Everyone knows that rooks belong on the 7th rank. Everyone knows about how powerful a knight on the 6th rank is. Everyone knows knights love Bishop5 squares.
Computers know that stuff too. At least, they know the what and the how emerges from trial and error (rather than any directed planning).
davidegpc, people are not computers and cannot calculate infinite variations. Us mere humans make moves based on positional considerations. Therefore positional chess does exist.
General warning:
Don't try to argue with davidegpc, he's proven to be immune to logic and reason over and over again on this forum. Nothing good can result from a engaging in discussion with him.
davidegpc, people are not computers and cannot calculate infinite variations. Us mere humans make moves based on positional considerations. Therefore positional chess does exist.
No computer calculates infinite variations,but feel free to provide evidence that there is one program which does that. Since some people here put in doubt my capacity to logically reason, I do believe the problem is the contrary, if someone doesn't know what "infinite" is.
Engines just make an evaluation based on a number and time. You give them 1 minute to think they will look for a certain number of plys, and then choose the numerical evaluation which is better or less worse for that position.
So your magical words "positional considerations" don't make sense, because as written above if someone you consider good, Silman, needs a computer to check his work, it means those "positional considerations" were not giving him the correct answer about that position.
Are you high?
davidegpc, people are not computers and cannot calculate infinite variations. Us mere humans make moves based on positional considerations. Therefore positional chess does exist.
No computer calculates infinite variations,but feel free to provide evidence that there is one program which does that. Since some people here put in doubt my capacity to logically reason, I do believe the problem is the contrary, if someone doesn't know what "infinite" is.
Engines just make an evaluation based on a number and time. You give them 1 minute to think they will look for a certain number of plys, and then choose the numerical evaluation which is better or less worse for that position.
So your magical words "positional considerations" don't make sense, because as written above if someone you consider good, Silman, needs a computer to check his work, it means those "positional considerations" were not giving him the correct answer about that position.
Are you high?
Look again, I'm talking in a civilized manner, I show my arguments, and if you are not a retarded person you should do the same. But if you feel to start using names, to demean me, I will feel free to do the same, and since no moderator is stopping your abuse, I do feel the right to do the same.
No, I'm not high, but it is not my fault if you are affected by down-syndrome, and the best your parents can do is to give you a computer, and internet connection.
My abuse?
davidegpc, people are not computers and cannot calculate infinite variations. Us mere humans make moves based on positional considerations. Therefore positional chess does exist.
No computer calculates infinite variations,but feel free to provide evidence that there is one program which does that. Since some people here put in doubt my capacity to logically reason, I do believe the problem is the contrary, if someone doesn't know what "infinite" is.
Engines just make an evaluation based on a number and time. You give them 1 minute to think they will look for a certain number of plys, and then choose the numerical evaluation which is better or less worse for that position.
So your magical words "positional considerations" don't make sense, because as written above if someone you consider good, Silman, needs a computer to check his work, it means those "positional considerations" were not giving him the correct answer about that position.
Are you high?
Look again, I'm talking in a civilized manner, I show my arguments, and if you are not a retarded person you should do the same. But if you feel to start using names, to demean me, I will feel free to do the same, and since no moderator is stopping your abuse, I do feel the right to do the same.
No, I'm not high, but it is not my fault if you are affected by down-syndrome, and the best your parents can do is to give you a computer, and internet connection.
My abuse?
I don't recall telling someone to be on drugs as a compliment, in my field (medicine) is reason for immediate firing from the working place. But again feel free to provide evidence that in a western society to be on drugs is a term of endearment. Hope you are not so childish that you cannot even admit that when you offend someone, you should apologies. Or feel free to provide evidence how your phrase on my assumed state of mind (you not being my doctor or psychotherapist, and I doubt you have a medical degree to diagnose on distance) would be a logical counter argument to the honest questions I asked about positional chess and tactics.
You really don't have any idea how ridiculous you sound. I have one counter argument I have stated several times: your argument against the existence of positional chess is simply one of semantics and quite silly.
hey kids i asked my computer if positional chess exists and it said:
1101010000011101010111000010100000101000111111100100011110101000001110101001
001001000100000111101101110111100001000110000000111010100001000
I think this settles the argument conclusively, I wish I could think like that.
^ because not believing in positional play is beyond ridiculous. It exists,whether or not you accept it is another story.
And the notion that one unexpected move throws your whole game off is wrong. I don't know about you,but I don't play chicken chess. I don't get scared by my opponents,I don't let them get in my way. I do what I want. I play the move I want to play,and only stop if my opponent's last move contained a serious threat.
Tactics and postional play, are like mother and father of chess. You cannot have one with out the other.
Yeah, continue to believe in fables. Positional chess doesn't exist, the proof, as given above in many messages, that strangely you didn't read, is again the same many others put in form of questions:
1° If Positional chess exists, why Silman used 2 engines to check the games of his last book? It should be evident the contradiction, that such enlightened teacher needs computers, which don't use positional skills, to check his positional teachings!
2° If positional chess exists, then why don't learn it from computers? Since it is clear there is no human being who can beat Rybka or Houdini. And they can give pawn and first move to the world champion, which means clearly there is not something as positional chess, or that those 2 engines know the game better than anyone else.
3° It was asked to the group of pink unicorn believers (believers of positional chess) to bring some games where GMs have won against computers thanks to positional chess, still this has not been done, and there should be a lot of material to prove it, or surely should be an interesting article or book to write. But what I saw was Kamsky that cried like a little baby in one of chess life magazines, saying that no human plays like Rybka, because they would lose, but Rybka beat Kamsky also doing moves that no positional chess genius like Kamsky would do, showing that there is no such a thing as positional chess. And yes, as human you can trick other humans into believe in fables, but they fall apart when put under scrutiny, as in this case.
And again, anyone has the right to have an opinion, from their "rating" level, but from your, very poor, or from Silman also very very poor, evidently you cannot judge the game, as someone which is 3200, which are Rybka and Houdini.
Of course positional chess exists. However so do tactics. When there is a tactic in a position, that must come first. Silman had to check his games with engines because people thought his book was totally flawed because of some mistakes. It was not, the positional ideas were sound, however the examples had some flaws. People would be better off worring about positional ideas and not complicated tactics that they would never find in a real game.
hey kids i asked my computer if positional chess exists and it said:
1101010000011101010111000010100000101000111111100100011110101000001110101001
001001000100000111101101110111100001000110000000111010100001000
I think this settles the argument conclusively, I wish I could think like that.
THE 
END !!
The real question is: are you better off investing your time to learn to calculate one move deeper or are you better off learning all of positional play while calculating one move less deep? If you can only see 2-3 moves ahead, perhaps calculation is more important. But what if you can routinely see 7-8 moves ahead? Does seeing 9 moves ahead make a player better than another who sees only 8-moves ahead but has mastered positional play?
You need to learn (to train) to see about 4 moves (2 by each side) deep. You should calculate deeper only if the resulting position is not calm or there is something else specific. Some chess programs use the so-called search extensions, which stand for increasing the search depth by 1 move when certain things occur during the move branch analysis. Such as: checks; recaptures; singular reply moves; threats; pawn pushes, etc.
The idea is that if nothing significant is happening, you needn't analyze that move branch deeper. Otherwise, if there are forcing moves, singular reply moves and others, you should calculate the variation 1 ply deeper for each of them.
All the rest is positional analysis.
Many people will of course disagree (and will say the deeper you calculate the better, but that's overwhelming, inefficient and unnecessary). That's their right so I don't mind, as long as they are comfortable with their beliefs.
But as Andrew Soltis wrote, "Of all the life lessons that chess teaches, perhaps the most valuable is that you need to be honest with yourself."
^ because not believing in positional play is beyond ridiculous. It exists,whether or not you accept it is another story.
And the notion that one unexpected move throws your whole game off is wrong. I don't know about you,but I don't play chicken chess. I don't get scared by my opponents,I don't let them get in my way. I do what I want. I play the move I want to play,and only stop if my opponent's last move contained a serious threat.
Tactics and postional play, are like mother and father of chess. You cannot have one with out the other.
Yeah, continue to believe in fables. Positional chess doesn't exist, the proof, as given above in many messages, that strangely you didn't read, is again the same many others put in form of questions:
1° If Positional chess exists, why Silman used 2 engines to check the games of his last book? It should be evident the contradiction, that such enlightened teacher needs computers, which don't use positional skills, to check his positional teachings!
2° If positional chess exists, then why don't learn it from computers? Since it is clear there is no human being who can beat Rybka or Houdini. And they can give pawn and first move to the world champion, which means clearly there is not something as positional chess, or that those 2 engines know the game better than anyone else.
3° It was asked to the group of pink unicorn believers (believers of positional chess) to bring some games where GMs have won against computers thanks to positional chess, still this has not been done, and there should be a lot of material to prove it, or surely should be an interesting article or book to write. But what I saw was Kamsky that cried like a little baby in one of chess life magazines, saying that no human plays like Rybka, because they would lose, but Rybka beat Kamsky also doing moves that no positional chess genius like Kamsky would do, showing that there is no such a thing as positional chess. And yes, as human you can trick other humans into believe in fables, but they fall apart when put under scrutiny, as in this case.
And again, anyone has the right to have an opinion, from their "rating" level, but from your, very poor, or from Silman also very very poor, evidently you cannot judge the game, as someone which is 3200, which are Rybka and Houdini.
1. Because Silman didn't believe in positional chess when he did that. But chess neither starts nor ends with Silman, nor with any of his actions. It is not him to decide whether positional chess should exist, neither is anyone else.
2. Because humans teach computers, and learning from a computer is learning from who has taught it. Computers can't generate their own understanding for chess, neither teach it to humans. (Let alone the fact that the same question can be asked about calculational chess, and there will be the same answer.)
3. This is not actually a question, but it seems to me that if no GMs have won against computers thanks to positional chess, also no GMs have won against computers thanks to calculation superiority.
Also, chess rating has nothing to do with reasoning and opinions. Computers, actually, are the best example. But even if they had one, why should we assume it to be that strategy doesn't exist? If we assume their opinion, is it really theirs? We should let them speak for themselves. Otherwise we need to rely on our reasoning.
This is a great passionate discussion. Why do rooks like the 7th rank? Lots of tactical/mating opportunities. Why do bishops like open diagonals? Lots of tactical/mating opportunities. Why do knights enjoy advanced squares in enemy territories where a pawn can't displace them? Lots of tactical/mating opportunities.
"Positional" play would therefore seem an attempt by humans to set up checkmate and if you can calculate well enough or know enough patterns, then to set up positions before checkmate (attacks). But since we are imprefect calculators so Rybka beats us every time, much like a 1400 will destroy me. One is simply attempting to advance his/her own pieces to checkmate the enemy, but one needs to calculate deeper and more accurately than the enemy to win. Those who have played more and studied more happen to know more patterns and exact lines/examples of more "accurate" play to achieve these objectives.
davidegpc:
1) I know Silman, and I respect his achievements. I meant that his (or anyone's) actions alone can't be used as evidence of positional chess existence / non existence.
2) Yes, there are a lot of things that can be learnt from chess programming - but both about strategy and calculation. I think I get your point - I think you mean that if we can learn something from computers at all, it should be strategy (so they contain it), not calculational skills because calculational skills are a matter not so much of reasoning than of developing allpicable abilities (speed, etc.). But the opposite is wrong - we can't negate both statements and come up with the conclusion that as we don't learn from them, there's no strategy in them.
3) Yes, but this can also be said about tactics.
Rating doesn't matter here. Rating doesn't play chess, neither does it think or give proofs. As far as reasoning is concerned, rating is only a side circumstance (a fact) and if someone claims it affects resoning, he should be able to say why. What affects reasoning is knowledge, and knowledge may or may not affect rating, but it is definitely not a consequence of rating.
davidegpc, people are not computers and cannot calculate infinite variations. Us mere humans make moves based on positional considerations. Therefore positional chess does exist.
No computer calculates infinite variations,but feel free to provide evidence that there is one program which does that. Since some people here put in doubt my capacity to logically reason, I do believe the problem is the contrary, if someone doesn't know what "infinite" is.
Engines just make an evaluation based on a number and time. You give them 1 minute to think they will look for a certain number of plys, and then choose the numerical evaluation which is better or less worse for that position.
So your magical words "positional considerations" don't make sense, because as written above if someone you consider good, Silman, needs a computer to check his work, it means those "positional considerations" were not giving him the correct answer about that position.
Are you high?
Look again, I'm talking in a civilized manner, I show my arguments, and if you are not a retarded person you should do the same. But if you feel to start using names, to demean me, I will feel free to do the same, and since no moderator is stopping your abuse, I do feel the right to do the same.
No, I'm not high, but it is not my fault if you are affected by down-syndrome, and the best your parents can do is to give you a computer, and internet connection.
My abuse?
I don't recall telling someone to be on drugs as a compliment, in my field (medicine) is reason for immediate firing from the working place. But again feel free to provide evidence that in a western society to be on drugs is a term of endearment. Hope you are not so childish that you cannot even admit that when you offend someone, you should apologies. Or feel free to provide evidence how your phrase on my assumed state of mind (you not being my doctor or psychotherapist, and I doubt you have a medical degree to diagnose on distance) would be a logical counter argument to the honest questions I asked about positional chess and tactics.
You really don't have any idea how ridiculous you sound. I have one counter argument I have stated several times: your argument against the existence of positional chess is simply one of semantics and quite silly.
General warning: if someone disagrees withGeordiLaForge he will start to stalk you in other threads, and write attacking messages.
Please, report me to staff.
General warning:
Don't try to argue with davidegpc, he's proven to be immune to logic and reason over and over again on this forum. Nothing good can result from a engaging in discussion with him.
Frankly your attack ad hominem, just shows that you don't know anything about logic and reason. Especially if the best you can do to refute my arguments is a personal attack, instead of showing your counter-argument.
Why the school system of your country didn't teach you how to reason? Or maybe you are just retarded, because of genetical reasons?
So, if you want to show a refutation of my arguments, I'm here, if you just think you can offend me, well I believe I can do the same, and since no moderator is stopping this behavior, feel free to escalate and let's see where it will bring us.
My main reason for posting in this thread was not to offend you, but to warn others that arguing with you is futile for the reasons I mentioned.
"Positional" play would therefore seem an attempt by humans to set up checkmate and if you can calculate well enough or know enough patterns, then to set up positions before checkmate (attacks). But since we are imprefect calculators so Rybka beats us every time, much like a 1400 will destroy me.
One's tactical opportunities are created by his opponent's strategical mistakes (poor control of lines, bad pawn structure, etc.). Tactics are inevitably connected with the board position (that's why most, if not all, tactics training exercises are a board setup to unpuzzle). There are also considerations that unused (not or poorly developed) material shouldn't be counted when evaluating, and many other principles that take similar features in mind.
It should all show that tactics are a part of a much larger picture. Computers (Rybkas) are able to see it much faster than humans, but they don't see anything a human can't see. Humans may be simply too overwhelmed / lazy / unwilling / etc. to notice it, and they will miss it if they don't know how to analyze the position. The problem is with human persistency, not with strategy existence.
Tactics are created by tactical mistakes, by definition. If I advance the wrong pawn and I get checkmated, then that's a tactical mistake. If I block in my bishop and my pawn structure limits my king's mobility, that is a tactical worry (easier to checkmate a king with limited escape options).
I thought by common usage, it takes multiple strategic mistakes to finally amount to a tactical mistake, since positional play/strategy involves the accumulation of multiple "small" advantages.
Anyway, isn't John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy essentially a critique of the presence of commonly accepted general chess principles based on using modern games/examples? What does that leave one with? Concrete analysis based on calculation. GM Andy Soltis (in Studying Chess Made Easy) says 99% of chess is not tactics but is calculation. The fact that chess has constant logical rules and ends in checkmate argues in favor of Soltis.
So why would I want to read a primer on Strategy or Positional Play if none exists? Simply because I can't calculate that far and I want to be able to think of something to aim for when I don't see immediate material gain or checkmate...but this is simply me hoping that when I make this move, my opponent will make another move that will be easier for me to identify a tactic/win if available. But I'll take the concrete analysis skills that comes from being able to calculate deeper over the generalities of "positional play"...doesn't the mere state of chess opening theory prove this?
Tactics are created by tactical mistakes, by definition. If I advance the wrong pawn and I get checkmated, then that's a tactical mistake. If I block in my bishop and my pawn structure limits my king's mobility, that is a tactical worry (easier to checkmate a king with limited escape options).
I thought by common usage, it takes multiple strategic mistakes to finally amount to a tactical mistake, since positional play/strategy involves the accumulation of multiple "small" advantages.
Anyway, isn't John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy essentially a critique of the presence of commonly accepted general chess principles based on using modern games/examples? What does that leave one with? Concrete analysis based on calculation. GM Andy Soltis (in Studying Chess Made Easy) says 99% of chess is not tactics but is calculation. The fact that chess has constant logical rules and ends in checkmate argues in favor of Soltis.
So why would I want to read a primer on Strategy or Positional Play if none exists? Simply because I can't calculate that far and I want to be able to think of something to aim for when I don't see immediate material gain or checkmate...but this is simply me hoping that when I make this move, my opponent will make another move that will be easier for me to identify a tactic/win if available. But I'll take the concrete analysis skills that comes from being able to calculate deeper over the generalities of "positional play"...doesn't the mere state of chess opening theory prove this?
Calculation leads to outcomes. Checkmate or clear gain of material are decisive outcomes. But if there are no decisive outcomes then doesn't the calculation rest on positional considerations? The only way to evaluate non-decisive outcomes is through postional considerations.
Has anyone actually done this in a systematic way?