GM Grigoryan on the "Myth" of Solving Puzzles

I have given my reasoning as to why strategy is useless below a certain rating. The reason is simple, the reason GMs talk about needing small advantages like an open file, good pawn structure etc is because their opponents don't allow them to just take their pieces... this is why they need strategy.

It's simple... if you can win a piece you would rather win a piece than just grab an open file right? well master players don't let you win a piece so u turn to strategy in order to gain the advantage... however in the games of lower rated players they frequently let you win a piece... so the important thing is to make sure that you have a sharp eye since in lower ratings people will frequently make mistakes, hang a pawn, make blunders etc.

You don't "NEED" strategy to win when your opponent is giving you free material... this is why strategy is useless below a certain rating. Strategy is just a means to an end.. the goal is to get to an advantageous position and a much quicker way of doing it is to win material.

You see, games at our level is just wild west. Mistakes, blunders, hanging pawns, missed combinations etc etc happening all over the place. Studying strategy is barely important since the way you get an advnatge at this level is by spotting mistakes and winning material, not by getting a long term strategical advantage.

Is it clear? i cannot make it more clear than this. Not all ratings require the same focus on all things. Strategy is worthless if u can just win their queen lol

Kindly refer to my post  #188, i explained my point there.

Lower-intermediate is pure wild west. Strategy is just means to an end, that end being winning. When your opponent is giving you a piece then u don't need the open file... in my last game my opponent trapped his knight, in the game before that i hung my knight... that's how players below master rating win games, not by strategy.

This is what hikaru and magnus have said... magnus says players should just study tactics before 2000... hikaru said that 95% of chess is tactics below 2200

 

You should check out IM Jeremy Silman's "The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions Into Chess Mastery."  It's an entire book about how players in the low club-level range can benefit from learning more about strategic principles.

The book's point is basically this:  Sure, learn everything you can about tactics, but if you're looking at the board and don't see anything tactically powerful, you still have to make a move.  How do you decide what that move is?  Failing to learn anything at all about strategic principles means that move is going to be random rather than at least motivated by a reasonable goal that might help win the chess game.

And yeah, a good chunk of the time someone like me will miss a tactic and get punished for it, but that doesn't help having a good way to decide what to do in that moment, staring at the board.  Silman's point is that even lower-level players can achieve some improvement just by making sure such moves have some kind of coherent motivation.

@Stil1

By the way, here is one game that combines a positional blunder (creation of a weak square) caused by trying to hang on to a pawn, with tactical motifs:

 

This is how I blunder as well in most of my losses. I feel bad for some reason in a position and then I implode. Sure I can blunder out of the blue as well, but most of the time there is something behind a blunder.

 

I already answered this point in the post I was writing when you posted this, but I'll summarize more succinctly:  At any given level of tactical skill, a good fraction of moves in the game won't offer up a hanging piece or a clear tactical combination that wins material.  The point of those strategic concepts is to have a reason (any reason, but preferably a self-consistent and coherent one) for making those moves, which are a substantial part of each and every game.

Edit:  I agree with you that failure to spot tactics is by far the main weakness of low-level players, including myself.  That, however, does not remotely equate to all discussion of strategy being worthless.

 
You make the most powerful point against the “tactics tactics tactics” mentality. The majority of chess positions and chess moves that you will make are not going to be “tactical”, so if that is the case, how do you determine your next move?

The counter point, however, concerns one’s studying priorities.  What is meant by everyone who says lower-rated players need to “study strategy”?   Replace the word “strategy” with “openings” —as in “study openings”— and what would you get?  You get a bunch of strong players saying “DO NOT study openings”, but rather “study opening PRINCIPLES”: control or occupy the center; develop your pieces;  get your king to safety; connect your rooks, etc.”.  What you will NOT hear stronger players say is “study opening books.”  

Why is it any different for strategy?  I read a simple books on strategy and what do I learn?  Well, I learn some rules of thumb and play through skeletal simplified examples of strategy by reading introductory books such as Pandolfini’s Weapons of Chess, Silman’s Complete Book of Chess Strategy, and the few corresponding chapters from the Idiot’s Guide to Chess, but more advanced books give lengthy complicated variations that are completely beyond my or higher-rated post-beginners’ grasps.  

Why study anything on strategy other than simple strategic principles, much like the advice to learn opening principles rather than openings themselves?   Rooks like open files, and also like supporting a pawn advance in the middlegame and passed pawn in the endgame; 2 rooks on a file even better. Bishops like open diagonals and open positions; 2 bishops even better, all squares are covered.  Knights like closed positions and being on outposts.  Fewer pawn chains are generally better; passed pawns and protected passed pawns are great.  Doubled, isolated, and backward pawns bad. Strong squares good, weak squares bad. More space good, less space bad.  Etc.  

So why shouldn’t the advice for studying strategy be any different than that for studying openings … namely, to study principles, and nothing else?  Know your basic strategic principles as listed by Steinitz, and mentioned in introductory books such as Weapons of Chess by Pandolfini. Try your best to apply these strategic principles when you don’t or can’t see a forced sequence, either offensively to take advantage, or defensively to prevent your opponent from taking advantage.  

Then get back to tactics tactics tactics.   

Because you can understand opening principles in 20 minutes, and then you need to practice them.

Strategical thinking (along with positional understanding) is more abstract and it is just more difficult to understand. For instance good vs bad pieces, pawn structures, why is doubling of a pawn sometimes ok, sometimes not, why are some weak squares relevant some are not, piece activity, space, and so on...

In all of those aspects you can bet that let's say someone rated 1 900 is significantly better than someone rated 1 000. There is more or less no way that those 2 persons are on the same level positionally and strategically. They both know opening principles, but 1 900 rated person will know more about openings. Perhaps he will not know specific lines extremely well, but he will know some common plans and so on and have more experience in those positions.

All of that will make him less likely to blunder in positions he knows better.

Which means that getting to 2 000 level will not be achieved just by getting better at tactics. Analyzing your own games will get you better overall, and you will improve in the areas some people believe are not important, whether you like it or not. If you don't get better at other stuff along with tactics, you will be another 1 100 rapid rated player with something like 2 200 puzzle score.

Edit: Now I actually see that your puzzle score is just slightly worse than mine. If only tactics matter, our ratings should be much closer.

It's true that tactical melees happen a lot in lower-rated games. But we can ask ourselves: Why is this?

Why do lower-rated players usually seem so aggressive with their moves?

Why do they bring out their king knight and king bishop, and immediately neglect the development of the rest of their pieces, while they try to attack the f7 pawn?

Why does their queen hop all over the board, threatening everything?

Why do they bring their wing pawns up two squares, then swing their rooks to the center of the board, in the opening?

Why they sacrifice material for dubious gains?

Why do they leave pieces hanging, while they pursue a combination on the other side of the board?

 

A lot of this is because they simply don't know what to do. So they try do something - and that something is usually: tactics.

Because tactics is all they know. It's all they've been shown. It's what so many players have told them is "the only thing matters".

"Tactics, tactics, tactics." That's all they hear.

"Move a pawn. Bring out your bishop. Okay now: go for tactics!"

They don't know what else to do ... and this is why games, at lower levels, tend to look like crazy shootouts in the Wild West.

Because the players are moving without any real sense of positional understanding.

They don't know what to do, so they assume that they're supposed to attack something ...

The tactical problems that you're speaking of often come from a deeper place than mere tactical vision alone. They come from a lack of understanding. From a feeling of confusion.

From the uncertainty that comes from not knowing what to do.

 

Strategy, in the form of positional guidance, isn't a "cure" for that - but it does help. Every bit of chess knowledge adds up, to improve the player's overall abilities. Just as improving one's tactical vision can strengthen a player's game - the same is true for improving a player's positional understanding. They can both work hand in hand.

Every bit of strategic knowledge, and positional insight, can help tame the board, little by little. The player begins to see ideas, in the chaos. Plans form, out of the rubble. Pieces begin to harmonize. Things begin to make sense.

 

Sure, blunders will still happen. Positional blunders. Tactical blunders. Nobody is perfect, and the learning curve is long. But think of tactics and strategy as two wings on a bird. Why flail around on just one, when you can fly with both?

@dannyhume

I agree that one should study tactics before strategy, but Capablanca, for example, said that one should study in cycles: basic endgames first, then basic tactical motifs, then basic strategy and then basic opening principles. Then again more complex endgames, more complex tactics, more complex strategies and so on. He gives examples of that in his "Chess Fundamentals".

Of course more complex concepts are more difficult to grasp, but there are diminishing returns in just training tactics, too. There is this general belief that anyone can become a tactical monster. They would have just to solve tons of puzzles, repeat them and they would reach 2200. But is that true? Or those who managed to do so had talent for it!? One might try hard to become better at tactis, while in fact they remain stuck at 1500, because they reached their limit. At that point they have two alternatives: to give up and be satisfied with their level, or study other things, even if they are harder to grasp. 

The argument of "strategy dosen't matter if you hang 3 pieces every game"...

Well... It does if your opponent misses 2 of those 3 hangs, and he hangs 1 piece too... That's "equal". But then he goes out on a dubious attack assuming the position is now equal counting the material, having no sense of danger

 

Besides, I see strategy as not a means of "becoming better", just a means of connecting to the more beautiful and less stressful side of chess. It puts you in a calmer state of mind more "at one with the game"... appreciating the beauty also helps calculating. Notice high level players rarely say "My opponent is playing like sh!t"... they would say things like "that's an interesting move, I don't think it works", so this state of mind will help you calculate better and miss less things...

 

Opening principles are strategic principles. Then you practice and apply them in your games. Same with middlegame principles. Endgames have principles too, of course, but there are theoretical positions that must be learned and are 100% concrete and technical, taking precedence over principles. Tactics are the same, 100% concrete technical sequences that take precedence over anything else in any given position (if a forced checkmate is available, that is the correct move always, not opening a long diagonal for your bishop or using your pawn to take away squares from an enemy knight).

It sounds to me like people are arguing more for learning strategic principles AND a thinking method for positional assessment and candidate move selection, rather than “study strategy.” On that, I can agree, but there are few resources in this regard (positional assessment + thinking methods) … most are simply “examples” of strategic concepts but rather lengthy inefficiency difficult ones for the learner, such “here is a lengthy variation that shows how powerful a bishop can be.”

Regardless, you will have to calculate extensively, and any forced tactics/endgames that may arise will take precedence over “strategy.”

The problem with the advice “study strategy” is that most books covering strategy simply give examples and present lengthy variations with no explanation of 90% of the moves in the variation(s). They don’t teach you to synthesize information into anything. There are obvious and not-so-obvious tactical and endgame reasons why certain moves must be played in these lengthy variations, but other moves in the line (as we see in opening variations often) are chosen more out of taste, stylistic preference, or cherry-picked to show a general concept (or counter to establishment such as Watson’s book on strategy). So then it is up to the learner to figure out why the rest of the unexplained moves make sense at their level of playing and analytical strength and compulsiveness. How can someone do this without spending hours on one variation, when they cannot consistently see a mate-in-3 or 4?

What about analyzing your own games? Better advice certainly since it is more directly relevant to your play, but you will find at the low-amateur level that your mistakes are missing tactics, leaving the opening book with a weak move (so yes, memorizing opening moves CAN improve your win-loss ratio), or miscalculating moves in a technical endgame if your game gets that far. When those are eliminated, then you can figure out how to try to set up optimal situations for your pieces (“study strategy”).

I’ve seen a lot of lower level games. I volunteer as a coach in scholastic tournaments in my area and help teach the elementary and middle schools. And yeah sure a lot of these under 1000 games go like: he plays Nh5, opponent takes the knight for no reason, but a lot more games go like this: 

Player A checks player B with his queen (because all checks are good), helping B develop a knight. Player A plays a pawn move like a3. Player B develops a piece. Player a checks player B with his queen again developing a third piece for player B. Two moves later player A misses a fork which wins material.

Over 1000 games can be just as depressing. Player A moves his bishop three times in the opening to trade it for an undeveloped knight. Then, because he’s an attacking player, opposite side castles into the scope of two raking bishops. Later he loses because of some bishop sacrifice and claims that his opponent was just lucky and it wouldn’t happen next time.

And I have the be the one that says, yes, it will happen, because you played stupid moves that don’t make sense. And he says “well I didn’t know what to do.” So I tell them that a common plan is to transfer the knight over to this place, and castle kingside because his bishops aim at the queenside. He goes and plays another game and castles queenside and loses.

Strategy is meant to be a guide. It’s like walking on a paved road instead of walking through a jungle. Of course, you still have to do the walking, but on the road you won’t have to worry about stepping in an ant nest.

It’s highly likely that the strategy books you read are too high level. For example I wouldn’t recommend anyone under 1800 otb to buy an entire book on pawn structures, it’s enough to learn simple things and principles. Like to play in the direction your pawns point, and if you have less space you tend to want to trade pieces.

As I mentioned above, I feel that it's a mistake to assume that "strategy is of no value because both players have an equal chance of blundering".

Both players do NOT have an equal chance of blundering. The player who is under pressure, the player who has the more difficult position, has a higher chance of blundering... and this is just as true in games between low-rated players as in games between experts.

If a bit of strategy can give you an easier game and allow you to apply pressure to your opponent, then it will shift the odds in your favor.

Honestly tactics just help with your overall board assessment, which can also be useful in a regular chess game. However, tactics don't just appear out of thin air in a regular chess game. I just do tactics for the fun of it but not really to improve my game. 

On the one hand, we have the grifter Michael de la Maza, who misrepresented his skill level when he embarked on a 400 point gain in a little less than two years doing only tactics and in a manner that is impossible for anyone with a job or a family. De la Maza quit chess at the end of his quest, but he inspired many “knights errant” imitators who blogged their process and mostly have quit chess.

On the other, we have the Silman aficionado, “Backyard Professor” who ignored Silman’s explanatiin that his books on imbalances will do you no good if you cannot see one-move tactics.

 

Tactics decide nearly every game, especially for players below 2000, so it should be an emphasis. But monomania is always counter-productive. Seek balance in your study.

 

Regarding the “origins of the myth” as Grigoryan puts it. The “myth” is older than he is. Chess engines did not create it.

 

Nonetheless, I think his views are worth considering aside from their historical inaccuracy.

There have been many instances in my games where a move that looks good strategically fails because of some move that i missed.  This is what happens in a real game... a move that looks good strategically would still need to be calculated for and many times following strategically correct things fail so strategic principles seem to be harming people if they are not good in just seeing moves or forcing continuations...

 

For example in this game I played 9.. Nc4 thinking that my knight is pretty good on the c4 square since it puts pressure on the e3 pawn and it also puts pressure on the b2 pawn which makes it tough for his bishop to get out. If he plays b3 then i can retreat to d6 and my next move Nf6 and i have solid control over the e4 square...    I discarded Nxf3+ since i thought after Queen takes i am just bringing that queen into the game and it comes with tempo on f7 square  and his bishop is blocked pretty badly by my pawn chain so i felt no need to exchange my knight for his bishop..

It turns out, after Nc4 i am losing since i missed e4 move which threatens to win a pawn and if i take it then Nxe4 and white is coming to g5 with his knight and i am lost...

It is just an example of how even moves which look strategtically fine need to be checked with calculations anyway so unless a player has solid tactical eye and can "see" moves and variations and threats, following strategical concepts can be a big detriment.

I think there is something to be said about how you solve puzzles.

Finding each move one by one won't help you develop. Puzzles should be solved in their entirety, before making the first move. That at least helps with calculation and visualisation.

This is a really interesting article and idea to have posted. So thanks so much for sharing that. 

For positional puzzles, check out Jeremy Silman's lesson on chess.com: Roots of Positional Understanding. It is amazing!