@tuskerking Haha. I tried to find who made that quote but couldn't find it unfortunately. Sounds like something Short could have said.
I was actually referring to the OP (a quoting option would be nice), given his hypermodern ideas and such.
@ F_D89 no i have not read that book entirely but have read few parts but I play indian openings and i like hypermodern style. but it is not for the beginners for sure.
about the quote: After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box. – Italian Proverb
now on internet boxes are replaced by pgn files :D
"Any chance you've recently read Nimzowitsch's 'My System'? "
Nope, haven't read a single (chess) book.
I should though.
It all came to me last night in a revelation.
I do watch a lot of kingscrusher's videos and he talks about these things a lot. Not philosophically, but he mentions common terms a lot like prophylaxis, undermining, and so on.
Thinking about these terms in conjunction with the quote "the threat is stronger than the execution" prompted my post.
Yes, a quote feature would be nice.
I like your idea of the "future" squares. The common way of discussing this in chess literature is mobility.
I saw a TED talk recently about how an AI researcher was able to program a bot that displayed intelligence with only one idea. The bot was programed to maximize future freedom of action. Many problems were solved with no other concepts.
You can think of the most basic intelligence as self-preservation. As long as you stay alive, you have more options that you would otherwise. Apply this idea for each chess piece. Each piece wants to survive and also increase his options for the future. So each piece wants to be mobile.
Chess engines actually calculate mobility as a number and add it to the evaluation, as if being able to move your bishop 8 squares instead of 3 is worth a fraction of a pawn. So they play to increase the evaluation of a position, which includes future options, mobility.
"Threats being stronger..." in my mind mean that if you have all these future options, your opponent always has to keep those in mind when he is trying to make his own plans. This makes his job more difficult. As soon as the treat is executed, it no longer has to be kept in the back of his mind.
Thanks for that post, Chris! I didn't know a lot of that info, but it's good stuff.
I love the ideas about keeping material making your o9pponents job more difficult and giving you more options. Beginners seem to love exchanges for some reason (simplification probably..)
I had no idea that engines calculate mobility!
I need to improve....
Ofcourse simplification is sometimes necessary, for example when you have less space or you have the opportunity to trade an inactive piece for an active piece on the opponent's side of the board.
Sometimes if you try to avoid simplification it is the repetation of the same position again and again and for a chess engine it is like evaluating a drawish line so they tend to inclined towards simplifications more than human players in most cases.
Good points.