Ridiculous Chessbase Hyperbole, and Still Undefeated in Florida...

...for what that's worth. I've played two games, drew one and won the second. Both opponents lower rated than me. Feed me to a few Class A guys and I doubt I'll stay undefeated much longer. In any case, the second game was played at the Boca Raton Chess Club at Florida Atlantic University. I played a young (10-ish) Asian kid, which scared me a little since kids tend to by underrated. I played the Classical Sicilian, and I have to say that it was one of the best games I've played. He made a mistake on move 7, and I was able to squeeze him for the rest of the game. I was proud of myself, because I didn't let up mentally and I kept total control of the game the entire time. I gradually pushed his pieces back with various threats until he was too passive to generate counterplay, and when a tactical chance presented itself I took it and won.

This has to be the most egotistical post I've ever made, praising myself like this, but I promise if I keep playing good chess it will become less pronounced. It's just nice to see work paying off over the board. It's true that I outrated my opponent quite a bit, but what made me happy wasn't the winning, it was that I feel that for probably the first time ever I played 'real chess' (in the Dan Heisman sense) for an entire game. And if you don't know what 'real chess' is (as opposed to 'hope chess') and you're rated under 2000, then you should read this: http://www.chesscafe.com/text/real.txt . In any case, here's the game:

Yin-Rampley.pgn



So that was that. Very clean for me. In other news, Topalov won the Pearl Spring tournament with a performance of just under 2900 (2890). Chessbase asked the ludicrous question in their article (http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5101) if Topalov was on his was to becoming the best ever. I can't tell you how absurd that is. While he is a great player, he's too streaky to ever be more than your 'normal' super GM. He's never won a world championship match (and in my opinion has never been world champ; Kasparov-> Kramnik -> Anand). Look at Fischer and Kasparov. Both were extremely consistent and showed long stretches in which they absolutely dominated everyone else. Kasparov was +55% =38% -7% in his career. Not only did he only lose 7% of his games (most of which were earlier in his career), but he won 55% of the time. That's sick considering the level of competition he was playing against. Fischer was +56% =28% -16%. Topalov is +36% =42% -22%. Not even close to the same league. For the record, Topalov's nemesis Kramnik is +38% =51% -11%. And he held the world title for 8 years. Capablanca was +51% =32% -17%. Laughable is too weak a word for Topalov as the best ever. The streakiest ever, maybe. Unbelievable.

The False Dicotomy of Tactical vs Positional players

This is an interesting one, because you hear it all the time. What player hasn't described him or herself as a 'tactical' or 'positional' player? I've certainly done so (tactical, in my case) without really thinking about what it means.

What chess game isn't tactical and positional? These are really just levels of thinking about a position, aren't they? Positional considerations relate to longer term structural and strategic factors, and tactics are the way we execute the plans we form while thinking positionally. Every game, we do both.

What I think the description is trying to capture is whether a given player prefers closed or open positions. Think about it: usually d pawn openings are described as more positional and e pawn openings as tactical. But this is silly. Kasparov cut a swath of rampant attacking destruction opening with either pawn, and Karpov player very prophylactically when opening with the e pawn earlier in his career. What's more accurate (though still questionable) is that e pawn openings result in more open positions, while d pawn openings often create closed positions. Tactical and positional considerations are important in each, but he nature of the play is different.

Perhaps what we should ask rather than 'tactical or positional?' is 'open or closed positions?'. I for one have a strong preference for open positions with easy piece play, and I play closed positions pretty badly (the exception being the King's Indian, which I seem to do pretty well against for some reason). Still, I open primarily with 1.d4 and do just fine in the opening. I just make sure to play the most open lines. I'd be interested to know if anyone else thinks 'open or closed' describes style better than 'tactical or positional'.

Credit has to go to Garrett Smith for pointing out to me that this was really a rather non-critcally accepted false dichotomy.