Is greed good or bad?  Certainly greed is good -- no, make that great -- when we are talking about the song with that name by Varga.  But what about on the chess board?  Every now and again one will find a posting that says how bad greed is on the chess board.  Invariably, the proof of this contention is a game in which one player (the greedy one) took what appeared to be a free piece, but it was a poison piece, and sprung a trap, thereby allowing the opponent to win.  Greed is bad.  QED.  But this is non sequitur logic.  Greed is defined by Wikipedia as:

Greed is the self-serving desire for the pursuit of money, wealth, power, food, or other possessions, especially when this denies the same goods to others.

 

It is not to be confused with being short-sighted, choosing immediate gratification over long-term benefit.  The party being denied is not yourself at a later time, but rather somebody else.  There is no notion of mortgaging the future.  What was proven is that short-sightedness is bad on the chess board.  The question of greed has not been addressed.  To address it properly, one would need to ask questions such as the following:

I beat this player seven times in a row, and now we are playing again.  I want to win again, but is that being greedy?  if I do win this game too, then will this player stop playing with me?

I do not have the answer to whether greed is good or bad.  I offer myself not as an expert on greed, but rather as one who has a modicum of knowledge of logic; at least enough to recognize the spurious arguments against greed.

Greed can be very bad.

There are two possible definitions of greed in chess. The first is the metagame greed, wanting to win at all costs (mating with sacrificing pieces, stuff like that). That one is good, because you get to win.

The second definition is ingame greed. You take a piece whenever you can, attack the king whenever you can. This kind of greed is bad because it can backfire easily.

haha great post! Very Humorous made me laugh. Thanks

On the other hand a good sense of greed can alert you to unsound sacrifices. One example from my own games is:

Thank you -- but it seems that some of you read only the title of the post, and not the post itself.  We still seem to be confusing greed with stupidity.

Greed is pretty much part of stupidity - it is the process by which you stop thinking when there's a chance of you gaining. If you define greed as wanting to improve your position the debate unravels. Theres only an argument if greed means being materialistic in chess.

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Well said -- I would have to agree with you!

Does anyone realize that "greed is good" is a cheat code for WC3?

Pardon my ignorance, but what does that mean?

Warcraft 3, the game?

I see.  Thank you for clarifying!

Sry, I am a gamer, so I just presume that everyone know what I am talking about.

I'm a gamer too, but my game is soccer -- do you call it "nogoment"?  I know that is Croatian, but not sure if Serbian too.

LOL, you are like the first american that I know who like soccer. Nogomet is croatian, we say fudbal (pronaunce same as football). I on the other hand like NFL. We are doing it all wrong.

I like both!

Philadelphia fan?

I hate the damned Eagles!  Giants fan!  And I became a Cards fan when they knocked off the Eagles!

O M G, I am not talking to you anymore. And just when we get to know each other... I dont know who i hate more, G-man or Cards....

Well, we both like soccer and chess, right?