What percentage of chess is tactics

He just isn't searching as wide or deep.  He's still looking for tactics.

Lol, Fiveofswords please stop noobing!

The answer is contextual. The game of Chess and the ppl pushing the pieces vary so much that an accurate percentage of tactical play would be immpossible. If such a number were to exist it would be transient and therefore useless.

The higher the count of pieces on the board would appear to relate to a higher opportunity for tactics. This is not aways true for example in closed positions. The end game has fewer pieces and therefore less tactical opportunities.

**An tactic in the mid-game, say winning a piece does not have the same value as a sucessful tactic in the end game winning the game.**

An attempt to answer your question would require a multi-dimensional matrix of information just to cover the basic factors of Chess.

Percentages that appear 'highly accurate' and to the 3rd degree (ty Venus-rat-trap) are possibly taken from an engine at the time. Once that engine has some more game information the percentages will change. All of the percentages quoted are so close that we may as well say (as humans) that  tactical positions on an average are 89.243183%. This is not very useful.

Rather than trying to define a percentage my time would be better spent enjoying a game. You may like to compare previous games at certain moves to compare tactical possiblities, but why?

I don't know, it's pretty common for the best players to come up with ideas that the commentators haven't seen. Not because they couldn't calculate them, but because they missed the idea.

The more tactics you learn the more you find logic in illogical moves.

I think this over simplifies it. Sure I can point at a move and say the idea is blah blah blah, but does that mean I think it's good?

Something simple to explain... like an exchange sac + you get a center pawn and a good knight. Ok, I basically just justified/explained in half a sentence why it's worth considering, but in a specific position knowing whether it's good or bad might be the difference between a 2600 and a 2800 player.

Ok I guess Scott is saying though "the commentators haven't seen" ... sure there are only so many basic ideas, but I'm guessing he means an unexpected application of it. "I didn't see that" as in "I didn't think that move was playable here."

wow...simple answer here. Chess is 100% calculation. 

No it's not. Do you start a game thinking:

1. a3 a6 2. a4 a5. 'Na that doesn't look good. Better calculate the next line'.

I've often wondered about how a person could teach these common sense type of thinking to a beginner so that they could start applying it right away to games. The words are simple enough, but I think tactics and threats are still so random it makes it impossible to put in practice.

I also wonder about if this common sense type thinking is absorbed unconsciously and VERY quickly by young improving players whereas I didn't see it for myself for years.

Also I hate how some moves are over-simplified by commentators.

"Oh Mr 2800 so-and-so played f3 because it controls e4."

No shit it controls e4. There's a little more going on that that... yes e4 is important but I still don't know if it makes sense or not

Or you know, Carlsen maneuvers his bishop somewhere "now it's on a nice diagonal" no shit. But there were a dozen other maneuvers available in the position to which you could have appended similarly trite praise.

Chess is definately not 100% calculation or 95% tactics for noobs.

Chess is not 50% or more tactics, but over 50% of chess games at sub-2000 level are decided on them, which makes them critically important completely regardless of who you are.

And yes, GMs can play moves with very simple reasoning, too. I don't understand your complaint. He needed to guard the e4 pawn, so he put a pawn on f3 defending it.

Well I mean, commentary is just for noobs, even if it is a Samisch King's Indian.

Tell me more ....

As i posted...chess is 100% calculation. 

I don't understand this. Computers play by applying evaluation function to possible future positions and comparing them with minimax algorithm. You have to search at least 1 half-move in depth. Otherwise you have just one current position in front of you and can only compare it to itself.

Both Fritz and Aquarium don't allow to set Search Depth to 0, minimal value is 1.

Positional factors together with material factors are part of evaluation function.

Venus-rat-trap wrote:

In highly tactical positions, chess is 93.753% tactics.

In medium frequency tactical positions, it drops to 87.47685%.

In low frequency tactical positions, the percentage is 86.4997%.

In actual games, the percentages are even less again due to missed tactics by humanoids.

I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Neither humans nor computers play like this. Think about it.

Really it depends on the phase of the game.

In the actual opening, you're probably trying to remember what you know, and if you're good, you're trying to remember something about what your opponent might have played in a previous game or something. If you have preparation for that particular opponent, wonderful.

In the part of the opening where you're out of your preparation, or out of book as it were, it probably depends. If you think your opponent is still in preparation, things are different from whether you think otherwise. In general you want to make the beginnings of a plan, and what goes into that can be as simple as pawn structure play or can be as complex as 100% tactics, in a pretty open position.

Once you're in the middlegame, again it depends on how quiet the position is. Though even if it is super quiet, and you're contemplating some maneuver like Nc3-b1-a3-c2, because c2 is _just right_ for that knight, you still have to ask yourself questions like how your opponent might counter such a maneuver. It really is a rare position where you can do whatever you want while your opponent is reduced to waiting moves. Though they do occur. More often in Capablanca's games than yours.

And then the endgame is full of calculation, because it's relatively rare that you'll be in an endgame where you know the principles going in. Obviously piece activity is important in almost any position, but unless you're in a rook ending which has some defined characteristics you're probably going to be winging it (calculating, and trying to draw some meager conclusions from the calculation).

That is my $0.02

Ozzie

p.s. Does anybody else love the show Gotham?