The Chess Mind

Among the questions bandied about in our controversy of Clint Ballard's brainchild is this: is the BAP system a "pairing change", a chess variant, or still something else?

Ballard himself has chosen door #1: that it's a pairing system, but I find this wildly implausible. Maybe the system has some implications for swiss system pairings (for example, maybe last round pairings should not match players with the same scores, but set things up so that, where possible, those with White have one point more than their opponents), but it won't have any effect on the pairings for a round-robin event. As far as I can tell, the only effect BAP has on the world of round-robin tournaments is that all such tournaments probably need to have an even number of rounds. Nevertheless, this doesn't make BAP a pairing system, so I think we can reject this thesis.

On the other hand, Jon Jacobs has insisted, in various comments both on this blog and elsewhere, that using BAP produces something that isn't chess as we know it, but a variant. Why? I don't think Jacobs is as clear as he could be, but the essential idea is that the rules of the game have changed because the fundamental goal structure of the game has changed. Traditionally, the primary goal is to win; secondarily, it's not to lose. But as a White draw nets him the same goose egg (no points) a loss achieves, the secondary goal has been (largely?) eliminated when one has White.

I find this account more plausible than Ballard's, but I'm not fully persuaded - there's more work for Jacobs to do. First, we should distinguish between different sorts of rules. A couple of weeks ago, I exchanged a few emails with another chess teacher on USCF's recent decision to mandate recording one's moves only after playing them. My interlocutor thought it was a terrible idea while I was somewhat in its favor, but neither of us thought our dispute was over two forms of chess. USCF did make a change to the rules of the game, broadly construed, but it's what we might call a nonessential change, not an essential change.

It's worth saying a little more about this, as the distinction between the essential and the non-essential is crucial here. A property is essential to a thing if, if a thing loses that property, it ceases to be that thing; that is, it ceases to exist. An example or two might help. It's an essential property of a sphere that, for any two points on its surface, each point is equidistant from the center of the sphere. Should something happen to the object to mar its surface, it ceases to exist as a sphere. (It could continue to exist as a hunk of marble, as a decorative object, etc.) Or suppose we think it's an essential property of a human being, that he have self-consciousness. What this would mean, if true, is that a sleeping human is in fact not a human being at all! Unless one wants to bite the bullet and claim that (non-REM) sleepers are corpses of a special sort, it would be better to rescind this alleged essential property.

Let's contrast this with non-essential properties. When I cut my fingernails, I've undergone a change, but it's not one that affects my essential nature. If I was a human being before, merely changing the length of my fingernails doesn't change that. On the other hand, if I'm flattened by a steamroller, a la good old Warner Brothers cartoons, then I'm not a really short human being; I'm an ex-human being. Or rather, physically speaking, I'm not, period - I've ceased to exist as an embodied human being.

Back to chess: the dispute over when one can record the moves is clearly non-essential: it was chess before the rule change, and it's still chess after the rule change. So not all rule changes affect the essential properties of the game, but others do. If kings start moving like kings in checkers, we've clearly created a variant of the game; it's not longer chess-as-we-know-it.

The really tough question, then, is what the essential rules of the game are, such that if any of them are changed, we're talking about a variant and not the "normal" version. One possibility, which might be Jacobs' view - but it need not be - is this: the essential, non-negotiable rules include the following:

1. The rules for moving the pieces (including captures, castling, en passant and pawn promotion).

2. The rules for checkmate, stalemate and other drawing scenarios.

3. The goal-rules: a win is worth a point, a draw half a point, a loss nothing.

This is a plausible list, and probably at least very close to what we'd all say if asked by relatives to give a 5-10 minute summary of the rules. But there are difficulties under all three headings.

Ad 1: All of these have changed over the years, and castling, pawn promotion and en passant (together with the pawn's double move) in particular are relative newcomers on the scene. Each rule made for a big change, but was it an essential change?

Ad 2: Checkmate is an absolutely ancient part of the game, but stalemate isn't. More to the point, the drawing rules have been in great flux within my lifetime: there have been the Sofia rules and other attempts to delay/deny draws by agreement, but there have been other changes as well. One short-lived change was the revocation of the 50-move rule for certain endings (e.g. 2 Bs vs. N) when computers proved wins taking more than 50 moves to achieve. So rules of type 2 are more flexible than we might initially think.

Ad 3: There have been changes here too, over the years, though the current point system goes back to at least 1867. (That might sound relatively recent, but with London 1851 generally considered the first international event, it's really not.) Yet there are exceptions to this system even in our time. What were the scores of the Karpov-Korchnoi world championship matches? No one says "16.5-15.5 and 11-7, Karpov" but 6-5 and 6-2, Karpov. Karpov-Kasparov I was terminated when the score was 5-3, not 25-23.

So maybe we need to revise the essential heart of our scoring system, and I think this can be done in a way that extends the tradition even before 1851. Here's the revision: a win by either side counts, equally, for a point apiece (but what about the Spassky-Portisch candidates' match? - that's at least a mini-problem), while a draw (a) counts for less than a win, and (b) intrinsically favors neither player. There have been objections to (b) over the years (based largely on anti-stalemate sentiments), but it is a pretty stable tradition.

Is (b) essential? Here's a little argument to suggest that it may not be. The conditions given might be seen as one way of expressing something still more fundamental ideas at the heart of the draw: first, the need to handle non-decisive results; second, to do so in a way that facilitates the overall event. The goal of the game is to win, but that's not always possible. So what do we do? Ideally, replay the games or otherwise disregard the draw in pursuit of decisive results. That was true in London 1851 and New York 1857, and more recently in various candidates' and world championship matches.

Unfortunately, this can easily generate logistics problems, though (recall once more K-K I), so the half-point solution was an economical way to address the two fundamental ideas of the last paragraph. It's a nice way to handle everything, and one that takes into account the near-parity of White and Black. If there's another way to satisfy the fundamental ideas, though, then why not? Why won't it still be chess?

Note that this stops short of endorsing BAP: to suggest that Jacobs' argument at the very least needs supplementation and at worst fails doesn't show that just anything goes. I could continue, but I think this is enough for tonight, and I'll allow Jacobs and others to pick up the ball and run with it where they will.

As many of you who have been reading the comments to my post on Clint Ballard's BAP system have probably noticed, the inventor himself has weighed in with a pair of long replies. (Here and here.) A massive reply is forthcoming, but I first wish to take care of some housekeeping.

Ballard seems to take a rather dim view of this blog and its participants (at least where the BAP system is concerned), but then hopes that although we're probably incapable of rational discussion, we won't censor him. (An ironic request, as his website includes his responses to this blog (here and here), but without mentioning the blog or linking to my and others' critiques.) Now, as any long-time reader of this blog will acknowledge, I don't censor comments or commentators for disagreeing with me. (Fewer than five people have been banned from commenting in the 16+ months I've been at it, and it wasn't because of disagreement over content.) That said, getting banned is not impossible: I will oust individuals who are persistently belligerent or seem to deliberately misrepresent others' work. Here are some examples of the sort of thing I insist on avoiding if discussion of these matters is to continue on my site.

Ballard: Since this thread has material inaccuracies, thinly veiled personal attacks and even an example by the moderator with the intentionally derogative acronym of "CRAP", it is clear that there is a lot of animosity and downright hatred toward my BAP system. I doubt that a rational discussion is possible and I am used to that, but I will present FACTS for the unbiased reader to consider and hope it won't get censored. Of course, all the critics will accuse me of being irrational because I won't simply agree with 100% of what they say, even if they are accusing me of being disingenuous, that I am conducting tournaments that should be banned, etc.

First, I engaged in no personal attacks whatsoever; in fact, I (and several others) praised Ballard for putting up a substantial amount of his own money in support of his system. I'm deeply skeptical of that system - no "thin veil" there! - but the man himself was not attacked. As for Jacobs' comment, in which he labeled Ballard's insistence that the BAP system is a new pairing method rather than a rule change "disingenuous", I leave that discussion to the two of them. (But note that Jacobs also praises Ballard for his sincerity, his willingness to invest his time and money and calls him a gentleman.) So it's an extremely thin "attack" - and it's not attacks, plural.

Second, no one called Ballard "irrational" - I and most of the commentators merely disagreed with his proposal and its motivations.

Third, no one called for BAP events to be banned; objectors merely wished that they not be rated.

Another quote:

Also, saying that a white draw is the same as a white loss is also incorrect, though understandable error. BAP is not a zero-sum point system. The effect of white drawing has a 2 BAP change to the overall point pool relative to a white loss. White winning has a 3 BAP difference relative to a white draw. Black winning has a 2 BAP difference relative to Black drawing. Black drawing has a 3 BAP difference relative to black losing. If you are going to comment on BAP math, please use the correct numbers.

Who made that claim? I didn't and neither did any of the commentators; in fact, my argument against BAP based on the attractiveness of last-round bribes rests precisely on the fact that while White's score doesn't change with a loss or a draw, Black's most certainly does. My argument went like this:

Last round pairings:

1. White (17) vs. Black (18)

2. White (18) vs. Black (17)

Given normal tournament prize structures, White on board 1 has good reason to take a dive, especially if he thinks he can't win. Only Black on board 1 has first place in his own hands; no one else can guarantee himself even a tie for first. (Board 1-White can't, because if both he and board 2-Black win, the latter gets it; board 2-White and board 2-Black can't, because Board 1-Black outscores either with a win.) The correct numbers were used.

More Ballard:

"indicating that the draw "problem" is not caused by GMs' nearly perfect understanding of the game" [DM:he's citing me here] This statement makes the implication that GM's have solved chess! Gee, I must have missed that announcement. Was it my imagination that Hydra DEMOLISHED Adams? One of the top 10 players in the world at the time, not prone to losing, got killed. The only draw was by agreement of the operators of Hydra, even though Hydra itself thought it was winning. Since Hydra is better than the GM's, shouldn't we have seen if it could find the win? So, with an actual result of 5.5/6 vs. Adams and maybe it should have been 6 out of 6, it boggles the mind that claims are being made seriously that human GM's have a nearly perfect understanding of the game.

I was summarizing Ballard's position here - I was making a statement that agreed with his! According to Ballard, a big reason why there are so many draws is that players are insufficiently motivated to fight for a win. If the problem was instead that GMs just knew too much, then computers, which play stronger chess than human GMs, would have an even higher percentage of draws. It's just the opposite, however, a point I summarized by saying that the problem is not caused by GMs nearly perfect understanding of the game (the antithesis of Ballard's view), precisely because their understanding isn't nearly perfect, or not close enough! That point could have been made more explicit, but there isn't anything else I could have meant in the original quotation:

Ballard offers a brief historical excursus recalling the days when draws were automatically replayed, notes that there are few draws in computer chess (indicating that the draw "problem" is not caused by GMs' nearly perfect understanding of the game)...

If my point (summarizing Ballard) wasn't to contrast computers with humans, with the presupposition that computers are stronger than we are, then the whole passage is a mystery.

So: If you wish to have a forum for your views here, then read others' objections with the same care you request for your own arguments. A little humor's fine, disagreement is perfectly okay, but misrepresentation isn't.

One Clint Ballard has had enough of draws, and is putting his money where his mouth is. He begins an open letter to GMs and IMs like this:

How many of your 10 most brilliant games are draws?

How many of your 10 most brilliant games are draws by agreement less than 10 moves out of known theory?

How many times have you won against a strong player who was playing safe as white and not taking any chances?

How many times have you avoided playing the most exciting and daring lines because doing so did not make sense due to external factors, eg. prize money, rating points, tournament standings, etc.?

After asking these rhetorical questions, Ballard offers a brief historical excursus recalling the days when draws were automatically replayed, notes that there are few draws in computer chess (indicating that the draw "problem" is not caused by GMs' nearly perfect understanding of the game), points out that even the NHL has recently eliminated ties to make their fans happy, and then goes on to propose the BAP system and plug his tournament. I'll say a little about his system and tournament, below, but first I'd like to address his questions.

In one of my first classes in graduate school, I was told to avoid rhetorical questions. (Who could have anything against rhetorical questions?) The reason is that someone might actually answer them, and not in the way I had intended! So it is here.

To the first question, how many of my 10 most brilliant games were draws, the answer is at least two. (Yes, I know I'm not a GM or an IM, but (a) the quick-draw problem doesn't just belong to those guys, and (b) I've played quick draws (and real draws, for that matter) with GMs and IMs.) One of those games is in my top two, the ridiculous game with Barcarola from the 1999 US Amateur Team tournament where I sacrificed two queens, and practically everything else besides. The second was a draw in the late 1980s with Larry Christiansen where we took turns sacrificing material for the attack, only to wind up in a drawn rook ending with a symmetrical pawn structure.

The second question is silly, of course, in the context of his overall proposal, because it doesn't show that anything is wrong with draws, but only - at worst - that something is wrong with (very) short draws. Thus the Sofia/MTel rules (no draw offers; draws only allowed when it's a forced repetition, material is insufficient or the arbiter permits it) are sufficient here. Further, there have been brilliant games meeting the question's condition: two that come to mind are Fischer-Tal from the 1960 Olympiad and Sax-Seirawan (a draw involving a queen sac that completely overturned the theory of that variation of the Pirc).

The third question fares no better, for while it's difficult to defeat someone using the White pieces as a fire extinguisher, it's hardly impossible. (Take a look at all the 0-1s in the history of the Exchange French, for starters.) Further, there's nothing preventing technique-and-safety lovers from continuing to play that way, waiting for the opponent to go astray. Players like Ulf Andersson, Tigran Petrosian and Anatoly Karpov became legends in that way, and drawing against them with Black wasn't very easy at all.

Likewise, his fourth question doesn't really address the draw problem, but one's tolerance for risk. Unless the penalty for a draw is Draconian, one isn't going to turn a Tigran Petrosian (the late ex-world champion, not the young GM) into a gambiteer.

So let's have a look at his proposed "BAP" system:

Black wins: 3 points
White wins: 2 points
Black draws: 1 point
White draws: 0 points
Any losses: 0 points

Two things are clear about this system. First, having the Black pieces is now a colossal advantage, far bigger than White's 55% expected edge in the usual case. And second, those with a more volatile style have an advantage against those with a more "correct" approach, even if by almost any current objective standard the former are clearly weaker.

So why do this? Ballard probably thinks the BAP system leaves chess as is, only serving to improve it for the fans, who crave decisive results. That's where the parallel to the NHL comes in, I suppose - the game will be played the same way, but the need for a decisive finish adds to the drama and makes the fans happy. But the sports parallel is inapt for an important reason. Overtime periods, extra innings, shootouts and so on do little to change how the game is played, except perhaps slightly at the very end of regulation/in the late innings. The BAP system, however, fundamentally changes the way the game is to be played, penalizing not just the wimpy and the lazy (or rather, the wimpy and the lazy when they have White), but anyone playing an excellent game of chess that isn't decisive.

Another outcome is that players with less imbalanced styles are punished; worse, they are almost prevented from displaying their art. There's nothing wrong with playing like a Tal, a Shirov, a Korchnoi or a Morozevich. I enjoy their chess at least as much as the next fan. But imagine what would happen if we changed the rules and created what we might call the Cunningly Reversed AP system:

White wins: three points
Black wins: three points
White draws: two points
Black draws: two points
Any losses: no points

In this, the Cunningly Reversed AP system, motivation to take risks for a win is seriously reduced, and it's the safety-first, technique-lovers who are disproportionately rewarded. Worse still, if the Tals of the game value results, they will have to change their styles and give up their art (or at least a significant and very special part of it) to succeed in this Not-So-Brave New World.

But the same goes for BAP: there's nothing wrong with playing like Karpov or Petrosian, if one is playing full games. Their games are masterpieces of the highest caliber, and it's terrible to force them to choose between relative competitive failure and playing the beautiful chess that's the finished, mature product of their hard work, mental gifts and aesthetic sensibility. If the choice is between losing fans who are not just averse to wimpy/lazy draws, but draws per se, and who wish to destroy a large part of the game as we know it, I say good riddance to the so-called fans. (To be honest, I think they are pretty rare; most players, even if they aren't moved by an Andersson, can be educated to appreciate his play even if they'd rather see a rip-roarin' sacrificial melee.)

A last critique, a sort of added "bonus" of the BAP system: the prospects for cheating are greatly increased. Suppose the World Open adopts this system, and going into the last round we have two players tied for first with, say, 18 points. These two have played each other, so they're paired down into the 17-point group, one with White, the other with Black. The 18-pointer with White cannot even assure himself of a tie for first, nor can anyone else but the Black 18-pointer. Guess which board is most likely to feature a bribe, and multiply it by all the score groups in which the difference between a White win and a Black win has a substantial difference in the prize fund.

All that said, Ballard is to be praised for supporting his ideas with action, personally funding a GM/IM event in Bellevue, WA from October 13-15 of this year. You can read all about the tournament, and his complete open letter with his entire rationale for the BAP system here.

...is the name of an article in the current issue of Scientific American, which you can access online, here. The cover of the print edition plugs the article thus: Secrets of the Expert Mind: Become Good at Anything. Of course, this is journalistic nonsense, as no "secrets" are revealed and the path to expertise is - hold your breath - effortful study. (You don't say!)

The article, written by New York chess expert Philip Ross (2062; father of Laura Ross, whose current rating is 2252), is a summary of mostly very old research on chess players. (The one bit that was new to me and concerned ongoing research addressed refinements on chunking theory.)

The argument, in oversimplified form, runs as follows:

1. Expertise in chess is primarily a matter of accessing "chunks" of data from long-term memory and using them in working memory. (An example of a "chunk" would be the two bishop sacrifice in Lasker-Bauer, or seeing a castled position with a fianchettoed bishop as a single unit.) It is not (generally) a matter of calculating more moves than a weaker player.

2. The memory of an expert player is domain-specific: despite having thousands of "chunks" of chess knowledge, this doesn't imply a superior memory per se or even a superior spatial intelligence. (An argument for this comes from memory tests of random positions. If the chess expert enjoyed a superior memory per se, he would do a better job of reconstructing the random position than a non-expert. But he doesn't, or only barely does.)

3. Therefore, it would appear that chess experts aren't born, they're made, and if so, achieving excellence is a matter of effortful study. "Effortful study" is to be distinguished from playing or a "time clock" (my term) approach to the game, where just putting in the hours will magically generate improvement. If one really wishes to improve, he must "continually [tackle] challenges that lie just beyond [his] competence", a conclusion that applies not only to chess players but athletes, mathematicians and musicians. No motivation, no effortful study, no mastery.

I'm a bit skeptical of Ross's skepticism (or at least his report of researchers' skepticism) about innate ability. To acknowledge that talent without training (the training need not be formal, of course) will not result in mastery (an obvious and very well-confirmed theory) does not show that talent doesn't exist. He reports that shape-memory tests on British chess players ranging from amateur to grandmaster failed to correlate performance with chess skill, but this doesn't seem to me decisive.

Objection 1: Is shape memory even relevant? Perhaps some players calculate with a mental picture of the board, but I and many others I know don't.

Objection 2: Even if it is relevant for some, is it the only relevant factor?

Objection 3: If the expert grabs chunks from long-term memory and uses them in working memory, then how would a presumably short-term memory test be relevant? What might be relevant is a test that involves the application of what one has learned of these shapes.

No doubt other objections are possible, and responses from those who know this literature are too - and would be welcomed. For now, I'll close with a final, meta-objection. Ross mentions Ukranian GM Sergei Karjakin, who at the age of 12 became the youngest GM in chess history. One interesting - and frightening! - factoid about Karjakin is that he learned the game at the age of 5 or 6, and by the time he was 7 he was regularly defeating his father, a 2200+ (FIDE) player. Is this really just effortful study, sans talent? I have no problem thinking that the fat part of the bell curve is primarily the triumph of nurture, but it would be shocking if it was the whole story for the outliers as well.

In the previous post, I reported my disagreement with a portion of Derek Grimmell's review of Roman Dzindzichashvili's DVD series on Nimzowitsch's My System. The discussion centered on Dzindzi's comments about this position, from the game Nimzowitsch-Vidmar:



Here Nimzowitsch played 1.Rb1, when 1...Re8 got Black out of all his troubles. In its place, N. himself suggested 2.Re4, when 2...Bc6 3.Nf6+ gxf6 allows White a winning king hunt (this is from Grimmell's review; Nimzowitsch in My System continues the line 4.Rg4+ Kf8 5.Qxf6 Bd7! (N's exclamation point) 6.Rg7 Be6 7.Rxh7 Ke8 8.Re1 (threatening 9.Qxf7+) Kd7 9.Qxe6+ and wins.

Brian Karen dropped me a line after I published my previous post, and asked if Dzindzi's analysis was correct, noting that Fritz gave 1.Qg4 as winning. Naturally, this piqued my interest, and I consulted with the box as well. As it turns out, just about everything Nimzowitsch says about the position is nonsense!

First of all, after 1.Re4, Black can survive with 1...Qxc2 2.Rde1 Qd2! 3.Qg3 Qh6 4.Nxg7 Kh8!

Second, after 1.Re4 Bc6, 2.Nf6+ is a mistake: 2...gxf6 3.Rg4+ Kf8 4.Qxf6 and now not 4...Bd7, which loses, just as N. suggests, but 4...Qb1!, when White has nothing more than a perpetual with 5.Rgd4 Bd7 6.Qh6+ etc.

Third, after 1.Re4? Bc6?!, White can gain the advantage with 2.Qg4! g6 3.Re3, when it's especially the threat of Nf6+ followed by Qd4 that leaves Black clearly worse.

Fourth, 1.Rb1 isn't so bad - it's better than 1.Re4, in any case. After 1.Rb1 Re8! Nimzowitsch played 2.Qg3, leading to a rapid perpetual. If he had played 2.Rec1 instead, he might have had a small edge after 2...Qa3 3.Qg3 g6 4.Nf6+ Kg7 5.Nxe8+ Rxe8. It's not much, but at least Black has to work a little after 6.Qg5 or 6.c4 Qxg3 7.hxg3 Bxc4 8.Rb7.

Fifth, 1.Qg4 and 1.Qg3 both win! The first move is especially devastating, but I'll leave the details to the replayable board, which you can find here.

And now a comment. While it's certainly understandable that Nimzowitsch failed to analyze this position accurately in the pre-computer era (although I believe that all of the analysis I found with the computer is well within his ability to find without it), it's surprising and arguably somewhat unprofessional that Dzindzi didn't check it himself before recording the videos. Still, to be fair, the line of reasoning in his comments, as recorded in that previous post, are insightful nonetheless and aren't undermined at a general level by his inherited analytical errors.

This past week's book review on the Chess Cafe sees one Derek Grimmell examine a pair of DVDs by GM Roman Dzindzichashvili examining and (purportedly) updating Aron Nimzowitsch's classic My System. The review, not-so-charmingly entitled "Stink like a Grandmaster", concludes that the DVDs have low production values, get game scores wrong, offer at-best sketchy updates and utilize materials that are more closely allied to some of Dzindzichashvili's opening DVDs than the content of My System. (Other than this, I think Grimmell dislikes the work.)

Now, I don't have a dog in this fight. I know neither "Dzindzi" nor the reviewer, and while I certainly have a healthy dose of respect for Dzindzi's chess, I do not and have not owned any of his materials over the years. If anything, I suppose I have a slight anti-Dzindzi bias, as my openings tend to be the ones he offers systems against. And I don't have any special reason to reject Grimmell's judgment on this product.

All that said, it seems to me Grimmell is unfair in his treatment of the first extended Dzindzi quote he examines. In this position

White played 1.Rb1, when Black played 1...Re8! with a good position, according to Nimzowitsch. Instead, he gives 1.Re4 (winning), with the idea 1...Bc6 2.Nf6+! when White will enjoy a winning king-hunt after 2...gxf6. Now here's what Dzindzi has to say (bracketed comment in text is Grimmell's):

I don’t really like the way Nimzowitsch just shows the winning move. In order to learn, you have to realize in today’s chess we have criteria and certain principles that help us find the winning move. Here are the criteria. If you notice, all Black’s pieces are located on the Queenside. Black’s Kingside does not have any support. White has very powerful Knight on h5, and Queen on f3 and open e-file. That signals you that you must try to attack Black’s King. Also, the other thing that we know now, that might not have been known at that time (when game was played) that combination Queen and the Knight is most of the time a deadly combination. So White has a wide range of strong continuations. Once you know that you have to attack on the Kingside then you get all kinds of ideas… [here our host plods through several candidate moves and one- or two-move variations for each] That [the kingside] is the direction you’re looking at. Nimzowitsch doesn’t say this. He says Rb1 was wrong because of Re8. I agree with him, and I disagree. It’s wrong not only because Black has the move Re8, but because in general it’s the wrong move. You don’t need to go to the Queenside, you must concentrate on attacking the King, especially when you are a pawn down. So the target is the Kingside, we have to attack and we have to do it now. […] Here is the simple way, here is why in today’s world, a relatively strong player will find Re4 quickly: if you don’t see an immediate mate with Queen and Knight, you have to bring more pieces. You can’t bring the King or Pawns, so you have to bring a Rook. Re7, maybe Re4-g4, maybe Rd4-g4. Rd4 weakens my back rank, e.g. Rd4 …Re8, so I would probably play Re4. So we have now various opportunities, but the idea, the target, we must attack on the Kingside.

Grimmell is not impressed, to put it mildly, but I don't think his negative judgment is well-substantiated. Here's his response, with my comments interspersed:

This summarizes about six minutes of monologue on a two-hour disc, or about 5% of the total material – a hefty amount for such a poverty of ideas. [DM: I read the quoted text out loud as slowly as I reasonably could, and it only took two minutes. So I wonder about the other four minutes' worth of material. As for the "poverty of ideas", see below.] The excerpt does a good job capturing the rambling, redundant manner of presentation that typifies these lessons. In six minutes he manages to point out, twice, that in 1911 people didn’t really get it that Queens and Knights go great together; twice he draws our attention to White’s back-rank weakness; he throws in the fact that White is a pawn down almost as an afterthought; twice he mentions that Black’s King has no defenders while White has that nifty Queen-Knight attacking pair; twice he gives us a set of criteria for knowing which moves to examine, only they aren’t quite the same criteria each time. The amount of repetition gives the impression that he is making up his dialogue off the top of his head. Whether he is or not, I found myself frequently longing to hit the fast-forward, or for someone to plug him in to a 220-volt outlet so he’d talk faster.

[DM: There may be some degree of repetition, but that's not necessarily a vice in an audio/video presentation. And far from a "poverty of ideas", I think Dzindzi's comments are quite instructive! Here are my reflections on this same passage:

1. I agree with Dzindzhi that criticizing 1.Rb1 on account of Re8! is not a helpful diagnosis, and for just the reason he gives - 1.Rb1 is more or less irrelevant to the needs of the position. This also informs the attentive listener that it's not a matter of bad luck - it's not merely that Black has 1...Re8! against it or that 1.Re4 just happens to win because of some unusual feature of the position; instead, even if 1.Re4 didn't win and Black didn't have 1...Re8, 1.Rb1 would still be an error.

2. Addressing the strength of Q+N as an attacking duo is a genuinely useful little tidbit, a bit of chess knowledge that supplements, but is not equivalent to, Capablanca's "rule" that Q+N are a stronger tandem than Q+B. I doubt that most amateurs are aware of Dzindzi's rule, especially in any explicit way. (Speaking for myself, I was unaware of this before becoming a master.) Note, by the way, that Dzindzi does not say that the strength of this duo was unknown in Nimzowitsch's time; he expresses uncertainty about this thesis.

3. I don't see different criteria for finding candidate moves in the foregoing quote, but instead a two-part approach. First, given Black's lonely king and the power of queen and knight as an attacking team, we're encouraged to look for some forceful solution using those pieces. Once we see that they can't finish the job by themselves, we look to bring a rook over to supplement the attack. That strikes me as clear, useful, and non-redundant.

4. The reason he brings in White's slight material disadvantage "almost as an afterthought" is because it doesn't come into play in the assessment of what White ought to do. If we gave White his pawn back, placing it on b3, b4, a5 or somewhere else out of the way on the queenside, 1.Rb1 would still be beside the point and 1.Re4 would still be strong. Nothing of relevance has changed, so White's eyes should remain intensely focused on the Black kingside. Back to Grimmell:]

It’s too bad, because Dzindzi seems to be almost discussing a genuinely important subject, namely, how to find candidate moves for evaluation. Near the end of the lesson, he says candidly that he is talking about “the way that you find the best move,” rather than just showing us the best move. But if you review the lesson several times to boil it down to its essence, here is Dzindzi’s secret cipher for figuring out that you need to attack the King:

* When the opposing King has no defenders; * When you have a Queen and a Knight near the enemy King; * When you’re down a pawn.

[DM: It's correct that the first two points in particular are his keys to interpreting the position. But why the sarcasm about a "secret cipher"? And even if this isn't the most informative lesson in history, (a) it's not bad - all three bulleted points should be part of a player's mental framework, and (b) Nimzowitsch omits them.]

Not exactly a manual on the attack, is it?

[DM: More inappropriate sarcasm. If Dzindzi claimed to offer such a "manual", that would be one thing. But nothing in the quoted material suggests that's what he's doing. What we are getting in Dzindzi's short speech are three or four useful lessons about attacking: (1) if your opponent's kingside lacks piece protection, look to attack; (2) queen and knight are a very dangerous attacking duo; (3) start calculating based on attackers already in place, and if they're not enough to do the job, look at lines that bring in new forces; and (4) if you're a pawn down, the need to make something happen (e.g. via an attack) becomes a matter of urgency. These rules obviously don't cover every situation (did Dzindzi say they were meant to?), but they are valuable.]

He does add the non-startling revelation that, if the forces near the King aren’t enough to give mate, you have to bring in more forces, but really, I needed a former top-10 player to tell me any of this?

[DM: Yet more sarcasm. Yet despite the rhetoric, one can benefit from being reminded of the obvious. All of us forget important lessons from time to time, or pay them insufficient attention. It's hard to see why a less-than-one sentence reminder occasions Grimmell's mocking comment.

But my last comment assumes the reviewer's uncharitable interpretation of Dzindzi's comments. In fact, far from being a potentially superfluous reminder of the obvious, Dzindzi's comment functions heuristically: first we look for a mate with queen and knight alone; then, not finding one, we attempt to find attacking ideas utilizing new pieces. What we have here isn't a banal truism, but a twofold lesson: first, we're shown how to organize our thinking about the attack; second, it's a reminder not to give up on the attack after seeing that Q+N alone are insufficient. An inexperienced player might give up on the attack, or just try with the queen and knight and hope for the best. It might seem obvious that one shouldn't do so, but in my experience as a teacher, this advice (most famously given in Yasser Seirawan's phrase "invite everyone to the party") is commonly disregarded or undervalued by club players.]

In conclusion, let me reiterate that I have no reason to doubt Grimmell's overall judgment on the value of these disks. (Which isn't to say that I agree with him either; I'd have to see for myself.) I haven't seen them, but my past, admittedly limited experience of Dzindzi's videos suggests that they're not generally high-tech nor overly scripted, and one of my basic complaints about videos in general is endemic to the medium: it's not possible for them to cover anywhere near the amount of material found in a book or a magazine. With luck, unless the speaker is really motor-mouthing it, you'll get ten pages an hour. What counts with videos is the quality of content and how effectively that content is presented, and I think that for at least this snippet, the video is a success.