Positional Chess

Here is a good quiz, to figure ourt your chess personality. It gave me Kramnik, and correctly guessed 2 of the 3 openings I play regualarly.

www.chesspersonality.com 

Here is an interesting puzzle, I really enjoy:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/are-you-a-technician-or-a-tactician

lol Im Fischer

I'm talking about good and bad positions. Not talking about positions where there's a question. Obviously what makes chess so interesting is we all disagree all the time.

I do this because the OP is very  new, so might get the wrong idea about positional ideas. They can be as crushing as being up a queen, even when material is equal and there are no tactics in the current position.

Re: strategy and positional chess, most people use them interchangeably, but they aren't the same. Below a quote by Kramnik:

"There is something mysterious about Petrosian. He was a brilliant tactician and an excellent strategic player, although his positional understanding was not as good as Smyslov’s. However, many people consider him to have been a master of positional play. He was definitely a player who could cope with every kind of situation, but I don’t think that positional play was his cup of tea."

And another:

"[Karpov] is a versatile chess player, a good tactician who brilliantly calculates lines and positionally very strong. . .
I think he did not pay attention to strategy. As I have already told, he easily forgot about the things that had happened on the board. Probably, he did not have a sufficiently deep strategic thread of the play. Karpov is a chess player of a great number of short, two to three move combinations: he transferred his knight, seized the space, weakened a pawn . In my view, he was not a strategic player by nature."

The way I see it positional play and tactics are two sides of the same coin. Strategy is a long term plan.

Again I disagree that positional play isn't concrete. You can also win a game by not executing a single material winning tactic until the very end when you queen a pawn. And this kind of game can be completely crushing. I get the feeling you're a tactical player who only knows how apply pressure with an attack or the initiative.

Good point. I've been tending to use those two terms to mean the same thing, but I can see there's a difference: just having a feel for the goodness of positions is different than knowing which general plans to use in which circumstances.

leiph, you misunderstood Kramnik.  He is saying that strategy and positional play are the same thing but Karpov was not as good at it as people think.  Incidentally, that is Kramnik's view about Karpov and his play but it is very much a minority view amongst experts.  You are the only person I have ever met who has suggested that strategy and positional play are different.  I have nothing further to say on the topic.

Ok. I'm willing to agree to disagree.

Thanks leiph.  No offence.  Incidentally, Kramnik's view of Petrosian is also very controversial. Kramnik is opininated and is arguably he is entitled to be as he is a great player.  However, just like with Fischer and Korchnoi to name two other great players at random, we need not agree with everything he says.

Ok good, no offense meant from me either :)

I definitely agree that quotes can/should be questioned. Sometimes I wonder if a person reads one of their quotes from years ago and cringes, because now they realize they were wrong, and their mistake is forever enshrined hah.

I am sure Kramnik cringes.  But we are all human and he is forgiven.