Is all chess POSITIONAL?

Imagine chess as a battlefield of wits, where knights charge like caffeinated horses and pawns fight tooth and nail for a slice of glory. In this epic showdown, you've got two main strategies: the tactical tornado and the positional pondering.

Tactical play is like a swift ninja strike. It's all about quick calculations and fancy footwork, executing moves that make your opponent's head spin like a chessboard carousel. You're basically a chess magician, pulling rabbits out of hats and making their pieces disappear faster than Houdini on a caffeine high.

But wait, there's more! Enter the positional play, the grandmaster's secret weapon. It's like playing chess with a crystal ball. You zoom out and see the bigger picture, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each piece like a chess detective. You carefully arrange your forces, maneuvering like a chess general on a quest for world domination.

Both approaches have their charm, like a battle between hot chili peppers and smooth jazz. Some players dig the tactical tornado, while others vibe with the positional pondering. But the true chess wizards know that blending both is the ultimate recipe for success. It's like mixing a dash of explosive tactics with a sprinkle of strategic sorcery to create a chess masterpiece.

So, whether you're a ninja on the chessboard or a crystal ball-wielding sorcerer, embrace the chaos, strategize like a boss, and make those opponents bow down to your mighty chess skills! 🏆♟️😄

Chess is a human construct. So it makes sense to play like a human, as well. As Grandmaster Aagaard advised in his book, Excelling at Chess: "Think like a human."

Because to try to think like an engine, or like a tablebase, would be a fool's errand. It would be like a human sprinter trying to "run like a car" - it simply can't be done, nor would it be helpful to attempt it.

Sure, it's true that, until chess is solved, we can't say with utmost certainty that any move is "best" in any given position.

But we don't need to - because we aren't engines, and neither are our opponents.

Making practical, reasonable (positional) decisions can take us quite far in chess.

Your moves don't always have to be "best" - as long as they're "good enough".

Well, okay ...

More accurate of me would've been to say: "... until chess is solved, we can't say with utmost certainty that any move is 'best' in many given positions."

My main point is that "best" doesn't really matter. Not at the human level. Just play reasonable moves, and strive to ensure that your position is as good as, or better than, your opponent's.

You don't need to play "perfect" chess to win - you just need to play better than the other guy.

GM's are so bad with their positional understanding. GM's can not win a match with a computer even when given a forced winning position of 2 pawns advantage.

Hikaru drew both games there, against a "3400"-rated engine.

Depending on who you ask, 2-pawn odds would be the rough equivalent of a material advantage of 60 Elo to 200 Elo (given to the odds-receiving player).

Given that Hikaru drew both games, that would suggest that his performance rating for those two games, based on his opponent's rating, would be between 3200 and 3340.

That's not a bad performance rating for a human, considering he spent a large portion of his time using positional reasoning, rather than calculation, to choose his moves ...

Would Stockfish obliterate any human, from equal starting positions? Probably. But it's not because "GMs are so bad with their positional understanding". Stockfish would win because humans tend to miss things. A strong chess engine, such as Stockfish, misses very little at all.

This doesn't mean that the human will lose because positional understanding is worthless. Quite the opposite - positional understanding is the only reason why the human will be able to keep it a close game, until the point when it finally isn't.

It'll be a blunder that eventually loses the game for the human - an incorrect decision, due to a misevaluation somewhere. An oversight, perhaps, where the engine makes a move that the human didn't consider. Or a temporary lapse in concentration, that leads to a costly error.

So yes, that's where engines have the edge - they've been designed specifically to minimize the types of mistakes that we, as humans, tend to make.

But positional understanding still remains vital. It's what allowed David Howell (and 3 others chess players) to secure a draw against AlphaZero in 2018 - they steered the game into positionally drawish waters, and AlphaZero - with all its mechanical brilliance - was unable to find anything better ...

What do YOU think?

I gave you incomplete information. As I wanted to see if you knew anything about what you are talking about. And it is clear you will just say anything.

I like to think of position and tactics as two stripes on a barber pole. they go hand in hand. they are intertwined.

Cool fact which shows that positional and tactical are quite dumb terms. Mikhail Tal was a super positional player, yes, I said positional, because all of his brilliant sacrifices and insane attacks wouldn't have been possible if, surprise surprise, he had a positionally worse position, like no control of center, weak pieces, weak king, weak squares, ect.

Whilst Karpov was a very tactical player, as in every position where he was squeezing his opponent apart, all the tactics in the position favoured him, rendering his opponent helpless.

See? You can call any player positional or tactical depending on what you wanna say, and back your point up. Because they are not two seperate entities, they are grouped togethor on the chess board, you wont be able to make brilliant sacrafices with loads of positional weaknesses, and you cant be positionally better if you have tactical problems.