Looking back on the days when I first learned chess the thing that stands out the most is how I had no idea what I was getting into. After learning how the pieces moved, then learning how to check the king while not allowing him a way out it was time to do something more interesting. Then the joy of eventually finding people weaker than you and grinding them down until their naked king could not resist checkmate made this a good thing to do in between biking and picking berrys. But this was not the norm.
More usual was the sophisticated opponent that always came up with ways to forcefully destroy your pieces before they could get involved in their own aggression. And so chess was at that time a game of brutal force and quantification of "The one with the most toys wins". So my next successful plan was to take out Big Bertha (queen) and maybe one or two other pieces on a big hunting spree to locate targets that my opponent could not guard very well and after winning enough free stuff then to grind them down to paste. Laughing all the while! But what to do about those people who seemed to protect everything while always having more pieces in play? So now the game was entering into the pinnacle of physical reality. It came down to who had the most toys yet again but now we had to get better at eating their toys. Unless of course the attack on the king came to direct fruition but that was the same as the toy analogy since the kings value was infinite.
In the backdrop of the physical reality the introduction to intangibles could now appear. Time for example was not a physical entity, we are referring to the time measured as tempi. With each move you could bring a knight into play or send him on a useful duty which would be using a tempo. Send him to do something worthless and you wasted a tempo. The textbooks stated almost unanimously that three tempos equal a pawn so that we could relate the whole thing to the physical reality. Yet this unsatisfactory. In some positions the three tempos could be worth more than a pawn and would yield more rewards often enough. Also the degree to which the position enhanced the value of tempos mattered, close things up enough unless you could A. Get something done right away or B. Obtain a lasting bind it was better to keep the material. The part that nobody mentioned is that intangibles as well as things such as the bishop pair are of greater value depending on the skill of the participant. Extra tempos in the hands of a poor player might not be worth the pawn while in the hands of a consummate master it would be worth quite a lot. So now when we look at intangibles we have to factor in the skill of both opponents. Some players are easier than others to take advantage of with a tempo or more. Styles as well as strength play into this. Emmanuel Lasker was an early great at understanding the interplay of the opponents and intangibles.
Another well known intangible is mobility. A knight that is blocked and cannot go to any squares is said to be immobile. A knight in the center that has a full range of squares and secondary squares is said to be quite mobile. Yet attempts to measure this are prone to inexactitude. Do we count the number of squares a piece or pieces can go to for a precise measurement? Can you have numerical amounts of mobility? 68.35 units of mobility? No, it does not work like that. Two pieces in just the right location with small amounts of the right kind of mobility are most effective. (clock time is also important. What kind of problems are best to present our opponent with the amount of time that they have. When Tal first met Botvinnik he presented the world champion with enormous complications going into the final hour of the game. Tal being younger and more at home in such positions enjoyed success. ((Bronstein was a master of Chaotic positions and used to aim games in that direction)) In the rematch Botvinnik took care to control the types of positions that he got into and regained his title)
Once again it takes an intuitive judgment of what form of an intangible is more valuable. Judgment of which intangible is more important than another as well as the known physical characteristics. And there are many intangibles. (Being able to make the position conform to the intangibles that we posess helps as well.) Knowing how they all work together in regards to our opponents strengths and weaknesses as well as our own strengths and weaknesses matters a great deal. It is the interplay between these fluid yet vaporous concepts that give the greatest pleasure for me in chess. (Yes I like when people fall into my cheap traps, or I swindle out of a horrible mess as well) The modern chess game of today has the superb titans of our time using these esoteric means to secure wins against players that are very difficult to topple.
In John Watsons' masterpiece "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" he attempts to reveal the nuts and bolts of the new game that has emerged since Aron Nimzonvitch wrote his positional great work, "Chess Praxis".
While expressing doubt for Nimzovitches idea of over protection he pays homage to the great master as forming one of the bedrock upon which todays Grandmasters build many of their concepts. Some of the chapter titles show Watson covering how modern masters deal with intangibles. 2/2 rule independence, 2/3... Are your pawns really backwards? From Modern Pawn Play. 2/4 The modern Bishop 2/5 The contemporary Knight 2/7 Bishops Versus Knights : Minor-piece Pairs , and here you get get a lot of insight into situations where rather than keep the position closed for the knight since bishops prefer open positions the possessor of the knights prefers to open up the position in a hurry in order to accelerate the knights before the bishops can awaken. (After that I had a brief love affair with the Chigorin defense.)
Watson also mentions the evolution through the sixties where working against static weaknesses was the rage. (They learned to love this style in the 20s through the 50s but it hit its apex in the 60s) John goes on to present how modern players give the opponent the opportunity to play against their static weaknesses (doubled, isolated or backward pawns for example) but always in exchange for this they get ample amounts of mobility and dynamic potential or some other intangible. And all of this occurs under very heavy layers of deep tactical issues. No wonder Chess is not a spectator sport to the degree of other sports, the viewers practically need a doctorate to understand what is going on.
Another of my favorites was his chapter on the exchange. The exchange sacrifice is more present in the modern game than at any time prior. Often there is little visible compensation. But oh is there ever compensation because it frequently succeeds. After reading the chapter on exchanges I read an unannotated game by V. Anand. It was simply amazing. (I am easy to impress, I love all the games of the professionals) Many moves laters Anands' initiative on the queenside comes to fruition and he moves in for the kill winning a brilliancy.
I suspect that there are many intangibles that world class players use that have not even been identified yet. Having the judgment to sort them all out while being under pressure from a genius while being given limited time to think.... This is the ultimate sport, chess.
