Was Tarrasch dogmatic?

Was Tarrasch dogmatic?

Tarrasch was trash

To an extent, yes.  Tarrasch was a "system player", who worked around a set of rules which became the foundation of the "classical" school of chess.  However, even he found there were tactical exceptions to just about every rule - this is shown plainly by his game results.

 

The issue was that the main rules were a window into how he intended to approach the game as a whole - and this is what the hypermoderns (Nimzowitsch, another "system player", most notably) objected to.

 

Tarrasch is widely believed to have "fallen off" from the 1890 to 1910, but this isn't really true.  The fact is that the skill and number of great players was growing fastest during this time.  Emmanuel Lasker managed to stay at the top of the ranks during this time because, unlike Tarrasch, he was able to adapt to the new styles of play coming to the fore, and to adopt the better aspects of these into his own strategies.

 

In other words, while Tarrasch stayed at the same level of skill, a host of younger players (Marshall, Nimzowitsch, Rubinstein, etc.) passed him by.  Meanwhile, Lasker kept improving, so that he was at worst level with the very best (which by the end of his career meant Capablanca and Alekhine) for the duration.  Lasker was far better in 1924 after he lost the title than he was in 1894 when he won it.

 

The issue is that it is very hard to learn to play well by studying the World Champions.  It is quite easy to learn to play well by following the advice of Tarrasch.   However, if you take his rules as gospel, and eschew the hypermodern school entirely, this will ultimately limit how much you can improve later on.  The best players, like the best game plans, are flexible - able to adapt to a wide range of opponents, and to take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves.

In my opinion, Tarrasch was not as dogmatic as many chess players have come to believe. Saying he was "dogmatic" is often just the uninformed chess player repeating what he/she has read or heard without checking the facts. When Tarrasch wrote his books, he was attempting to establish easy to follow guidelines for the average and/or developing player to improve. When learning any new skill, it's often helpful to first learn it in a structured and systematic way. The target audience of his writings was not the already highly skilled chess player. Also, keep in mind he was coined "dogmatic" by a few of the leaders of the so-called hypermodern chess school, namely, Nimzowitsch, Reti, and Tartakower. However, a detailed study of his games will show that he was not as dogmatic as many believe, and often "broke the rules", indicating that like many modern masters, he knew when it was ok to "break those rules".

Good point, O-Ren-Ishii-Gambit. I've heard the exact same from other sources. Right now I am studying both Tarrasch's books and Nimzo. Unfortunately, the points of contention are rarely clear when other authors are making reference to them. Most chess players don't study Tarrasch these days and just accept what another author says about Tarrasch.

Nimzowitsch, Reti, and Tartakower's objections to Tarrasch's rules - most notably when it pertains to opening strategy - represent a fundamentally different approach to the game.  The issue wasn't so much how dogmatic Tarrasch was being with the application of his rules, but rather how rigid his readers were being with them.

 

The basic point is, and it sounds like we're in agreement on this point, is that the rules Tarrasch wrote are, unlike other systems, easy to understand and apply in gameplay.  The only point I'm warning about (being mainly a hypermodern player myself) is that you can't treat them as gospel, and at some point you need to break free of these rules in order to progress past a certain skill level.

 

You can say much the same thing about Aron Nimzowitsch.  His approach was more intrinsically flexible than Tarrasch's, but taking Nimzowitsch's rules (which are harder to understand) as gospel leads to a similar sort of mental trap - albeit a bit further down the road.

 

You might say the difference between a beginner and an amateur is structure, but the difference between an amateur and a master is flexibility and adaptability.

See, this is part of the problem. The opening phase wasn't the only point or points of contention. The more critical points pertained to the middle game.

Right, i totally disagree, he was a great chess player.  And: Praeceptor Germaniae  

I said that because it rhymes.

The middlegame differences flowed out of the differences in the opening because of the hypermodern school's fundamentally different conception of what constitutes "control" of the center.

 

If you look at Reti's games in particular, they fly pretty much directly in the face of what Tarrasch tried to teach.  There you have a player purposely blowing up the center - often undermining his own central pawns - in order to open attacking lines for his pieces.  This style of play is out of favor today because it results in very few draws, but nonetheless Reti was a better player than Tarrasch.

 

Tarrasch's results (the fact that so many players surpassed him by 1920) do seem to imply that the rules he developed - even being as flexible as he was in their application - appear to have limited the extent to which his play could improve.  The same can be said of the hypermoderns - none of them ever became World Champion (though several, like Reti and Breyer, died quite young).

 

The best players of the era, by which I mean Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine, were able to adapt their methods as the game evolved, and to incorporate the best aspects of both classical and hypermodern into their own gameplay.  Their use of both schools in combination, and the results they managed with them, underscore both the merits and the limitations of both systems.

 

Tarrasch and all of these "hypermoderns" were extremely good players.  However, there was a step to be taken beyond them, and three players (some might count Akiba Rubinstein as a fourth, but he wasn't sane for the heyday of hypermodernism, so it's hard to say for sure) took that step while the debate between them was still raging.

 

That's the important point here - structure will help the novice improve, and can even make him into a master.  Every player gets to the point (sometimes more than once) where their results stagnate, and to break through that impasse requires a mind which is open to different and sometimes even contrary ideas.

Smyslov and Korchnoi come to mind.

The middle game doesn't "flow" from the opening; it's not the result of opening strategy. In fact, opening strategy and middle game strategy cannot and should not be separated. Opening strategy is actually the result of desired middle game positions, with specific middle game strategies intended.

Particularly these days, some openings are mapped out all the way into the endgame.

However, at the time this wasn't the case.

There was only 1 single point of contention between Tarrasch and the hyper-modern school, regarding openings. Hyper-modern players wanted to develop from the flank and control the center prior to occupation. Tarrasch asserted that the center should be first occupied with pawns.

Now all other points of contention were regarding the middle game.

Chess players learn to "see ahead" by learning the game backwards. First you learn to play the endgame, and then the middle game; last the opening.

This certainly applied when hyper modern players were formulating their ideas about the opening.

So the middle game isn't the result of the opening, but the opening is the result of the middle game.

 

Hmmm? Let's see. According to chessmetrics.com, Korchnoi peaked in his 40s.

Chessmetrics puts Lasker as #1 in the world at age 58. 

Here's Sonas' reckoning for various players' rankings at age 58

The issue is that it is very hard to learn to play well by studying the World Champions.  It is quite easy to learn to play well by following the advice of Tarrasch.   However, if you take his rules as gospel, and eschew the hypermodern school entirely, this will ultimately limit how much you can improve later on.  The best players, like the best game plans, are flexible - able to adapt to a wide range of opponents, and to take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves.

 

This is a very instructive observation.  Thank you DSmith42.

I’m biased, because Tarrasch became my favourite historical player after reading his The Game of Chess book, which propelled my rating up.  That said, here are my thoughts.

My view is that people misinterpret Tarrasch, though it’s easy to see why.  When speaking about the Philidor Defence, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6, Tarrasch says that d6 voluntarily locks in the Bishop when it was unnecessary, thus restricting it’s mobility.  “Black’s play should on principle be condemned.”

This has a powerful effect on me.  It’s not, as one might suppose, that Tarrasch is condemning the Philidor defence.  Rather, he is condemning the unnecessary restriction of your own forces.  We try to play d6 after Bc5, because our pieces need to be active to be effective.  This isn’t so different from avoiding moves like h3 or h6 unless necessary; here it is wasting time, whereas the Philidor is wasting (or restricting) mobility.

Said another way, what do we call the rule ‘Do not move the same piece multiple times in the opening?’  We generally call it one of the opening principles.  Can you treat this rule dogmatically?  Sure, but that doesn’t really make sense and isn’t in the spirit of the principle.  The same is true with Tarrasch.

Tarrasch also had an interesting view on many of the hypermodern openings, or at least he did by the time he wrote The Game of Chess.  Against the KID, he said that the ‘normal’ way of playing with d4, c4, Nc3 and e4 gave Black chances to fight back against the centre.  In other words, he agreed and respected with the hypermodern approach.  He differed by saying that, if White played properly, the KID should not grant equality.  He recommended 3.g3!, finishing development normally and castling, and only then expanding further in the centre (he recommended something similar against the Alekhine, 1.e4 Nf6).  Many Black players dislike facing such White set-ups, so I think Tarrasch was onto something. 

Tarrasch was one of the best players in the world in the 1890s, and he did it while being a medical doctor first and a chess player second.  If he reversed those priorities, or if he learned chess before 15(!), he likely is world champ at some point.   

 Every chess master is dogmatic, Nimzovitsch was more dogmatic than Tarrasch. Tarrasch was a GM before Nimzovitsch; and Tarrasch approach to chess was sounder than Nimzovitsch. 

 

I own all of Tarrasch's books but one and all of Nimzo's books. I've been reading Nuremberg 1896 and a lot of Tarrasch's annotations are wrong. I must also point out that on every single point of contention, Nimzo was correct and Tarrasch was wrong.

Tarrasch probably calculated better than Nimzo, but Nimzo was by far the superior positional player.

"I must also point out that on every single point of contention, Nimzo was correct and Tarrasch was wrong."

 

Really?  I don't know how many different points of contention they had, but hypothetically, suppose there were 20 points of differences between them.  You're saying that Nimzovich was right on all 20 of them, and Tarrasch was wrong on all 20 of them?  Seems pretty bold.

 

Just go do the research