Is karpov style similar to philidor ???

Is it my coach suggested I find a master player who plays in the same style as me by looking at my best and there mostly by exploiting positional (and opening inaccuracies) advantages and choking my opponent which I thought I was sorta like karpov. But then I took a closer look and found I seem to mostly play better with pawn structure ideas in mind and thought of philidor so which one should I study more intentionally or are there styles the same but just one being more modern(karpov).

"Style? I have no style."

--Karpov

IMO, such advice the coach gave is good in that it gives the student something useful to do that he is willing to do (studying master games). The style aspect just doesn't seem essential to me though.

I think it takes some real chess strength to have a style; most of us are simply aggressive/defensive, attackers/defenders/counter-attackers, tactical/afraid to jump into tactics. A pretty simplified palette.

I think Reb quotes some GM in his profile, saying that no one under 2500 has a style.

Anyway, something to think about.

That is strange to me because I would have thought that the reverse would be true, that no one over 2500 would have a style.  I would have thought that as strength increases, any style gets drummed out of a player's game, whereas lower rated players might have an identifiable style.

Kramnik said "There are only two styles: the winning one and the losing one."

Fezzik, I find the comment genuinely interesting where you talk about how not just problem solving but also mistakes are indicative of a style.  When I observe chess games I like to assess mistakes scientifically (if possible) as well as learn correct plans.

Thank you for that post, Fezzik.  This is a fresh analysis to me.  Is there somewhere I can get deeper specifics on that view of Anand-Topalov?

While it's true that the Philidor system is usually seen as very stodgy and defensive these days, Philidor's main idea was to follow up with 3...f5, which is everything but solid.

Well I always liked philidor when I was just starting out I know it sounds weird but I won my first chess tournament only 3 days after learning how to play and most games to the best of my knowledge off of what the chess coach said back then (I didn't know notation so I dont have any off the games.) said I had really good pawn structure skillz for a beginner at that time. The story goes is this though. My veryvery very  first chess game I lost and even then I noticed it was because of piece-play I knew how the pieces moved but that was it but I noticed just from watching a few games afterwards that  when attacked by a pawn that the pieces would move out of there way running and when I heard about the schools annual tournament coming up I only based my practice off of just pawn structures and piece values. On the day of the tournament all i really did was set-up a good pawn structure and just basically mess around with the other stuff on the board just protecting my pawn structure and through out the tournament everyone just made blunders against me when they couldn't break through. I didn't see it as nothing more thane a board game till everyone started telling me how sweet it was as a fresh beginner to come 1st in any tournament. When I found out about a famous player named philidor who was a master of pawns I flipped and wanted to know more about him. Over the years my style kept developing to where I was known for bishop play during my middle school year where I was ranked 3rd out of everyone in the club (just 37 or 34 people) And now when I really start to look at my games and from what others say I seem more like Karpov in style. I know it's a long story but I love telling it it always gets me pumped up even while typing it.

I like the Jazz and Chess link/analogy, Fezzik.  I often notice in games that I lose that my opponents' mistakes become useful and my mistakes are just mysterious.