The Chess Style Crisis

I'm sure you've heard of "indentity crisis" but what I am talking about here is the state when you are confused of what kind of chess style you know that you have.

Just this year I have changed my opening repertoires, and immediately noticed that my playing style has changed from tactical to positional. It is not that I wanted to play positional games but realized the opening demands it to.

I have always been an 1.e4 player as white, and as black I play the Sicilian Dragon and the King's Indian. These openings have my taste for tactical games. But because of outside responsibilities I have had difficulty keeping up with the latest theory. Thus have suffered numerous defeats in later games played.

So I have decided to changed to low maintenance and more easily grasped openings: The English as white, and as black the Hyper Accelerated Dragon and the Nimzo Indian.

To be honest I dont enjoy playing the positions arising from the new repertoires because it is not to my tactical taste. I know my style is of a tactical player but because keeping up with the latest theory has become difficult for me, I was somehow forced to swallow which isn't my style - positional.

I wonder if you have had the same dilema and what can you say about it...

See my games below for examples of my new positional style.

is that English opening?

Alekhine was really heavy into queenpawn openings too, and he is probably the greatest tactical master ever. I say you should play whatever style makes you happy, whether you win or lose. I see you using the phrases 'I don't enjoy playing' and 'forced to swallow', which both convery to me that it's taking away from the fun of the game for you. I'd try to worry about the losses less and just play they style that you like.

Thanks guys. Really tempted to take it on board.

 Me as white, yes.

Also, the game play looks simple but if you look deeper from the middlegame there are subtleties which are fairly technical.

I'll say the Middle Game was very technical. I'm going to have to go over this a number of times (Aand I thought we were having a fashion crisis).

 Fashion crisis? O yeah, I have that bad habit too

If I get the chance I will annotate the games I presented here for you Hugh.

Cheers!

Chess vocabulary!

Okay, I think I've got this figured out:

Technical means "Ha! I ended up with three attackers on that square and you've only got two defenders!  Points!"  Whereas....

Positional is more like "once the dust settled, the placement of my army allowed me to outfox the other army for a lasting advantage"   ???????????????

Is it another way of saying "open" and "closed" positions????

(My style crisis is that my development is boring as hell.  If the other person is good they'll usually end up with the initiative.)