Domination

by Jan Markos

The idea of completely dominating your opponent at the board and forcing them into total passivity is one of Jan Markos' favourite themes in chess. Because once you have achieved this, all options are open to you - you can start collecting material or move and improve your own pieces freely and without any time pressure. Markos illustrates the power of domination with three sample games by Alexandr Predke, Vidit Gujrathi and Magnus Carlsen! "‘Domination is a very important tool for a strong chess player. quite often it is worth it to invest your material, your time or transferring your attack in a way that you get such a position.’"

In addition to the video, Jan Markos invites you to solve a couple of training tasks – try to find the best dominating moves!

Small collection of exercises

How should Black continue in order to create maximum problems for his opponent? Wang,H - Nepomniachtchi,I

White has full domination, but needs to be careful not to lose it. How would you play? Ivanchuk,V - Radjabov,T

How should White continue? Can you solve this position with the same precision as the 13-years-old Magnus Carlsen? Carlsen,M - Lie,K

Can you see the contours of an emerging White´s domination here? What should White play? Burmakin,V - Markarov,A

White is much better. But how would you try to achieve full domination? Drori,S - Roiz,M