3 ms·

It's all well and good controlling the centre, putting rooks on open files, co-ordinating your bishop pair, keeping a strong pawn structure, etc., but if you le

It's all well and good controlling the centre, putting rooks on open files, co-ordinating your bishop pair, keeping a strong pawn structure, etc., but if you leave your pieces vulnerable to tactics that your opponent can find and you can't, then it's all for nought. That's why tactics can be considered more important than strategy. Strategy becomes more important only when neither player is making tactical blunders.

mci 6y ago
> if you leave your pieces vulnerable to tactics that your opponent can find and you can't, then it's all for nought. In my book, {avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them} ⊂ strategy, being wary of forks ∈ tactics.
- chki 6y ago
  >avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them So maybe I don't understand your mathematical shorthand correctly but those things are definitely not widely regarded to be a part of strategy. Edit: and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement. So apparently our different views simply come from different definitions.
  - mci 6y ago
    > and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement. I tried to explain my (perhaps unorthodox) understanding of strategy and tactics in the last paragraph of my grandparent comment. EDIT: Now I can see that I was framed into the tactics:strategy dichotomy by the answers to my top-level comment. To get a better verbalisation of my ideas, replace "strategy" with "principles" in all I wrote.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  I think you are using nonstandard language. Tactics are short term material wins. Hanging a piece is absolutely tactics, it's a one-move tactic. You seem to be saying that "defending against tactics" is strategy, which I guess it is, but it's a very tiny strategy that won't fill a "study". Once you know the idea of "find your opponent's best move before you choose your move". There's no more of the strategy to study , you just apply the tactic every turn. Things like maintaining control of many squares, building a >3-move plan around depriving the opponent's bishop of mobility, and switching between these plans when they are inevitably interrupted, is strategy that takes a lot of time to study.

mci 6y ago

> if you leave your pieces vulnerable to tactics that your opponent can find and you can't, then it's all for nought. In my book, {avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them} ⊂ strategy, being wary of forks ∈ tactics.

chki 6y ago
>avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them So maybe I don't understand your mathematical shorthand correctly but those things are definitely not widely regarded to be a part of strategy. Edit: and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement. So apparently our different views simply come from different definitions.
- mci 6y ago
  > and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement. I tried to explain my (perhaps unorthodox) understanding of strategy and tactics in the last paragraph of my grandparent comment. EDIT: Now I can see that I was framed into the tactics:strategy dichotomy by the answers to my top-level comment. To get a better verbalisation of my ideas, replace "strategy" with "principles" in all I wrote.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
I think you are using nonstandard language. Tactics are short term material wins. Hanging a piece is absolutely tactics, it's a one-move tactic. You seem to be saying that "defending against tactics" is strategy, which I guess it is, but it's a very tiny strategy that won't fill a "study". Once you know the idea of "find your opponent's best move before you choose your move". There's no more of the strategy to study , you just apply the tactic every turn. Things like maintaining control of many squares, building a >3-move plan around depriving the opponent's bishop of mobility, and switching between these plans when they are inevitably interrupted, is strategy that takes a lot of time to study.