Kevin's Watch

Nothing wrong with playing tight defense.

When we were kids, we used to play around with the pieces a lot. 3 knights and 1 bishop, advance all pieces I row at the start, different rules, etc. I think everybody does this at some level, thinking about strengths and weaknesses of the design, and I believe it's part of what's led to the game being what it is today (or games like 3-dimensional chess, and so on). Until you do this, you can't really understand the elegant simplicity and multi-faceted possibility of the game.

You can't win with defense unless your opponent screw up, right?

Anyone ever try those 3 or 4 player chess sets?
Looks interesting but I never tried it.

Yeah, but tight defense tends to make your opponent screw up. Similar to poker where you can make money 95% of the time by not getting drawn into a hand where you don't have the nuts. The problem (other 5%) is when you go up against a patient but aggressive opponent.

Heh. The great thing about playing poor defensive players is making moves just to screw with them. Left- or right-side pawn skirmishes that have no value other than to annoy your opponent. Almost as much fun as that moment where your opponent realizes you've gone from defense to offense.

All defensive postures being equal, it is virtually impossible to win without first obtaining the initiative.

Syl, I think your observations are somewhat misleading to a beginning player, as you undoubtedly avoid novice faux pas like creating bad bishops behind unassailable pawn walls as a matter of course.

Better a blocked bishop than a dropped queen, though, right? And a fi... beginner, playing offensively, will always bring out their queen as soon as they can. It's a law, I think. In fact, if a beginner can play offensively without trying to bring out their rooks or queen first (or maybe trying to launch the Great Pawn Offensive), I'd say they're probably not much of a beginner anymore.

Defense and offense are both part of any good chess game. You can't do one or the other. If you do, though, I would argue that a purely defensive game would yield better results, both in leading to a longer game and in turning a beginner player into an intermediate one.

High Lord Tolkien wrote:You can't win with defense unless your opponent screw up, right?

Not unless, until. Nothing I like more than to see somebody beating themselves bloody against my defences.

--A