are you a grandmaster?
Chess: A game of tricks and brains?
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I still haven't figured out how all the pieces move. The castle, that moves side to side, right? And the horse can jump over the other horse?
I think we often find two distinct confrontations in chess:
1. Tricks.
By "tricks", I don't mean someone took my queen off the board while I was in the bathroom. Nor am I talking about looking at the other guy's eyes to see which part of the board he's looking at (Russians?) Nor am I talking about the psychological play that can happen, someone offering to draw over and over again. Rather, I'm going to artificially limit my use of the word, "trick" to one of the many cases in chess where, because of the nature of the 64 squares and pieces, sometimes a "trick" situation comes up. Most of us know what a knight fork is, and we can spot them and defend against them. But, for illustration of what I mean by "trick", imagine you knew how all the pieces worked, but, you'd never seen a knight fork. It's a trick.
"Hey, that knight worth 3 pawns is attacking my king, so I must move my king. But wait a minute, it's also attacking my queen. Oh no, I'm in a dilemma, I can't save them both, an inferior piece has tricked me into a later exchange with a greater piece, my queen."
So, the first time you face a fork, whether pawn or otherwise, it's a trick, not equal forces maneuvering against each other, no.
So, too, by a new chess opening. New to you, I mean. If there's a weakness is this or that reply to an opening, and the other guy has it memorized and gleefully takes advantage of your learning situation, OK, you didn't lose any money out of your wallet, but you did lose something, and you lost it not because the other person stared at the board, this position, did the math, and just now decided to go this way, no. He came with a bag of tricks, picked this one, one you yourself did not know, and, failing genius on your part, you got tricked out of a pawn or position or the like. It wasn't brains versus brains, it was someone with a trick and you may or may not lose out to that trick, whether by luck or brains or, the third way, already knowing the trick and the counter-moves. If you already know the counter-moves, then I'll call that "brains" how you deal with your equal knowledge of the established values of that opening.
2. Brains.
Imagine you and I each have a king and two pawns, end game. The "brains" of chess is to do the math, think, silently, each move until you see that you need to stop this pawn first, then that one, or, perhaps, you do the moves in your head and see that you'll pass your lone pawn over there before I can get to it, and still have enough time to stop the enemy pawns from queening. So, using brains, you think through all the variations, let's put a couple of knights on the board with those two pawns, now you have a lot of thinking to do, mentally picturing moves, "he moves there, I move here, he can move there or there, so, now I have to work out two lines from this point, but I can ignore that other pawn because it's too far away from passing to be any threat, so, I must work out these two lines to see what my next move should be."
That process, thinking about whether it's a good idea to hold the center, I have two guards but he can muster four attackers within five moves, that's all brains.
Never having seen a discovered check, or, similarly, discovered diagonal attack by a bishop on a rook, etc etc, whenever those tactics are new to someone, that is a "trick" until the victim of those tricks learns them and can spot them out of habit, just like we can all spot a simple knight fork. Again, once we learn the "trick", it aint a trick no more, we can move that tactic to the "brains" side of chess, because both players can equally spot that "trick" so neither should be surprised by it, they equally can predict, just in an instant, that position yields this problem.
Each "trick" is, intellectually, no different than a new chess piece. Not having advance knowledge of how a fork works (or discovered check, etc) is no different than not knowing how a piece moves. When you learn the patterns of a knight fork, you've learned a new "piece", just like when you learned how a bishop moves. One player may know 72 tricks / patterns of attack, the other may only know how the pieces move, plus perhaps knight forks and discovered checks. So, in essense, the later player has fewer pieces to play with. Both start with all the physical pieces, plus whatever tricks / patterns of attack and defense, that they already know. Much of chess is learning how the pieces move, inlcuding learning the patterns. Knowing fewer patterns is equal to knowing how fewer pieces move. "What, I didn't know a queen could move like that." by a beginner is no different than learning how castling works, how discovered check works, it's just that discovered attacks are not embodied in a single chess figurine, like a bishop, rather, that new move is part of the interaction of multiple pieces. But, learning a knight fork or just learning the knight itself, there's no difference. Zero.
I think openings are that way, if someone has a trick opening, one that nets them a pawn through some surprise move, I think that if the victim of the 'new' opening (new to the victim) if the victim of the trick didn't spot it coming, then, it's a trick, not brains. (Even if you could see five moves in advance, knowing the values and consequences is another cup of tea, nobody can do that perfectly, no such thing, because nobody knows all possible outcomes for every five moves in advance. [obvious exceptions where moves are forced, such as Fool's Mate, etc]) You'd have to see to the end of every possible game from that position, and know which possibilities will occur, so just knowing the possible positions five moves from now is not good enough (partly because you don't know which of the later possibilities will be chosen by your opponent after the five moves. Line #752 would be best for you if he would later trade bishops, otherwise line #334 would be best for you if he won't trade bishops much later in the game. There's no way anyone could know that, so just seeing five moves in advance isn't good enough to say you get 100% credit for the outcome.
Let's be fair, if you were taught chess, you probably didn't know about discovered checks and knight forks until you either were shown them by the person you were playing with, or stumbled onto them, were amazed by them, and eventually saw them enough times so that you were no longer tricked by them. So then you move that "trick" to the "brains" side of your chess menu.
I'm not saying good or bad, but I think the two situations are real and distinct.
3. Genius.
By "genius" I mean from the word, Genesis, meaning to create. If you can see 10 moves in advance in chess, I'll put that in "brains". Here, "genius" I mean creating a new trick, or coming up with a new answer to an older trick. It's not really part of my above discussion, I only list it here to distinguish that ability from the other two.
4. Luck.
I've already made this argument in another thread, but I think there's luck in chess, unless you know 100% of all the tricks and can, along with your opponent, predict all the possible moves in every game. Otherwise, my argument goes, how your equally skilled opponent responds to your move, when unpredicted (can you see every move till the end of the game? no), that is the element of luck if, certainly if it allows you to use tricks.
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Closing:
Chess IS a game of brains. Absolutely, almost by definition. But that's because there's no better known game of brains. I can assert chess is the world's best and best known game of brains. And I can assert - without internal contradiction (I am not making any obvious logical mistake to say) - that there are tricks, luck and genius in chess, too. Far more than we appreciate.