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In this series of videos, GM Damian Lemos sets out to help the beginner chess player learn everything they need to know in order to get started with playing the beautiful game of chess.
This time, Damian tackles a topic that can be crucial in chess games, but is often overlooked by beginners: Zugzwang.
What is Zugzwang? Don’t let the odd-sounding word throw you off. As you’ll see in the video, the concept is quite easy to understand. It’s a German word that means “compulsion to move”. According to chess historians, it was introduced into English in 1904 by Emanuel Lasker who was the World Chess Champion for 27 years without break from 1894 to 1921.
So, Zugzwang is simply a situation when one player finds themselves at a disadvantage because it’s his turn to play, but all the available moves are simply bad moves. Often, if they didn’t have to play a move, they’d be okay, but these positions can force a result in favor of the other player.
Sometimes, a player would simply like to skip their move! While Zugzwang appears relatively rarely in practice, these type of positions normally arise in the endgames, when the number of pieces and possible moves are reduced.
Sometimes creating a Zugzwang position is the only possible way to win the game. In order to discover Zugzwang’s motivations, you need to plan not only your own play, but also control opponent’s possibilities and moves.
Not only will you see examples of Zugzwang in the video, with a full explanation, but Damian will also explain how you can use this concept in your own games.
Even though Zugzwang appears relatively rarely in practice, we see that knowing it may help us to win different types of endgames, and you never know when it will happen. That makes knowing the technique of Zugzwang very important for every player.
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