"Activity, Activity, Your Kingdom for My Activity!"

"Activity, Activity, Your Kingdom for My Activity"

- Travis Patay

Super GM Levon Aronian's active piece play and his method to achieve such activity impressed me so much that I decided I had to make a blog post annotating the game.

We're all taught, starting as beginners, that active chess pieces are better. But what does this really mean? Why exactly are they better? I've encountered a concrete explanation for this that I would like to share. I learned this nugget of wisdom from my all-time favorite chess book.

In the videos for The Seven Deadly Chess Sins on Chessable, GM Jonathan Rowson explains how pieces that are more active than their counterparts are simply better and have more quality. He further explains that being more active is the same as being "up in material."

I've understood this aspect of chess for a long time on some level, but hearing him say those words explicitly had a great impact on me. It's so easy to get bogged down by material factors, which is one of the deadly sins: materialism. There's so much more going on in a chess game than just the material count, and it's critical that we give them all our due attention.

I now return to the chess quote I created for this Blog Post:

"Activity, Activity, Your Kingdom for My Activity."

Other chess factors, such as material count or pawn structure, can often take a backseat to the trump card that is piece activity, which can readily translate to a significant advantage. I challenge you, the reader, to strive for piece activity in your games and, with skillful play, demand your opponent's Kingdom in return!

Now, onto my annotation for this Blog Post's featured game, Levon Aronian vs. Vincent Keymer: