Article: 9846 of rec.games.chess.misc Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.misc Path: info!dregis From: dregis@exeter.ac.uk (D.Regis) Subject: Re: TACTICS IN CHESS Message-ID: Organization: University of Exeter, UK. References: <4ttrt0$vs5@news-f.iadfw.net> <4u0kq9$c2m@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 12:06:26 GMT In article <4u0kq9$c2m@newsbf02.news.aol.com> chessrsc@aol.com (Chess RSC) writes: >In case you do not have Reuben Fine's "Chess Marches On" I will give you >what Fine said about, Strategy and Tactics. "Thirty years ago (this was >written in 1942), Teichmann said that chess is 99% tactics. And despite >the enormous strides of chess theory since then, his percentage can only >be reduced a few points Richard, thanks for posting this, I think it is very interesting. I think in fact we don't know a great deal about chess: the vast bulk of games at most levels go unscrutinised (at least publicly), and those that do get examined and published may be both untypical (e.g. a brilliancy) and be annotated in a self-serving way. There has often been noted another tendency in published games, for the tactics to be suppressed in annotations in favour of the strategical side. I agree at club level (say, up to 1800 ELO) games are often marred or decided by tactical oversights. But what about a 'typical' master game? How many errors does it contain, and of what type? We have now an abundance of master games available, say, from TWIC and the archives, but no error analysis. It would be an interesting exercise to take a tournament book where every game is analysed, and go through it, counting: - number of errors - size of error (?! ? ??) - nature of error (tactical/strategical, oversight/misevaluation, how many moves deep) - consequences of error ( = to +/-, += to +-, +/- to 1-0) - context (time trouble?) I no of no such analysis of master or amateur tournaments. [I have got a stack of games from the East Devon Minor tournament which I intend to go through one day.] I think only after such a count would I believe Fine's conclusion that "most games, even between the greatest of the great, are decided by tactics or combinations which have little or nothing to do with the fundamental structure of the game". The Alekhine-Euwe matches may be an example, but the style of the players, the tension and the alleged drunken state of Alekhine may have increased the proportion of games decided by tactical oversights. My guess is these match games are not typical of most master games, certainly not nowadays: I hear more about "percentage chess" and "playing inside the margin of the draw". One must also recall Alexander's observation that blunders only occur in lost positions! It may be that aspects of style (i.e. a player who avoids tactical positions) would confound such an analysis of tournament games, but I'd be interested to see it done anyhow. I don't own a tournament book suitable i.e. literally every game analysed, preferably not by the players themselves. Could anyone take this on? I see some difficulties in assigning errors to classes e.g. Gligoric failing to play Rf7+ in a Rook ending against Fischer in 1958: was this a failure of analysis (tactical error), or a failure to assess the position as containing such a resource (positional evaluation)? Anyhow, it made me think! -- May your pieces harmonise with your Pawn structure and your sacrifices be sound in all variations D _ / "()/~ Dave Regis &8^D* WWW: http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/chess.html || \_/| = DrDave on BICS ~\ / "...what else exists in the world but chess?" _|||__SHEU: ~/sheu.html -- NABOKOV From info!dregis Fri Aug 9 10:33:23 BST 1996