How or why can you be too positional? The old masters Anderssen, Morphy, Paulsen, Zukertort were positional too, but as their weak opponents made mistakes, they allowed tactical finishes.
Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca dominated because of their superior positional play.
Later there were more tactical players like Alekhine, Bronstein, Tal, Kasparov as well as more positional players like Botvinnik, Smyslov, Petrosian, Karpov.
It is not that one is better than the other. Chess is a game. Whatever wins, is good.
There's no "right" way to play chess. What you might find "boring" or "too positional" is more than subjective. We evolve, and both positional and tactical play have had their periods. It's always about advancing. The top players play what they play because that's their vision of their game and find it best for them. Find your own way, but there is no such term as "too positional". It's a subjective perspective.
What i read was talented GMs when they were young play more exciting chess trying to raise their fide points and become a supergm. Because if they can get in the top 20 highest rated players they get invites to the more lucrative supergm tournaments and earn more money.
Once they are supergm rated the last thing they want to have happen is have a bad run and drop out of the top 20 and no longer get invites to the more lucrative tournaments. So they play to conserve their rating. So if a supergm is playing a supergm and both of them are trying to not lose more than trying to win you get more draws.
Its depend of us new generation of gm(keep on working) to make something different
@tpr you are wrong when you said Morphy and his opponents were too positional. They were very tactical because they lived in the romantic era of chess. When players loved attacking, sacrifices and quick development. I agree with the rest tho
#15
I did not write "too" positional, but positional. Their brilliant attacks came from a superior position. Their opponents were often weak and committed several positional mistakes and weak defences, which allowed brilliant tactical finishes.
The end of the romantic era came with Steinitz: he accepted all gambits and the defended his position to a win.
The problem is computer assisted analysis. These players have access to super accurate computer tools which allows them to drill their responses to openings from memory sometimes 20 to 30 moves deep. By that time unless they've made mistakes along the way you won't see any fireworks. Carlsen actually tried to take risks in the recent online Chess Legenda Tour especially one memorable one against Nepo when he played far too dangerously against him and paid a heavy price for it when Nepo crushed him brutally for slightly miscalculating a line.
@tpr often says, that chess is won on mistakes. This is an important principle to understand - with perfect play by both sides, chess is a draw. Games are *not* won by brilliant attacks and sacrifices, they are won by making less mistakes than your opponent, and by capitalising on the mistakes your opponent makes. If you're in a game against a master (and whether they intuitively know where to put the pieces or are able to calculate out every variation), if you have an exciting/romantic attack that wins on 9 responses, but can be refuted by finding the 1 correct response, then the chances are your high level opponent will come out of the combination ahead. As such, strong modern players will tend to take less risk and not play "hope chess", but still look for positions that will create complications and give a good position to maintain a slight advantage to the endgame.
