Life In 19x19

Aidoneus wrote:Chess tactics are forcing sequences that typically lead to mate, material gain, saving defense, or significant alteration of pawn structures. Forcing sequences can be thought of as super sente, in that ignoring them lead to immediate mate or loss of too much material to reasonably continue play (at least above rank beginner levels).

Thank you, this is what I was looking for!!

Related to Uberdude's question regarding "go tesuji as one move" vs "chess tactic as sequence of moves", I wonder if that is because in chess it is more likely to find a longer forcing sequence (due to the nature of the game, since it is likely to be won/lost after one wrong move), while go tends to be more flexible wrt local losses, and therefore fewer moves can be forced?
(Or maybe I am just over-thinking it).

dfan wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:Chess is mostly tactics, it seems. See http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extr ... ctics.html

All the "Chess is 99% tactics" quotes are intended to stop learners from focusing on strategy when they don't have the tactical tools to support it. Tons of intermediate players get excited about learning dozens of subtle strategic concepts when they are still making elementary calculation (reading) mistakes, exactly the same as in go.

It seems to me that the size of the board matters. For instance, there is (or was) a variant of shogi -- I don't know how many games were played of it -- on a 25x25 board instead of a 9x9 board. I imagine that it was a very strategical game.

Also, doesn't the long range of the moves of the bishop, rook, and queen make the game more tactical than otherwise, in effect shrinking the size of the board? Chess has three basic battlegrounds, the king side, the queen side, and the center. By comparison go has 9, four corners, four sides, and the center.

Oh, I totally agree that the tactics-to-strategy ratio in chess is higher than in go, largely because of the size of the board, as you say. Every chess problem you will find in a book, tactical or otherwise, is a whole-board problem! I am mostly warning go players who look at a quote like "chess is 99% tactics" and nod knowingly that quotes like that are exaggerating for effect.