- opponent's kingside or queenside? --> King, or center.
- moves that "just look good"? --> if adrift, whatever has the best chance of helping, so that's a 51% "no."
- focus on your plans or opponent's plans?--> depends who has the initiative or if you're ready to steal the initiative. There's a steady decline in focus on what he's doing after the tipping point in the middle game once you've decided to make your push. There'll often be several moves toward the end of the middlegame when I don't care in the least what the opponent is doing. It serves me just fine at that point if he continues on doing his own thing.
- Kingside pawn storm as weakening or as attacking? --> worthwhile weakening. So only done after the shape of things on the board is established, at which time I can start justifiying it to myself.
Why do some players seem to become more Tactical and others Positional players?
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May 19, 2009
0
#42
@AfafBouardi I don't know which side you'd score. But I am firmly in the positional camp, and here are my answers
- The pawn structure dictates where I will be concentrating my forces. I don't even call it attacking.
- Yes, all the time. Without any calculation at all.
- My opponent's plans, and what I can do about it. Going back to the pawn structure, I try to find out what pawn breaks my opponent has and prepare against them.
- When I do a kingside pawn storm it is weakening my king position and when my opponent does it it is attacking my king position. )-:
May 19, 2009
0
#44
I dont' think I need to answer any questions to know what style I am.
Some side commentary from a game I am presently in where my opponent is 200 rating points higher than I am
erikido23: interesting game
erikido23: I have to go.
Ltee: it's more like weird. I never done so much defending B4
That last sentence brought the biggest grin to my face.
May 19, 2009
0
#45
Gonnosuke wrote:
santiR wrote:
i think your definitions are wrong: they could be easily switched around. often tactical players play by intuition alone (read: me).
I agree. Often times, the outcome of an especially complex tactical sequence is unclear or too complex to calculate and it's in these types of situations where intuition plays a huge role. Some players are loathe to make a move if they're uncertain of the outcome, while others rely on intuition -- just because they are uncertain about the outcome doesn't really matter if they feel intuitively that a sacrifice is correct under the circumstances.
When talking about intuition in chess, Tal is the perfect case study. The "Hippo in the marsh" ancedote that appeared in his autobiography, The Life and Times of Mikhail Tal, illustrates the point:
"Journalist: It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?
Mikhail Tal: Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.
And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanovic Chukovsky:
Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus
I don't know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out:
Just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh?
I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder. After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it."
Capablanca said something like " That there is a correct style of chess play. One should not seek complications but do not try to avoid them."
I became a positional player because I was always getting killed by strong, aggressive tactical players. I knew I was never going to out-calculate them. I had to find another way to win. I had to create positions capable of absorbing their initial onslaught and leaving me the opportunity to strike back. I had to keep improving my tactics enough so they couldn't push me off the board. I learned defensive calculation as being as important as attacking calculation. My goal became to survive long enough to reach a simplified position with my remaining forces in a better position.
