Chess Styles

Long since the days of Ruy Lopez and Greco have players argued about chess styles. Before we continue this article, I would like to bring to attention some important words that my chess coach FIDE Master Geoff Saw said to me, "I really doubt that [12th World Champion] Karpov would ever play an inferior move just because it's more congenial to his style. But if the moves are objectively about the same anyway then it's fine for personal preferences to take over... Way too many players wreck themselves by deciding that they are an 'attacking' playing or a 'positional' player, and this kind of self-labelling stops them working properly on areas of weakness." A player must be careful that their style does not get in the way of playing the best objective moves. Now that the 'disclaimer' is over, let's continue onto the main discussion.

It is often said that our chess style emulates our personality. For example, an outgoing person might be an aggressive chess player. Although we can't draw anything extremely deep from this, it is one of those unique nuances that apply to chess...

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