Would You Recommend How to Reassess Your Chess by Silman?

It is for me. Sometimes I make a good move based on incorrect calculation.   When that happens I feel very lucky. I guess someone could make the argument that my intuition triumphed. Not sure I buy that. Sometimes I just randomly drop my pieces on good squares.

 Well stated. I think you are completely correct, except perhaps in the situations where a player has a lost position and he purposely introduces complicated but incorrect tactics into the position. The tactics really aren't based on positional considerations, they are based on desperation. It is his only chance to save the game. Normal and correct positional moves would lose trivially. On the other hand can someone make the argument that based on the reality of the position these kind of moves are actually positionally (but not tactically) sound?

But shouldn't the most positionally sound moves set up the best and soundest tactical chances?

No, there is no such definition (at least I don't know it). Moreover, creating pawn structure weaknesses and limiting piece mobility (making a bishop bad or blocking a king or another piece) are strategical mistakes. A tactical mistake is, for example, to capture a piece with a more valuable one if you know the opponent can recapture, not to take into account the opposition (usually at an endgame), etc.

Yes, often it takes more than one strategical mistake to allow an opponent's tactic. But at least one is required. It depends on the position. (I recently played an OTB game where I advanced a pawn, and this unlocked a 8 move tactic that my opponent used. At first play was calm, though he played forcing moves. But I finally ended up a piece down because that pawn move gave my opponent access to useful squares and lines that he managed to exploit, while my pieces were gradually getting inferior while I moved them. After the game we had a look at the position and there was no way to avoid the tactic.) Every tactic requires certain board conditions, and as soon as they occur, it is ready to be launched.

I haven't read John Watson's book. But I have read many books from Andrew Soltis, and he's one of my favourite authors. He really says calculation is very important. But he also wrote the book "Pawn Structure Chess" (that I can recommend to anyone) where he shows how important strategy is, and that every board position requires a certain strategical approach - for both attacking and counterplay.

Yes.

(And because they exist too.)

Opening theory is a means of saving time (time is interchangeable with other chess "resources"), as all strategy knowledge (not that opening theory contains strategy only). The purpose of memorising book openings is to save time. Of course, you can calculate instead. But let's take as an example a Sicilian line, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4. It contains 6 moves, and if before every one of them there are about 20 legal moves, to come up with this position without book knowledge you'll need to check 20^6 moves. Even if you check only the most obvious candidate moves (say, 5 per move), you'll need about 5^6 lines to calculate. But if you play, say, White, you have prepared yourself, you know you'll open with 1.e4, you know that if your opponent replies 1...c5 you'll play 2.Nf3 and so on, you needn't calculate until you go out of your opening repertoire. Then you need to start thinking more intensively.

But the matter is similar - either you have to calculate much, or reduce calculation efforts by implementing general strategical principles. Which of them you'll use is up to your and your opponent's skills, knowledge, experience, preferences, etc, even mood if you like.

Anyway, when it comes to managing resources (be they material or non-material - in this case calculation and strategical abilities), the marginal utility principle will come up - the more you increase your usage of one of them while not improving the other, the less effect every consequent improvement has. Or as many people like to say - work more on your weaknesses.

(That's an indirect way to say that if one really doesn't use strategy, he will have a much bigger overall improvement if he has a small strategical improvement than if he has a tactical improvement of the same or maybe even much bigger size. And vise versa.)

Yes! That's the case. I agree with you.

Some posts earlier I wrote a similar opinion that tactics require particularity; temporatity, circumstance dependance; progress (action); a limit in view length;  tangibility and certain inevitability. Strategy requires integrity; permanency; evaluation; farsightedness; generalization.

I also think the reason there is so much negating of strategical play and praising of tactics is at least partly because many people don't make an exact distinguishment between them.

Wait, how does strategy require integrity?

Anyway, I think the distinction between tactics and strategy is actually rather arbitrary -- indeed, in some interpretations, you could even have just tactics, calling positional play "slow tactics" (although for my purposes I don't). I say use the definition that fits your preferences, that makes talking about chess convenient for you. After all, it's not the person who "correctly" defines a chess vocabulary term, or knows the name of the opening played that wins the game.

jo momma

YES Fantastic book! If you want the rundown with much less depth, read The amateur's mind by silman!

Your allegations are slander.

Please report me to staff.

I'm still waiting for you to tell me where all those two and three dollar Silman books are.

1. This is not a debate; your insistence that it is one seems to be among the fundamental disagreements here and needs to be worked out.
2. Yes, all expressions of thought need to be thoroughly spaced and buffered by meaningless fluff, sextuple nested quotes, and ad hominem attacks.

Yes! but play hundreds of OTB (long game) and solitaire chess afterwards and apply what you've learned.....this is the best way to improve. 

Strategy requires integrity in the way it requires connection between particular means.

When it comes about discussion, there must be an agreement about terms. Otherwise there will neither be understanding nor any constructive outcome. One may be able to play chess without being acquainted with chess terminology. But if he wants to discuss chess with other people, he should make sure he understands and is being understood, which requires unification in terminology (as all communications do). Definitions are useless for a single person, but a necessity for interpersonal understanding (each word is actually a definition, even if it is not so evident). When there is obviously disagreement about terms, a mutual agreement must be first achieved. Similarly, when you meet someone who doesn't speak your language, you should first establish a mutually understandable language (be it by learning the other language or finding a language both people are able to use), and then have a conversation.

Also, to come up with an objective conclusion, you can't use subjective senses. If people do so, even if they manage to reach an agreement, it is only superficial.

Otherwise, if everyone uses terms as he wishes, he will be completely comfortable with himself, but there will be no conversation. When it comes to communication and objectiveness, the "everyone is right in their own eyes" principle doesn't work.

People tend to dislike (or even fear) obscurity, and this is one of the reasons humanity likes to explore, investigate, learn, etc. When one is not familiar with something, the subconscious reaction to it is suspiciousness, and sometimes even agressiveness. I believe much of the quarrels here are exactly due to lack of understanding of what the discussion is about, which results in personalization of the conflicts, which in turn results in hostility due to the lack of tolerance. In other words, one claims something he believes in (expressing himself correctly or not); someone else doesn't understand correctly and "fixes" the first one's "mistake"; the first one can't think of being wrong (because they both don't know what they are arguing about, but they are convinced in their own beliefs' truthfulness) and gets the reply as a personal attack, doesn't stay behind and offends the other one, and so on - this repeats until a more interesting quarrel is created by others to draw the attention away.

This here is somethig like the broken telephone game in a wicked and boring version, but definitely not a discussion between civilised people who pretend to be able to play chess, to communicate, etc. Chances are it will stay the same, because unwillingness to understand the others and to express oneself correctly is incorrect, but comfortable. It doesn't require mental activity; only instinctive reactivity.

Here's another opinion that is similar to mine:

Although it's true that slightly different definitions can affect exchanges, it's not that bad

I think it's ok to believe strategy is a separate part of the game, or that it is another form of tactic, simply because there is validity in each opinion. The problem with trying to come to an agreement, is that sometimes that can't always happen, and if we make a definition and force people to accept it for practical purposes, it would just be strange, to be frank. For some, thinking of chess as divided between strategy and tactics may be less clear to them than not putting any label on either; instead viewing everything in the game as whole. And the player should not be forced to go against that. We have to use purely objective definitions for language (which, by the way, does have subjectivity leave a mark -- the word pathetic for example literally means more or less "to evoke emotion," but today it's simply used to describe something really bad, inducing pity. In reality, pathetic could be referring to something really bad or really good), but in chess, our "language" is good enough that a few flaws in the system won't have any large impacts.

Even if two people have slightly different concepts of positional play, a conversation would not necessarily be difficult if they are "close enough" if you know what I mean. It's too hard for there to be a 100% precise definition that everybody can totally agree on, so a couple of small arbitrary adjustments each of us makes to them is natural.

"Strategy requires integrity in the way it requires connection between particular means."

I don't know what that means. Do you mean looking at everything about your position and trying to see what it implies as a whole? Unification perhaps? It just seemed like integrity was a strange way of describing the elements of strategy.

I think it means he did not have sex with that woman.

Chess has constant logical rules that don't change.  Therefore it is solvable (though we don't know if it is theoretical draw or forced win), but we don't have the technological means to solve the many positions possible (there are literally hundreds of positions possible in chess). 

There is no "general" rule that can be obeyed to ensure sucess when immediate material gain or checkmate is not seen.   The "generalities" may work well against rank amateurs like myself, but it is essentially "hope chess"...if I set up a 2-move mate and my opponent sees it and has a response, then my "attack" is over.  Various positional "principles" (rooks taking over files, bishops taking over diagonals, knights on the 6th, pawn structure, etc.) are simply attempts to set up the equivalent of my pathetic transparent "mate-in-2", except that these "attacks" are at a deeper length than I can caclulate. As you advance in skill and decrease the number of obvious mistakes in your play, the depth (e.g., sophistication) of such "attack"-planning increases. 

At the highest level, there are too many exceptions to the "general" rules and principles, though these rules may work regularly against 2nd-rate players ("2nd-rate" is a relative term...Lev Alburt, for instance, is 2nd-rate to Kasparov, even though better than 99.9% of tournament chess players).

The changes in opening theory since 100 years ago, the logical rules of chess, and the concrete nature of tactics and endgames, demonstrate that positional play technically doesn't exist, except as a set-up for attacks that you hope your opponent doesn't see or can't stop (whether your opponent is class E or GM).

Fischer didn't say that Capablanca was a crappy positional player, but he complained that a kid of 14 years can gain an advantage against Capa with pretty much any opening these days.   That's not because of supreme positional skill on the part of the 14 year-old; this is simply the fact that such a kid can literally memorize enough lines that have been improved since Capa's day to maintain an advantage.  (This is why I have to laugh when people say modern champs are more "skilled" than prior champs...they have more concrete knowledge/analysis of specific positions, that's why they'd beat old champs).  You could even argue that Capa realized this phenomenon, which would be why he was so strongly in favor of learning endgames, which are concrete...the more endgames you know, the more forcibly-winning positions you can see relative to your opponent and make moves that "hopefully" s/he won't see due to his/her lack of specific concrete chess knowledge.

You will get blasted by an equally skilled, maybe even less skilled, player if you rely on "general" principles against "preparation" or concrete analysis.  I'll be my own guinea pig.  When I am a GM in 2023, that should prove it, but then again I am just 1 example and people will naysay my success by saying I had a weak sample size (n = 1 is too low).

We needn't force someone to use our definitions. But we should make sure we understand his own ones in this case. Anyway, we can't use both in the same time.

Yes. This has been written many times. But still there are people who insist strategy is not a part of chess (or at least not an important one, or an inferior to tactics one, etc). Then they obviously make some division. But it's unclear what it is. One can't both claim strategy and tactics are undistinguishable and that strategy is less important.

That's a actually a subjective definition for "pathetic". Definitions are not thought out of nowhere. There's nothing wrong with them being subjective, but in this case (as you see) the one who uses them should inform the others what sense he puts in them. As I wrote, an agreement should be achieved.

But they will be enough to produce all the disagreements that have been occuring here. Those flaws are connected with misunderstanding.

I mean strategy is not particular, but general. You can't say "my strategy is to capture 5.Nxd4, then my opponent will reply 5...c6, then I'll play 6.Qe2", but you can say "my strategy is to centralize my knight and take control of the e file", which is much broader and can be achieved in different ways.

Here's a topic created today - an annotated game of one of chess.com's members. If you read the annotations, I think you will find examples of both strategical and tactical thinking:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-showcase/my-first-win-against-a-titled-player-fm?ncc=1

It means noone can surpass his mental shortcomings.

That's true. But a plan's main reason is saving time, because you can't afford to calculate all possible variations. Therefore you need to skip some of them. If you have some principles which ones to explore and which ones to omit, it will be much easier to you (and you will have at least slightly higher chance that you'll keep the better ones than if you don't apply any choice criteria). Strategy is about applying educated guesses.