As someone who now follows the de la Maza approach to chess improvement, I found strategy and positional chess was the foundation of my chess understanding. I read Amateur's Mind when I was in my early 20s and used to think it hurt my chess. Over the last 2 years I believe it was extremely foundational to my success now. My tactical strength has finally caught up to my positional understanding making chess so much easier to play. I will have to dovetail that having a strong understanding of both will be the quickest way to improve. What is the saying? Always work on your floor.
The question is not as dumb as it sounds. If you review hundreds of chess games, what you find is that the vast majority are decided by tactics
I did read further. And I found the letter to be making interesting thesis and antithesis presentation. pros and cons always having more reader autonmous useful parsing than more partial communication mode. And chess is still mysterious at many experience levels. :)
Anyway, I do like to think not just in chess, but in science about certain constraints of being ourselves in charge of building theory and also adpating it sometime same persons, to empirical data. Sometimes, the same experimental data, can not provide adequate verification or information, if we don't have some existing model to slant how we look at the data. very generic comment I know.
But here, we don't have much built to talk about the data, and we use or delegate some of that missing tools to persons with more experiences, still individual expertise, but we hope that for the same data, they can see things we would not. However, as my experience with chess is from the much to learn left on my plate, I wonder about our abilities (my ability) to see as logically and clearly tactical causes and tactial plan level consequences, so that even if there was sme other longer scale and possibly more statistical logic, in terms of tactical potential wealth, maybe, or room to exercise ones tactical imagination having been restricted, that such level of strategic non turn by turn thinkng and long arc, would not always be conflarable with the left over tactical room stiching.. To say we only can see in hindsight or are "éblouis" by more visible tactical stories, and saying that because we can see them better that is what the whole games was constrained to. I find it possibly to be some kind of selction bias. It seem that the very nature of strategy is that is about the fog of plan imagnation and problems beyond our ability to devise clear tactial shenanigans. i wrote too much. sorry.
Players below master level constantly blunder in winning positions. Thus the analogy to boxing fails quite pointedly.
De La Maza himself explained that even when he had the edge such as in a position with a better knight versus opponent's bad bishop, he would often blunder and fail to convert.
Thus I believe strategy is of much lesser importance relative to tactics as far as amateur play is concerned.
I see it the same way. If a computer sees three only moves when defending a very complex position after taking a piece.... this is maybe not advisable for the human player. the machine says you are plus four, but in fact you need to nail three diabolical moves. We need to play what we understand.
As someone who now follows the de la Maza approach to chess improvement, I found strategy and positional chess was the foundation of my chess understanding. I read Amateur's Mind when I was in my early 20s and used to think it hurt my chess. Over the last 2 years I believe it was extremely foundational to my success now. My tactical strength has finally caught up to my positional understanding making chess so much easier to play. I will have to dovetail that having a strong understanding of both will be the quickest way to improve. What is the saying? Always work on your floor.
The concepts of tactics and strategy go together, I think.
According to Bobby Fischer: "Tactics flow from a superior position".
The way to get a superior position (unless your opponent blunders a piece or tactic) is by playing better strategically than your opponent.
The question is not as dumb as it sounds. If you review hundreds of chess games, what you find is that the vast majority are decided by tactics
I did read further. And I found the letter to be making interesting thesis and antithesis presentation. pros and cons always having more reader autonmous useful parsing than more partial communication mode. And chess is still mysterious at many experience levels. :)
Anyway, I do like to think not just in chess, but in science about certain constraints of being ourselves in charge of building theory and also adpating it sometime same persons, to empirical data. Sometimes, the same experimental data, can not provide adequate verification or information, if we don't have some existing model to slant how we look at the data. very generic comment I know.
But here, we don't have much built to talk about the data, and we use or delegate some of that missing tools to persons with more experiences, still individual expertise, but we hope that for the same data, they can see things we would not. However, as my experience with chess is from the much to learn left on my plate, I wonder about our abilities (my ability) to see as logically and clearly tactical causes and tactial plan level consequences, so that even if there was sme other longer scale and possibly more statistical logic, in terms of tactical potential wealth, maybe, or room to exercise ones tactical imagination having been restricted, that such level of strategic non turn by turn thinkng and long arc, would not always be conflarable with the left over tactical room stiching.. To say we only can see in hindsight or are "éblouis" by more visible tactical stories, and saying that because we can see them better that is what the whole games was constrained to. I find it possibly to be some kind of selction bias. It seem that the very nature of strategy is that is about the fog of plan imagnation and problems beyond our ability to devise clear tactial shenanigans. i wrote too much. sorry.
De La Maza managed to find a training regimen that sucked all the joy out of chess, and eventually drove him to quit.
Players below master level constantly blunder in winning positions. Thus the analogy to boxing fails quite pointedly.
De La Maza himself explained that even when he had the edge such as in a position with a better knight versus opponent's bad bishop, he would often blunder and fail to convert.
Thus I believe strategy is of much lesser importance relative to tactics as far as amateur play is concerned.
I see it the same way. If a computer sees three only moves when defending a very complex position after taking a piece.... this is maybe not advisable for the human player. the machine says you are plus four, but in fact you need to nail three diabolical moves. We need to play what we understand.