The Forest or the Streets: Either Way You're in Trouble

"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2 + 2 = 5 and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."
-Mikhail Tal, World Chess Champion 1960-1961

Chess books say his nickname was "The Magician from Riga," but he was also called "The Claw" because he had only three fingers on his right hand. To call them fingers is misleading: there was the thumb and then two hooks forked like a lobster's tail. He used this alien appendage to play speed chess, smoke a cigarette, and gesticulate all at once.

Tal favored a wild, attacking style, often sacrificing multiple pieces for an attack. Sometimes his moves were shown to be unsound after the fact, but that was scant consolation to opponents who had already been blasted off the board. The Dutch Grandmaster J.H. Donner said he could feel waves of aggression emanating from Tal when they played.

He held the world championship for only a year. After being blindsided by Tal's aggression in their first match, Mikhail Botvinnik, an electrical engineer known for his scientific approach to the game, dissected Tal's style and formed a game plan for the return match. He steered the games into more staid positions and won comfortably. Tal would never regain the championship, but he was no flash in the pan: he remained one of the game's top players for decades.

If there are two fields best known to outsiders as the realm of cold logic, they are chess and computer science. But if anything the rise of strong chess-playing computer programs has upset players' notions of what makes sense on the board. The rules of strategy have been replaced by the simple mandate of Whatever Works. (When in a post-game analysis session an opponent suggested a better defensive move and asked, "But what is your reply to this?" Tal responded, "Who won?") In fact unexpected, seemingly nonsensical moves are now referred to as "computer moves," whether played by silicon or flesh.

The point is not to play moves entirely at random - that wouldn't work. Rather, sometimes the best move is the one that is most useful in this exact position, not the one that conforms to the usual strategic precepts. Computers taught us that some moves and strategies we believed to be logical were merely facile and pretty.

While his uncompromising aggression made Tal an exception in the chess world, such a strategy is the stock in trade of many of the best poker players. In a post on the poker forum 2 + 2, heads-up specialist MagicNinja described a hyper-aggressive strategy as Street Poker:

"Street Poker is all about game flow dynamics. It's impossible to analyse the amount of future winnings you can make after you bluff someone in a spot they would call 80% of the time, or when you call them in a spot you're only good 15% of the time when they shove pot. I'm not supporting these plays, i'm just saying that when you analyse them on a case by case basis, they are bad; i know they're bad; but it is impossible to really quantify their true effects against players who play in many different ways."

The hyper-aggressive approach seems to be all about swashbuckling flair, but its real value lies in an underlying pragmatism. You force your opponent into unfamiliar territory. If you have to make a mistake to get there, that's okay because the mistakes he'll make more than compensate. But only if on the Street (or in the Forest, or whatever) you know what you're doing.