Playing style

It's easier to attack than defend, at least for most of us and definitely for me. The attacking player has the initiative and it's often tedious and nerve-wracking to have to react to your opponents' every move (ie defend) as opposed to "act" and maintain an initiative. Often a bungled attack simply results in an equal game or maybe a slightly inferior position, but a bungled defense can result in a major loss of material - or checkmate.

That said, it isn't possible to attack, defend or counter-attack all the time no matter what you like to do, so it's necessary to determine what you're best and worst at and try improving whatever you do worst. Knowing what positions you play best and worst (open, semi-open, closed) is also important to work on your weaknesses and to try avoiding whatever type of positions you're the least comfortable with.

Positional here.  I have  always preferred playing a waiting game. 

Well, whatever you say, I prefer winning, but if I had a choice I'd choose attack over defense.

"Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack", Wilhelm Steinitz said. Trying to attack if not having the initiative or with having an inferior position is dangerous and more often than not leads to an inevitable loss.

One will both have to attack and defend throughout the games he/she will play. If we assume White has the initiative at the beginning, then when playing White you'll have to attack, and when playing Black you'll have to defend.

The exclusions from that will appear when White doesn't prepare and execute a good attack. Then (and only then) Black can counterattack. And vice versa - once Black takes the initiative, what's left for White is to defend, no matter of playing style preferences.

Shortly said, if both sides attack, the one that has an advantage (initiative or other) will win, hence by attacking the other side has chosen a wrong plan. If both sides defend, then neither side should win, and as long as both sides have opposite aims for the game that should be a bad outcome for one of the sides - and that side would have chosen a wrong plan. And finally, if one of the sides attacks and the other defends, chances are 50:50 that you'll be either side (in the long term), so you should be proficient with both.

browni3141 is right, Arctor is the best forum contributor of all!

ok, if you prefer winning, how do you play to win? what style do you use?

To win, you have to attack. Otherwise you can draw at best.

But the matter is you needn't always win. To be successful, you need to score at least 50% against relatively equally strong opponents, which means you should have (wins + 0,5*draws)/(total games)>=0,5.

In other words, winning one game and losing one is equal to drawing both. Moreover, if you play defensively when you don't have the initiative and manage to draw the game, after that win a game where you have the initiative, that would be a great result.

Have a look at some GM or other competitive player. Magnus Carlsen, for example, has w/d/l ratio of 34/54/12%, which means he's won a third of the games he's played, but he scores 61%, which is a very good result. That's because if he's not won a game he's usually avoided losing it too, and that's for over 1/2 of the games he's played.

I prefer attacking....but if I have to play a positional game in order to secure the full point....then I'll do it.

 Then how did Tigran Petrosian become WC? Given that a draw means the champion remains?

Botvinnik tired later in the playing sessions, committing errors that the younger man took advantage of.

He held off Spassky by the odd game in match #1, and lost to him in match #2. Most people concurred that Spassky was the stronger player, right at his peak.

I prefer to win as well, by which I mean that I prefer to play in whatever style is most advantageous in the current position. If the position is quiet, I'm happy to play quietly and try to slowly build positional advantages. If the position is sharp, I'm happy to analyze at length and try to outplay my opponent tactically. And I won't try to steer the position from one to the other when that doesn't seem objectively best.

Given the choice, I prefer somewhat sharp and dynamically unbalanced positions, but you often don't have a choice, so I've learned to enjoy all kinds of positions and find pleasure in the challenges of almost any position. I think striving to be a universal player who is comfortable playing against any kind of player is good for my progress in the long run, as well as how much fun I have playing chess. The only type of position I don't enjoy is really sharp positions where the opponent has all the tactical opportunities, and I'm forced to defend perfectly for many moves in order to emerge with a tiny advantage. For that reason, I try to avoid accepting sharp gambits that require perfect defense, and I would not play lines like the black side of the Lolli Attack or the white side of the Traxler Counter Gambit.

I think Petrosian's match with Botvinnik is a good example of the importance of scoring instead of winning, which was my previous post about, and that's one of the reasons he became world champion despite winning only 5 of the 22 games. However, did Petrosian win a game without attacking? Has anyone at all won a game without attacking?

Well said. That's the correct approach towards playing style.

 This is sooo incorrect...

lol

Which is incorrect? And why?

 GIex wrote:

I guess it is just semantics. I've won plenty of games by inviting and then defending against an attack that eventually falls apart leaving me with material advantage. But at that point I had to go on the King hunt, which could then be taken as attacking.

And no, you don't have to attack to win, sometimes your opponent will just blunder it to you.

There is a difference between "attacking" as a playing style which is the sense of the topic, and an "attack" as a middlegame plan. As far as the topic is about the first and not the second meaning of the word, I believe one can't win without attacking. But here are my reasons.

"To attack" as a style means to "to aim for a win", as opposed to "to defend" which means "to try to disallow your opponent to win".

"An attack" as a middlegame plan means "a consequence of moves that aims to vitiate the opponent's king's safety and checkmate" - attack on the king, or "pawn advancement (on the flank opposite to the enemy's king) that aims to gain space and/or disrupt the opponent's pawn structure" - usually the minority attack.

In chess, there are 4 (or 3) ways to win a game:

1) by checkmate;

2) by your opponent's resignation (shortening the game if an oncoming checkmate is obvious, or by some other consiedration);

3) by being awarded a win due to your opponent's failure to adhere to the rules, whenever the penalty for the violation is such;

4) on time (may be considered as a subtype of 3).

The first way - checkmating, can be reached by either a successful attack on the opponent's king, or by checkmating in the endgame when the opponent's king is already exposed and can't defend due to material inferiority, due to your opponent's mistake that you manage to exploit or for some other reason. Hence there are ways to win by checkmate without performing an attack, not to mention the non-checkmate ways to win.

However, to win without playing to win is impossible. At least as far as your opponent can't force you to win, because if you don't attend the event you'll have a loss, or a draw at best if the event's rules allow it. Hence it's impossible to win without playing to win, in other words without attacking play.

Therefore one can't win without attacking play, although one can win without an attack on the opponent's king. Otherwise, as I said, a draw is what can be achieved at best.

I prefer to defend, to refute my opponents ideas, because for one thing, in most of my games, I build up a winning position, but then I lose it, because I can't attack. Because I just can't find ways to checkmate unless it's trivial, only to build up my position. And Petrosian was great: Anyone can win some games by attacking (I don't have anything against it), but to win a game by patiently defending, by enduring, that takes real skill. 

"THEY SAY MY GAMES SHOULD BE MORE INTERESTING. I COULD MAKE MY GAMES INTERESTING: AND ALSO LOSE." 

-Petrosian.

well, you don't need to attack the entire game IMO. you can defend and set up a god position. you're oponent then has 2 choices:

1. build up his position

2. Attack your defense

in  each case, you have to adapt to the position.

Sometimes you willl have to battle with him and make sacrifices.

Others you will both set up a good defense and then start a war.

But when defending, your king has a lower chance of getting mate, because of the spot protection. Because of this, if your oponent sees a mate, but one piece is blocking, they might try hard to get that piece out of there by either killing it, or giving it a bait.

However, if you defend well enough, your oponent could very welll make a blunder at this stage which could cost the game. A blunder, and your defense becomes an offense, which could lead to a win.

Thank you all for advice again.