Caro-Kann: Passive or solid?

A good positional player is the one who should be able to produce tactical shots at any time during a chess game. (for e.g. if your opponent makes a mistake, you should be able to punish them right away) This can only be achieved if you are good at attacking.

As far as your comment is concerned, if you hate your own style then you are just a beginner and should stop playing chess immediately and better invest your time elsewhere. You should always be able to enjoy your chess game. Take for e.g. Petrosian, Karpov , Ulf Andersson and Leko. These players don't/didn't take much risks too but they always enjoyed their style and never changed no matter what people said about them. That also doesn't mean they were not capable of producing moements of magic. They all played tactical chess long after they became GMs. Leko and Fischer played 1 e4 all their life. Any player under 2000 is never a positional player. If they declare themselves as positional players then are just a chicken who play passively because they can not think.

Ulf Andersson played passively all his life (just like you think you play), then why he is 1200 rating above you ? Think about that and change your attitude. You will never improve go beyond your current rating if you don't play for a win or dominating your opponent.

P.S.: I know I used harsh words, but those are necessary sometimes for reality check.

That's an uninformed statement. I'm rated give or take 1800, and I play positionally. The meaning behind a positional player is one who choose their moves depending on the imbalances on the board and this may either demand a tactical attack, or a buildup of positional pressure.

Any player under 2000 is never a positional player. If they declare themselves as positional players then are just a chicken who play passively because they can not think.

Correct!

Agree and disagree --

Disagree: it's perfectly possible (and to be encouraged) for class players to think about strategic elements and place pieces with longer term goals in mind.

Agree: All questions of style, "I'm a positional this and a tactical that" are pretty much bogus and pretentious for players below 2000 (and probably more like below 2200 -- and that's elo, not chess.com) ... we're still learning the game and should be attempting to improve in all facets of it. 

@TonyDal --

Do you really believe Caro Kann is passive/drawish?  I think you've been hanging around Gonnosuke or those forum guys with Gambit in the name. Come on it's chess...  Jeez, if you want to play King's Gambit, Blackmar Diemer, Traxler counterattack etc... just give in all the way and play Counterstrike, or hell go Bungee jumping... you adrenaline junkie! 

Kidding aside, I've been playing Caro Kann regularly for the past year and I haven't found it boring at all. I've found it exceedingly difficult to play well. Accurate prophylactic chess while waiting for an opportunity to counterpunch is difficult as hell, I think it's making me a better chessplayer though.

So young and playing the Caro-Kann, London System...

When a C or D player plays chess, they might have a preference for certain types of situation. Is that a "style" -- does it really need the vainglorious title: Style? IMHO that's ridiculous puffery.

Player A: I like playing hasty inaccurate unjustified attacks announced with ridiculous sacs, howzabout you?  Player B: I prefer to lose by sitting back pushing my pieces around reacting to my opponents threats while failing to seize the initiative. But what I really like is playing King and Pawn endgames so badly I give away won games two or three times in the space of 5 moves ... Player A: Oh yeah I hear you on the endgames, that's my style too!

We all have our individual preferences but 'style' presumes a certain command of the form, a command which class players emphatically do not have. 

A player who can't look at the majority of middlegame positions and correctly identify the most salient features of the position and correctly identify the plans available to each side doesn't have much business talking about their style, since their style's foundation is a foggy understanding of the position being played. 

Preference is not style.

That's not avoiding Caro-Kann, that's the famous Caro-Kann: Panov Botvinnik attack... I think most Black players are happy to see White being the one who has to concede pawn structure defects. White has, or will have, an IQP -- it's definitely not boring. 

I never said, and never will say, that class player's games are "garbage" -- I was exaggerating a bit, for humorous effect, that was the intention. I'm not trying to put anyone down, really. I'm NOT a titled player. And I've played strong Russian/Eastern European types who acted like there was a bad smell in the room every time I made a move. I really hate that attitude.

But IMs and GMs will tell you that their games (against each other) are full of errors ... it's not being ungenerous to say that class players make a lot errors, make moves that badly misjudge the position. It's just true. 

As for the part about endgames. Well, I'm going to stand my ground there... I've seen way too many games posted on the chess.com forums where the players played pretty decent chess for 25 or 30 moves, and then played the endgame like they were on acid. I didn't mean King vs King + Pawn... I mean like K plus five pawns vs K plus five pawns... or just endings in general. It's really startling how badly they are played, as a rule.

Looks like someone would be proud to have a style . I on the other hand would not care about having a style unless that style was actually backed up by good moves

Style: The way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed

Each chess player has this "way", but it has nothing to do with being able to execute the style well. I remember early on when I had a positional style (still do, but becoming a better chess player has of course allowed me to execute it much better). Sure, I would still make mistakes in judgement or more often blunder a piece in a deep think about minor piece superiority, but there was still a distinct way of me playing that you could tell what I liked most of the time by looking at my games, and I still play with the same philosophy, but it's simply executed in a more efficient, as well as balanced, way. I don't think any low rated player's style needs to be respected, but geez, I would at least call the way they played a style!

If the Caro-Kahn is goood enough for Karpov go with it.  Its a very solid opening. 

"If you play the Caro-Kann when you are young, then what will you play when you are old?" -Bent Larsen

This pretty much sums up my opinion of the opening in question .

The guy who started this thread is just an amateur and is certainely no Karpov.

I think that's something we can all agree about .

Regarding style:

Anand is one fine positional player and he literally throws pieces away whenever he gets an attack. Petrosian is another one, the so-called "Master of Defence". From time to time he suddenly plays like Tal. Finally, Tal himself is known to hunker down and play an endgame when the situation calls for it.

Conclusion: There is such a thing as correct moves, and we shouldn't overestimate style.

Take another example - badminton. A novice struggles to deliver basic strokes and serves; he may "attack" or "defend", yes, but one wouldn't call it style. Or an artist may paint, but if he hasn't mastered the brush, whatever is produced is more likely "schoolkid" than style.

Regarding the Caro-Kahn:

I've played a lot against Caro players and I kind of feel that the philosophical (pokes TonyDal) way to combat it is the Advance Variation, since Black's counterplay is extremely feeble compared to the French. True, this has led to a groaning number of draws, but I am pretty sure my technique (and not style) can be improved. There are other ways to cook the fish, of course.

Regarding passivity and solidity:

I am not even 2000 and even at this level I have felt the "impact" of openings - the Sicilian is a bloody fight, the French is judo, the Ruy Lopez is tense, and the King's Gambit is a berserker. Certainly, an enterprising choice of moves can liven the Caro, but I wouldn't push this point too far. Every system has their rules and playing "out of character" tends to compromise the board.

So yes, the Caro is both passive and solid. A fact as true as the statement that birds fly. (Even if some of them actually swim).

"Take another example - badminton. A novice struggles to deliver basic strokes and serves; he may "attack" or "defend", yes, but one wouldn't call it style. Or an artist may paint, but if he hasn't mastered the brush, whatever is produced is more likely "schoolkid" than style."

One may or may not call it a style, depends on the person, but there's nothing wrong with calling it that. Someone is probably more likely to have a style described if they're good of course, because going to your artist analogy... well, if they aren't good I don't think many people would care enough to dig deep and see the style of a random amateur, but there is certainly one there, even if it's inferior.

And it's not like amateurs are necessarily an "inferior version" of some better player with a superficially similar style, as everyone plays a little differently. I could be thought of as a much inferior Karpov, yet my opening repertoire is completely different from his, etc. He has a style, I have a style, we all do. Generally speaking we try to follow what the board says, but no human can do such a thing perfectly and subconciously we can drfit away from that mindset just a little.

You could validly call chess styles preferences, but, no matter how bad the style is executed, I think the way one plays a chess game can't be fully described just with a list of preferences (it's deeper than that), because to me preferences are merely one big component of style, but there are certainly other factors such as what kind of moves a person is most immediately drawn to. I almost get the feeling that some of you think it's even disrespecting the good players to say we have a style too, which I simply cannot understand! I mean, say I was a GM, and someone told me: I have an attacking style, that says zero about me and does nothing to compare who attacks better, it's just that his way of doing things is more likely to end up in a, most likely unsuccesfull, dive for the initiative. If he starts to say he's the better chess player, well then things would get personal, but of course I would know he couldn't be serious so I'd actually just laugh hysterically, but I think you get the point.

Oh boy, me going on about the definition of style again (which I posted in my last post, from some dictionary). Look, bottom line, everyone has a style; yes the good players are much better than us we know, but they are merely better players with a, naturally, more respected style, not the only ones with a style. Can us amateurs claim anything, even a crappy style?! Guess not

Sure, me too, and that's certainly the style I seem to be adopting. But there are still tons of little differences too, not just the playing strength!

I think the caro-kann defence is not drawish at all.I alwayse use this good defence against white.but Im agree with u that there are so many line in the carokan.but u dont need to learn all of them.u can choose best move yourself(sometimes!).but I advise to u to learn this line because there are so many traps for black:1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5

In any opening, you have to be ready to use lots of tactics. The "equalizing openings", like the caro kann often can be, are mainly solid in the fact that they don't immediately commit to any structural weaknesses; they're sort of trying to get it all: a good deployment of the pieces and a fine structure, but that's merely the philosophy; in reality, with both players fighting for their goals, how these goals are actually achieved, it's not easy to predict. It's very easy for some tactics to come up (especially if in the caro kann black opens the center with say ...c5), when the outcome of the game may well depend on who they end up favoring, and the resulting position might not resemble the "typical" positions at all of a given opening!

"dynamic" openings don't wait at all and immediately start to be aggressive, even at the cost of positional or material concessions, but either way you need to be ready to have some aggression, whether you wait for the opportunity or go for it right away, but if you insist on always playing slowly and defending, you won't be winning too many games.