If you are playing someone good you have NO tactics to use unless you've created a position that allows it. You need strategy to create a superior position from which you can force the opponent to create weaknesses, which in turn allow tactics. Against people like me however, who blunder and create stupid weaknesses, tactics are easy to spot and use even if your position isn't all that good.
chess 99 % tactics agree or disagree
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Sitting-Duck wrote:
Please, chess is at least 50% memory, then 30% ability to see what is going on, 10% calculating, 5 % luck, 5%. managing time and 12% body odor.
Yogi Berra would be proud!
Tactics are not 99% chess.
For me chess is:
80% going to tournaments and watching
10% Buffets with friends
10% Checking out the chess supplies for sale
15% Hanging out with friends
12% Meeting new people
Thats 127% of fun in my book!
Rodiath wrote:
If you are playing someone good you have NO tactics to use unless you've created a position that allows it. You need strategy to create a superior position from which you can force the opponent to create weaknesses, which in turn allow tactics. Against people like me however, who blunder and create stupid weaknesses, tactics are easy to spot and use even if your position isn't all that good.
Just because no tactics end up happening on the board doesn't mean there's no tactical considerations going on. The reasons you'll have no tactics against someone good is that they are better than you at spotting the possible tactics and avoiding them. Even if they beat you in a strategic, positional struggle, their tactical abilities had to be good enough to avoid any immediately game-losing blunders. This is why tactics is 99% of chess (or maybe 95% would be more reasonable), higher levels included. In fact, perhaps especially at higher levels, because more tactical care is taken on each move at higher levels. I've heard that the speed of basic tactical pattern recognition has even been shown to separate GMs from IMs, IMs from masters, masters from experts, and so forth.
Vandarringa wrote:
Just because no tactics end up happening on the board doesn't mean there's no tactical considerations going on. The reasons you'll have no tactics against someone good is that they are better than you at spotting the possible tactics and avoiding them. Even if they beat you in a strategic, positional struggle, their tactical abilities had to be good enough to avoid any immediately game-losing blunders. This is why tactics is 99% of chess (or maybe 95% would be more reasonable), higher levels included. In fact, perhaps especially at higher levels, because more tactical care is taken on each move at higher levels. I've heard that the speed of basic tactical pattern recognition has even been shown to separate GMs from IMs, IMs from masters, masters from experts, and so forth.
That makes sense. I guess preemptive moves that shut down tactics are tactics too :V
Everyime this topic comes up (at least once a week) I like to throw out some "different"..."insane" kinda thinking. Why not just study the entire game! Who cares what percentage of what the game is. Play the position on the board.
Feb 18, 2016
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#29
jengaias wrote:
Chess is not calculation.You can calculate as deep as you can , that doesn't mean you can find the correct moves.If they put you against a very good player and give you an analysis board next to the real one so that you can try all lines and go as deep as you like , will you win?
...
Chess is not 99% tactics or 100% calculation.It's 100% judgement and evaluation.
I think you may be conflating tactics and calculation. Though calculation is important to tactics, tactics involve more than calculation. I think of tactics as a combination of visualization, calculation, and pattern recognition.
Pattern recognition is particularly important as it's what gives strong players the ability to see the right moves and combinations without "calculating" per se. Pattern recognition also helps strong players avoid blunders, almost automagically.
Not true.
Fiveofswords wrote:
stronger players rarely, if ever, calculate.
I don't understand, can you give me a small illustration of a "chess calculation"? I don't understand how we are not constantly 'calculating' when playing a game of chess.
I understand even at my level, that sometimes I just 'see' the answer to a combo, but you can't be telling me that at 2200+ you 'just see ALL the answers' with zero calculation???
I'm still unsure, what is an example of a 'chess calculation'. Calculation can be such a vague word(depending on context), for example, I had to calculate what shirt to wear based on temperatures, and how nice to look where I am going. I didn't have to calculate how to put my arms in the sleeves, but if I'm wanna 'look sharp', I calculate maybe how I wanna wear the collar or the sleeves. Or maybe I'm wrong there, maybe I don't understand what calculation is literally.
What is a 'chess calculation'?
chess is 100% bad moves.
I mean, to me, it just seems like chess is A LOT of calculation, but even the master agreed with you, so I'm just like W...T...F...???
How do you play chess without calculating ANYTHING?? haha
Feb 18, 2016
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#35
This is all very interesting for a learning player. Thank you all for your comments.
Any kinda books you know about on this topic? Or anything? (the part about seeing how chunks of pieces tend to move)
BigKingBud wrote:
Any kinda books you know about on this topic? Or anything? (the part about seeing how chunks of pieces tend to move)
I've heard masters just suggesting that you look over a lot of master games on the themes you want to learn and just go through them move by move. A LOT of games. If there are some tricky tactical things go over them again a couple of times more slowly.
You will subconsciously absorb the patterns.
Feb 18, 2016
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#38
I've recently started taking a similar approach. I usually go for complicated positions because I feel I can make an opponent around my rating crack before I do. However lately I'm feeling more like you, just play solid, maybe win a pawn or cause structural damage of some kind and get a winnable endgame.
Fiveofswords wrote:
low level players seem to get into chaostic positions mroe often than stronger players. It jsut rarely happens to me. I have everything overprotected while also constantly moving my position forward. im rarely if ever testing the limits of how loose my position can get chasing some attacking dream...i jsut do not feel the need to. I rather believe that i can simply win a slight advantage endgame and im jsut waiting for it.
I fancy one can always find a queen sac in the post mortem, just to prove me wrong. Besides, some positions are very attractive from the tactical point of view but not very attractive otherwise.
“Chess is the art of analysis.”, Botvinnik
“Chess is 99 percent tactics.”, Teichmann
“Chess is really 99 percent calculation.”, Soltis
"The pleasure of a chess combination lies in the feeling that a human mind is behind the game, dominating the inanimate pieces with which the game is carried on, and giving them the breath of life.", Reti
In the period between the matches Botvinnik had thoroughly analyzed Tal's games.
During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey.- Yefim Geller.
Before Geller we did not understand the King's Indian Defence. - Mikhail Botvinnik
Botvinnik was quoted to have claimed that Geller was the strongest chess player in the 1960s.
Right.
I find the line of thought presented in this post--that there's no need to calculate in chess, and that great players don't calculate--well, crazy.
Where is this coming from? Of course great players calculate! How many times have you seen in "My Best Games" type of books something along the lines of, "And here I had to calculate very carefully because.." followed by a list of lines he considered at the board? Whole books have been written on techniques for rigorous calculation. And of course, we have the numerous quotations on the importance of calculation/tactics in the thread above.
Regardless how good you think you are, there come at least a few points in the game when you have to buckle down and calculate.
Chess is 97.7% sitting on butt, 2.3% arm movements.