I am curious as to how one would go about determining their playing style.

I once heard on here that a person does not have a playing style until they reach a certain rating. Is this true?

 

To be honest, I don't even know what the different playing styles are. 

To answer the question directly: "style" basically describes what sorts of positions you prefer. If you prefer closed positions with a slow manouevering game you're a "positional" player. If you prefer open positions with lots of tactics all over the place, you're a "tactical" player.

But really, it's not as important as some make it out to be. People say that Tal was a tactical player and Petrosian was a positional player; but Tal understood positional play and Petrosian could execute stunning tactical combinations. Masters are masters because they've mastered all aspects of chess. We are not masters because we haven't mastered the game. So why worry about our style? There's lots of other things we have to learn first.

Thanks for your response. By the definitions above, I suppose I currently would be more of a tactical player (i'm not great at either style however). But I guess you are correct, it's too early for me to worry about my playing style.

At some point in time, I would assume that you would want to know your style in order to asses your strengths and weaknesses.  

lance is correct about playing styles and that every player needs to be able to function in any style of game.  However, it is helpful as you progress deeper into chess to make mental note of what types of games you tend to play better in.  Sometimes you'll find that what you enjoy the most - they type of game you feel the most comfortable in playing - is not the type of game in which you play at your best.

A simple thing to begin keeping track of is whether you win more games that open with a double king pawn opening or with a double queen pawn opening.

For years I almost always opened with a queen pawn of with Nf3, avoiding king pawn openings because I was more comfortable in a slow and ponderous game than one where both sides come out swinging.  then I started keeping track of the results, and discoverdd that I wan a far greater %age of the games that opened with double king pawn than with double queen.

That told me that I should spend some time studying the king pawn openings I already did well with in order to get a better understanding of them.

that i know about myself is, complete noob

diskamyl wrote: Checkers4Me wrote:

I am curious as to how one would go about determining their playing style.

I once heard on here that a person does not have a playing style until they reach a certain rating. Is this true?

 

To be honest, I don't even know what the different playing styles are. 

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 I think it's closely related to one's personality too. Kasparov is a very agressive and agile person in real life, too, for example.

if you find a particular style better, then I think the way to adopt it for your own play is studying the games of the greats that have played in that style, and having a strict opening repertuare too. 

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 Thanks for the advice. To be honest, I haven't even really begun to study openings. I bought Chess Openings: Traps and Zaps a while back, but it is probably the most useless book that I own right now.

i agree that certain openings fit certain personalty types. Some are calm some are agressive. i play everything though from crazy kings gambit and icelandic gambit englund gambit to safe philidor defense and french. i find playing the same openings all the time boring.

Try every opening there is an then pick 2 favs for white an 2 for black and get good at them.

u may have a playing style at any rating... all it means is what kind of moves u like to make and so forth