Middlegame Secrets Vol.5 - The Inner Strength of Kings
In this video course, kings will play a role of strong and active pieces. We will explore how Kings can be helpful in defence and prophylaxis, or even in attack!
The most important piece in chess does not always need to be protected. The young Indian player Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu showed just how fascinatingly the king can be used actively in chess with his king march against Anish Giri at the GCT Superbet tournament in Bucharest. Of course, this game took place well after the editorial deadline for the new episode "The Inner Strength of Kings" from Jan Markos' video series "Middlegame Secrets". But the Slovak coach has plenty of equivalent and instructive patterns at his fingertips. He offers players of all levels new aspects of how the king can be used to advantage and protected in often surprising ways.
Markos admits at the beginning of the chapter "King March" that as a young aspiring player he had no real idea of the importance of king marches. He later realised that they occur far more frequently in practice than one would expect. Reason enough for the coach to scrutinise this. From his coaching experience, he reports of many students who immediately attempt to attack in the positions presented - rarely does anyone come up with the correct solution, namely the King's March. Prominent examples from players such as Kamsky, Topalov and others illustrate how effective such a move into safer territory can be - especially in positions where the opponent lacks momentum. This often happens when the kings have castled to the same side. If the other wing and the centre are more or less fixed, it can be advantageous for the player active on the kingside to invest several moves in order to place the king on the other side of the board in safety before the floodgates open for the kingside attack. Sufficient space and time are the decisive prerequisites for a successful evacuation of the monarch.
Middlegame Secrets Vol.1 + Vol.2
Let us learn together how to find the best spot for the queen in the early middlegame, how to navigate this piece around the board, how to time the queen attack, how to decide whether to exchange it or not, and much more!
In the following chapter, "The helper King", Shirov impresses with a daring king's march into the white camp, which, combined with the activation of his knight, secures him the draw against Kramnik - all this despite an active rook and the splendid bishop pair of his world champion opponent. Markos explains when and why such a manoeuvre can succeed.
The king started from g6!
Anish Giri was no less creative in his win against Aryan Tari: After castling and a piece sacrifice by his opponent, his king circles his own pawn on f2 to block Black's pawn majority. What a far from everyday idea!
Other impressive examples follow, such as Loek van Wely's king march on an almost full board:
The king is brought to safety on g3 after the pawns have condemned the black pieces to inactivity.
However, the chapter culminates in an almost unbelievable, barely imaginable king's move by the former world champion Tigran Petrosian against the young Garry Kasparov. Here, experience once again prevailed over youth. However, Markos also admits that such a manoeuvre is hard to find for any player at the board. But if you've seen it before...
Middlegame Secrets Vol.3 - The Career Paths of Bishops
In this video course we will explore in depth some familiar concepts regarding the bishops. For example, everyone knows that a bishop-pair should grant him a positional edge.
"The Art of Castling" - this chapter is more about the art of recognising when and where to castle. The advice sounds so simple: "Castle to bring your king to safety." But sometimes there is simply no safe place for the most important piece. Nevertheless, castling can be advisable. Here is a free video example of one of the great long-lasting duels in recent chess history: Shirov and Kasparov were two brilliant attacking players - in this case, the long-time world champion showed how well he could assess positions.
And what do we learn in this chapter? In the context of castling, the activity and connection of the rooks plays a particularly important role and the right timing is extremely important.
In "The Uncastled King" two always important questions about the uncastled king are considered crucial: Is the central king vulnerable? Does the central king interfere with the harmony of the pieces?
Taking Kamsky against Karpov as an example, Markos explains several times in the course of the changing position of this instructive game which of the two questions is the decisive one - very instructive and once again impressive how Karpov transforms his pieces from a difficult position into a harmonious one.
At the end of a long phase of regrouping, Karpov wins with a nice final combination (solution at the end of the text).
Markos closes this exciting chapter with one of his own games, in which he played his king to e2, and a memorable game between former World Champions Mihail Tal and Mihail Botvinnik. The young Tal created real fireworks with his king on d1 and his rook manoeuvres. Without worrying too much about the safety of his king. It was a significant and original victory at the start of the 1960 World Championship match against the defending champion. Interestingly, Botvinnik later played this French variation again, moving his own king to d8 early on.
Middlegame Secrets Vol.4 - The Secrets Lives of Knights
Knights add irrational content to any position. However, in this video tutorial you will learn how to tame them.
Finally, in "Miracles with the King", Jan Markos once again shows everything the kings can do: For fans of the classics, the game Teichmann vs "Advisor" from 1902 should always be a favourite. No less impressive, because they were played in world-class tournaments, are the modern classics Short v Timman (Tilburg, 1991) and Navara v Wojtaszek (Biel, 2015). The latter game was awarded the title "Game of the Year 2015" and even the word "incredible" does not do it justice. All three of these games are not without flaws, but perhaps this only makes them even more special. Calling this chapter "Miracle with the King" is certainly not overstating it - chess can be that beautiful ...
Jan Markos has put together a sensational mix of game fragments and, time and again, complete games. These show in the experienced Slovakian trainer's own way what the king can do. His didactics will certainly lead to the viewer finding more correct moves in the attached exercises and positions to be played against Fritz online than he would have thought possible at the beginning of the course. After looking at the queen, rook, bishop and knight, the king sequence is the last in this video series. If you want to learn about the strategic and tactical usability of the pieces and improve your middlegame, you can't avoid this series. Never before has strategy training been so much fun and caused so much amazement. Jan Markos has set new standards in this area.
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Solution of the puzzle in Kamsky-Karpov:
29…Rxd2 wins because of …Qf3+ followed by …Bh3 and Qg2++.
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