From the author's preface to Strategic Play:
"I am not sure that the title of this book is entirely accurate, maybe it would have been better to call it Complex Positions, but this would probably convince the already very limited number of people interested in this book that it is dull and torturous. Instead I decided to call the book Strategic Play, because the skills exercised in this book are to a great extent the same ones used when we make strategic decisions: the combination of calculation, positional evaluation and long-term abstract thinking."
So apparently, "strategic" refers to a higher level of positional understanding. It's written for those above master level so I'm not really qualified to comment further.
@MM1993 Hi. Maybe no. I wondering if positional chess is more like checkers. Many exchanges result in pawns changes "lanes" THATS positional in my head. Of course there is more. But I see it as a change in formation versus short term "dances". Sounds a bit derogatory but I've always been a fan of tactics and it has it's limits. It results in low rated play per my experience.
From my point of view frankly speaking it's unclear. On my 1600 lichess level there are no strategy at all. Chess is 95% tactics as somebody smart said and I keep to that. Computer engines play almost entirely tactically so it basically goes down to who makes the first blunder. In human games the winner is the guy who makes the one but last blunder as Kasparov said. And he knows what he says because his life was chess in miniature or vice versa.
This is just sooo confusing for me at the moment😂😂😂.
Especially because that I think (think) that strategy and tactics are supposed to be different things🤯🤯🤯🤯
So that's another kettle of fish all together. Strategy is tactics you've learned OFB. Tactics are tactics you learned 5 seconds ago.
So strategic play must be stuff like, openings and traps. Then the opposite is random play.
Positional play?
I just don't know. 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Maybe it's attacking from a good position? Then the opposite would be something like bringing your king to the centre of the board to kill a pawn in the opening (lol😂😂😂)
That's all I can think of. I could be wrong but that's the last of the ideas I can muster.
@clutchnutz "this would probably convince the already very limited number of people interested in this book that it is dull"
so true
TL;DR this is a never ending discussion, some say positional and strategical are interchangeable, some say positional is a type of strategic play
In "Mastering Chess Strategy" by GM Johan Hellsten, Hellsten states in his first chapter :
"any action undertaken in the
game can be abstracted to tactical and
strategical operations. The tactical ones are
easy to grasp: direct threats, pins, forks,
deflection, etc. As for the strategical ones,
we can distinguish between:
a) improving our pieces;
b) pawn play;
c) exchanges;
d) prophylaxis (with restriction and
provocation)."
And then later says:
"Alongside the strategical
operations we have positional elements
such as material, weak squares, space,
passed pawns, files, diagonals, etc. One im-
portant task during the game is to evaluate
which of these elements hold most significance."
Yet in the also famous "Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player" by GM Lev Alburt, Alburt says ""Strategy is the art of forming an overall plan." and then later says "The words positional and strategic are frequently used interchangeably."
Apparently even GMs can't decide whether or not "strategic" and "positional" are interchangeable or not! 😂
A lot of sites that sell courses often imply that positional chess is a *type of* chess strategy.
In Aagaard's "Strategic Play" and "Positional Play" the contents pages cover the same topics: weaknesses/weak squares, improving pieces, and prophylaxis.
Some argue that strategy books often give general rules like "bishops belong to the diagonals"; "knight on the 6th ranks is equal to a rook" ; "bishops are better than knights"; "trading a bishop for a knight is ok when it weakens control of a key square/outpost" etc etc etc, whereas positional books tend to take positions from a game and explain a specific aspect, and the winning idea may not follow typical chess strategy "laws".
The difference is that he gets two book titles out of it (instead of just one). ;)
@MrPushwood Ah so cynical. Take the long way home. :) (that's a reference to a song by SuperTramp)
There's an excerpt on here:
www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/StrategicPlay-excerpt.pdfit's on a bookshop site so I'm assuming it's above board and legit.
Even trying to wrap my head around what he's saying in the preface makes me feel like a hamster trying to read A Brief History Of Time, but it sounds like what he calls strategic play is stuff that depends on both nontrivial calculation and positional judgement, ie situations where you need to look for positional improvement rather than an immediate tactical knockout, but where spotting how to achieve that improvement depends on significant concrete calculation rather than just identifying the most positionally correct move and checking that it doesn't fall into an immediate tactical trap.
To be honest, I'd be happy enough if I was consistently spotting the immediate tactical knockouts and positionally correct moves in my games, so it might be a while before I get onto this one...
