This is actually a serious point that deserves its own thread. All the time one is seeing GM assessments expressed as += or =+. What exactly do they mean? More latitude in possible plans? Less restricted pieces? Easier development and more natural moves? Maybe all these factors are related? And how is a club player to play such positions? Reading a game in Informant, the positions morph effortlessly from slight advantage to clear advantage to winning advantage. How do the winners know how to play such positions and why does their opponent stumble at critical junctures? To my knowledge, except for Gufeld's pathetic book (titled "Exploiting Small Advantages"), there's no book that treats the subject matter of small edges and what to do with them. Maybe the small edge only becomes evident in hindsight, in the postmortem? During the game, the player may be too busy calculating to determine who exactly has the microscopic edge and how to use it.Gavin Strachan wrote:I wonder if Karpov (and Spassky in later years) ever thought of writing a book called "attacking chess" perhaps how to "grind out a win with a micro edge".
Maybe someone like Nunn, Marin, or Dvoretsky could write a book on this.