Article: 8383 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: <4i7if4$bj7@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <4iehbn$qm8@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <31503457.550A@jhu.edu> Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 12:22:20 GMT In article <31503457.550A@jhu.edu> User writes: >Personally, I think chess is 98 - 99% tactics. You >simply can't count on trying to get good bishops, >occupying the center, maintaining good pawn >structure, etc. to win games from masters. Besides, >there is only so much strategy you can know. But >there are practically an infinite number of tactical >possibilities. > > I think that people want to believe that there is >some sort of easy road to becoming chess master. Can what >a 2300 know and what a 2000 know in terms of >general strategy be all that different? I doubt it. > >The only difference I can be sure of is that the master >sees more tactical possibilities than the non-master, and >calculates further. The things is, you could swap all the occurrences of "strategy" and "tactics" in these two paragraphs and it would all still make sense, and be as true. [For example, Znosko-Borovsky famously said that the number of tactical ideas is limited - forks, double attack, etc.]. Masters are masters because they are better than us at both strategy AND tactics, and better at spotting opportunities of both kinds, and have more instantly available experience of each. I've just read John Nunn's Best Games book, and the instructional examples - and why his opponents lose - are of tactical and strategical types, and more often than not a bit of both. I think it goes quite a long way to illustrating the differences between masters and experts. e.g. strategical insight: NUNN-GELFAND "As a young player I was puzzled by games in which White played the manoeuvre Nc2-e2-g3 against the Pirc. It seemed to me that the Knight was not very well placed on g3, because Black's g6 pawn prevented the Knight advancing. Indeed its one and only duty seemed to be to defend the pawn on e4. Then, in 1984, I lost a game with Black against Murray Chandler, in which he used precisely this manoeuvre. The crucial distinction is whether White is attacking or defending. If White doesn't hold the initiative then the Knight on g3 is truly inactive, but if White holds the initiative and has pressure in the centre then the Knight can be very useful. The Rooks and Queen operating on the open files are so dangerous for Black that he cannot counter them directly; instead, Black must somehow aim for counterplay. The only weakness in White's position is the vulnerable Pawn on e4. If this is secure, then White has plenty of time to improve his position. The function of the g3 Knight is precisely to support the e4 Pawn and give White the freedom of action he needs to step up the pressure." -- NUNN e.g. mixed strategical/tactical insight: NUNN-MESTEL [18. h6 when: 18...Bh8 19. h7+ Kxh7 20. h5 +- 18... dxc3 19. hxg7 Kxg7 20. Rxd6 +- 18... Bxh6!! 19. Bxh6 Nxb3 20. axb3 dxc3 ] "When conducting a sacrificial attack, it is very important to consider lines in which the defender returns material in order to exchange some attacking pieces. If the attacker has made positional as well as material concessions, then the defender may even be satisfied with a final material balance in the opponent's favour, as he may even have a positional advantage or even a counterattack in compensation." "The move 18...Bxh6! is very hard to see, because it is very unusual for Black to give up his 'Dragon' bishop voluntarily, least of all for a mere pawn." -- NUNN Now, if you are still with me, Nunn is a demon attacker and a theory nut, but his games aren't driven by "98-99%" tactics. Positional play is the basis for combinational play, and while I don't doubt he can out-calculate many of his opponents, the strategical insights are also important. > Sometimes, when I play a game, I like to play purely >strategically. Especially when the game is a hard fought >one you get a certain sense of satisfaction knowing that >it has some sort of theme or idea in it, and it becomes, >in a way, sort of like a work of art. Against this tendency >are the purely tactical elements of the game which one >is forced to consider. And this somehow destroys the >overall aesthetics of it. > > - DougRockacy, FICS(2050) I have a lot of sympathy with this - I've never played anything you could call call artistic, but I do tend to think of the strategical ideas of chess as more attractive than the tactics, which seem more mundane. I often like Nunn's verbal strategical comments more than his usually very attractive and instructive variations. It's a sort of romanticism, I suppose. [I wonder if it's related to the sort of snobbery that exists between 'pure' and 'applied' science, or between the professions and the trades - somehow the intrusion of the grubby details of the world is demeaning to my sphere of ideas... Just thinking aloud, flames redirected to alt.dev.null] 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 Tue Apr 2 09:45:26 BST 1996