What is your playing style?

Aggressive or defensive? Tactical or positional? A stylish mixture of both? Do you prefer open or closed games? Does your playing style help you to win games? Id be interested to know what you folks have to say, thanks.

I would like to think I was aggressive but I think mostly my moves tend to be more defensive.

Currently, I prefer closed games only becuase they challenge me more at present

I just fling pieces around and hope for the best

what i'd like to be: open game; aggressive; positional

what i am currently: i'm not good enough to know this.

Yea, I'm not good enough yet to have a true style but I often have to hold back from sacrficing a knight or a bishop to open up the king side.

over-cleverish  and blunderish

When I play with the black pieces I try to get a feel for how my opponent is going to play. Then I develop my style for that particular game around that information. If he seems to be shooting for a wild tactical battle, I will try to steer into a slow positional struggle, and vice-versa. Other times I will fight fire with fire and just 'play into their hands'.

With white, I usually play 1.e4 and head toward open tactical fights.

In a word, my style can be thought of as "super-duper-ultra-extremist-other-times-ultra-conservative-hypermodern-positional-tactician".

I would describe my style as dynamic. I play 1. e4 and 1...e5, tend to play actively, but not too aggressive, like playing King's gambit or Two Knights defense (though I like Marshall attack). I can go for intuitive sacrifice if I feel that position requires it and I don't see the forced line. I think your style reflects your character and it's important to follow it, so you would feel comfortable with openings ( and middlegames, that arise from them ) that you are playing.

im a technical player. not necessarily positional but i can play to the positions needs. i prefer simple positions to complicated ones and prefer open boards to closed ones mostly because im a player who likes to keep the bishop pair

I think everyone has a unique style, patzer or GM. It's interesting if some styles are more effective than others and why that is. Such as the classic matches between Fischer and Petrosian.

I never play 1.e4 as white, usually I go 1.c4 English. Sometimes I have the problem of being overly aggressive that gets me into trouble . I like complicated positions with the initiative. I need to work on my defense. Usually I'll take a knight over a bishop, but the bishop was Fischer's favorite piece, so I want to learn how to use it better.

hanging pieces is my specialty, especially queens and rooks!

I have no clue. I just like to win, any way possible.

I like chaotic positions with everything hanging in the air. I like closed position because the game lasts longer but I do a lot better in open games especially against higher rated opponents.

I prefer my bishops over knights in the end game and in open positions. I n the openings and in closed games, I prefer theknights over bishops. I try to get to an end game with rooks and queens gone. Other than that, I think I'm terrible.

I describe myself as a general mixed player of everything. Sometimes offensive, other times defensive. Sometimes I choose to open with lines that require sharp play, other times I leave the game open. But overall, people describe me as an annoying player. I like to develop most my pieces and then start chasing their queen around with my queen, forcing them to trade queens early. This is my favourite move and it gives me about 80% win rate OTB.

Aggressive, classical, anti-structural, strategical.  I tried to be hypermodern once, but I didn't like it. My opponent was allowed to develop! I like to counterattack rather than equalise. I like imbalanced games were both players have different advantages; trying to prove the one against the other makes for fine chess, and leaves more room for speculation.

I love closed games, they help me to logically lock parts of the board and eliminate them from my thought process, so that I can apply endgame-like accuracy to the areas that have complications. I like to tear my opponents structure to pieces, via trading against their pawns and I use logical devices like comparative effectivity of remaining pieces as a weapon. I've always got one eye on the endgame and the other on your castled king... one of my main strategical flavours is controlling the pawn placement to leave myself with a strong bishop and the other guy a real bad one. And I'll usually take that queen trade If I have an advantage of one pawn or even better structure..

...if you open the game up, I'll start shutting it down piece by piece, trying to tie up more of yours than mine, or at least leave myself with enough to give mate. If you close it down, I'll try to squeeze even harder and choke you first. I like to launch my attack so that it finalises 1 tempo before yours does; to this day I have yet to find a better technique than this for making your opponent commit his forces and overlook your plans.

I like to sac pieces, especially online - I think if you show an opponent a sound positional sacrifice that has an immediate material deficit and no way of regaining or forcing mate, and it wins, then they *know* you didn't use a computer to find it. A knight is worth both centre pawns in the opening, rooks are for trading fianchetto bishops, and the light bishop is for throwing at the kings pawns. Rather than enjoying winning material cleanly - although nice - what I really enjoy is showing your opponent the sacs and trades that prove their position unsound. Once in a while, I like to create certain "weaknesses" to direct my opponents play.

im wondering what rating everybody posting is.  I don't really know what style I play, although I have a slightly higher winning average with black than white, so I would surmise I'm more naturally defensive. 

What rating do you have to be to make qualified statements about your own playing style?  I'm mid 1500s usually, and feel like total patzer.

Well I am usually rated inbetween 1900 and 2000 on here and I still don't know what my style is. I just try to "play the position" meaning that I try to find the best suitable plan for the position on the board infront of me. There have been games where I play positionally and slowly, and also ones where I play aggressive and tactically. I think you have to be good at both styles to be a good player. I do however prefer open boards and bishops over knights.

I don't like the idea that white attacks, and black defends, but then its a question of temperament, and I guess style. I think you believe you are a defensive player, but you feel unworthy to qualify your own game.

We are talking about describing your preferred positions, not assessing your strength; even a gm can't answer this question as well as you can.

I know my game has its own flavour, and I've tried to describe it. This doesn't mean I'm claiming to be any stronger than I am or even making a suggestion at all about my strength.

OTOH, I believe that a lot of people cannot express their own style. This is not because they are too weak to make a qualified statement, but simply that they either have not developed a style, or have not come to know their own chess well enough yet. If you asked me my style before I came here, I would have said "I dunno, aggressive, and pacy ATB." I've played enough chess here to recognize the sort of positions I enjoy most, and the sort of positions I perform well in. Sometimes, I even manage to get a game into something that scores on both accounts.

Overall, your style is represented by the kinds of positions you try to get into, and the kind you actually end up getting into. If you think you need a master to come along and tell you what these positions are, I think you're really wrong. But conversely, there is no harm in not yet having committed to a way of playing, or not yet having recognised it. And of course, like BigTY above, some people prefer a dynamic, fluid "style" of no set style, in his case with just some piece-bias and a leaning for open positions. But this in itself is a style!

I think I'm a mixture of both...

ADK