There are only two chess styles: beginner and master. We start with the former and slowly change our tastes towards the latter.
Chess Styles
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These styles do hold up at lower levels also.
We have 1 guy in the local club who is technical/positional. In any type of dry position he will beat you. He is only happy when pushing pawns and advancing his king. When a guy like that does get an advantage on you its over. He lives for endgames. Obviously he is a commited d4 player
that being said, he doesnt like tactical positions too much. He played e4 against me once and I played a latvian gambit and got him into a terrible position with sharp play. He has tried to learn sicilian but I dont think it suits his style as it gets very sharp.
Another guy at the club plays unorthodox openings etc and he is all about tactics and attacks. He will play weird openings and when you try to punish it he will counterattack you to death. He is totally ANTIpositional and not technical at all. He actually doesnt KNOW much opening theory but he can call out mates in 4 etc
I have watched these 2 battle many times in blitz and it gets pretty heated. Either of them can get on a winning streak. The funny thing is, the positional guy is over 200 points stronger (uscf) but the weaker guy gets the stronger guy out of his pet positional style and they are about even
My style is somewhere in between those two but closer to the second guy. I am not technical at all (yet.) I did realize at some point that I needed to play differently when facing these 2 different players.
Against the positional guy if I play my normal nimzo indian it sort of plays into his style and he is very comfortable. Against him I need to play stuff like Budapest, Benoni, or maybe Chigorin
Against the wilder guy I just need to play good solid stuff and be ready to punish his antipositional moves etc. In any case our games are very tactical struggles
What type of style do the following players have?
Anand
Carlsen
Aronian
Karjakin
Caruana
I be a calculator
Calculator is the one I'd like to be.
Inuitive is the one I am.
I prefer intuitive play. Less headaches than calculating :)
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Sep 4, 2014
0
#49
I try to see if any one piece on their side is serving multiple roles, more or less keeping their structure together, and I try to set up an "even" trade in terms of material worth. If they've invested a lot into a piece, as in it's moved all over the board, I try to target that as they've invested more into that particular piece, and I try to take it off the board with one of my pieces that I haven't invested as much.
Today while watching Caruana-Carlsen, GM Seirawan told of a discussion he had with Najdorf. Najdorf said he could look at a game and see crazy tactics and sacrifices but that player won, and he knew that was a game of Tal. He could look at a game where one player shuffles his pieces around doing nothing, then all of the sudden his opponent had no good moves, and he knew that was a game of Petrosian. But he said when he looked at a game of Fischer, he could find no style, just good moves.
He went on to say that Caruana was playing without a style in this tournament, playing whatever the position called for.
My takeaway was that he considered "having a style" to say that a player has certain psychological comforts, which means they have exploitable weaknesses.
It is interesting that when you are a club player you have no style. Then when you make expert/master you develop a style. Then a handful of the best super GMs lose all style and just play good moves.
It's a good reminder to forget about your "style" and just play the best move. Saying "I have style X" is basically saying "I refuse to let go of some of my weaknesses".
rtr1129 wrote:
Vis-a-vis "best move" style.
Fischer, Caruana and Houdini.
Today while watching Caruana-Carlsen, GM Seirawan told of a discussion he had with Najdorf. Najdorf said he could look at a game and see crazy tactics and sacrifices but that player won, and he knew that was a game of Tal. He could look at a game where one player shuffles his pieces around doing nothing, then all of the sudden his opponent had no good moves, and he knew that was a game of Petrosian. But he said when he looked at a game of Fischer, he could find no style, just good moves. He went on to say that Caruana was playing without a style in this tournament, playing whatever the position called for. My takeaway was that he considered "having a style" to say that a player has certain psychological comforts, which means they have exploitable weaknesses. It is interesting that when you are a club player you have no style. Then when you make expert/master you develop a style. Then a handful of the best super GMs lose all style and just play good moves. It's a good reminder to forget about your "style" and just play the best move. Saying "I have style X" is basically saying "I refuse to let go of some of my weaknesses".
I don't know what I am, I play both really slow, posistional openings, and really explosive tactical ones, what do you think I am?
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Phantom_of_the_Opera wrote:
I don't know what I am, I play both really slow, posistional openings, and really explosive tactical ones, what do you think I am?
Schizophrenic?
I'm an attacking player, I think. I'm still pretty disorganised and not particularly skilled, but I've had the most success with dramatic sacrifices and breakneck attacks coming out of nowhere.
I do not know what style I am.
Im a chess player. I play the position on the board.
As discussed in Another thread- while Gm's perhaps have preferences in even positions (called styles) they don't allow those preferences to distract them from playing a solid, winning chessgame.
unfortunately A patzer's Preferences- yours and mine- often cause us quite a bit of problems; steering us into losing positions. so I reject the implication that "style" is something us patzers need to obsess on.
instead you must First learn to play in a way that doesn't lose- and if you don't
IMHO. basically we have a "losing style"
(as in ... Losing style with a tendency to make unsound attacks).
thegreat_patzer wrote:
(as in ... Losing style with a tendency to make unsound attacks).
Or unsoundly wimping out of making sound attacks!
Wouldn't you call this "types of chess players", "rather than chess styles?"