Naka against Gelfand the other day was elegant. How often is a superGM caught out like that? With such daring and elegance?
Elegance
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Jan 11, 2010
0
#23
Elegant in mathematics has many different definitions. but the one I like is: the most self-evident path, with a minimum of complications, leading to the clearest explication. Somehow, that leads to beauty - as it does in chess.
I think Qe8# is the most elegant as each potential escape square is covered once. After pd8=Q#, d6 and f6 are covered twice. Twice!! Absolutely ridiculous!
Jan 11, 2010
0
#25
BTW - share the moves before the position with us. It's quite a setup, be fun to see how the pieces got there. Particularly given the pawns on both sides being on their original squares.
schlagle wrote:
Art is subjective and temporal. Chess is win or lose. I think you're forcing an artistic aesthetic where one doesn't exist and isn't needed.
Interesting topic, I like it.
I rather disagree with schlagle here. There is a whole branch of chess in compositions and studies which is almost entirely about aesthetics.
Speaking of chess in its normal form, yes, there is win or lose - but there are many different types of wins and losses. There's winning because your opponent dropped his queen from a good position, and there's winning with a cascade of sacrifices.
I have a couple of friends I kibitz a lot with on playchess.com, and we regularly make comments like "xxx would have been a prettier finish", "wow, nice move", "shame he didn't play xxx instead, it would've been much nicer", etc. All very trivial but we have a definite sense of what we like to see and what we don't - subjective, like art.
I'm also bemused by the terminology "artistic aesthetics in chess isn't needed". Since when is art/aesthetics needed?!
Art/aesthetics doesn't have to be for the sake of itself, it can arise out of anything.
Perhaps you don't find aesthetics in chess, but some of us do and it certainly isn't forced :)
marvellosity wrote:
Interesting topic, I like it.
I rather disagree with schlagle here. There is a whole branch of chess in compositions and studies which is almost entirely about aesthetics.
Speaking of chess in its normal form, yes, there is win or lose - but there are many different types of wins and losses. There's winning because your opponent dropped his queen from a good position, and there's winning with a cascade of sacrifices.
I have a couple of friends I kibitz a lot with on playchess.com, and we regularly make comments like "xxx would have been a prettier finish", "wow, nice move", "shame he didn't play xxx instead, it would've been much nicer", etc. All very trivial but we have a definite sense of what we like to see and what we don't - subjective, like art.
I'm also bemused by the terminology "artistic aesthetics in chess isn't needed". Since when is art/aesthetics needed?!
Art/aesthetics doesn't have to be for the sake of itself, it can arise out of anything.
Perhaps you don't find aesthetics in chess, but some of us do and it certainly isn't forced :)
What I was trying to say, but much more eloquent.
I think we can all agree that someone will find art/aethetics in anything anyone on this board can possibly think of. I just happen to disagree with the loose definition of what "art" is. If it becomes everything then the term is meaningless. But that's my burden to bare I guess :-)
My main point was that most of the time I see a thread like this it's about humiliating an opponent and I find that to be in poor taste.
And I do actually think art is needed. We're creative creatures. Art, in all its forms, is a wonderful expression of everything it can mean to be human.
I think that I wrote on something similar already. There is a lot of aesthetics in chess but it is still a game not an art. A chess player like Tal plays to win games, not to create beautiful combinations. If beautiful combinations are the means to winning the game then they are utilized. In fact, if a queen sacrifice is played just for the sake of it being 'beautiful' when in fact we could have won by a simple mate in 1 something this is not very impressive.
First of all => I only associate the word "good" with a chess move when it did the following:
- Completely blocked out the opponent's chances of counterplay.
- Did something both offensive and defensive at the same time.
- Showed precise calculation by the player, who factored every forcing line.
- Demonstrated lucid technique in closing out a won game.
How utterly insane.