Philosophy of Chess

Chess is generally a very abstract game, I'm currently expert level in chess, I could probably get to national master if I took the game a little more seriously and controlled the frequency of my blunders OTB but I tend to get too lost in the bigger picture.

At this point I feel like everything is too abstract and down to intuition. Even things such as capturing a piece is obviously very good for you but is hard to demonstrate why without relying on other abstract concepts like a crutch.

To demonstrate my point if you capture a piece that is one less piece that can do something or in chess speak one less piece that can be active. reducing potential activity as well as current activity. My point is that activity is itself an abstract term as well as it's interactions with tempo.

Personally It is my belief that anything can be explained in terms of activity, including most any rule of thumb there is in chess. Capturing pieces clearly means you have reduced you opponents potential activity as well as current activity. Only moving each piece once in the opening clearly means you should try to outpace your opponent in terms of generating activity, understanding what it's really about helps you identify exceptions to the rule as well.

If everything can be explained in terms of activity then by understanding activity deep level, it's interactions with tempo as well as why it leads to victory then we could understand chess.

I'm interested in what others have to think about this subject!

Spirit > material, well known since ever.

Chess is more a skill than accumulating dry knowledge, that‘s why it is difficult to explain what it really is. Activity is something intuitive abstract, enhanced skill level will recognize it.

A skill?

Skill: that’s the way modern books describe chess. Move First Think Later or Rowson (philosopher!).

Praxis, praxis, praxis!

thats an interesting concept - so take it further, the cooperation between pieces is the harmony that moves as a connected and collective dominating force- capturing your opponents pieces breaks down that connectivity - and yet introduce sacrifices and it moves to another level

@p-wnattack said "im currently expert level"
Hahahahahaha
Can't stop laughing

I'm not sure what the objection is to a concept's being "abstract". Activity is abstract in the sense that gravity is abstract; however I wouldn't get in an aircraft whose designer ignored it.

The most "concrete" way of explaining the general advantage of material advantage - if you want a contrating concept to "abstraction" - is increased opportunity or possibility of mating the opponent (which, to remind ourselves,is the goal of the game). A sacrifice might seem superficially to be an exception to this, until we remind ourselves again that it takes material in the first place to sacrifice that material, and since the goal of having material is to increase the probability of mating the opponent, any use of that material for that purpose is valuavle within the terms of the ultimate goal. A better example of contradicting the general value of material is when one needs to get rid of one's own pawns to open a file or diagonal. But again, typically this is to increase the chances of mating by activating pieces (allowing them to cover more territory, especially in the vicinity of the opposing king) or else precisely to capture more material (thus a small temporary sacrifice for a larger gain).

Military strategists make analogous sacrifices, abandoning outposts that are too costly to defend, or sacrificing units to create a diversion. Another analogy is personal use of material wealth. All things equal, it is better to have more, but since material wealth is not (or should not be) an end in itself, but is only of insrtumental value (say to help achieve various persoal goals), it sometimes should be spent, and one should sometimes sacrifice wealth for the ultimate goals.

*contrasting

@NOTFOXAnonymous I can't understand why you find that funny? Seems like a really bad attempt to troll.

@nayf my objection to the abstractions is they are not concrete enough to claim true understanding of the game itself and at best means your decisions are based on intuition. Of course our intuition is often correct and must be based on something.