Equal Positions: Playing the Balanced Middlegame

How to play when the position is level — creating imbalances without overreaching. Chapter 8 of Znosko-Borovsky's The Middle Game in Chess.

"It is impossible to get the initiative in an equal position without sacrificing something." — Znosko-Borovsky, 1922

Chapters 6 and 7 studied middle games in which the verdict was already written into the position — one side had the advantage, the other had the disadvantage, and the moves each of them owed the position were determined by that fact. This chapter turns to the case Znosko-Borovsky called from the start the most complicated: equal positions.

They are the most common. Almost every well-played game passes through equal positions on its way from opening to result. The Four Knights, the Giuoco Piano, the Exchange French — whole opening systems produce them almost by definition. Any position in which both sides have made reasonable moves for ten or twelve turns is, more likely than not, an equal one.

"Every unsound move and small mistake becomes the source of immense trouble and occasionally of absolute loss."

The reason is structural. In a superior position, a small inaccuracy narrows an advantage that will still be there tomorrow. In an inferior position, a small inaccuracy pushes a lost position slightly further into lostness — but the game was going to end that way anyway. In an equal position, a small inaccuracy is a verdict . There was no advantage before the mistake; there is one now, and the position that was going to be a draw is now going to be a loss.

Znosko-Borovsky splits equal positions into two families that must be handled very differently.

Equality of character. Both sides have the same weaknesses, the same strengths, the same pawn structure. The Exchange French with symmetrical pawn chains, or an early queenless middlegame from a Berlin, or the Four Knights with mirror development. Neither side has anything to base a plan on. The player who eventually gets an edge is the one whose plan- construction is more subtle — the game of a positional artist.

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Equal Positions — The Middle Game in Chess, Ch. 8 | Endgame Society