Afternoon all. I thought I would like to do an interesting discussion video
about trying not to calculate anything. A lot of you might hold calculation in
very high regard like candidate moves, looking at
variations you might hold this all in very high regard and you might find this
example shocking. Okay magnus carlsen was playing black
here and white just played Knight e5 attacking the Queen so if I give you 20
seconds here I wonder what you would play and why?! So 20 seconds starting from
now
okay you might want to pause the video or basically a lot of analysis was done
by white in this position by Luke McShane and very very little analysis of
variations was done by Magnus. You might think how is this possible?!
and what did Magnus play which reflects this and more importantly why
and I want to discuss why at various different levels of abstraction
Magnus played the move Queen d6 and the interesting thing is he pointed out in
post-mortem and I'm pretty sure he wasn't joking
then he rejected Queen b5 in this position because b3 and there's not
much counterplay here okay that's basically what he said. You
know we've not much counterplay. The Queen but if we look at it in more
detail just at an abstract level the Queen coming here is away from the king
and you can actually do a numerical counts of potential attacking pieces
that there's actually four attacking pieces here and just three here and also
you might want to consider this pawn is almost an attacking unit. Kasparov has
indicated pawns next to the King almost can be counted as attacking pieces more
dangerous perhaps if it was on h6 at some point or closer to the king but
even on g5 it could be dangerous so intuitively even without tons of
analysis of Queen b5 it might be the case that Magnus's move is actually
better Magnus played Queen d6 and now this is
an important paradox to really really really think about because it has big
implications first of all this numerical counts business comparing a number of
attacking pieces will the number of defending pieces you might think is
absolute nonsense can that actually be used in the process of thinking about
chess?! Well actually a recent video was about interfering with the opponent's
forcing moves and shortly after doing that video and I'll give you the link in
the description it occurred to me that the very first
example I was actually removing one of the opponents attacking pieces in
particular sector of the board to be able to Queen the pawns and you can see
that if you are thinking in terms of the relative attackers and defenders in a
sector of a board that is an important generalization looking at the sources
the actual very sources of forcing moves where to forcing moves come from?! Forcing
moves come from pieces in a particular sector of the board usually around the
opponent's king because forcing moves like checks you can't do anything that
checks so if you compare literally the number of pieces around the king and
number of pieces defending you might on general principles on general principles
of such accounts discount Queen b5 and the very interesting thing about this
game is that Luke McShane must have spent I think more than half an hour analyzing
various pawn sacrifices on b2 and rook sacrifices and almost making the
attack work and being really prepared for Queen b5 and a lot of energy was
spent - mental energy - and and the interesting thing as well is that in the
game after the move Queen d6 was played - after all this energy was played he
misses a simple forcing move from black which at least equalizes Knight takes g5
because the Queen is actually useful it's around the king and it's also got
its own forcing moves available with it then actually now if Queen takes we have
Bishop takes f6 and if Bishop g5 then f6 and the attacking pieces of starting to
be repelled and the Magnus went on to grind a wing from there so there
are various things we're told in Kotov's 'Think like a Grandmaster' (book)
about candidate move trees and analysis. I think that is very well suited to
computers. Why is it very well suited to computers and not to us?! Well the simple
matter is we can't calculate millions of positions like computers do like bean
counters. Imagine tons and tons and tons of bean counting
in this position then you might think yeah queen b5 might be justified
compared to Queen d6. After Ne5 you might think Queen b5
you might try and work it out so your analyzed all the candidate moves after
Queen b5 and we could do a technical analysis but I just want to explore this
other idea first. What we're talking about - what are we talking about when
we're comparing the number of attacking pieces with number of defending pieces?!
We're talking about a 'causal analysis' cause NOT effect so like symptoms are
caused by causes yeah if you if you want to avoid a cold you sometimes might not
want to go to places where you could pick up a cold. Having to deal with the
cold is a pain so what you try and do is determine cause and a 'causal analysis' in
a chess position is on an abstract level. We're given equipment to assess
positions, evaluate positions since the very first world champion for example
passed pawns, King safety, pawn structure, the bishop pair , centralization, the
importance of the center, different types of center help us evaluate and determine
cause - not affect - a 'causal analysis' here implies actually you can try and quickly
determine but if you want to keep the count of defensive pieces relatively
imbalance to the attacking pieces then on intuition to play the move Queen d6
is very very interesting. What does our being bean-counter tool toolkit say if we did
analyze this position so on depth 14 ...15 Queen b5 is mentioned and we've got
Queen d6 as the second candidate so Queen d6 is Magnus's move and now on
depth 16 Queen d6 so what is going on here with Queen b5 anyway so intuitively
we can think it's a piece away from the king so that abstract counts of the
attacking pieces versus defensive pieces is in White's favour after Queen b5
and I think some people might have mentioned that intuitively you often see games on
this channel where as soon as the Queen goes away from the king the King gets
mated we've seen a number of examples of that in Tal games for example on this
channel or in other attacking games where the Queen's actually are
distracted maybe with some bait and then the King is slaughtered because basically
it's to do with abstract reasoning. One player perhaps is intuitively thinking
about this. A count of attacking pieces and defensive pieces will be a cause of
forcing moves which are irresistible and in fact you might think this is a joke
surely?! But no Kasparov as well there's a very famous game Kasparov against Karpov
in the Ruy Lopez which Kasparov has labeled 'the punishment' and in his notes
he talks about the game and he talks about the number of attacking pieces
versus defensive pieces as a ratio and keeps referring to that ratio and it's
more than just a joke. This is more than just a joke
so this causal analysis is something which you might think is common sense to
think about causes but why are we lured in chess to want to look at
candidate move trees. The lure is basically in forcing sequences in
particular. Forcing sequences can transition games dramatically so you
need to calculate those as very high priority because the branches are very
few but as a generalization as humans were not very good at calculating and
okay we can calculate forcing moves and a lot of the brilliancies we call
masterpieces and immortal games - they have these fantastic moves but if you
look at a lot of them they're to do with Kings safety and forcing moves in
particular. In the general sense we want to bear our intuition our patterns.
Chess on a human level is a 'patterns war' it's a war of patterns - it's not a
war of 'bean-counting' - I think that's a really really interesting concept it
shows it might be about being bean-counting because sometimes people calculate and
they find amazing variations but often a large ingredient of that is
forcing moves but chess is really a patterns war and it has been since the
advent of Steinitz - the first world champion looking the elements of chess
but not just the the patterns of position - you can look at more abstract
patterns like counter play, number of attacking pieces versus defensive pieces
so here it seems white is actually better - the computer has worked out at
depth 23 by the way that white is better with Bishop takes g7 King takes g7 so is
it going to confirm what we see that the queen is away from the king. It's a
fundamental fact - there's one less defensive piece near the king. Let's have
a look at rook e1 and now it's difficult in fact for the Queen to even come back
because the knight is covering d7. How is the Queen actually coming back to the
defense?! And this would be a very very different game. White has uncomfortable
pressure. Say Knight g8 okay and now b3 which Magnus mentioned earlier in I
mean he mentioned that b3 initially Queen a5
what does Queen a5 do?! Again it's material grabbing but visually we know
as human beings we've got more pieces around the King than it's defending it
and in this position this would technically apparently be be troublesome
for Black Knight d7 and what is the actual threat of Knight d7 it's now
Queen e5 check. A major threat of Qe5 check and look how useful that pawn
is for holding up f6. So we've done something which seems idiotic to move
the Queen away from the King just from a numerical counts perspective. An abstract
perspective of the number of attacking pieces versus defensive pieces in a
particular sector of the board - we can argue that the intuitive move triumphs
what we can calculate as human beings. Sometimes we need to throw away the
calculation aspects of chess and really focus on causal reasoning. On the
patterns war. The war of patterns. And I'm not sure it's been described like that
before so this is something to think about. There's a war of patterns
going on here and black by playing Queen d6 but nevertheless Magnus is seeing forcing
moves because his next move goes from this very very intuitive move to a very
very tactical move straight off the bat - he's looking at forcing moves as well so
he hasn't thrown away completely the human side of calculation but where the
human side of calculation really excels is in the calculation of forcing moves
so Knight takes g5 was found so we have here two profoundly different results of
different types of thinking. The move Queen d6
followed by the move Knight takes g5 this is like Jekyll and Hyde. It is
such a contradiction in thinking style but Magnus has mastered clearly both
types of thinking and if we did go material hunting for those interested so
let's like take the pawn on b2 as well it will just just show even more that
what is the queen doing away from the king so say we go for let's say Queen f3
I think there's a lot of analysis by Luke McShane on a video somewhere about
this Queen takes b2 and there might be a way for White to sacrifice the rook even
so even this - Bishop takes g7 is not maybe completely losing for white it's
not ludicrous because we see the Queen away from the king we have a numerical
superiority of pieces here around the King so in this position this might
actually get quite dangerous if if blacks not careful so already look you
see Queen g4 and why would this be a shock to see the engine changing its
mind. What we can see as human beings is patterns. That's what we can see and it's
like confirming what we already saw so do we do we kind of try and work like a
computer in efficiently because a computer can calculate many more
millions of positions than us or do we sometimes trust our instinct. Our
instinct is dealing with what I'd call the patterns war. It's causal
reasoning. What is the cause of forcing moves?! Have you ever asked that the cause
of forcing moves or the cause of attacks to be undefendable in numerical counts
of attacking pieces versus the defending pieces and I think
just to reinforce this point we'll take the Kasparov Karpov game in a later
video where he destroyed Karpov's Kings side and we'll look at from a
numerical perspective of attacking versus defensive pieces. Anyway I
just thought this is something I wanted to get out there
this idea of chess as a patterns war and the illusion of calculation has really
often celebrated with forcing moves to get to get rewards for calculation it's
usually forcing moves which which can be really decisive in games but you see
here Magnus using both toolkits intuition ruling out very very quickly
Queen b5 on the on the basis of b3 without much counter playing versus the
huge amount of calculation by whites on Queen b5 and the ramifications of that
but then on the very next move white blunders may be exhaustion etc has set
in and he should have played h4 defending g5 when white is actually okay
White's actually got a promising position but it was all wrecked so
comments or questions on YouTube. Thanks very much