Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer & Laurel Kenner Dedicated to the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter;  a forum for us to use our meager abilities to make the world of specinvestments a better place.

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2/10/2005
When to Attack, by Nigel Davies

Lasker was very clear in his book that you had to attack when you held the advantage and that the strength of the attack should be in proportion to the advantage held. What is not so clear to most of us is whether we do indeed have an advantage and how big this is.

This is one of the biggest issues in chess and one of the greatest strengths of good players. Many games are lost simply because players look for moves which are 'inappropriate' for the situation, often attacking hard when they should in fact be building or building when they should be exchanging. When they then have the computer analyze the game they decide that a particular move was to blame, overlooking the fact that the real source of error was that the entire spectrum of moves they were examining at the time were out of context.