Player Types - The Summary

by Arne Kaehler
2/28/2022 – The Grandmasters Dr. Karsten Mueller and Luis Engel have set a ball rolling in Germany with their latest Fritztrainer. GM Lars Bo Hansen designed the four-player model in 2005, and was perhaps ahead of his time. In the 5-part interview with Dr. Karsten Mueller, all four player types are discussed in detail. Today - The Summary, and questions about all four types.
Playing styles in chess are an important and thus often discussed topic. GM Dr. Karsten Müller and GM Luis Engel take up a model by GM Lars Bo Hansen based on 4 player types - namely ‘activists’, ‘pragmatics’, ‘theoreticians’ and so-called ‘reflectors’.

The 4 Player Types standard model

by Dr. Karsten Mueller and Luis Engel

Some chess players love to attack, others prefer a solid defence. Some know all the opening theory and others play purely by intuition/recognition. But can we all agree that there is no perfect way to play chess yet?

Every type of player has their strengths and weaknesses.

Namely:

  • The activist (Aronian, Kasparov, Polgar, Tal)
  • The reflector (Carlsen, Capablanca, Karpov, Keymer)
  • The pragmatic (Caruana, Fischer, Euwe, Korchnoi)
  • The theorist (Giri, Steinitz, Botvinnik, Kramnik)

GM Karsten Müller and GM Luis Engel spent a lot of time defining the model of the four player types, wrote a book and developed the Fritztrainer, which is very popular in Germany. 

In this five-part interview series with one of the authors, Dr Karsten Mueller, we take a more in-depth look at all four player types and summarize some open questions in the last part.

The Summary

Playing styles in chess are an important and thus often discussed topic. GM Dr. Karsten Müller and GM Luis Engel take up a model by GM Lars Bo Hansen based on 4 player types - namely ‘activists’, ‘pragmatics’, ‘theoreticians’ and so-called ‘reflectors’.

Links:

Arne Kaehler, a creative mind who is passionate about board games in general, was born in Hamburg and learned to play chess at a young age. By teaching chess to youth teams and creating chess-related videos on YouTube, Arne was able to expand this passion and has even created an online course for anyone who wants to learn how to play chess. Arne writes for the English and German news sites, but focuses mainly on content for the ChessBase media channels.

Discuss

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Vidmar Vidmar 3/1/2022 03:31
Any good list will create controversy; opinions are welcome.
herr_doktor herr_doktor 2/28/2022 11:17
Vidmar has got it badly wrong: Reti is a pragmatist, as is Lasker and Nakamura (at least these days). Nunn is an activist, as is Bronstein, Alekhine, Keres and Anand. Fine and Gelfand are theorists. Fischer is a pragmatist par excellence. Maybe read the Muller/Engel book?
Karsten Müller Karsten Müller 2/28/2022 07:46
Vidmar: Interesting. I basically agree, but in my opinion:
Em.Lasker is a pragmatic, Alekhine and Keres activists, Fine theorist, Anand, Bronstein and Nunn activists. But this is no exact science of course.
And Fischer a pragmatic but in a way also a class by himself as you put it...
Vidmar Vidmar 2/28/2022 03:28
Activist - add Spassky, Larson, Marshall, Nakamura, Em Lasker
Reflector - add Alekhine, Keres, Fine, Gelfand, Smyslov
Pragmatist -add Anand, Bronstein, Reshevsky, So, Karjakin , Ding
Theorist - add Nimzowitch , Tarrasch, Reti, Tartakower, Nunn,

Move Fischer into a class by himself.
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