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Football and Chess: Tactics, Strategy, Beauty
Why are football and chess 'beautiful games'? Do top football coaches read the pitch as a chess player reads the board? What is the connection between Jose Mourinho's defensive cunning and Grandmaster Wilhelm Steinitz's 'principles of defence'? The global popularity of football and chess remains unmatched by any other game. In this book, Adam Wells argues that stereotypical views of the games have concealed a deep connection between them. The first study of its kind, this book explores a rich world of tactics, psychology and aesthetics. Structural principles are analysed using real life examples to show how these connections play out on the board and in the field. This book is accessible to fans of either game, including football fans with no previous knowledge of chess. Readers will see how chess can be a pulsating, dynamic game, whilst appreciating that football shares much of the mystery and structural beauty of the world's greatest board game.
169 pages, Paperback
First published December 18, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 13, 2011
Was pretty insightful, very nice analogy. Only take is that he, Wells, emphasized a lot on English football making it sound like the best brand. And, of course, he undermined Italian football almost all the way, except in the last few pages.
All in all, if you're a football fan.. MUST READ
All in all, if you're a football fan.. MUST READ
April 26, 2015
I often find that the subtitles of books are deceiving. For example, I keep wanting to replace A Thousand Plateaus's subtitle with its last chapter name: Abstract machines, concrete rules.
I wouldn't subtitle Adam Wells' tome "Tactics Strategy Beauty". It seems to me that the best description would be Space, Movement, Architecture. Let me pull a quote from the first chapter.
First things first: this is a book full of illustrations, alternating chess games in progress (no notation of how they got to that point) and sketches from football games. There isn't that much reading, at first sight, but the book rewards a second critical look if you find something else of interest in the patterns he brings up.
These are patterns in the sense of Christopher Alexander: they're abstract concepts that can be stringed together into effective theories. They're very intriguing at this, seen as a whole.
Ultimately found this book useful, but not for the reasons I expected. I wanted a better understanding of the so-called "tactical" aspects of football (which, as Weller himself admits, tend to collapse the concepts of "strategy" and "tactics" proper from war and chess). The analogies to chess are interesting, but not thorough; if anything, as the book's themes progress from the simple (connective supply lines, as in the pull quote) to the more complex (the stretching and compressing of space, the properly strategic pull-back of defenses in football, etc.) the differences become more jarring.
The major difference from the point of view of chess – as someone who struggles to play but hasn't got much talent – is tempo. A chess game isn't continuous-time; every move must count, and it's easy to lose critical tempo going for a safe move that doesn't advance your game. From the point of view of football, there's the plain fact that strategy/tactics fail to encompass the totality of football as it happens; there is no meaningful sense in which the economics of chess championships seep into the activities of the chess player, for example - not in the same way that coaches must optimize for multiple objectives.
Accordingly, the vast majority of chess games used as examples are from the Classical Masters (Tarrasch, Steinitz, Capablanca); it's very hard to see, in isolation, the kind of concepts Weller is trying to illustrate in contemporary chess. The fact that most football sketches are also from the English Premier League - and from a handful of coaches, most notedly Mourinho - probably means something as well, although I'm not well-versed in football enough to see what is it.
Instead, Wellsian pattern language hits on some other issues I had been thinking about and researching following Shimon Naveh's literature on operational theory: the architecture of occupancy and combat in close spaces (for example, in urban insurgencies), how usage patterns may effectively work as invisible, fragile architectural pieces (and vice-versa) and what exactly this inversion of architecture meant in a wider sense. (See any scene of police chases in Rio's favelas in a Brazilian movie, even flat favelas like in City of God)
These clearly have to do nothing with football and chess, except they just might. Football as described by Wells, in particular, unencumbered by the tactical effects of discrete tempo, has to do with "architecturing" a field that has very little preexisting structure. "Wellsian chess", in turn, while making more sense as an abstraction of positional chess from other pesky details of real games, is better specified in terms of what pieces are supposed to do; a version of this book that relied only on the football sketches would be very loose and not engaging at all, as those diagrams can't really represent the potential of Rooney, Ronaldo, etc.
In this way, it's like the book wasn't really about the similarities between "tactical analysis pundit football" and "tempo-free real-time chess", as contrived as those games are, but rather that Wellsian football and Wellsian chess are needed as opposing principles of a language that allows him to speak of these patterns of space and movement.
It's not a brilliant book in that it takes it doesn't arrive to a theoretical depth that surpasses or overwhelms the applied knowledge that has emerged in what could be new applications, such as riot policing, insurgency and counterinsurgency or strategic games unfolding in space in general (I'm reminded of Achewood's The Great Outdoor Fight). It's no A pattern language at this - the software architects that began taking Christopher Alexander in earnest did so because his theoretical depth afforded them a new operational art. Not so here; this isn't trying to be a masterpiece - it doesn't even look like one, at first sight.
It is, nevertheless, an important book in that it identifies a theory of space and movement that stands now in need for development. That intellectually capable but underdeveloped football coaches who are great at the "physical game" might stand to learn some abstract thinking from this is symptomatic, rather than a main feature; that chess players might instinctively feel an overemphasis in positional play at the expense of tactics is also suggestive. There is something new here, something hard to put in words.
I wouldn't subtitle Adam Wells' tome "Tactics Strategy Beauty". It seems to me that the best description would be Space, Movement, Architecture. Let me pull a quote from the first chapter.
Chess and football are architectural games, and, like any powerfully built edifice, overall strength derrives from underlying structural components. Carefully built, strong connections can lead to a chance at scoring a goal or securing a piece. Succesful attacks in football are not reliant solely on the positioning of players or pieces in attacking positions. There must be connective supply lines that flow from the back, through the middle, and up to the attacking players...
First things first: this is a book full of illustrations, alternating chess games in progress (no notation of how they got to that point) and sketches from football games. There isn't that much reading, at first sight, but the book rewards a second critical look if you find something else of interest in the patterns he brings up.
These are patterns in the sense of Christopher Alexander: they're abstract concepts that can be stringed together into effective theories. They're very intriguing at this, seen as a whole.
Ultimately found this book useful, but not for the reasons I expected. I wanted a better understanding of the so-called "tactical" aspects of football (which, as Weller himself admits, tend to collapse the concepts of "strategy" and "tactics" proper from war and chess). The analogies to chess are interesting, but not thorough; if anything, as the book's themes progress from the simple (connective supply lines, as in the pull quote) to the more complex (the stretching and compressing of space, the properly strategic pull-back of defenses in football, etc.) the differences become more jarring.
The major difference from the point of view of chess – as someone who struggles to play but hasn't got much talent – is tempo. A chess game isn't continuous-time; every move must count, and it's easy to lose critical tempo going for a safe move that doesn't advance your game. From the point of view of football, there's the plain fact that strategy/tactics fail to encompass the totality of football as it happens; there is no meaningful sense in which the economics of chess championships seep into the activities of the chess player, for example - not in the same way that coaches must optimize for multiple objectives.
Accordingly, the vast majority of chess games used as examples are from the Classical Masters (Tarrasch, Steinitz, Capablanca); it's very hard to see, in isolation, the kind of concepts Weller is trying to illustrate in contemporary chess. The fact that most football sketches are also from the English Premier League - and from a handful of coaches, most notedly Mourinho - probably means something as well, although I'm not well-versed in football enough to see what is it.
Instead, Wellsian pattern language hits on some other issues I had been thinking about and researching following Shimon Naveh's literature on operational theory: the architecture of occupancy and combat in close spaces (for example, in urban insurgencies), how usage patterns may effectively work as invisible, fragile architectural pieces (and vice-versa) and what exactly this inversion of architecture meant in a wider sense. (See any scene of police chases in Rio's favelas in a Brazilian movie, even flat favelas like in City of God)
These clearly have to do nothing with football and chess, except they just might. Football as described by Wells, in particular, unencumbered by the tactical effects of discrete tempo, has to do with "architecturing" a field that has very little preexisting structure. "Wellsian chess", in turn, while making more sense as an abstraction of positional chess from other pesky details of real games, is better specified in terms of what pieces are supposed to do; a version of this book that relied only on the football sketches would be very loose and not engaging at all, as those diagrams can't really represent the potential of Rooney, Ronaldo, etc.
In this way, it's like the book wasn't really about the similarities between "tactical analysis pundit football" and "tempo-free real-time chess", as contrived as those games are, but rather that Wellsian football and Wellsian chess are needed as opposing principles of a language that allows him to speak of these patterns of space and movement.
It's not a brilliant book in that it takes it doesn't arrive to a theoretical depth that surpasses or overwhelms the applied knowledge that has emerged in what could be new applications, such as riot policing, insurgency and counterinsurgency or strategic games unfolding in space in general (I'm reminded of Achewood's The Great Outdoor Fight). It's no A pattern language at this - the software architects that began taking Christopher Alexander in earnest did so because his theoretical depth afforded them a new operational art. Not so here; this isn't trying to be a masterpiece - it doesn't even look like one, at first sight.
It is, nevertheless, an important book in that it identifies a theory of space and movement that stands now in need for development. That intellectually capable but underdeveloped football coaches who are great at the "physical game" might stand to learn some abstract thinking from this is symptomatic, rather than a main feature; that chess players might instinctively feel an overemphasis in positional play at the expense of tactics is also suggestive. There is something new here, something hard to put in words.
April 27, 2014
كتاب غريب,قبل شرائه توقعت منه الكثير وبعد قرائته ما استفدت كثير
يعطي شرح لبعض الحالات مثل الاوفرلاب ولا نقل الكرة من طرف لطرف ويقارنها بتحركات في الشطرنج..والهدف الي يبي يوصل له ان الكرة مقاربة فكرتها من الشطرنج..ماانصح فيه
يعطي شرح لبعض الحالات مثل الاوفرلاب ولا نقل الكرة من طرف لطرف ويقارنها بتحركات في الشطرنج..والهدف الي يبي يوصل له ان الكرة مقاربة فكرتها من الشطرنج..ماانصح فيه
April 2, 2016
All-in-all a decent book. A good intro in soccer tactics, and uses chess as an analog to help better understand an otherwise complicated subject.
Just one thing. Benjamin Franklin was never, and I quote, an "American president".
Just one thing. Benjamin Franklin was never, and I quote, an "American president".
February 15, 2015
Quite interesting, but often a bit vague. I mostly noticed the vagueness on the chess-related bits, but that may just be because I understand football better.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews