Throwing Down the Gauntlet to the Old School of Chess Thought

Hi chess people of Nederland and Chessity guests,

The new ALT-Chess Square 1 method is out. Its First Hour of Chess, Part 13 of Principia Scacchorum was published on chess dot com yesterday. It breaks fresh ground of how we are going to teach chess at Square One, on Day One, for much better results than the traditional approach currently produces.

It is based on the idea Nimzovich, Copernicus of Chess, came up with in How I became a Grandmaster back in 1929. The idea of r-e-l-a-t-i-o-n is somewhat hidden and can't be easily recognized as someting so important for teaching Chess Square One (GM Ray Keene omitted Nimzo's First Hour of Chess in his Nimtzowitsh: A Reappraisal - I published its first English translation in full in The Chess Journalist of America, Vol XL, No4 in Fall 2011.).

The ALT-Square One approach is throwing down the gauntlet to the Old Church and its scripts. It is challenging the ineffective, lacking meaning, and let's say it openly, broken traditional method having been in place for too, too long (look one of millions of games the traditional "teaching" at SQ1 has produced: 1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3.exd5 Bishop takes Queen at move Three, you can't believe your eyes, can you? - btw, the boys had been in chess for 6 months at the time, in an afterschool program here in Atlanta; this game was actually a trigger point for me to start researching Chess Square One, and after eight long years, the ALT-Sq1 has finally come).

Any revolution... begins with some definite act, often meant to purify corrupt practices and restore what some conservative radical imagines as a pristine state of things.

-Charles C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity (1960)

The crisis of the traditional Square One is really a chronic crisis of meaning. As a result, wood pushing is most likely to be seen with 99,5% of all chess entrants. Too bad. To paraphrase Dr. Tarrasch, chess, like love, like music, has the potential to make people happy. Yet, millions are kept outside the game and an enjoyment of life time as they never get out of Level One beyond the moves. Too sad.

Meaning in chess can only come from the power structure on the board. Only network of pieces and their interrelations can give the player the reason for a move. Otherwise, it is like kicking the football randomly into the air (and that is not how Cruyff and Co. played back then).

The position of a piece on the board is only meaningful relative to its relations to other pieces. Not only chess piece relations define Space (chess space wouldn't even exist on the board without pieces exerting Force in it - imagine a lifeless empty board; see Principia Scacchorum Part 7 on Force), relations also introduce Time into the picture - any change of piece relations on the battleboard is an event of chess Time.

Yet, the scripts of the Old Church are totally unaware of this when they start teaching with the moves. The whole idea of the ALT-Square 1 approach is actually turning things upside down - relations come BEFORE the moves***.

If you check the First Year of Study book published by FIDE, you find the word attack (the generic piece relation from which all other - protection, restriction, interposition - can be deduced from) only on p.68, without any explanation. Then next occurence is on p.92, Exercise 3:

"Read carefully and remember. The king cannot move onto an attacked square." (note the tone... the old school... discipline, parotting and stuff...)

If you check the Stepping Stones teaching method, perhaps one of the best around (that you guys must be very well acquainted of), it introduce relationships on p. 46. Still a little bit too late in my view.

If you check the seminal Choice and Thought in Chess, the baby of your great compatriot Adrian de Groot, and go to the speak-aloud protocols section, you may well realize that the first impulse that comes to mind of a Grandmaster when starting analyzing a position, is spotting relations:

Keres: Who is actually better off? Let's first have a look at what can be taken; are there any immediate attacks?

Alekhine: Is the pawn at b2 really attacked?

Euwe is talking "hanging position of the Knight." "overburdening of the Bishop," "Bishop at R2 undefended," pieces being "tied down," "overloaded," etc.

So why in the world we don't start off with the relations, in place of the moves?