.
We have to be aware of what we have to avoid instead of following blindly some rules dogmatically regarding what we are supposed that we have to do. Therefore the slight changes of our plan are necessary once our opponent does not react the way we expect. On the other hand, if he follows the theory we have to know exactly when we must leave it and then handle the middlegame on our own.

And what is our profit when we follow this very strategy, ie Development?
Our profit is the loss of our opponent -any kind of loss at the level of Time, of Strategy and of Tactics. We always sacrifice This in order to gain That. The exact nature of “This” and of “That” has to do with our personal level of understanding and with the needs of the position.

This understanding is related to the quality of the potential of our dynamism. Our army gets gradually a potential that needs to expand further: we don’t want our army to suffer of a fixed pawn formation at the areas where we want to drive our assaults, therefore this is the area at which we will fix the enemy pawns and use them holes etc etc -and this is Tactics; whatever we do when we make a move is Tactics. Our enemy is free to see our moves but not our intentions; he is free to see our intentions solely when it’s too late for him to react.

“Skill” in CC is our ability to apply our Tactics to the desired depth and to the desired level of complications. If we have the same strength with our opponent and we spend 20 hours for each move of ours after quitting the theory at a 3/7 game, we will definitely see in advance things that our opponent, who spends 5 hours per move, cannot even imagine. This way the soon-to-come reality we are producing is superior than the most intense fantasy of our opponent. As a matter of fact, if the opponents are equal, the most hard working one he will probably prevail.
Therefore “skill” becomes the synonym of strength, and the strength of the chessplayer remains his ability to plan correctly (according to a decent and feasible strategy) and to conduct his plans correctly by means of accurate calculation.

We distribute our chessmen on the chessboard according to our needs to Develop. We cannot build a position without soft spots in our camp, so we chose carefully our vulnerabilities instead of permitting our opponent to establish them in ours. This way we can control the rhythm of the game. This means that we will act within Time whilst our opponent will just follow us out of Time trying to catch up.
And we will (pseudo)sacrifice everything -tempi, material, a file, a diagonal etc- in order to avoid strategic impurity once we want to gain the desired position. We will avoid to overload our pieces and we will handle them well paired, concentrating their accumulated force to the soft spots of our opponent.
And whenever our opponent does not react the way he is supposed to react, we will try to find out why he reacted the way he reacted. If there is a logical explanation we will try to cope with it. If it is an inaccuracy we will push further, and if it is a blunder we will punish him immediately.

This is how we refrain from early blunders at the phase of the opening and how we proceed at the middlegame. There must always be a concrete reason why we play this move instead of that at a particular opening, even if this reason is “solely” a product of our intuition, because intuition is a product of dismissing every other alternative by means of cross-checking our rest chances. We play a move because we wanted to play that move, not because "god told us to play it". We are fully responsible for everything we do.

Following the opening theory as deeply as you want once you understand the reason why, well, this is pure understanding. Quitting the theory at a false timing is an inaccuracy or a blunder. We always welcome a novelty, however we avoid the supposed “novelty” that turns out to be unsound, inaccurate or a blunder, because it is not a novelty at all. Therefore we will rather accumulate force in order to unleash a possible assault at the middlegame than risking to play a dull “novelty” at the phase of the opening.

It seems to me that these are the essentials of the strategy “Development”, therefore we are now free to decide by what means (pick an opening and establish your personal repertoire!) we want to serve it during the first 12 moves of the game.

Petrosian said that, when we study opening variations without reference to the strategic concepts that develop from them in the middlegame, we just separate the head from the body. Right. The dynamism of the position at the migglegame arises after a successful opening: how can you transform the initiative and the hidden advantage of the first move into a specific advantage? How can you stop the counterplay of the opponent? Where will you drive your pieces and why? What pawn formation will you establish and why? How can you establish and attack the soft spots of your opponent? How can you achieve superior spatial control, and what are you prepared to do with this? What exactly have you to avoid and what kind of endgame will you chose if your opponent denies you the opportunity to attack him directly and gain the brutal force necessary to wipe the floor with his body?

Answering decently and genuinely these questions at the middlegame is enough. We cannot answer these questions if we ignore what we know and what we ignore. The quality of our answers will determine the quality of our soon to evolve Tactics, because the “right Plan” is solely the product of our personal Strategy/ Understanding. Well, we have to serve this product of ours with accurate calculation.

It seems to me that every attempt to play the Immortal Game without full understanding of these essentials, is futile. In fact, these essentials, along with the endgame mastering, is the core dynamism of the point singularity that is the well known position before the very first move of the White😵

it is with great interest that i read your words beetle, for they contain much wisdom, a plethora of ideas based on reading and trying to understand the immortal game, far better than this miserable theist patzer. As I try to explain my present understanding, i will try to avoid all pretensions and aim for a clarity of both thought and language, so as to avoid ambiguity.

it seems to this miserable patzer that harmony is the key, as espoused by Symslov. Harmony is the prime goal or objective. Harmony of strategy harmony of tactics, harmony of pieces and pawns, total and complete harmony of thought and objective. thus before even moving a piece or pawn we survey the battle field and make a reconnaissance, this must be done before every single move, because the position is always in a state of flux.

what do we see before we have even moved a piece? if we are white we are able to determine the our opponent has two weaknesses, the square at c7 is weak being protected only with the queen and the square at f7 is also weak being protected only by the king, thus we have the beginnings of a strategy, to occupy the dark squares and attack the white ones on the queen-side and to occupy the white squares and attack the dark squares on the king-side in a harmonious fashion. we can achieve no more than this, the occupying of one colour complex and the attacking of the other , for our pieces have limitations, i.e. pawns, knights and bishops can only attack one colour complex at one time, no more than this! so what happens when we play 1.d4 and our opponent replies 1...d5 here we have the beginnings of a strategy, the occupying of dark squares with our own pawns/pieces and the attacking of the opposite colour, thus in queens gambit we occupy the square d4, a dark square with our own piece/pawn, in a positional manner and then attack the white square d5 in playing 2.c4! in a tactical manner, and in this manner harmony may also be achieved between positional play and tactical!

it is well understood that there are two ways to win a game of chess, either by checkmate or by the accumulation of material which will eventually overwhelm our opponent, as in pawn promotion in an end game. how are we two achieve harmony between these two objectives? we know that if we are to administer checkmate we need at least two pieces, one to administer the check, the other to support it, thus if we are aiming to checkmate the king, we should try to keep our pieces on the board, avoid exchanges until we can see a combinational motive that will lead to success, it may involve sacrifice etc etc if we are on the other hand in a position which we deem advantageous for an endgame, perhaps we have a pawn majority on one side, we should be clear, right from the out set, that our goal is to exchange pieces and thus as the game progresses our advantage accumulates to the point where it will overwhelm our opponent.

this is just the stage i am at at present beetle, but it seems to me, that harmony is the prime objective. when we listen to a piece of music and the piano man plays a duff note, we recognise it instantly as it grates on our ears, thus in chess, any move that may lead to discord must be ruthlessly punished in the case of our opponent and discarded in favour of another in our own camp. i really appreciate you having taken the time to write these things beetle, for it is a source of great joy to read them. - regards Robbie.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
it is with great interest that i read your words beetle, for they contain much wisdom, a plethora of ideas based on reading and trying to understand the immortal game, far better than this miserable theist patzer. As I try to explain my present understanding, i will try to avoid all pretensions and aim for a clarity of both thought and language, so ...[text shortened]... me to write these things beetle, for it is a source of great joy to read them. - regards Robbie.

Creating Weaknesses

Why did I lost?
I lost because my camp had weaknesses that I was unable to overcome. And I hold myself fully responsible for this.

In the opening the weaknesses are related to lost tempi and poor development of the pieces.
In the middlegame we have to spot open lines, weak squares, underprotected pieces, overworked pieces, disharmony of pieces, lack of communication of the pieces, outposts, restraining support points and bad pawn structure.
In the ending we spot pawn majorities, king placement, piece activity and tempi.
But all these weaknesses evolve solely if the opponent makes an inaccuracy or a blunder. Once the opponent offers us not this chance, we have to create on our own some kind of weakness at his camp. Over here the tactics are futile because there is still nothing to be “counted” due to the fact that for the time being the position means nothing to us. Over here we have to use Strategy -a quite simple one: Solid Domination.

How can we force the opponent to deviate from the right path, thus to establish Solid Domination?

We can do it by accumulating slowly force that, seemingly “all of a sudden” it will be released to a single target at once. Petrosian used to create so many threats that his opponents were dead far before the strike of his final explosive attack. Iron Tigran was the epitome of the Lurking Flexibility.

So when you put the Knight here and the Bishop there and that Rook behind that pawn you simply follow a concept that does not violate the Strategy of the opening.

When you develop your pieces do not “follow” your opponent but try to establish your own set-up according to your strategy; and when you are the Black try to counterbalance in full his workout for accumulated force at a specific area of the board, force him to rush in in order to deter the outcome of the hidden advantage of his first move or to neutralise his initiation and have the position equalised.

So we have anyway to establish our own rhythm at the game -but what is the “right rhythm”? This is a question that it can be answered solely by the Strategy, and it is the first question that arises when we have to evaluate the position.

The chessplayer has to consider the specific landscape that will probably arise at the middlegame due to the opening. He also has to consider the endgame that will arise once the middlegame will become exhausted. And he has to take measures. Is there something that our opponent does not expect during his seemingly natural development of his chessmen at that landscape? Once you are out of the theory the evaluation of the position is critical. You have to use all the parameters in order to establish the powerful analysis that is required in relation to the specific standards of the position. Tal had his style, Fischer had his style, every Master has his style -but their Strategy was the same: Solid Domination.

If my evaluation is false, my strategy will be false and my tactics will fail. Therefore I have to:

1. Seek for the truth when Ϊ try to decide the specific kind of weakness(es) that Ι want to create at the enemy camp; of course Ι have to keep my forces well paired and flexible
2. Analyse in depth whilst I am seeking for a forced variation; I check every cut, every checkmate and every sac, and I leave my pawns at ease ever ready to break the rhythm of the attack of the enemy or to establish my rhythm
3. Calculate each viable continuation with accuracy
4. Avoid cheapos
5. Trust my intuition. I am at war and I walk on a minefield
6. If my attack is quite easily conducted and the enemy pieces are targeting a specific area or a square in my camp whilst they withdraw, I will not rush in until I will become sure that I am not heading to an ambush
7. There are always hidden weaknesses that they wait for me to discover them, as Shamash pointed to me at another thread; I will spot them during my evaluation and then I will use the required tactics in order to exploit them
8. A quite “invisible” detail can become the agent that will give me the chance to get the initiative
9. Act economically, because then my own weaknesses are sufficiently counterbalanced
10. Avoid chess fatigue; I think that chess fatigue is similar to the “Barrier of Pain” that frustrates the athlete. “Pain” in chess is in my opinion related to the temporary or permanent lack of the ability of the chessplayer to use his memory, his fantasy and his experience efficiently, plus the lack of the motivation to overcome the patterns that they “mean nothing to him” by means of accurate stratagems and then tactics. I think that the sole agent that can help us to overcome chess fatigue, a phenomenon that arises whenever we have to become ready to push our level even higher but we face quite strong opposition, is our Love for the Immortal Game -the passion soon evaporates I reckon🙂

Once out of the theory I cannot see Strategy other than the establishment of Solid Domination -permanently. This Strategy is the essence of the No-Defeat Spirit, and by the way it works fine at every field of the human activity🙂
And when the target is fixed and the position becomes meaningful, yes -then it’s all Tactics😵