Tactics is about moves, strategy - about ideas.
Tactics vs. strategy
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Oct 31, 2012
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#23
If you can't work out tactics, your strategy won't work. Furthermore, strategy is dictated by tactics. You won't know when "there's nothing to do" unless you're really good at tactics to begin with.
Every great chess strategist was also an excellent tactitian.
The two go hand-in-hand.
My two cents:
Strategy involves the determination of (usually) long-term positional goals and abstract plans to achieve those goals. Tactics involve (usually) forced sequences of captures or threats that aim to achieve either positional goals or non-positional goals such as material gain.
In a lot of ways, tactics and strategy are the same thing. For example, a good "strategic advantage" such as a cramping pawn chain, with white pawns on c5, d6, e5, f4, is only actually strategically desirable if it leads to some sort of threat, and threats are based on tactics. That's really what a good strategic position is: one that can generate tactical threats/problems easily. One might describe it in more general terms, but the former is a requirement for the position to lead to anything.
I think of the two words more as different perspectives of the same thing. When you talk about strategy, you are focusing less on concrete variations and more on plans (even though these things shouldn't be ignored); when you are talking about tactics, you are usually referring to very specific, fairly forced sequences of moves.
But really, though, you could call both of these things tactics or both of them strategy, as strategy only has value in relation to tactics. We use the two words to narrow our focus, whether on the plans, or precise sequences of moves. I don't think the dictionary makes any real distinction between the two words; the distinction is most likely unique to chess cant.
Estragon wrote:
It may have been American master Edward Lasker who said, "Tactics is what you do when there is something to do. Strategy is what you do when there is nothing to do."
I thought it was Tartakower.
Oct 31, 2012
0
#27
Tactics: I take his knight, he attacks my bishop, I ingore it and atack his rook, he moves his queen to threaten back-rank mate, and I drop my Knight in with check, winning Her Majesty with the old Fork Trick!
Strategy:I could take his knight with my bishop here, doubling his pawns. He will get the bishop pair, which will in turn give him a little initiative. But if I can survive that, thoise doubled pawns will make excellent targets in the endgame. I bet I can even win one of them, if my king gets to the queenside first. Better start finding ways to tade pieces off now.
"The tactician knows what to do when there is something to do; whereas the strategian knows what to do when there is nothing to do." ~ Gerald Abrahams
Just play enough games and you will learn:
People win because of superior strategy and lose due to failed tactics.
well my strategy is .....
if you don't got no tactics ... go make some!!
Most of the posts on this thread, almost surprisingly considering other threads, are right on the mark. The two, ideally, are inseperable. I have said that tactics are the bullets; strategy is the rifle. Without the rifle, the bullets are often no more than paperweights. Without the bullets, the rifle is just a stick. "Tactics VS strategy" makes no sense. It must be tactics AND strategy, (unless your opponent has already blundered badly, in which case, pummeling him with paperweights may be adequate).
It may have been American master Edward Lasker who said, "Tactics is what you do when there is something to do. Strategy is what you do when there is nothing to do."
Pretty like this adage!
It just confirms that you employ tactics with the situation at hand, while strategy is a long term planning!
More like a "mission vision" thing!