Why It's so hard to play against "stone" players

In my chess experience I've run into countless "stone players". What do I mean with that you may be asking? First of all no, it's not stonewall players if that's what you were thinking, I mean players that play by the law of reaction, playing passive looking openings and somehow emerge with amazing ideas in endgame/middlegame. I'll look at one of my games as an example:

In this game My opponent played a weird out-of-theory opening and defended well until he blundered the queen in time scramble, after looking at some similair games I've noticed that this players have:

• Strenghts:
  • Tremendous Defending/strategical skills
  • High resistance
  • Reasourcefulness
• Weaknesses:
  • Often miss cheap tactical shots because they're too concerned on being positional
  • Often use too much (or too little) time during the game
  • they understimate attacking possibilities and often remain very passive

This Playing style is normally found in mostly inactive chess players who don't have modern opening knowledge or are not studying daily, so they are trying to give a run for their strength and many times it works!

How to beat them?

You could be either as tactically gifted as Tal or Stockfish or use this more simple method:

The Pickaxe method

I invented this method today, and it consits in: 1. Do not overextend in the centre, that's their plan 2. Use some Attacking Systems with clear and simple ideas 3. avoid exchanging pieces if it's not very favorable 4. the slower and more prepared the attack is the better 5. They will play quite slowly and many times you can wait before attacking until all of your pieces are in the best squares.

I hope this little article will help you during your chess career, see you in the next one!