Preface
The highest art of the chess player lies in not allowing your opponent to show you what he can do.
—World Champion Gary Kasparov
Is it better to play the board or the opponent?
Playing the board means choosing plans based strictly on the objective characteristics of the position, Many great players of the past have played that way, and many modern masters play that way today. How could it be wrong?
Just before the turn of this century, World Champion Emanuel Lasker published a book, Common Sense in Chess, in which he propounded a new philosophy of chess. He argued that chess was neither a game nor a science nor an art, as had been thought at various times in its long history, but a fight.
There can be but one objective in a fight, Lasker wrote: winning. What does it matter, in the heat of battle, whether or not a plan is theoretically sound? Simply put, if it works, it's good; if it doesn't, it isn't.
Chess is played by human beings, Lasker emphasized, and to disregard their human frailties—that is, to play the board—is to close one's eyes to a world of winning opportunities. To play with common sense means not only to choose plans according to the characteristics of the position—that goes without saying— but also with due regard for the characteristics of the opponent. "Chess is a fight in which all possible factors must be made use of," he asserted; "a knowledge of the opponent's good and bad qualities is of the greatest importance."
That sounds perfectly reasonable to us today. The idea of "psyching out" an opponent or rival, or "doing a number on his head," is familiar in all forms of competition, from the playing field to the boardroom. But it was a revolutionary concept in Lasker's time, and not everyone agreed with him.
Even today there are players—though not at the highest levels—who would choose the same plan in the same position no matter who the opponent or what the circumstances. There is much to be said for finding the objective "truth" in a position, the objectively "best" move. The trouble is: given two identical positions, the move that is best against player A in the first round of a tournament may not be best against player B in the last round. Once you accept the logic of this argument, as you must, you are ready to appreciate the often decisive role that psychological factors play in chess.
Psychology has become a standard weapon in the armory of modern chess. It is not unfair or unsporting or unethical or illegal or against the rules. It is simply the application of the principle, first enunciated by Lasker, that the best move is the one that disturbs the opponent the most.
Lasker, who was world champion for a record twenty-seven years, believed that players who understood human psychology should have an advantage over those who did not, other factors being equal. In this book we will show you how to obtain that advantage.
The book is divided into two parts. The first five chapters outline the development of the psychological method as practiced by its leading exponents of the past: Lasker, Alekhine, Botvinnik, and others. The rest of the book will show you, regardless of your playing strength, how to use in your own games what those and other great masters have taught by example. The purpose of this book is to make you a stronger player and to help you win more games.
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