"The whole is other than the sum of the parts." – Kurt Koffka
Steinitz, William-Von Bardeleben, Curt, 1895
A position from the classic Steinitz, William-Von Bardeleben, Curt, 1895. The first impression is that Blacks king is weak and herein lies all of Blacks troubles. White can lay claim to a huge positional advantage, although, mathematically the position is equal, as in the numeric value of pieces of both sides are the same.
White =9+5+5+3+1+1+1+1+1+1=28
Black =9+5+5+3+1+1+1+1+1+1 =28
If we permit ourselves to bend the laws of chess with our imagination, we can explore the nature of the position more deeply. Without altering the position of the king, lets observe a few hypothetical scenarios, where the position is balanced.
Improving the position of one of our rooks is not enough to restore balance here. White has an advantage after d5.
Imagine that we shift our inactive rooks to d5 and d8. Black's king would cease to be weak.
Imagine that you remove white's most active rook and Blacks Most passive rook. Black can even hope for a slight edge now.
Black can be happy with his position if we shift the passive h8 rook to d5.
By eliminating all the rooks from the position Black emerges with a slightly better position.
We can descend back to reality and can contemplate whether it was the king that was weak in the initial position. We can also observe that Black is also very far away from achieving these scenarios we have dreamed of.
We can draw certain conclusions from our exploration:
● The king does not really possess any qualities of strength or weakness individually. It entirely depends on its ability to communicate with the rest of his army.
● The harmony of a position depends on how quickly the pieces can communicate with each other.
● Everything exists as part of the whole and the sum of the whole is morethan its parts!.The pieces have their own individual values but once you start adding them there is an extra factor of connection between pieces.
