Superior Positions: Converting an Advantage

When you stand better: how to convert an advantage without letting the game slip. Chapter 6 of Znosko-Borovsky's The Middle Game in Chess, interactively reissued.

"However great the advantage in any position, it is necessary to seek for the quickest forced win." — Znosko-Borovsky, 1922

The first chapter of Part Two set out the three-way classification of middle games. This chapter takes the first of those categories — positions in which one side has the advantage — and asks the question every player in such a position eventually has to answer: now what?

Znosko-Borovsky begins with a definition that is more careful than it looks:

"When we speak of the superiority of a position, we bear in mind that, however great may be the peculiarities of these positions and whatever their fluctuations as regards the different elements, in general there is an advantage on one side."

The advantage need not be uniform. Your opponent may actually have gained in force, or in time, or in space, or in two of these — or even all three. What makes a position yours is not that you lead in every element, but that the qualitative balance is in your favour: the counter-advantages you hold are enough to entitle you to an active game, even if for the moment you must defend before you attack.

The obligation that comes with a superior position is the obligation to play actively. A superior position played passively very quickly stops being a superior position.

The Simplest Case — and Why It's Still Not Trivial

The easiest kind of superior position is the crushing one: you lead in every element and the opponent has no counter-chances. Between strong opponents such games are usually not continued; the weaker side resigns. Znosko-Borovsky's illustrative example is Morphy against Sicre, where White's advantage is "tremendous" in every dimension and he can simply grab a rook whenever he chooses.

The Endgame Journal collects our writing on openings, tactics, endgames, and the habits that separate players who improve from players who plateau. Every article is written by people who teach chess, not by a content farm.

Superior Positions — The Middle Game in Chess, Ch. 6 | Endgame Society