‘. . . although chess may be a thoroughly logical game when boiled down, you can’t boil it down when actually playing, so it is of more practical use to see it as logic and romance in conflict. Be ready to adjust your mind to combinative possibilities at every turn. Do not, as Lasker did in a famous game in his 1921 match with Capablanca, allow your mind to become embedded in “positional” channels. Think of the positional principles as operating only if combinative possibilities are “off”.
It is this extraordinary conflict between purely chess principles (tactics) and the general principles of struggle that is one of the secrets of the game’s fascination.’
Cecil Purdy
The Search for Chess Perfection (Davenport: Thinkers’ Press, 1997), p.196
