Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 13:18:03 06/13/98
Go up one level in this thread
Hi: Maybe this debate could be solved or at least advance a little bit if we take a wider apporach to it, as I try here. For that let me first to try a definition of both tactical and positional kind of play. a) tactical is what the player can see inside an horizon that lets to calculate exhaustively the output AND the criteria of the calculation is mate or material considerations. b) positional playing happens when the player meets any of these conditions: 1.- it goes beyond the tactical area of possible exhaustive calculation. 2.- the relation between time allotted and processing power does not let to perform an exhaustive calculation 3.- material and mate considerations does not gives anything to differentiate moves -not chances available- and so the scoring process can continue only on the ground of general concepts based in coded experience of chess playing thorough centuries. Then, to begin with, it would seem that what is tactical or positional are not absolute things but partially a consequence of the available capacity -or incapacity -to perform an exhaustive and exact calculation and also partially a consequence of the existence or not of material advantage or mate. For humans, if little time is left to play, nobody can calculate and so the move is based on the ground of general concepts, even inside an horizon of let us say 4 or 5 ply. Nevertheless, even if that way of thinking what is "positional playing" is a necessary consequence of not being the player capable of playing tactics anymore because lack of processing power for the time allotted and/or the growing of the number of moves to consider and /or the lack of tactical chances to grasp, even so this does not means that positional play is just that, only a kind of orthopedic design, a” crust” to replace concrete calculations beyond these last are not possible anymore. Positional playing can be just a crust IF the player just follow a tactical approach until it is exhausted, or in other words, if the unit of analysis of the player is the move as such, as computer do. In this case the tactical way of playing is not possible and the computer must rely in general sign-post to get trough the game. But at the same time, however, therte is a superior concepto of positional play in which it is something radically different and not only a mutilated consequence of not being capable of being tactical all the time. Positional playing is different and superior as much the unit of analysis is the structure of position and not anymore the insolated pieces and his legal movements. In this last and superior sense of the word, positional playing cannot be adquired just deepening more and more the tactical approach; they are parallel lines, never to touch each other. In this case Thostersn is absolutely right. So, as a conclusion we have that positional play is, in fact, two different things: a) a kind of evaluation based in general knowledge, sign-post or whatever you call it once the tactical, material approach is exhausted. THIS kind of positional playing is constantly being moved back by the deeper search programs actually do with better hardware, etc. The unit of analysis is still the move, but evaluated with general parameters this time. b) a kind of evaluation based in a different conceptualization of the board, this time being the unit of analysis the overall structure of the relationships between pieces. This kind of positional playing is what computers does not do . And this kind of playing is not reachable trough tactical adquisition. Fernando
This page took 0.01 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.