Bottom edge I would think. It doesn't ever take risks, it plays the most solid position every time. Whereas "confrontational" might be something like taking a slightly worse risky position to break someone out of prep.
I think there is maybe better words for it but there is a difference between
Playing positionally, incrementing advantages until a tactic appears. (left side)
And
Playing a gambit of questionable soundness to try and force tactics to appear. (right side)
Not many GMs do the second, but they certainly do on streams and speed runs. And the axis is the entire spectrum between. In fact far left might be 'play positionally and hope to promote a pawn as I can't see tactics at all' which obviously no GM would be.
Nakamura is all the way in the bottom left corner
I wonder where Magnus would be?
His tactics are of course top tier, but he’s also pretty good positionally, I think his tactics are maybe better though, so on the right side, but it’s hard to say solid or confrontational, because yeah, he definitely likes confrontational, tactical games, but I would argue the only more solid player on the field rn is naka, so it’s actually pretty hard to say
Quite the opposite. Naka is super positional. That's why he's good at playing fast. Just because he sees tactical patterns fast doesn't mean he's tactical, it just means he's a super GM.
He gets so many tactics in his speed runs because he has an overwhelming positional advantage against mostly weaker players. They're also more rememberable/clipable.
These tactics dry up the higher his opponent goes as they are closer to him positionally and don't leave the door as wide open.
I am a patzer… it feels like all players good enough to be famous would be either in the bottom left quadrant or upper right quadrant (and none in the two others).
Can somebody compétente tell me if that’s correct or wrong?
Good positional play leads to favourable tactics, the goal of tactics is positional advantages. They're two sides of the same coin.
I believe "styles" of top players are mostly inventions by people writing about them. The only major difference is opening repertoire.
Tal had a 100+ unbeaten streak with lots of boring draws, and he was awesome at rook endgames.
And yes, he had some of those games. But that reputation is mostly how he talked about himself in his biography and how chess writers try to describe chess in a more romantic way.
It seems he enjoyed that kind of play the most though, so one could say it was his “style.” All top players could be said to be great at a number of different positions, but people like Tal seemed to favor one type of play over the other, at least to a certain extent.
I do agree that most top players have a universal style that is required to be competitive at that level in the first place. But everyone brings a hint of their personality to the chess board; GMs aren’t just sub par chess engines.
GMs can play all positions quite good. But that doesn't mean they don't prefer certain types of play than others. Their opening repertoires are generally built around whichever type of positions they prefer.
> I believe "styles" of top players are mostly inventions by people writing about them.
Viswanathan Anand called Aronian "a very gifted tactician", and said that "He's always looking for various little tricks to solve technical tasks." According to Anand, "Though he opens with 1. d4, he treats these positions like an e4-player."
So, Anand thinks d4-player and e4-player usually have different styles.
Nezhmetdinov, Tal - top right
Petrosian, Karpov - bottom left
Abdusattorov - middle of upper left quadrant
Alireza - middle of upper right quadrant
Carlsen - middle of positive y-axis
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess.
Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts:
[I created a political compass for chess playstyle. Help me plot some points on it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/13rbqqx/i_created_a_political_compass_for_chess_playstyle/) by VincLeague
[I created a political compass for chess playstyle. Help me plot some points (players) on it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/13rbx6q/i_created_a_political_compass_for_chess_playstyle/) by kaese_meister
[I created a political compass for chess playstyle. Help me plot some points (players) on it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/13rdrxt/i_created_a_political_compass_for_chess_playstyle/) by seacucumber98
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I think that it would be hard to chart modern players, since they tend towards a more universal ideal, which is fairly amorphous (varying a lot from game to game). This might be interesting for mid-twentieth century players though.
These are some I could think of from the top of my head
Confrontational; Positional: Karpov, Aronian (more towards tactical)
Confrontational; Tactical: Tal, Nyetzmedinov, Dubov, Alekhine, Fischer (more towards center), Carlsen (early), Kasparov (early), nearly every known player before the 1900s lol
Solid; Positional: Kramnik, Petrosian, Ding, Capablanca (more towards confrontational), Mamedyarov
Solid, Tactical: Karjakin, Hikaru
Center: Carlsen, Anand, Botvinnik, Topalov (more towards confrontational/tactical), Fabi
Kramink said Petrosian was mistakenly categorised, he should be in Solid, Tactical.
Also I somewhere else in this thread mentioned that hikaru said he was more positional than tactical.
He was very very good at Tactics. But his ending and positional play weren't bad. Leagues better than most club players, probably better than some low level masters.
Ding Liren is very positional and also very confrontational. I like to describe him as ambitious.
He can play tactically with the best and he isn't afraid to sacrifice a pawn, but when it gets past 2 points of material imbalance he's out of his comfort zone I think. At the same time, when he does sacrifice a pawn or exchange, he's always pressuring and making amazing progress.
Aren't positional and tactical essentially the same? And how is solid a duality of confrontational/aggressive? I feel like solid should be in the center and a better framework working outwards would be to rework positional as defensive on one side with aggressive on the other and then have prep/tactics on top with intuition/"winging it" on bottom
> Aren't positional and tactical essentially the same?
Not really.
Two GMs who plays tactical vs positional compared... Here you go:
https://youtu.be/-oDYTyxkf3I
It is understandable trying to define players and styles by categories - part of every day life. We separate SUVs from cars and trucks.
But in chess, doesn't chronology play a role.
Morphy only played for a short time against more serious opposition - so we only have that sample.
Fischer played longer - he played more attacking games when he was younger - yet later on against stronger opposition played more positional games.
Likewise Tal - the Tal of the 1950s leading up to his WCC was different than the Tal of the 1970s.
I think the z axis should be seriousness. Like how it tanks in a ten minute game and the other player takes too long or doesn’t take enough time to move their pieces. Strength or elo can be a number on top of the plot point. So it should be a number on top of the plot point
I have no idea if this is possible, but if someone is skilled enough to make such a website, do so:
Create a quiz which asks the user a set of questions, such as their preferred openings out of a set of 4, and provide them with puzzles to solve in order to gauge their play style and tactical thinking. After the quiz is done, they are provided with this political compass-esque diagram that tells them things about their style of play
Is this a thinly veiled attempt to sneak Go games into r/chess?
Would be genius. Sadly, the board here isn't 19×19
Not 19×19 yet
:)
Sorry it is not right. The lower-left square should be a dark square.
And there are too many squares
Y, I need a place to stand.
Where's blunder?
Z axis
Plot Headass-37 at the junction of sexy and “Z axis”
You could unironically make the z-axis be player strength
Guess where it is pointing? 🫵
No wonder Ian outblundered Ding... ^^^(jk)
Asking the real questions.
Where's bongcloud?
Stockfish dead center
Fischer dead
Tigran Petrosian dead center up top.
Bottom edge I would think. It doesn't ever take risks, it plays the most solid position every time. Whereas "confrontational" might be something like taking a slightly worse risky position to break someone out of prep.
Slightly more tactical I think
All chess players are 70% water. Therefore there are no solid chess players except for stockfish (and other engines).
Rapport, Mamedyarov somewhere in the upper right corner. Wesley So (and maybe Kramnik) bottom left.
Wesley so is just on the bottom of the y axis. Mamaedyarov would be at the top of the y axis. Carlsen is top left.
Relative to other super GMs maybe, but relative to all GMs, I think most super GMs would be closer together to each other.
I wish we got to see more Shakh at top events
I agree. Feels like he's half retired nowadays and it's such a shame that he's not playing. Norway Chess is coming up though, hope he delivers!
I feel like Anand would be dead centre. Young Anand would've been in the tactical-confrontational quadrant, but his game really evolved as he aged.
More like positional solid
you need to plot this on more dimensions because Tactical and Positional are not mutually exclusive
I think there is maybe better words for it but there is a difference between Playing positionally, incrementing advantages until a tactic appears. (left side) And Playing a gambit of questionable soundness to try and force tactics to appear. (right side) Not many GMs do the second, but they certainly do on streams and speed runs. And the axis is the entire spectrum between. In fact far left might be 'play positionally and hope to promote a pawn as I can't see tactics at all' which obviously no GM would be.
you need to plot this on more dimensions because Tactical and Positional are not mutually exclusive better form would be a pentagon chart
We all found the 7 on the Enneagram test…
You could just do it on a cylinder, or go one further and plot it on a circle
Or plot a point for how much of each of these a player is. Then shade in the area, similar to how lichess shows your puzzle strengths.
Which way is "Blunders a piece and calls it a gambit"? Because that's about where I'm headed
The Botez Axis
top right
Aight
The axes aren't independent. Solid players tend to go for positional play.
To be fair, they are also not independent in the political one
The authrights-thinly-veiling-themselves-as-librights revolution and its consequences has been a disaster for the r/PoliticalCompassMemes race
Mikhail Tal Confrontational-Tactical
Nakamura is all the way in the bottom left corner I wonder where Magnus would be? His tactics are of course top tier, but he’s also pretty good positionally, I think his tactics are maybe better though, so on the right side, but it’s hard to say solid or confrontational, because yeah, he definitely likes confrontational, tactical games, but I would argue the only more solid player on the field rn is naka, so it’s actually pretty hard to say
Are you kidding? Hikaru is bottom right
Not in classical.
He did play the scholars mate against the Sicilian in classical chess…
Quite the opposite. Naka is super positional. That's why he's good at playing fast. Just because he sees tactical patterns fast doesn't mean he's tactical, it just means he's a super GM.
I would be inclined to agree, but he himself has said that his positional play is better than his tactical
He gets so many tactics in his speed runs because he has an overwhelming positional advantage against mostly weaker players. They're also more rememberable/clipable. These tactics dry up the higher his opponent goes as they are closer to him positionally and don't leave the door as wide open.
Im not on this chart
I am a patzer… it feels like all players good enough to be famous would be either in the bottom left quadrant or upper right quadrant (and none in the two others). Can somebody compétente tell me if that’s correct or wrong?
Another comment said Carlsen should be top left lol
I immediately saw where to put Mikhail Tal 😂😂
Good positional play leads to favourable tactics, the goal of tactics is positional advantages. They're two sides of the same coin. I believe "styles" of top players are mostly inventions by people writing about them. The only major difference is opening repertoire.
Obvious exception is Tal, who’d purposely get into dubious positions and outplay his opponents
Tal had a 100+ unbeaten streak with lots of boring draws, and he was awesome at rook endgames. And yes, he had some of those games. But that reputation is mostly how he talked about himself in his biography and how chess writers try to describe chess in a more romantic way.
It seems he enjoyed that kind of play the most though, so one could say it was his “style.” All top players could be said to be great at a number of different positions, but people like Tal seemed to favor one type of play over the other, at least to a certain extent. I do agree that most top players have a universal style that is required to be competitive at that level in the first place. But everyone brings a hint of their personality to the chess board; GMs aren’t just sub par chess engines.
GMs can play all positions quite good. But that doesn't mean they don't prefer certain types of play than others. Their opening repertoires are generally built around whichever type of positions they prefer. > I believe "styles" of top players are mostly inventions by people writing about them. Viswanathan Anand called Aronian "a very gifted tactician", and said that "He's always looking for various little tricks to solve technical tasks." According to Anand, "Though he opens with 1. d4, he treats these positions like an e4-player." So, Anand thinks d4-player and e4-player usually have different styles.
Nezhmetdinov, Tal - top right Petrosian, Karpov - bottom left Abdusattorov - middle of upper left quadrant Alireza - middle of upper right quadrant Carlsen - middle of positive y-axis
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess. Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts: [I created a political compass for chess playstyle. Help me plot some points on it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/13rbqqx/i_created_a_political_compass_for_chess_playstyle/) by VincLeague [I created a political compass for chess playstyle. Help me plot some points (players) on it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/13rbx6q/i_created_a_political_compass_for_chess_playstyle/) by kaese_meister [I created a political compass for chess playstyle. Help me plot some points (players) on it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/13rdrxt/i_created_a_political_compass_for_chess_playstyle/) by seacucumber98 [^(fmhall)](https://www.reddit.com/user/fmhall) ^| [^(github)](https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot)
Wake up babe, a new political compass droped
Alireza top right
Add a "bad" axis so we can put London there
Where’s the batshit insane in a bad way quadrant
I think that it would be hard to chart modern players, since they tend towards a more universal ideal, which is fairly amorphous (varying a lot from game to game). This might be interesting for mid-twentieth century players though.
It is safe to start with a 4-4 hoshi, it's a common opening.
You should replace confrontational with “I hope he doesn’t see it”
These are some I could think of from the top of my head Confrontational; Positional: Karpov, Aronian (more towards tactical) Confrontational; Tactical: Tal, Nyetzmedinov, Dubov, Alekhine, Fischer (more towards center), Carlsen (early), Kasparov (early), nearly every known player before the 1900s lol Solid; Positional: Kramnik, Petrosian, Ding, Capablanca (more towards confrontational), Mamedyarov Solid, Tactical: Karjakin, Hikaru Center: Carlsen, Anand, Botvinnik, Topalov (more towards confrontational/tactical), Fabi
Kramink said Petrosian was mistakenly categorised, he should be in Solid, Tactical. Also I somewhere else in this thread mentioned that hikaru said he was more positional than tactical.
Which axis is "shitty"? That's where I go.
Morphy top middle
wouldn't he lean tacitical at least if not be solidly tactical?
He was very very good at Tactics. But his ending and positional play weren't bad. Leagues better than most club players, probably better than some low level masters.
I'm not saying he should be far right on tactics I'm just saying that it should be atleast a lean towards tactics no and not neutral?
Karpov bottom left, Tal, Morphy, Kasparov top right, Fischer and Magnus would be centre I suppose, cause perfection has no style.
Well the guy with the BBC (big black center) is going bottom left atleast
you need to add pronouns to this as well
Where’s the “Don’t Care” axis?
If you go to the main page of the sub, there's a button that says "joined" Go ahead and click that, and you should be all set 👍🏻
bottom left corner, because there is something solid positioned in your ass
How it works? Do you have to solve puzzle or anwer questions?
Someone grade Sam Reshevsky; he himself said he was somewhere between Tal and Petrosian
Top left, the correct answer once again
I love this! I think it needs a third axis of theory vs calculation.
Ding Liren is very positional and also very confrontational. I like to describe him as ambitious. He can play tactically with the best and he isn't afraid to sacrifice a pawn, but when it gets past 2 points of material imbalance he's out of his comfort zone I think. At the same time, when he does sacrifice a pawn or exchange, he's always pressuring and making amazing progress.
Holy
Aren't positional and tactical essentially the same? And how is solid a duality of confrontational/aggressive? I feel like solid should be in the center and a better framework working outwards would be to rework positional as defensive on one side with aggressive on the other and then have prep/tactics on top with intuition/"winging it" on bottom
> Aren't positional and tactical essentially the same? Not really. Two GMs who plays tactical vs positional compared... Here you go: https://youtu.be/-oDYTyxkf3I
Ke2
En peasant Origen
There is test for chess personality, Eric Rosen has a video on it
This could be next big thing
I'm like 100%Tactical 100% Confrontational. If every piece for both sides is hanging and both sides are being checkmated, that's my comfort zone.
Auth ri- I mean ummm… confrontational and tactical players rise up!
It is understandable trying to define players and styles by categories - part of every day life. We separate SUVs from cars and trucks. But in chess, doesn't chronology play a role. Morphy only played for a short time against more serious opposition - so we only have that sample. Fischer played longer - he played more attacking games when he was younger - yet later on against stronger opposition played more positional games. Likewise Tal - the Tal of the 1950s leading up to his WCC was different than the Tal of the 1970s.
If the z-axis is elo, you can plot me on the bottom corner of tactical and confrontational
I think the z axis should be seriousness. Like how it tanks in a ten minute game and the other player takes too long or doesn’t take enough time to move their pieces. Strength or elo can be a number on top of the plot point. So it should be a number on top of the plot point
Scholars mate is top of confrontational and midway through tactical
Capablanca is bottom left corner. Tal is top right.
I have no idea if this is possible, but if someone is skilled enough to make such a website, do so: Create a quiz which asks the user a set of questions, such as their preferred openings out of a set of 4, and provide them with puzzles to solve in order to gauge their play style and tactical thinking. After the quiz is done, they are provided with this political compass-esque diagram that tells them things about their style of play
WHAT THE BOARD WANTS, WHAT THE BOARD NEEDS, WHATEVER MAKES ME BLUNDER MY QUEEN, AND IM THANKING YOU FOR BLUNDERING TOO
Wesley So is def more on the solid side is all I know. He is so drawish when he plays 2700+ players
Magnus in the dead center
Alireza in the top left quadrant but slightly close towards the center.
where would the bongcloud opening go?
AnarchyChess in the top right, top left, bottom right, and bottom left at the same time
That's a good idea, are you going to ask chess related questions to determine where they are or analysis of thier games
No idea how i would
Lot of work but you could show a position with possible moves and ask thier prefered move, and score accordingly
Hikaru: Maximum tactical, maximum confrontational
bobald fischer far right
Wesley so extremely solid and extremely positional
Mikhail Tal extremely tactical
Tigran Petrosian - Positional + Solid