"The Chessplayer's Style". This article has been on my chess site for 12 years. I don't think anybody has read it yet. It's time that somebody did. It's about chessplayer typology. I suggest a method of determining a player's style according to a model which uses primary and secondary function. Fischer would be a positional player with tactics as secondary function (or help function). Spassky would have tactics as primary function and the positional as secondary. Botvinnik is a strategist with positional(?) play as secondary function. Kasparov would be primarily concretistic with tactics as secondary. The tacticians and the strategists are the visionary and also the artistic types. The concretists and the positional players belong to the realistic and the more "scientific" types.

Please read the article here:
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/playstyle1.htm

Mats

12 years? oh boy

how come you write when nobody is reading the stuff?

I didn't know, then, that chessplayers are, as a rule, intellectually debilitated. Just like Petrosian concluded, chessplayers are seldom intelligent. An article such as this is far beyond the intellectual capacity of the general chessplayer. I suppose a chessplayer is on the same level as the average construction worker. Chess carries this projection of intellectual proficiency, but it is an illusion.
/Mats

You're exhibit A, buddy.

Slightly off topic...

Lars Bo Hansen has a model which consists of four type of players: activists, pragmatics, reflectors and theorists. These are characterised by four parameters: intuition, logic, facts and general concepts.

He uses his model in his books Foundations of Chess Strategy (which I've read already) and How Chess Games are Won and Lost (I'm halfway through).

(Though completely different in his writing style, I put Lars Bo Hansen in the same category as Jacob Aagaard and Jonathan Rowson—very honest, interesting and helpful.)

As so often, it's quite helpful to know yourself. After you know which kind of player you are, it's easier to strive for openings, strategies, central formations etc. that are more likely to fit your style. If you know what kind of player your opponent is, this is equally helpful in many situations.

After all I think the "I play against pieces" approach isn't very realistic. Of course there are often best moves available—but often enough there are choices. This is where the above mentioned model can be very helpful.

I've tried to characterise myself objectively which is far from easy, but I think it already helped me in concrete situations on the board where I had for example several ways to change the central pawn formation. It's similar to the situation when you already estimate your chances of possible endings in the middlegame which often helps to find the right move.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. I belong to those who simply must find the right plan hidden in the position. Otherwise I can't play, so I am definitely a positional player, according to my model. Those who can "conjure up" plans (regardless of their validity) belong to the strategists and the tacticians. However, I often miss the concrete things in the position, which is due to a lack of concretism.
/Mats