What kind of game is chess?

[mclane]

It is a tactical game, basically ?

Or is it a strategic game? Or if it is a tactical one, is it mostly about Zugzwang?

I was considering a post with a lot of interesting positions, but you guys do spend +way+ more time with these things than me, so why spend time? And I haven't seen this question discussed here.

I have watched a lot of slow games by now on my old Laptop, mainly facing the BLAS version of LC0 aganst Crafty. The latest 6+ nets get about 22NPS here at very slow time controls. And LC0 is incredibly weak tactically, it really is. Yesterday I watched a game and I suddenly realized: if LC0 really plays this move, this is mate in 4. It did, and right I was; as Crafty pointed out immediately..

But it does win quite a lot of games, too. When it is about games against Crafty, nullmove situations hurt Crafty IMHO. LC0 creates a lot of situations where there is some kind of zugzwang. Is there sth like a Stockfish without Nullmove?

Lc0 shows that you can play strategical/positional without playing good tactics. We knew you could do the opposite because programs showed us over years they can play very good in tactics without having a clue about chess. Lc0 now shows the opposite behaviour.
This shows also that there is a strategy and knowledge beside tactical behaviour.

[mclane]

It is a tactical game, basically ?

Or is it a strategic game? Or if it is a tactical one, is it mostly about Zugzwang?

I was considering a post with a lot of interesting positions, but you guys do spend +way+ more time with these things than me, so why spend time? And I haven't seen this question discussed here.

I have watched a lot of slow games by now on my old Laptop, mainly facing the BLAS version of LC0 aganst Crafty. The latest 6+ nets get about 22NPS here at very slow time controls. And LC0 is incredibly weak tactically, it really is. Yesterday I watched a game and I suddenly realized: if LC0 really plays this move, this is mate in 4. It did, and right I was; as Crafty pointed out immediately..

But it does win quite a lot of games, too. When it is about games against Crafty, nullmove situations hurt Crafty IMHO. LC0 creates a lot of situations where there is some kind of zugzwang. Is there sth like a Stockfish without Nullmove?

In Chess one needs basics of tactics and strategy. Both of them . For new learners book I have read and suggest "My System" from Nimzowitsch.

But there is also "attack with michail Tal" ...

[syzygy]

LC0 is weak at tactics. But it knows that, and has learned it should better avoid tactically complex positions.

Has it really learned that? That would mean it evaluates positions asymmetrically. Do we know that it does that?

Conventional engines are good at tactics. But they are not aware of that. Their evaluation is just as happy in tactically quiet positions as in tactically complex ones. They never learned that tactics is good for them, because they were tuned by playing opponents that also are good at tactics, offsetting the advantage.

So they naively allow LC0 to take them to tactically quiet positions, where they cannot use their major (only?) weapon.

This could be fixed (to some extent) by adding a contempt component to the evaluation measuring tactical complexity.