To take is a mistake

So today i saw this video wich basically says that you should avoid capturing your opponent's pieces first. But rather you should exert pressure on theirs while also defending yours, and when they start capturing your pieces, you just respond back.

The theory is that when you capture your opponent's pices, you help them to be more active.

I played a couple of games using this method, and i always end up losing. I keep defending myself, and allowing my opponent to come to my side of the board. In the end, i end up with a significant material loss. Usually when i play, i play aggressively and keep atacking my opponent. So, what do you guys think about this strategy? Is it good, is it bad? Any advices?

P.S. I'm glad i've found this site. It's awesome!

I've watched that video before and there is a good point to it, but you cannot simply never capture and hope to win. The video author even says this in the video.

He is showing how in many positions you don't want to simply trade because there is a trade. If you do so you will often open up more of your opponents pieces. So you want to continue developing/creating attacks and force the opponent to make the trade so your pieces get opened up instead.

You will of course have to look to see if the particular trade hurts your opponent or makes their position worse, if so you certainly want to make the trade.

The reason you are losing is you are missing key tactical points.

Example:

I didn't look at every move, but I did add in some comments. I added comments earlier than where I started the game so you can look at those, but I wanted to highlight major tactical positions that you are missing. That should be your main focus to improve right now.

This is relatively good advice for players who are quick to trade.  If there isn't a specific reason you're capturing, then you shouldn't do it... it's better to build up your position with a non-capturing move.

And as Estragon points out this is a general guideline in the opening when development and tempo are quite important.

But as a general system of play for every position, it's pretty poor to never capture

What is interesting about it?

If you're referring to my post, I think you are drastically misreading things.

@ ChessSponge  thaks for analyzing my game. I appreciate it.

absolutley play passive and allow your agressive opponent to make the mistakes which you can then prounce on

I have played such opponents and it usually doesnt work for them Their moves become constricted, and they lose I would not advise it; However SOMETIMES it does work One must judge the situation

I've seen the video and I thought it was an interesting piece of advice.  Of course all the positions he shows are situations where you don't want to capture... as you point out there exist positions where the very best move is to initiate a capture (for one or many strategic reasons).

In fact I remember one position from the video (this one or a different one) where capturing was bad, but to understand why took more than the simple explanation "your opponent gains time."  It had something to do with pawn structure and the strategic plans in general.

Anyway I thought something you said was interesting and key to the point... "if they gain activity."  IMO I think even decent club players have problems evaluating activity in many positions.  It may be interesting to make a small video series on what constitutes gained or lost activity... e.g. sometimes it's simply because a piece has more scope, but sometimes it's because it can come in contact with something important like a weak pawn, piece, square, king, file, etc...

But I guess that wouldn't be a video about activity... it would be a video about strategy haha.

Well... seems like you answered it even if other posters weren't wrong.  "To take is a mistake" is not bad advice... but it is important to understand it's advice that's part of a larger puzzle.

I just recently learned about pressure.

Before I knew what it was, I would just capture to avoid pressure.(I didn't konw about it and was affraid of it at the same time!)

Now I know about it and often use it in positions. Sometimes successfully, often times not. The postion can get quite complex.

I would have to agree; it should not be a default approach to a position. It has to be planned and, at least in your mind, lead to an advantageous result.

That's interesting.  I'm not a big fan or big critic of Silman's HTRYC, what would you say are some of the downsides?

How would you teach strategy?  If ~1400 student asked you about strategy would you point them to Igor's series every time?  Do you think books like Euwe and Krammer's middlegame books or Pachman's modern chess strategy are archaic banter?  I think there are some concrete points e.g. open the position when well ahead in development or some ways to handle an IQP.

Igor is right with this one. Well, if you tried this in bullet/blitz games, you can't really blame this tip for losing. This is an important tip which becomes useful in higher-level chess(2000+).

And with this, I don't mean extreme cases like when you have a tactic to win, or REALLY get a strategic advantage.

Yeah part of the problem may be the more you know, the more you're able to learn.  So where to begin?  You have to have something very concrete for a beginner.  "To take is a mistake" is concrete.  Tempos in the opening is concrete too.

Funny enough, "abstract" ideas like the importance of the center or something like open vs closed files didn't really make sense to me until many years later... yet beginners are saturated with sayings like "bishops on long diagonals" or "backward pawns are weak"

To tie this in to cookiemonster's point of exploring ways to teach strategy... I wonder if there's a way to do it Socrates style where you introduce fundamental elements, and thereby let the student discover ideas on their own.  e.g. a middlegame position where 4 active pieces on the queenside overwhelm 2 (or something like this) the student may make the connection such that when shown an earlier position they value development moves higher.

Maybe this is why endgames are said to be fundamental to middlegame strategy (and rightly so).

Interestingly in the (very) small amount of teaching I've done, both young and old new players look at capturing moves first.  The only values they know are how many pieces you have.  This makes sense and is necessary to check.  But as cookie said there may be better ways to intoduce strategic ideas.

Wow, I'm really rambly tonight... need to go to bed hah.

Oh, yeah.  When reading Silman for better or worse I ignored the rigid thinking process.  What I found interesting what the idea of imbalances and what Silman picked as the imbalances (and how he used them in example positions).  Such a half-assed reading of other books may get me into trouble haha.

No, what's Sierawan's method?

I predict that when strong players seem to say opposite things that they are both correct and as a homework assignment I would try to figure out how that is even possible.

Wow, I wish I'd started chess with Sierawan's winning chess series.  I have the tactics and endgame books.  Isn't it 5 books total though?  6 months per book would have been a few years (and more like 1 of 6 books that produced an 1800 player).  And in that case I wouldn't have been surprised you got a lot better... still beginner to 1800 FICS is quite a jump.  Sounds like you improved relatively quickly.

BTW, FWIW, I agree space, time, and force are the "real" core elements and the most useful for teaching strategy... at least it's the explanation that makes the most sense in my head.  Interesting he/they added pawn structure.

I assume Dvoretsky / Yuspov involves having the student do lengthy analysis of difficult positions and then comparing it with their analysis.

This exactly.

The point of the video is that most beginners will jump on taking a piece when possible, because it looks (and sometimes is) forcing, so it delays actual thinking by one move ; but forcing the opponent to get into a good position is not useful.

Making you stop and think before going for natural moves is a good thing, but changing the kind of moves you find natural and keep jumping on them is not.

"Broke 1800 by himself"

Hehe, after you brought him to 1700 in 6 months?  Sort of ;)

I can relate to the realizing later ____ was important.

I'm interested in improving, but first want to put myself in a position to go to tournaments regularly.