blonde poker forum

Those of you who enjoyed the coverage of that and the analysis of the games will likely enjoy English Grandmaster Danny King's instructional videos called "What happens next?".

This is the first: YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQHCIGlP6Sk

There are 5 now, I think, and I've only just stumbled across them. It's a clever idea: he takes you through a few moves of a game, explains the position to you and then asks you which of two moves you should play next. You then have to click on one side of the video to open up a new video (either explaining why you were wrong or confirming why you were right)

Enjoy

Got it wrong :(

They're not designed to be easy, of course, but the way that Danny King presents it and explains the ideas - and the solutions - really allows you to take something away from it.

Persevere with the other 4 and see if you improve.

Jeez, I am SO bad.......

Have never played chess. Are these videos ok for complete beginners to watch, or do I need to know the basics first?

actually some very interesting news coming from me soon regarding chess, hopefully will be a huge positive impact on the game.

I think you would need some form of basic knowledge (how thepieces move) as it's not designed for total beginners. However, my advice would be to spend 5 mins with this video and see how you find the level of it. Have a look at the end position and see whether you can work out a few possible ideas before clicking on the move you want to play.

If the second video still makes no sense, it might have been too much, but it's the only way you'll know for sure.

Really enjoyable ty Tal

If you want to learn chess, start at http://www.chesskids.com/lessons04.shtml. It's the old version of his website, but it will get you going. Ignore that a lot of it is for da kidz.

Played chess at school level, (was captain). Played for Rotherham chess club and played and got to a south Yorkshire under 18 final when I was 14. But not played since leaving school. This has wet my apatite to play again     

By all means persevere at your leisure with the series. A quick search on YouTube will reveal the others.

I provided a basic coverage of the top flight competition, the Tal Memorial, a few weeks back. Well, there are a few comps on at the moment, but the top players are a big more spread out, rather than all being in on tournament.

You might remember young Mr Caruana, who came so close towinning the Tal Memorial, only to fall at the final hurdle. He has just won a comp in Dortmund against strong opposition, so he remains a man in good form.

What of the champ and World Number 1, Magnus Carlsen? He has just started a comp in Biel, along with 5 other strong GMs in a double-round-robin (you play all five guys as white and black). He drew the first game but the other two matches resulted in wins, so he sits half a point behind after the first game. Hikaru Nakamura of the USA is Carlsen's most obvious challenger, but these are all good players.


http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8351 (http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8351)

The reference is made in the write-up to a "Poisoned Pawn". It's an odd choice of phrase, really, but chess people aren't known for their well-roundedness...

On the link above, have a look at the game between Chinese GM Wang Hao and French Number 1 Etienne Bacrot. When it gets to move 20, Black has to choose whether to take the pawn on c4 with his queen. Bacrot decides he can and so does.

Wang Hao has let Bacrot take the pawn so that he can get his bishop to b3 (which he does immediately), in order that it is pointing on the long diagonal towards the Black King.

There are now three plans for White, which work on the clever idea that, if your opponent has one weakness, give him two. If he has two give him three...

He has an attack possible on the King because of the diagonal his bishop his on - and, as we will see, the dark squared diagonal beneath it.

Secondly, he will have the e-pawn, which will start to march forward. Because Black will have to make moves to stop the two diagonals, he will have to allow the pawn to get forward.

The third plan kicks in because Black gets cramped from all the defending. White gets a big, powerful centre for his heavy artillery, which, as pieces get swapped off, leads to Black's king getting exposed. Eventually, it is too much and Bacrot resigned just before he was about to lose material.

The Poisoned Pawn gets another victim!

An absolute Juggernaut of an attack from Magnus Carlsen saw him bring home the bacon in his game today in Biel against Wang Hao.

http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8357 (http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8357) gets you to the coverage. Just have a look at how white's pieces swarm the king. Black never gets forward and his rooks never get free.

Closer to home, the British Championships started yesterday in North Shields this time. It is two weeks of endeavour for an historically prestigious title.

Today, partly due to lack of strong sponsorship, the main event doesn't attract all the top players (the top three ranked players have not attended, although Luke McShane would not have been expected to be here, as he works in the City). Nevertheless, the strongest three who have entered are exciting young talents, with Gawain Jones the top seed. He has improved in the past couple of years from a decent, solid grandmaster to one promising to go further towards the top 100.

David Howell has played in tournaments with the elite and is second seed, narrowly behind Gawain in the rankings. Both were child prodigies, although David more famously, as he holds the record for the youngest person ever to beat a Grandmaster (he beat John Nunn in a blitz game aged...8 in 1999. Yes, eight. As in 8 ). He also drew a game in 2002 with then World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik, which made him national news.

Steven Gordon was another outstanding junior player, although not quite the headline-maker of the two above. He was British Under 21 Champion 4 years in a row (2005-8) amongst a number of other achievements and will be looking to secure the main title this year. I do have a 1-1 record against Ste (although he might have been 11 when I beat him...).

They aren't the only Grandmasters on show and there are lots of exciting juniors looking to make a name for themselves. There is also the opportunity to get one of the tournament performances (called Norms) required to get a master title.

Coverage is available on the website directly (with live streams of the games from about 2.30pm each day) or via sites like http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8355 (http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8355) where there will be evening reports of the action.

Whether to do with any of the games or coverage, or just general stuff, if anyone has any questions, I'd be more than happy to see whether I can answer them.

Hope you enjoy the information anyway.

Hi Tal.

Don't let the lack of interaction make you think there's not much interest in the thread. If I had anything remotely intelligent to bring to the table I would but I'll have to remain an observer for now.

I very rarely play chess but I'm definitely enjoying the information you're providing and it's starting to make me want to play a bit. I also enjoyed those videos which you recommended.

Please keep it up.

Matt

Very kind of you. Thank you.

As long as the views keep going up, I will carry on, but I do welcome feedback (whether posted or PMd) on the content and style of what I put on the thread. If you enjoy the latest games, if you want to keep up with who's winning tourneys, if you want something more instructive (old games or positions that explain tactics or ideas), if you want historical anecdotes and interesting stories, I'd like to know.

Of course, if you HAVE any of the above yourselves to share, please do. The more of a forum thread it is the better!

A few things of interest for you from the British Championships.

Firstly, the current standings, as round 4 has just finished.

Top seed Gawain Jones has won all four of his games, including one against number 3 seed Steven Gordon today, and has the sole lead. In second place is a relatively unfancied player in James Holland, who has achived 3.5 out of 4, despite having to play four titled players in a Grandmaster, an International Master and two FIDE Masters. The two of them will face each other tomorrow.

There is a cluster of players on 3/4, including both Steven Gordon and David Howell, as well as all but one of the remaining Grandmasters.

The website for the tournament is http://britishchesschampionships.co.uk (http://britishchesschampionships.co.uk) and you might well enjoy the feature whereby you can watch all the games from the main competition live each afternoon. If you're really keen (ahem), you might take a peek at the webcams.

Commentary

For something a little more user-friendly, the British Championships has had a commentary room for some years now, which is a great feature of bigger tournaments.

The Tal Memorial thread included some discussion about getting chess on TV and I explained that it’s very hard to commentate live, when your brain (and the brain of those commentating) doesn’t work as quickly as the chaps at the board. The live commentary environment is the closest we get these days.

The last time I went to one, there was a room (classroom-size) full of players of all abilities, some with laptops with chess programs on, some with their own magnetic boards, all focusing on the man at the front. It was the same man who is commentating this fortnight, International Master, Andrew Martin.

The top 4 boards were all up on display at the front of the room for those present to study and, as the moves are played, Andrew flicks between them and looks to explain what is going on. Players throw out moves, some insightful, some terrible, but all respected. Occasionally, no one can work out what the players are up to (not something we see in live sports but perhaps something with which people who’ve watched live poker might be more familiar with) and that’s when it gets really fun.

If you can, I’d really recommend watching it.

Game of the Day

Andrew’s work doesn’t finish when the clocks stop, though; he prepares a video on his favourite game of the day.

Of those I’ve seen, game 2 was a belter. Gawain Jones put on a bit of a masterclass against a weaker opponent (still a strong County standard player) in Terry Chapman. Chapman played an opening very much en vogue over the past couple of years.

A lot of big names have played the Black side of the opening a number of times and, for my sins, I have given it a go in practice over the past 12 months, hoping to take it up as one of my main openings. It’s a quiet opening, where you let White come at you a bit, but safe in the knowledge that your structure is solid and is hard to break down, so you can counter the weaknesses White will inevitably leave behind as he comes forward.

The trouble is playing accurately, because there’s little room for error. Here, Jones got an edge, turned it into an attack, converted the attack to a material advantage and then changed plan again, switching to winning the game with his material, rather than going for the enemy King. It’s the artistry of the Grandmaster in these games that shows them for who they are; they are able to judge these positions so well and know when the time is right to change plan.

If you have 15 minutes to spare, watch Andrew Martin’s analysis of the game. Whatever your level, you will get something from it, as Andrew is able to explain basic strategy and advanced theoretical points in the same breath.

As ever, I welcome your feedback (thank you again to those who have taken the time to do so) and, above all, enjoy…

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM5nPGCpuB8
 

I echo what many others have Posted, Tal, this is a great thread, please keep it going even if you do not get many replies.

This "commentary" thing interests me. Are the commentators routinely dissed, as they are in poker, or is there more tolerance &, perhaps, understanding?

And when a player makes a move which is questionable, or perhaps not widely understood, do they get grief from lesser players, or is the mindset more respectful??

I need a website and an android app to start playing again.

I've got a few days off soon and I'm going to lie on the beach playing chess against my computer.

Any thoughts on the best ones to go for?

Would prefer free but don't mind paying for something if it's worth it.

Shredder is a cracker. Costs £4 ish. You get a strong computer to play against (which you can set at whatever strength you want, but which gets stronger if you beat it, so you find your level). You also get a "tactics" feature, where you have to work out the next move on a series of puzzles.

The engine rates your moves by assessing the position after each move, so you can see how you're getting on.

Not sure about internet sites you can access easily by phone where you can play chess against others.

Sounds great. I shall make an investment of 4 whole pounds very soon.

Any good ones for playing against friends that you know of? No doubt there's loads available but I'd prefer to go on a recommendation.

Must admit I don't have one like that on my phone so not much help there. I do sometimes use PlayChess on my laptop, which is free for basic software (all you need) and has a subscription for a lot more content (lectures, commentary). Huge range of players on it - magnus carlsen to magnus random.

Lots of others about tho. If it has a board, a clock and the ability for your friends to play you, it will be fine!

It's not that different to anything else, really. Hataz gotta hate etc.

On the whole, commentators are respected players before they are commentators, so the content should be good. Delivery, interaction with a live audience, display of personal opinion range wildly, just as with any other game.

As for when a player makes a mistake, if a superstar player blunders, it makes chess news. There are plenty of articles and reports out there, going back as long as the game itself. Everyone has a "senior moment", just as Phil Ivey misread his hand the one occasion he wore sunglasses (seem to recall that being a story?).

In a World Championship final over a hundred years ago, Chigorin made what is often quoted as the biggest blunder (as much because of the context of the situation) against William Steinitz. He moved away the one piece preventing himself being checkmated.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1036366 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1036366)

Bobby Fischer made an elementary error in the famous match against Boris Spassky, by taking a pawn which led to his Bishop being trapped. He got a lot of stick for that, although it was just one small part of a match full of oddities.

As for us mortals, we all make 'misclicks' and it's one of those things, generally speaking, that you laugh off (usually after a lie down in a darkened room/kicking the cat/drowning your sorrows) amongst friends.

We'd need a bigger thread for the mistakes I've made in games!

This is the sort of thing I don't get. Why is having your bishop trapped such a bad thing? (Except in your zip when it's obviously terrible).

Surely having a bishop trapped means that the other guy has a few pieces locked up trapping it so effectively they're trapped themselves?

At my level if my bishop was trapped I'd just forget about it and move along to something else. At what level does the trapping of one piece become a match winner/loser?

From club standard up, the loss of a bishop, knight or worse tends to be curtains. There are exceptions, which generally involve the other player getting compensation for the piece loss. By this, I mean he has something to off-set the deficit in material, such as a better attack, or the opponent’s extra piece not being in a good position,

Imagine playing a five a side football game where you lose a man. The difference in numbers makes it so hard against a reasonably competent team, who know how to keep the ball, use the space and make you chase shadows. The loss of a bishop can be that unpleasant at club level.

At master level, it’s generally an automatic resignation; it is assumed that the other chap will finish you off and it’s best to save your energy for another day. Actually, it’s a step further: if there’s no obvious compensation for the piece, it can be considered an insult to carry on at that level (effectively suggesting that your opponent isn’t good enough to be guaranteed to finish you off).

If I can explain this all more specifically, put a bishop in the middle of an empty board and see how many squares it covers in one go. Ok, now throw a couple of pawns on for each side (say the king and queen pawns in the place they start the game) and a king each. Play some moves for each side and see how easy it is to win with the bishop. All you do is creep forward with the pawns, get your king involved and slowly force the opposing king back with your bishop. If the king doesn’t retreat, the pawns can become targets for the bishop, which can – as we have established – cover a lot of ground and a lot more quickly than His Majesty.

Once you win one of the pawns, you can either look to win the other one or swap it off for one of yours. Then, you march your pawn forward and, whereas you have to be careful not to stalemate your opponent in a King + Pawn v King situation, the bishop can force the enemy king away with checks and you will get your pawn home to queen, with checkmate soon to follow.

So, if you get a bishop up, one way of winning is to swap the other large pieces off and win with the extra bishop.

How do you force exchanges? The answer might seem a little odd, but the best way is often to attack. If you just oppose the pieces, the other guy doesn’t have to take; he can just move away. But, if you attack (remember you have extra artillery, so can offer more muscle in the attack), the only solution might be to get rid of the threatening pieces by swapping them off. If he doesn’t do that, your extra piece can often be decisive because you can attack something once more than he can defend it. Slowly, as pieces come off, the advantage becomes one for the endgame and you get to the sort of position I’ve described above.

Fischer didn’t lose the piece immediately in the Spassky game, but he took a pawn which Spassky had left unattended on purpose, because there is a well-known (even at junior/novice level) trick of leaving the pawn in front of where the rook starts. If the bishop takes it, you push the knight’s pawn up one and the bishop is trapped – the incarceration of the
prelate. It’s not called that, but we shall do so for our purposes!

In all seriousness, does that help?

Thanks for that Tal. Yes it helps a lot.

I liked the bit about forcing exchanges. So basically if I was to get a piece up at any stage if I can swap off all the others my advantage becomes larger.

What about the rook vs bishop scrap? I understand that the rook is a more powerful piece that the bishop but why is this?

Also in the end game. If it was king vs king + some other pieces what's the minimum requirement of other pieces to be able to force a check mate? Can you do it with just a pawn advantage?

The bishop can only cover 32 squares of the board, whether attacking or defending. Linking your questions together, the rook is also a mating piece, as King + Rook can mate a King, where the same can't be said of a lone bishop.

As for the requirements for mate, I can't do better than wikipedia...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkmate

Found a new move today whilst playing against Shredder. "En Passant". Had never heard of that before.

Seems a really good piece of software and not too bad at £5.99

I'm just going to play around a bit at first then I want to learn a few of the standard openings. I've heard some names but don't know what any of them are yet.

What would be the best ones to learn for a novice?

Also how long do the standard openings go on for? Are they just rough guides or do they have to be exact?

If you think a lot of theory has been written about poker, just have a look at the books on chess openings. Put it into context: starting from move one, White has 20 possible first moves (eight pawns that can move either one or two squares up, plus two knights which each have two possible destinations). To each of those 20 moves, Black has 20 possible responses. Already, there are 400 possible positions after move 1.

Opening theory for a club player would go to 10-15 moves (10-15 white and 10-15 black moves) for the important lines and maybe 7-10 for the less common lines. For the top players, you’ll find them knowing not just 20+ moves of the main lines, but also the little intricacies: changes of move order and their significance.

Club players will have their own favourite lines; their stock responses as Black and their standard openings as White.

Move order can be important, certainly, but when you are starting out, all I would advise is to watch out for anything that can be taken; any immediate tactics. If you can avoid that, the order will be less significant for the time being.

The learning isn’t as daunting as it sounds, I promise. Think of it more like in poker, where the basics of call/raise/check/fold are easy, then you learn about position/pot odds/stack sizes/bet sizes and finally you start wearing hoodies, buying beats headphones and triple-rangemerging the face off dem pigeons.

As for what you should play, openings tend to suit style, so have a play around and see what works for you – see what sort of positions you tend to get into and then see if there is an opening that most easily fits.

The vast majority of players will start 1.e4 (pawn in front of the king up two) or 1.d4 (pawn in front of the queen up two). The first often leads to sharper, more tactical positions, whereas the second are generally quieter and more positional games. That’s a simplistic summary, but covers the details.
If you wanted an opening to start out with, I would recommend taking a look at an opening called the Vienna Game. It is one I have given new starters to look at in the past. The idea is the theory on it is pretty manageable (there are only a few lines to consider) and the themes as to what you should be doing will keep coming up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Game

My advice would be to look at the first half dozen moves in one of the lines (pick the third move that appeals), then have a go at playing it against either someone on the internet or a computer. Only after doing that should you go back to the books to see how you’re getting on.
 

My head hurts :D

How quickly should you look to castle? Is there an advantage to being the first to castle and is it something you should usually look to do?

Is it considered more of a protective move to get your king in to a corner or attacking as it gets a rook in to the middle?

I'm just off to play Mr shredder again. I'm up to 1200 now whatever that means. I think I'm still crap :D

LOL yeah careful of that!

First few simple bits for any opening:

• Get a pawn into the centre
• Get your knights and bishops out
• Castle
• Watch what the other guy's up to incase there's any threats or traps

Everything else - for now - is secondary and you don't need to worry about it. Just read as much as you want and study as much as you want as long as you are still enjoying it.

Have a look at what Mr Shredder does. He'll castle most of the time. It will form part of the 'development' stage of the opening.

Get your bits out and castle. Can't say fairer than that in the opening.

Castling first isn't an issue, but developing more quickly than your opponent can be decisive.

Get your bits out and castle!

I like this. It means I'm doing it basically right :)

Something for everyone, I hope.

Magnus Carlsen was on the US show 60 minutes a few months ago.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxBtrT_qZgI

He's quite something.

He's filmed at, amongst other places, the London Chess Classic, which I have been to watch for the last two years. It will be on in December, I believe in Kensington Olympia. Will post details nearer the date.

Unbelievable.

The bit where he plays against 10 other players without seeing the boards is quite something.

wow loved that!

Utterly astounding, the playing 10 boards blind was just out of this world, last time I remember watching something feeling like this was after I watched:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSqUcrFJ498

Love this thread more & more, & now it's gaining momentum. Please keep it going Tal!

This I enjoyed, too....

The learning isn’t as daunting as it sounds, I promise. Think of it more like in poker, where the basics of call/raise/check/fold are easy, then you learn about position/pot odds/stack sizes/bet sizes and finally you start wearing hoodies, buying beats headphones and triple-rangemerging the face off dem pigeons.

PS - I can confirm that Evil Pie is crap.

Carlsen's ten is impressive, but what if I told you that the world record is 46?

The Godfather of blindfold chess - arguably of modern chess itself - is Alexander Alekhine about whom I could happily fill the entire bandwidth of this forum.

As for blindfold chess itself, here's a starter for 10: http://www.blindfoldchess.net/

On the subject of blindfold chess, here is one of the most famous: a game by Alexander Alekhine in which he made a clever tactical move that the audience missed, as did his opponent!

Remember that neither player can see the board in this game. They would be sitting back to back and shouting out moves.

Can you find the killer combination?

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qfjc4e35Lg

Don't know the commentator, btw. The game was played in 1931.

Love it. I'm getting in to this now.

I really enjoy playing against shredder. I like that you can play out a game and then back track to where you went wrong and play the game out again. Excellent recommendation. Thanks for that.

I'm getting better by the way but still making really silly mistakes. Every now and then I'll move a piece and leave something totally exposed. Doh!!!! Thankfully shredder let's you take it back when you do something really stupid.

The best advice I can give you on that is, just before you play a move, have a last look round to see whether there is anything immediate your opponent can do. Imagine you have made your move. Look at the position then and just make sure all is well.

Simple, straightforward advice that is the solution to a staggeringly high percentage of the blunders made from rank beginners, club players and World Champions alike. We all do it!

Another of the great players was the American Paul Morphy. He was the best player in the world in the middle of the 19th Century, although there was no World Championship per se then.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#section_1

Morphy had a bright flame and, like so many, burned for a short period of time. He was a prodigious, gifted individual but born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was an odd character, who was fortunate enough to travel the world playing chess - challenge matches against the other top players in the world.

He gave up chess to take up the law but he lost interest and - for want of a better phrase - dossed about on his father's money until he died aged 47.

Why tell you about him? He played a game one night so interesting he stopped an opera.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_game_(chess)

The story would struggle to be more opulent. Enjoy (in your most decadent and fanciful attire)

I used to work at the British Chess Federation, so I've had a bit of a look around the National Chess Library, there are a LOT of books on chess theory and history.

The total number in that library is 7000 books, I think most of them are history books but I reckon there's probably approaching a 1000 books they had just on opening theory. :D

Elsewhere, in modern-day Germany, Magnus Carlsen leads the Biel tournament by half a point, going in to the last round tomorrow. If he draws, he will only take second if there is a winner between Dutch superstar Danish Giri (a young man even next to Carlsen) and China's Wang Hao.

The penultimate round has just finished and Chessbase has reported the games.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8376

If these are accurate, have a look at the game Bacrot v Nakamura. Etienne Bacrot has been the top player in the world in my age group ever since I started playing chess. Luke McShane is the same age. Mentioning myself in the same breath as those guys is a bit of an insult tbh but it's my thread so what the heck.

EvilPie asked about silly mistakes. Have a look at Bacrot's thirtieth move. If this record is accurate and that is the move he played, it's an absolute shocker. After Nakamura took his rook, Bacrot can take the queen, but he loses his own then and the net result is he will lose a whole rook in that sequence.

A very simple tactic. It must have been an absolute mental block.

Thank goodness I haven't said anything unpleasant about the BCF/ECF then!

Yet.

 ;D  lol I wouldn't worry about that - the office manager was psychotic and the leadership from the directors was largely incompetent, I left before everything got completely re-jigged so I don't know how much better it got after they re-organised things but it really wasn't that impressive when I was there.

Yes I'm sure such matters may come up in our polite conversations on this thread!

Perhaps another day  ;)

In Biel, the final round gave all the drama it promised. Magnus Carlsen couldn't get over the line against Etienne Bacrot and had to settle for a draw. He therefore needed the two players below him to do the same, as a winner between them would take the title.

The opening between Anish Giri and Wang Hao gave neither player any advantage but Giri made a fatal mistake, missing a clever combination by the Chinese player to give his opponent the win and the title.

Wang Hao was the third seed of the six on paper but held his own well, winning key games against the lower-ranked players. Carlsen had to settle for second, but in the knowledge that his rating will increase (again), edging ever closer to Garry Kasparov's record.

What you might find interesting about the result of the tournament is that Carlsen won 4 and drew 6 of his games, whereas Hao won 6, drew 1 and lost 3. So Carlsen actually got 7 out of 10 and Hao got 6.5 out of 10. What's more, Carlsen beat Hao as white and black.

It has become en vogue in the elite circles for everything but the biggest chess tournaments (World Championship, etc) to have a football-style points system of 3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss.

Every now and then through chess history, someone kicks up a fuss about there being too many draws, that it’s becoming boring and everyone’s frightened to lose. It was much, much worse 50 years ago, where almost everyone was from the USSR and there are any number of occasions where draws between Comrades resulted in a USSR winner.

Nevertheless, the sponsors speak in these matters and they can’t afford to allow boring (particularly short) games on too regular a basis, or no one will watch. Sadly, the outcome has been this silly nonsense of 3 points for a win, inviting fighting chess and, in some cases, more open games.

Wang Hao drew just once and was rewarded for his all-or-nothing approach by finishing above Carlsen, where he would have been runner-up under the conventional scoring system.

Thems be the rules. What do you make of them?

Slightly closer to home, the final round of the British Championship resulted in a tie between top seed Gawain Jones and third seed Ste Gordon.

They will share first and second prize money between them (but for a nominal £50) and will play a tiebreak series of quick play games tomorrow morning.

http://britishchesschampionships.co.uk/news/play-off-in-the-british-championship/

Tomorrow from about 10:30am (not poker player o'clock, I grant you...) the title of British Champion 2012 will be decided. The link above should get you either to or close to the games, which will be pretty fast-paced and streamed live.

Neither has won the British Champs before. As Ste has played for my club in Birmingham and singularly one of the nicest chaps I've met, I have to funk for the underdog.

Won't be much in it.

Two games to start off with (roughly taking 45 mins each). If they are still level, there will be some much faster blitz games.

Enjoy if you're watching tomorrow

Watching that documentary on Magnus Carlsen - incredible!

I can't get over that clip of him with his back turned to the 10 games reading out the moves - just unbelievable.

It's just awesome to watch, isn't it?

Imagine playing an MTT blindfolded where players announce their bets and you have to keep track of their chip stacks!

Alekhine, the great Russian master of our great-grandfathers' generation, used to say he went by the voices as the opponent read out his move, which triggered the positions in his mind. From there, it was just the simple task of working out the best move. Easy then!

Meanwhile, the British Championship was won by the top seed and favourite, Gawain Jones, following a playoff with Steven Gordon.

Started playing a bit of chess again on chess.com. I totally thrashed this 8 year old yesterday, was amazing.

Got completely pwned by everyone else i played though, i totally suck.

Following on from this, if anyone plays a game online and wants me to have a look at it, I can't guarantee an overnight turnaround, but I'd happily offer some feedback/advice. I can assure you from having watched 7 year olds playing in junior comps and from having done some coaching in the past, there is no game you can show me that will offend!

Just give me an idea of what you want me to look at/advise on, as you would in the PHA thread, and I'll do my best to get back to you in a few days by PM or email.

Following on from the debate on other threads about Rastafish and his ability to unsettle opponents over the poker tables, I got thinking about the tactics I've seen and heard about.

Digestive biscuits being munched, boiled sweet wrappers twizzled and pens clicked on and off. That was just last season against me in league matches!

At junior level, parents control their children's movements and there was a particularly memorable father who used to send his children in to each game 15 mins late just to put the opponent (again, a child) off their concentration.

At the top level, you will have seen Kasparov in the Carlsen clip. He's famous for his mind games, in truth.

How about hypnotism?

In the 1930s, Alekhine was King. He beat the seemingly unbeatable Capablanca to claim the world title in 1927 and with the exception of two years, held that title until 1946.

Alekhine, a bit like Kasparov, was very interested in the psychology element of chess and his contemporaries took this either as a joke/an irrelevance or they were affected by it.

I have just found a fascinating article on this very point and here it is.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8310

It covers a few anecdotes and then turns to some articles from and about Alekhine's rivals. The very thought that the great Bogljubov (not a Victorian magician, as much as that name sounds like he should be!) would be convinced that he was being hypnotised over the board is incredible.

A couple of the excerpts are in other languages (including a French story of Mikhail Tal playing six games against an amateur; three normal and three with the amateur hypnotised and convinced he was Paul Morphy - see earlier post about him - Tal was amazed at how much more aggressive and fluent the play was in the second set) but the whole thing is worth five minutes of your time.

Tony G's got nothing on chess players!

Imagine if Iker Casillas said he couldn't save penalties from Messi because he kept being hypnotised!

Love this thread!

A final - for the time being (probably) - series of notes about Alexander Alekhine.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7555

It's a collection of interviews in various newspapers around the world. Bear in mind that this is a man who grew up in Russia at the turn of the Century and saw the revolution. He was not a communist, with his father a man of some considerable importance under Tzar Nicholas II.

He escaped to France and eventually became a French citizen.

A curious character, an epoque-defining chess player and a fascinating - if controversial - man.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aycFDkIAhnQ


And something less cerebral:

Magnus Carlsen playing a friendly game against a Norwegian junior player. She gets 9.5 minutes on her clock to make all her moves.

Magnus gets 30 seconds. Total. If he takes one second between her pressing her clock and him pressing his every move, he will have to beat her inside 30 moves.

It's a little on the grainy side so you might find the actual game hard to follow. But you can see just how the black pieces come forward to attack together.

What amuses me is how, when there is a distraction, Carlsen looks up to see what's going on. He has 30 seconds on his clock and he is cooler than Usain Bolt in the last 5 metres of a 100m heat.

It is actually a bit sad to watch that, in a way.  The little girl is dithering & not at all sure what to do, & Mr Hero knows EXACTLY what she will do, & EXACTLY what he will do long before she actually makes her move.

Painful to watch, in a way.

I had a good read up on Alexander Alekhine after your two Posts about him.

Some man!

His Wiki page is a purler, & worth a read.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Alekhine


This is a great read, too......(excuse the cumbersome link)


http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=alexander+Alekhine+chess&view=detail&id=B8B8EB8C42DDBDF453DD0B5AF67F569BC4F26F6B&FORM=IDFRIR&adlt=strict



Here our hero plays Mr Romanovsky.


(http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o541/tikay2/AlexanderAlekhine_PeterRomanovsky1909.jpg)

Time handicapping for blitz games is pretty standard. The 9.5-0.5 is extreme but it's also worth saying that the opponent is not a complete novice.

I played a British Grandmaster about a year ago in a series of "fun" games for a couple of hours. Every time he won, he had to sacrifice time for the next game. We started at 5 v 5 but were soon at 5 v 2 and then 5 v 1. I managed to get one checkmate against him from 12 games but was winning heavily in 4 others, which was enormously frustrating.

Carlsen could give that GM a handicap and be favourite, such is the gap.

As for the girl, there is always a feeling of "I really wish I were better at this!" But it's the only way someone of her standard would get a winnable game against the World Number 1.

I can only say - and hopefully those who have played the game a bit (JonMW?) - it's less humiliating than it looks. It isn't, for example, analogous to playing Roger Federer where he has to play left handed.

One thing to watch on this clip is how the girl hovers over the piece she wants to move for a few seconds, while she does a last scout around the board to check she hasn't missed anything immediate.

This isn't a novice thing; pretty much everyone but the very top does it. Watch Carlsen's eyes. He's drawn to where she's hovering and already his calculations have begun. Of course, he will have thought about the possible responses already but his reply can be so quick because he knows what is coming.

In poker, people will, when facing a bet, ask how much it is, count out the chips, count what they have left, ask the bettor whether they want a call, feign to throw the chips over the line but pull them back, mull, mull and mull some more...then raise.

If you hover over a piece, 19 times out of 20, that is the piece you are moving. I'm not aware that I have ever seen a player hover over a piece on one side of the board purely for deception.

On reflection, I might try it!

Ahh, my bad. That is EXACTLY what caught my eye, & I wrongly assumed that only a complete novice would do that. Seems an odd thing to do, but yes, Hero would get an advance read from that, thus speeding up his reaction time.

We see it in poker too - newbies tend to play with theier cards in an odd manner, simply because they do not know what to do. And that in itself is often a tell.

At amateur levels, there are plenty of stories any chess player can tell you about people's attempts to put them off.

One of the silly ones you get is done in a situation where you make a sacrifice. The idea of a sacrifice is to lose a piece of yours but specifically because you have a tactic behind it. So, you want your opponent to take your bishop/pawn/queen and then you can deliver the hidden checkmate, for example.

The trick you get crafty juniors (or crafty men against juniors) pulling is looking really disappointed when they make the sacrificial move. Sometimes they will actually sigh or go "oh shucks" in the hope you go "oh he's left his queen in prise! I'll have that!" and then fall into the trap. It's a real novice thing but it nevertheless actually does happen!

The most extreme form of it happened to me when I was about 11. I played in a tournament in Derby in an open-aged comp, where the players were separated into 4 groups, based on ability/rating. So I happened to be playing a man in his fifties in this particular game.

We'd played about 15 moves each and I went off to the toilet while my opponent thought about his next move. As is the way - not everyone does this but most probably do on some level - I was thinking about the position while I spent my penny and had a plan to use my already active knights to mount an attack. I had worked out a variation of moves if he made a particular response and, as I walked back to the board, had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do next.

When I got to the board, I had a shock.

The knight - the one I was going to move and mount the attack with - had moved. But it was MY knight. And it hadn't moved (as my old maths teacher used to say) in an L-shape; it had moved just one square to the left.

I haven't seen this before or since. I asked the man whether the knight had moved and he assured me it hadn't. I asked if he could see on his score sheet (all players have to record the moves on paper) when the knight moved to that square. He showed me. "Can you see on mine?" I asked, thinking about doubting myself.

While he mused, I pointed out the path the Knight had taken - b1 -> d2 -> f1 -> g3 -> f5. Why was it now on e5?!

He simply went "Oh!" and did no more than move it back to f5 and press my clock.

I was completely taken aback. To this day, I am convinced that he moved it deliberately, expecting that I wouldn't notice. When I told others the sequence of event, skullduggery was the only conclusion. There had been no accidental knocking over of pieces - so said the people on the table next to me - and he had no need to touch my knight in playing his move.

I made sure I won that game and took enormous pleasure in doing so.

Could Magnus beat Chris Rock though ? doubt it :P

Just looked it up in an old chess book. Turns out:

Chris Rock < Magnus Carlsen < Chuck Norris

Move over Kapersky, MilliDonk has returned to the board after almost 2 decades out of the game.

A 3.5hr battle of the minds resulted in the opponent being forced to resign.

Cries of "misclick" could be heard from the stands but MilliCheck does not accept prisoners.

(http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff384/Milligan84/NewPicture30.jpg)

Fine work, sir.

Yes, Kaspersky must be quaking in his reboots.

Nice easy starter for ten tonight: What was the influence of The Black Death on chess?

In telling stories of some of the great chess names, I’ve strayed away from going too heavy on the detail of their games and I’ll keep that theme for some of my posts. This is one of those, so if you find the stories boring (don’t worry, Tikay; I know you don’t!), do keep coming back, as there will remain a variety of chess posts on this thread!

Joseph Henry Blackburne was one of the most interesting characters of the game. Unlike many of the others I’ll post about (Alekhine, Morphy and Tal included), Blackburne was never regarded as being the best player in the world in his day. Nevertheless, he was a tough match for anyone and had a string of excellent tournament performances in his record. He’d have a few flags on his Hendon Mob.

Where Blackburne excelled was in beating the weaker players in tournaments. Don’t get me wrong; he was right up there in the top handful of players, but he would never be the World Number 1 or the World Champion. He was a brilliant tactician and a giant killer, capable of taking any scalp.

Blackburne was born in December 1841 to a Manchester family who travelled the nation preaching about the ills of alcohol and the virtues of temperance. It is believed that he learned to play chess at 18, which is positively ancient in chess terms. Two years later, he beat the world’s best player (Wilhelm Steinitz) in a strong tournament in London, although he did finish towards the bottom of the tournament in the end.

The overall Blackburne story is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henry_Blackburne

What separates him from most are the stories about him. As with many people, you can never really know which ones are real, which are embellished and which are just plain made up.

What isn’t in doubt is that, despite being from such an abstemious family, Blackburne loved to drink. When I say he loved to drink, he LOVED to drink. I’ve never heard of anyone – Ozzy Osbourne, Oliver Reed, the Fast Show’s Rowley Birkin, QC – who has more whiskey-related stories about them.

Blackburne was so famous for his love of Scotch that he was often paid in Scotch for tournament appearances or simultaneous displays, rather than money like everyone else.  There is a story that, on his insistence, he received an advance of his fee for a tournament in 1895 in Hastings – a case of the finest. He polished that off during the first six games and, well, his standard of play dropped off somewhat after that…

A story not included in the wiki page is my favourite. Picture the scene: a posh, Victorian London club on Pall Mall. The sort of place you have to be invited in by a friend (usually with a peerage). Blackburne is playing an amateur over several whiskeys and any number of cigars. The crowds are raucous, their surnames double-barreled. I see it as being rather like the Drones Club that Bertie Wooster likes to frequent in the Jeeves novels.

Further ado-less, we turn to the game. Blackburne is in a frightful mess. He is playing a man whose name was never reported (known only as ‘Mr C’ - more likely because chess people aren’t interested unless you’re a chess player, rather than him being a spy) but it is understood he was no more than a novice player. A report of the game refers to the atmosphere “boiling over with excitement”, because our hero – now several stiff glasses in – was losing badly.

Blackburne was a resourceful fellow and losing badly didn’t mean lost. He picked up Mr C’s bishop and put it one square diagonally from his opponent’s king.

“Check, sir!”

Bewildered and, quite possibly, feeling slightly worse for wear himself, Mr C captured it.

Blackburne triumphantly declared, “You can’t take your own bishop!”

Mr C agreed with this completely logical statement, apologised and moved his king away, only to find Blackburne leaping from his chair, immediately checkmating the flummoxed Mr C to roars of hysterical laughter from the assembled crowd.

I’m not sure whether Blackburne got away with this in the end, but what a fantastic image it conjures of Victorian clubs and those who played chess in them.

Black Death? This was the name given to him by commentators of a tournament in Vienna in 1873. His full black beard probably helped!

(http://www.quantumgambitz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Blackbourne001.jpg)

Joseph Henry Blackburne

Cool story, more stories would be greatly appreciated.

I should just point out to observers that Mr Outrageous has just moved his queen to e1, only to find that Mr Milli-hero has lopped it straight off with his own queen. Quite a dramatic error. More than a mere oopsicle.

Excellent. Do check out the wiki page for more stories about him in the meantime  :)

haha ty for translating, was seriously struggling. Must be how muggles feel when they read PHA!

Got to be honest, extensive discussions on 3bet-ranges do make me quite sleepy...little ones I'm good with and I can hold a conversation intelligently enough but there's a limit  :P

There's been some chat about hEV in poker - if i can call it the happiness coefficient - on your thread, Alex. As with chess, you have to find the limit (if you will, the range) where you still find it enjoyable and make sure you stick to playing within it.

Funnily enough, I've never been a particularly big student of chess opening theory. I know a fair bit less than most players of my ability and I would certainly be a stronger player if I put more work into the hard learning. But I enjoy doing other things, particularly poker (and a bit of pool), and unless that stops, I don't see myself going too heavily into the books anytime soon. I do a bit to keep my eye in but my books at home are mostly just research tools.

That's my enjoyment limit at the moment. Some people love studying and know tons of openings inside out but can't play very well as soon as they get out of the book.

Funny bunch us chess players.

Love that Blackburne tale, it reminds me of so many tales.

Too late tonight, but I'll comment further tomorrow on that, and your earlier tale about the bloke who cheated.

A final Blackburne pic before I remember I have a bed (and work in the morning).


(http://www.endgame.nl/D1892.JPG)

Dresden 1892
Standing: Heyde, Schmid, Blackburne, Noa, Hoffer, von Scheve, Walbrodt, Zwanzig
Sitting: Loman, Schottländer, Winawer, Mason, Schallopp, von Bardeleben, Tarrasch, Mieses, Albin, Alapin


A club player will know about half these names and tbh that's not far off where I am! A few have openings and opening variations named after them (Winawer, Tarrasch and Albin) that are played regularly today, over a century on.

I have been musing on this story for days, it is filed away in my bulging "how can you explain these things?" file.

I mean, why would he do such a dumb thing? How could he NOT be sussed?

I played in a Golf Tourney once where a 5 handicapper passed himself off, or tried to, as a 16 handicapper, & duly ran away with the Tourney, wininng by an eye-popping 8 or 10 strokes, when these things are usually 8 way ties & countback. His playing companions - we were playing in groups of 4 - would have sussed the deal the very moment he teed off at the first hole, as the gulf between a 5 & a 16 is huge to the trained eye, if not mine.

He was duly disqualified, & banned from all courses in Notts & Derby for, I think, 5 years, & his recreational golf-life was in tatters.

His prize for winning the tournament? A pair of FootJoy golf shoes, valued at £70.

How can we ever understand such peculiar things?

The Henry Blackburne tale - what a great story!

This part caught my eye especially....

".....Picture the scene: a posh, Victorian London club on Pall Mall. The sort of place you have to be invited in by a friend (usually with a peerage). Blackburne is playing an amateur over several whiskeys and any number of cigars. The crowds are raucous, their surnames double-barreled. I see it as being rather like the Drones Club that Bertie Wooster likes to frequent in the Jeeves novels....."

For some reason, it reminded me very much of a chap who lived around the same era, & moved in the same circles, one Robert Standish Sievier.

Robert owned & trained THE the greatest racehorse that ever drew breath, bar none, & without a shadow of doubt, being "Sceptre". And Mr Sievier was a right scoundrel. A brief synopsis of him is here....

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sievier-robert-standish-8425

There are some characters these days, but I fancy there used to be so many more. It is a trick of the mind, of course, but those olden-times scoundrels & rotters seem really rather loveable.

More Blackburne-type stories, please.

interesting film , blind chess is pretty standard for chess players , took Andrew Greet to local match few years ago & on way there he was texting moves to players he was coaching , nice see a IM turn out for a local club

The ability to play one game blind is one thing - I used to play people at school where they could see the board and I couldn't and someone as strong as Andrew Greet (an International Master - one below a Grandmaster) would have no difficulty at all tackling a position someone described to him or where the moves were read out.

Playing multiple games blind is a different kettle of fish and it is so easy to miss something subtle (like a clever combination or a check in the middle of a variation) that even players as strong as that would find it very difficult against five or more competent players. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn there.

The third level is where Alekhine excelled. It wasn't the fact that he played multiple blindfold games simultaneously; it was the quality of those games. He found incredible combinations that would be applauded in an ordinary 'over the board' match against a single opponent.

It is wonderful watching GMs analyse games with each other. Even if they don't speak the same language, pointing to squares and gesturing with a piece is often enough to draw appreciative nods from the other player. Meanwhile the people watching - called kibitzers in chess circles (is that an expression used in poker?) - look at each other for an explanation of what on earth they're on about.

Never heard Kibitzer in poker, although if it was said it would probably come from the likes of Eli Elezra, The Schulmans or even the great Stu Ungar himself.

Ooh, a new word. I went googling, & found this....


1. a spectator at a card game who looks at the players' cards over their shoulders, especially one who gives unsolicited advice.
2. a giver of uninvited or unwanted advice.
3. a person who jokes, chitchats, or makes wisecracks, especially while others are trying to work or to discuss something seriously.

So you are right.

I shall use it somewhere. Today.

I am more used to the 2nd description, "a giver of unwanted advice".

I made a daft bet yesterday which deservedly lost, & then someone told me this morming "why did you do that, it was a daft bet?".

Kibitzers ftw.

Railbirds is probably the name more commonly used in poker, on reflection.

They tend to hunt in packs, somehow knowing when a king is in trouble or when a player was under time pressure. A bit like when there's an all in and a call.

Kibitzers love asking you afterwards "Why didn't you play this instead?" A bit like "You should have jammed the turn. You just let him catch up cos he was always checking behind"

Yeah thanks for that!

Lol, spot on. Don't you just love those sorts?

no idea how Magnus Carlsen plays bullet chess with clocks , find it hard on internet chess sites

about 9/10 years ago used to play 15 round tourney 1min each , they offered $80 for winner which got few GM's/IM's & FM's playing , was nice to play few knowing you gonna be beat , if we got 7/15 was pretty good but about 45 moves was about most I could play , the masters all used premoves which you could use to your advantage but still always lost lol

dont know if ICC still does it or any other site

Nor do I in truth. Problem is so many strong chess players make their money playing poker now. Chess is a live pursuit for a lot of them, with expenses etc covered by the organisers.

Not quite sure how you've got me watching post game analysis vids on youtube. Doesn't half expose how crap i am.  I do like to play the timed games but i prob need to play the long games so i can actually spend some time thinking a bit bigger.

Its funny when carlsen reviews a game that he can remember every little move and every potential move he thought about along the way, i wonder what percentage of his brilliance is down to having an incredible memory.

Loved the tales of players trying to put each other off before the game.

During the Olympics Mark Foster told a story of a time when he was in a race against the great Russian swimmer Alexander Popov. As they were waiting to come out before the race, Popov turned to Foster and said something like 'you could be a great swimmer if you ever sort out that thing with your elbow'

'My elbow? What's wrong with it?'

'It's too high when you pull your arm through'

Foster then, of course, starts thinking about his swimming action and swims quite poorly and it was only years later than Popov admitted to Foster that he made up the elbow thing to disrupt Foster's action, as he knew he'd start thinking about it.

There's a wonderfully instructive story on the other side of that, which I apologise if I've only half-remembered.

A tennis pro was struggling for form badly and had pretty much had his fill of the rotating elite tennis coaches. In desperation, he was put in touch with a coach from a business sector, completely unconnected with sport.

The coach realised quickly enough that it was a psychological block - think they call it The Yips in a lot of sports - and that the solution would essentially be focusing the player's mind on the job; the moment.

He decided to make the player watch the ball as it came over the net, but saying "watch the ball" would never work. Instead he asked a much cleverer question:

Tell me, which way is the ball spinning?

In chess, people make silly mistakes, where games are lost for an elementary misclick. The Russian master of half a century past, Alexander Kotov, wrote a book called Think Like a Grandmaster. In it, he suggested that players should list the possible moves and, excluding the ones that are obviously no good, you end up with 2-5 possibles. Then you know that you have definitely got the right move on your list.

After that, you work through the variations until one comes out on top. That's your move.

But wait! My old coach explained to me that a last look around is key before you put finger to piece. Just make sure there's nothing obvious your opponent can do and you're good to go.

Systematic approaches are often so effective

I vaguely had an idea to see if I was on the ECF database (v much as a dead link, but technically there to record my whole one tournament)

That made me think of looking up the proper name for an opening (Larsen's as it happens)

BUT that made me look at a related one, the Wiki entry to it had this explanation for one of it's names



Which I thought was brilliant :D

I've never heard that story before. Fabulous!

The Orangutan opening starts with White moving the pawn in front of his queen's knight up two squares (1.b4).

Larsen's opening is the same pawn, but only moving it up one (1.b3).

A few openings are called Indian openings (the most famous being the King's Indian, which is still very popular). The reason for this is they involve moving a pawn up one square and, in the original version of chess, Chaturanga (he says hopefully spelling it correctly), which started in India, pawns could only move up one square at a time.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8050

Something more hands-on for you all.

The chessbase website posted a collection every month or so of a variety of tactical plays in Grand master games. Some are reasonably straightforward; some trickier.

It helps when you know that there is a killer punch, because no one tells you that when you are playing the game at the time!

Not all of them are checkmate; winning a bishop/knight or a queen for a rook, say, is enough.

Make sure you think of all the possible responses for the victim- OK it's checkmate if he moves left, but what if he moves right?

Have fun, anyway...

Solutions are linked at the bottom of the page when you are ready. Don't worry if it's not what you thought. Just see why.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8047

funny story from chessbase this year publish 2/4/2012 ish Rajlich: Busting the King's Gambit, this time for sure

Yes I remember this story. Shalln't spoil it.

Capablanca once claimed he had solved chess; that he had taken it as far as it could be taken. He lost the world title to Alekhine shortly afterwards.

So the first one was more to do with a mistake from black (Qe8) than an awesome move by white?

Putting your queen on the same rank as your king seems to be a potentially dangerous thing to do and I'd assume you need to look very carefully for traps like this before you do so?

I would've thought this one was more interesting to figure out what black could do differently? For example Bxe5 or Pxe5 (sorry if these are the wrong way of saying things).

Before Qe8 is this a winning position for either colour?

All the problems arise because the other player has done something to allow it, either by making a move that opens the opportunity or by playing something else entirely and accidentally allowing the trick.

Black looks OK at first sight if he doesn't play Qe8 because he has equal material. The problem is that silly rook of his and the knight stuck on the back rank. White has that lovely square of g6 with his knight looking menacingly at it. Combine that with the bishop on e5 and the tactical threats such as the one played in the game and White is better here.

As for your suggested moves, assume white to be a strong player. He would have spotted that the bishop on e5 is attacked but he has allowed it still to be takeable, which suggests he has a plan up his sleeve. That f8 square looks delicious...

Prepared to be shot down here but would Nb6 be a decent move for black?

It offers protection of that back rank by the rook and also obviously frees the rook up.

It also threatens Nc4 covering a3 and e5

Should black be looking to trade off and force a draw in this position if possible?

Let's have a look at Nb6...

Before we do anything, your reason for moving the knight is twofold: to develop the piece generally and to threaten Nc4, forking the queen and bishop.

The tactical threat is a nice idea, but bear in mind that white gets a move first, so he neeonlg move his queen to prevent the fork. Nevertheless, c4 is a good square for the knight so we shouldn't let the tactical bit put us off; positionally, it looks good.

What about developing? I've explained that the rook and knight are stuck in that corner making a mess of Black's drawing chances, so moving the knight solves that problem. But the knight is doing two things for Black at the moment: defending the a7 and d6 pawns.

As soon as you move that knight, the white Queen will munch that d6 pawn, which looks as delicious as a pie on a shelf from a Disney cartoon.

It gets worse: play 1...Nb6 2.Qxd6. The white queen is then threatening the f8 square (the rook is now covering it but we are attacking it twice now) and the pawn two in front of the King on h6. The black bishop is still pinned so it isn't defending the pawn.

Nb6 highlights the trouble Black is in. At first sight, it's not too bad, but as you try to think of moves, you realise you're making the position worse.

This is one of the most frustrating parts of chess: when you think you're fine until you realise it's too late!

Does that help?

Definitely. Much appreciated.

So what would your move be as black?

It's pretty horrible tbh. Maybe Kh7. If the bishop checks, the king can come back and the white took is attacked by the black queen.

So how much of a lower standard player would you need to be up against to turn black in to a winning position?

If I was playing as white (rating 1243 on shredder over 30 games) would you expect to be able to turn this around against me?

At the moment, it's a little out of my hands, as anyone could play the correct tactical moves, whether by accident or design.

If you had no idea what you were doing and didn't find the right ideas, I would develop my knight and rook, stop the immediate tactical threats and probably avoid swaps until I had a better position or some extra material.

That would do it.

second one dont get , played through it without looking at solution & found line but Be6 holds it , after BxB..Re8 forces white to castle & black wins piece back

Just to explain the notation, "x" denotes the capture of a piece, so BxB means bishop takes bishop and Nxe5 means knight takes whatever is on e5 (usually a pawn unless otherwise stated).

So, curnow, your idea is 1. Nxe5  Be6. The idea being that the knight attacking the black queen cannot move because the white queen is also then exposed by the bishop and the bishop on c4 is then under threat.

What is white to do about this?

We can't take the bishop on e6 because black recaptures with his queen and our knight is pinned, else we are in check. That's out.

Leaving the knight gives us a problem, too, because the bishop on c4 (which we now know can't exchange on e6) can't really go anywhere and keep the pressure on. Let me explain, this position is highly charged: lots of bits pointing at other bits; lots of combinations and no time for dilly-dallying.

Here's our solution (I think :) ). Let's take the black queen. White then takes ours with his bishop so we have a white knight on g6 and a black bishop on g3.

White to move. We have a bishop on c4 under attack and a knight on g6 under attack. We can take either the bishop on g3 or the took on h8 though. Lots of options.

Take the rook and there is a little problem after black takes our c4 bishop: the knight is trapped.

Take the bishop on g3 and now black can't recapture the knight because h7xN is followed by RxR! The result is that Black has a rook attacked by the knight and a bishop attacked on e6. Although the knight would still be stuck on h8 if he were allowed to take the rook, our rook on h1 can take the h7 pawn and the knight will escape.

So my answer is 1.Nxe5 Be6 2.NxQ BxQ 3.h2xB and I think we are good.

Haven't checked it on a computer so by all means tell me if I'm wrong!

second game
1 Nxe5..Nxe5
2. Qxe5.. anything apart from Kf8 loses
3 Qe3 protecting the bishop & here Be6
4 BxB..Re8
5 0-0..RxB white has a small advantage with Rook on h8 but wont take long to get that rook active + double c pawns

if 1 Nxe5..Be6 2 RxB & knight still attacking the queen

Ooh that is fun! I'll have a look and get back to you.

You obviously know what you're doing. Do I know you?

Some of these puzzles are there really to make you see the combination, rather than necessarily a forced win.

You, of course, have done that.

This is the problem, I suppose, with using real games; a setter can design a perfect position where that's not what often happens over the board.

My sharpness on these isn't what it was a couple of years back so some of them take me a while before they click. I do follow what you're saying about the position in the second example.

lots of bits pointing at other bits

If only all chess advice were so succinctly described.

At last, I understand Chess theory.

Love this thread been playing chess for 9 months or so now, still pretty bad but i enjoy playing the 10min blitz games on chess.com been experimenting with the scandinavian defense quite a lot lately quite proud of the game below after making a blunder on move 13 I fought back for a nice win. feel free to flame away!

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=345643908 (http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=345643908)

First impression is you finished him off nicely: got the bishop pair working together (very often an effective tool) and a couple of neat tactics, like Re8 to pin the queen.

I'd look a little at the opening. You get your pieces out well but you could probably improve on playing f6 and recapturing with your knight. The king's pawn is left a little backward otherwise and although it might not matter when you play, you need to keep away from leaving little holes in the position. You have the right idea about breaking down the centre but you could also do that by looking for c5 (Nimzowich said attack the base of the chain [of pawns]) and develop your pieces with e6 instead.

What you did worked out fine so well done.

I really like how quickly you developed your pieces.

I must state I am a massive amateur and have just been getting back into chess this week but his move 24. Rfe1 can't be anything but terrible can it? Surely bring the other rook across to either attack the bishop or protect the king.

I didn't even realise you could post the links to the games. Here is my fewest move win so far: http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=345571652

Can't wait til I have actually learned proper openings and stuff. At the minute I can only play counteractive chess

Tbf it is probably too late anyway for White. Those bishops are too strong, covering too much ground against the rooks that haven't really got out of bed.

If he plays Rd1 instead, still the same queen move, because he's threatening checkmate on h2. If Rf3, Be4 forces the took to move again. If he moves right to g3, the bishop lops it off. If he moves left, we have the same queen move. If he moves up or down on the f file, black has a clever tactic which I'll let you have a look at.

As Teddy KGB would say, Millidonk, "Very aggreee-essive"

Might want not to throw all and, as it were, sundry at your opponent that early with h4 and g4. A stronger opponent might make you look a bit silly with better defence and opening the centre to expose your king.

Mr Outrageous was minding his own business, looking for a nice, quiet game. He played simple, developing moves, and...completely ignored what you were doing.

(http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z230/curnow_01/chessproblem3.png)

white to play , & get result  

nice problem from game I played several years ago , back then could put it into fritz & would not find right move , tried this today in fritz 12 & found it but took bit of time  

Is it to win or just to avoid defeat?

 stalemateis about only option

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bg5 Bg7 4.Nbd2 O-O 5.e3 d5 6.Bd3 h6 7.Bh4 c6 8.O-O Nbd7 9.c4 Re8 10.c5 e5 11.dxe5 Nxe5 12.Nxe5 Rxe5 13.Nf3  Bg4!
14.Qc2 Qe7 15.b4 g5 16.Bg3 Ne4! 17.Rad1 Nxg3 18.hxg3 Bg4 19.Rde1 a5 20.a3 20 b5 axb4 21.axb4 Ra3
22.Rb1 Rea8 23.Nd4 Bxd4 24.exd4 Qf6 25.f3 Qxd4  26 Kh2 Qxd3 27.Qxd3 Rxd3 28.fxg4 Rxg3
29.Rf6 29 Rbe1 Ra2 30.Rxh6 Raxg2
31.b5 Rxg4 32.bxc6 bxc6 33. Rc8 Kg7

blacks move 31 was the problem , white has stalemate forced afterwards

That is what I thought so OK. It's a nice, instructive problem. Muchos likeos.

How's everybody doing on this, then?

I got in to a similar situation against shredder last night but he had 4 pawns to my 3.

My king was pinned on the back rank and for the life of me I couldn't figure a way out. My use of rooks was very poor so I need to improve that. I kept repeating the position several times but shredder was too good for me.

I'll see if I can dig it out and let you guys figure out a way out for me.

In that situation is being 1 pawn down usually terminal?

In endgames, the most important factor is often how active your pieces are. A strong rook and a centralised king versus a rook stuck in the corner and a passive king can often be decisive, even if the more active side is a pawn or two down.

Hard to generalise and there are always tactics involved but strong players won't allow themselves to get into positions where their pieces are passive. They know the jig is up and would rather sacrifice a pawn for a fighting chance.

Just came across this little gem: an article about a YouTube clip showing Mikhail Tal giving a blindfold simultaneous display.

I haven't linked the clip itself because it's in Russian. However, the article gives you a transcript and explains what's going on, so you can watch it at the same time.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5715

Would encourage you to do so. Marvellous fun.

Reckon if the world's cameras weren't there this wouldn't have gone down as smoothely as it did.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19300149 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19300149)

Never been one to shy away from controversy, Mr K. You might not have gathered this, but he's not the hardiest supporter of the Putin administration...

You've probably seen - actually didn't you post? - the infamous interrupted speech he gave against the government. The one with the flying intruder? Yes, well there is little love lost between them.

It's a very odd situation. I wonder whether his worldwide fame and international popularity make him hard to touch by the Russian government. India and China love their chess, too.

OK, I've got Shredder on my iPad now and can see me losing many hours to it - it didn't take long before I got the 'That move was so shit do you want to take it back' message...

Do what all poker players do: call it a "misclick"

The Android version allows you to alter the playing strength of the engine, which you might prefer to do if you want a competitive game. I imagine the IPad version does the same

Yeah, it does and that's definitely the plan.

Fun for the weekend, methinks.

Tal was born in Riga in 1932. Forty years later, from the same city, there came Alexei Shirov.

If you want to compare chess playing styles to poker, Shirov would be something near Isildur1. He is probably the most aggressive player that elite chess has seen. Certainly in an era where there is so much assumed knowledge about openings, where computer research is so prevalent and where players are more comfortable in complicated positions.

Shirov rose through the ranks as a young man and got as high as World Number 4. He should have played Garry Kasparov in 2000 for the World Championship, but there were issues over funding that could not be resolved and the man he defeated to earn the right, Vladimir Kramnik, played Kasparov instead.

Don't try this at home but here's a game he played around the time he became a Grand master in 1990. Just incredible confidence in his ability to calculate.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54I3uOA1mI4

Here is Mr Shirov:

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2008/morelia/shirov04.jpg)

Here is his wiki:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Shirov

lol lagtards.

First video of its kind I've watched, really enjoyed it thanks Tal.

(http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/cc416/cambridgealex/chessspot.png)

I don't understand why he says with regards to the knights pressure on the c7 square that "forking the rook and king would not be to white's advantage right now, he really needs to go for broke and force the win because he's so far behind in material".

Reply as if you were speaking to a 5 year old please :)

Very approximately, you can make more sense of exchanges by attaching values to the pieces:

Pawn = 1pt
Bishop = 3
Knight = 3
Rook = 5
Queen = 9

(We don't include the king because if that goes you're dead!)

So at the critical stage of Alex's question, white has a queen, two rooks, a bishop, a knight and five pawns.

Black has a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and five pawns.

Black has an extra bishop and knight.

All winning a rook would do is get him back to parity (including the pawn at c7) in mathematical terms. White is looking for the win here though.

I said the values were very approximate and here is why: however powerful a rook is in theory, if it is stuck in the corner with no prospect of release, is it really better in the short term than a dominant knight? If the material is close and there's not much of an immediate winning threat, you'd take the extra material of a took for a knight every day of the week.

Here though, Shirov realises he's so far behind in material that simply taking pieces to get level isn't going to win him the game. That would be what you do as white if you think the attack hasn't worked and you need to regroup.

Any help?

Absolutely love that!!

Thanks for the link Tal.

Great help thanks. I'm going to try that approach against my Dad see how he copes!

By all means be aggressive, but get your pieces out first. Attacking is way easier when you have more ammo.

A Tal game, this Sunday evening. Treat yourself!

In 1959 the best players in the World convened in Yugoslavia to play in the Candidates Tournament, the winner of which would go on to play Botvinnik the following year for the World Championship.

Among the Russians and East Europeans there was a young whipper snapper from across the pond. A 16 year old upstart named Robert James Fischer had qualified for the tournament and was ready to take on the big fish.

He would become one of the most famous names that that there will ever be, but this wasn't his time to take the world by storm.

Fischer was a truly gifted positional player (more on this another time, but essentially he had a sixth sense for where best to put his pieces) and in Tal there sat across the board from him a player on the other end of the scale: a tactical genius, who saw combinations and sacrifices no else could.

Tal beat Fischer all four times they played in this tournament and this particular one won a prize in the tournament for its brilliance.

In contrast to the Shirov game, Tal's style was to play normal openings - the same as the other players - and to play imaginatively from there.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044107

Enjoy.

Great thread.
 
Got so many questions, re-written this a dozen times already, I'll start with;
What advice would you give to some-one thinking of going to their local chess club for the first time.
Ty.

p.s. I play on chess.com too if anyone wants a friendly game.

any chess club would welcome new members of any standard . they will help you improve a lot
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=19473

they got a clubs link but not all them are there , like mine but that is for the County Associations which will give links to local clubs

btw I have run a small chess club for over 10 years & getting new members is not easy for any club

edit : to add Scottish & Welsh chess links
http://www.chessscotland.com/
http://www.welshchessunion.org.uk/

Absolutely this.

Find your local league - there is one - then find a team close enough to you, give them a call/email and pop in one night for a few friendlies.

Clubs range from a dozen to a hundred players, from Grandmasters to people who are just starting out. All of them would be delighted to welcome an interested player.

After watching the Shirkov stuff i had 3 check mates in a row on 30 min games last night against higher rated players than me.
The joy of pinning the oposition pieces down is great.

Aggressive play is definitely a good idea, but it's also important to recognise when to defend; when the other guy's attack is better and you need to retreat; when your attack isn't working and you need to regroup.

Different players have different styles but all the top players will attack if given a chance. Just as, in a marginal spot, Tom Dwan finds a raise where Phil Ivey calls, different elite players take different lines of attack in chess.

Shirov and Tal are extreme examples - Nakamura is another - of tactical players who will use a blunderbuss over a pistol. Their attacks are viscous, thundering through the opposing blockade.

Carlsen is much quieter and so is Kramnik. Fischer, Rubenstein and Petrosian are famous names past who played more positionally, squeezing the life out of the opponent's position like a boa constrictor. I'll discuss this in a bit more depth another time and show some instructive games.

Thanks for the replies. My local club is literally 5 mins from my house and they recently had an IM play 14 games (he won 12, 2 drawn) and also had a strategy talk with a GM so thats quite impressive, definately going to go. I've never played live before(against a proper chess player) only online.

  The Shirov vid is excellent. His opponent must have been thinking "wtf is this donkey doing, Im gonna crush him" or something like that.lol.

Sounds excellent. A club that gets simultaneous displays on during what is essentially the "off season" is likely an excellent one to join, as it will have enthusiastic players.

Chess season roughly mirrors the football season BTW: August-May. No idea why either!

The Shirov game was fun because of its ferocity. In 1990, he was already a well-known player so it's more likely his opponent (himself a strong player) thought "crumbs! It's Shirov!"

At any level, when you are due to play someone who you know plays unusual openings or is flamboyantly aggressive in style, it can really put you on the back foot before you start. You can start to assume they have seen further than you when they play an attacking move you hadn't expected, so you won't take a pawn on offer because he must have a trick up his sleeve you haven't seen.

I vary my style a bit but I love being aggressive - as you will have inevitably picked up already from the whole being called Tal thing! I played a game a couple of years back against someone who knew I like to attack. I offered a pawn to open the position up for an attack, although I couldn't completely work out over the board whether it was sound. I played it anyway and my opponent effectively took my word for it, not taking the pawn. The result was that I got a huge attack, much greater than had he taken the pawn, and won convincingly.

Reputation can be important. A player at my club describes my style as "swashbuckling", which I love, however overly-generous he is.

By the way, the trick for beating aggressive, tactical players is the same for beating attacking football teams: you wait for them to overstretch, then you catch them on the counter. They inevitably leave space behind and the position can be opened up to expose the misplaced pieces.

I don't play enough these days so, when I do, I make mistakes and get caught when I attack. Sometimes, of course, it works and I look like a hero :)

Positional play is a different kettle of fish entirely, when compared to the Lord Flashheart from Blackadder, Brian Blessed in full voice stuff we see with the tactical style of chess.

Bobby Fischer was capable of dazzling tactics - this another time, including "the game of the century" - but he was a masterful and naturally gifted positional player.

This is harder to teach because it is less obvious to most players why moving a piece to one square is good and another is bad, if there's nothing to take it. Some people are blessed with this side of the game, but the majority have to learn it.

Let me give you an example, where it isn't necessarily easy to see why Black is doing better than White.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044434

The opening is pretty standard, although I haven't seen that many Amsterdam Variations of the Sicilian Defence for a while (these things go in and out of fashion). Play through it in your own time if you like, but the bit I'm interested in today is from white's 28th move. Here we have a position where the material is equal, so it's a draw, right? If you were playing someone better than you, would you still fancy your chances of drawing it? Why might you lose? It isn't just a question of tactics; the other chap might get his pieces into a better position, with them working together better than yours.

Immediately, we see that White has three pawns - the same as Black - but they are more spread out. Black's are connected, which means they are easier to defend and easier to creep forward. Remember that the bishop can only cover 32 of the squares on the board, so, if White wants to move a pawn to a black square, it may need to be defended by the king or rook, whereas Black can defend it with another pawn. Any advantage in an endgame like this is made harder to capitalise when the opponent has an active rook - the rook covers ground quickly and makes progress much more difficult.

Watch what Black does from here: he makes sure White can't get the pawns too far forward, swaps the rooks off, gets the king into the centre, puts his pawns on black squares (harder to attack and more space for your own bishop), stops the White king from getting to the black pawns, wins one of the remaining pawns and, as White resigns, Black was just about to pick up the second pawn and win with the two pawn advantage.

You know in poker sometimes when you play heads up and the other chap just keeps getting slightly further ahead of you? Nothing dramatic, just little edges - an extra fold pre, more precise bet sizes, more aggressive button play - those little nuances that make him a favourite against you, all other things being equal? That's what happened, here. 

Picture the scene;

The office is finally empty, I login to chess.com to see if I can put an end to this horrid losing streak. I make my first move, the phone rings... stay calm, I answer it and have a conversation whilst trying to concentrate on the game... all good, I deal with the issue and get back to the board... the doorbell goes, seriously??... its only a courier delivering flowers for someone's bday, I sign and run back to my desk,  I have lost over 30 seconds playing time. Norrrrrrrr. This is never going to end well... a few more moves go by then BOOOOOOOOOOOOM, I Break my 12 move record, whats more he was a decent rank compare to me.

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=349512569

Well done! Keep winning games in 12 moves and you should be doing more than contributing the odd game!

Ng5 is a common idea in these Italian/2 Knights games. There is a particular line called The Fried Liver, believe it or not! The common response when someone is moving away from the centre is to hit back through it, so Ng5 is often followed by d5 for Black, which blocks the bishop.

If he takes it on your game with the pawn, you can play Na5, either forcing the exchange ofthe troublesome bishop or getting him off that nasty diagonal. If he takes with the knight, recapture with yours and you have a discovered attack on his knight with your queen. If he takes with the bishop, you can take it ans he's lost one of his most important pieces in this opening. It might not become apparent until much later in the game (if you haven't checkmated him by then!)

Seriously tho, good stuff. Get that rating into 4 figures and kick on!

Ah yes the fried liver attack aka the Fegatello Attack... Ya learn something new everyday. I like it.

After reviewing some of my losses I think I am a bit too aggro with my queen, keep getting myself stuck in traps.

What's the quickest way to improve your rating?

win more games :)

Get someone better to play for you à la [insert name of poker player accused of doing this but for legal reasons we won't name]

Joking aside, attacking chess is a good strategy and tactical threats are good against weak opponents. Just watch what they are up to. As long as you know why they have made their last move, you can work out what to do about it.

Keep playing simple openings like the one you showed today; simple, rapid development ftw

Re: the Fegatello Attack, little did you know you were playing a similar line to one played in 1610!

I'd never heard of Fegatello either. Unsurprisingly, as a junior player, you hear "fried liver opening" and that's the name that sticks!

The Jännisch Variation of the Ruy Lopez is also called the Schliemann ("silly man's opening")

There's also an Elephant, a Frankenstein-Dracula, a Cabbage, a Fred (Tikay, are you listening? A Fred)...

This list is just the animal-named variations: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_openings_named_after_animals

Does chess have anything similair to the WSOP, WPT or EPT? What would be considered the best single tournament to win for the top players or is it all about accumulating ranking points throughout the season?

Players are rated based on their performance against other players, so it's a bit like a continuous ranking system.

There's a World Championship every couple of years and a series of tournaments to get to play the current champion.

That aside, there are some big tournaments such as in Wijk aan Zee in the spring. There's a big one in London in December, although it's a relatively new one.

FWIW - as I've already mentioned ITT that I used to work for the British Chess Federation, that's what I was mainly overseeing when I was there.

There are voluntary directors to work out the 'bigger picture' but for the BCF rankings and membership I was the one who was paid to do all the administrative donkey work.

Haven't really got anything to add to that though - it wasn't very interesting - being ignored by Nigel Short (because he didn't like the BCF) about sums up the excitement level.

And a mighty fine job you did, too, Jon :)

When I first joined I played a few single games to guesstimate my realistic ranking. I then joined a min/max ranking tourney where I was one of the lower ranked players, so if I lost, I would lose minimum points but fortunately I managed to beat a couple of the higher ranked players.

If you want to know what's on near where you are, here's the English Chess Federation's tournament calendar:

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=27

99% of tournaments are free for spectators, who are most welcome to pop in and watch the events. There are etiquette rules like not talking to the spectators while they're playing, not shouting "you sunk my battleship" and not laughing at old people who lose to small children.

 Live and learn, eh?

Latest Danny King video is up, chaps and chapesses:



YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BYN3sOWuXA


We had one of these earlier in this thread.

This is number 10, in case you've missed any.

And here's #11...


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjM_t8YJ4mA

And for those who prefer the stories, I have had a look at the places where chess was regularly played in Victorian London and found this website:

http://www.victorianlondon.org/entertainment/dickens-chessclubs.htm

Here's an extract from a report by Charles Dickens Jr (Boz's first son):

Chess Clubs.— What may be termed the coffee-house epoch in the history of chess in England ended in the year 1810 with the establishment of the London Chess club, where members met for play in a private room in Cornhill. For some sixteen years afterwards it was the only association of the kind in London, and being supported chiefly by City merchants and members of the Stock Exchange, who played chess in the middle of the day, it was practically closed to amateurs whose occupations or pursuits were not "of the City" or whose only leisure was to be found in the evenings.

It had other disadvantages from the amateur's point of view, not the least of which was that the members comprised a host of experts in the science of chess, giants in whose company the tyro of the period was much more likely to be awed than edified. There was no chess club at the west end of the town at this period, but accommodation for players was provided in numerous coffee-houses, where "Monsieur" and "Herr," who since the first French Revolution have been always with us, dispensed instruction at such charges as their modest requirements suggested.

In 1823 a West-end chess club was established, with special rooms, &c., at the Perry Coffee-house in Rathbone-place. The members met for play at seven in the evening, sat down to a hot supper at ten—it was fifty years ago—and broke up at half- past eleven. Murphy, a miniature painter of note at that time, became a member of this club soon after its foundation, and introduced to the members the greatest player of the period— William Lewis. Lewis was then a merchants clerk, and, after the death of Sarratt, the strongest chess-player in England. He won the admiration of the Percy Chess Club by beating their best players at the odds of a rook.

In 1825 the Percy Chess Club was closed, and Lewis opened subscription rooms in St. Martin's-lane, where he was patronised by nearly all the best players in London: Alexander Macdonnell, subsequently the famous rival of La Bourdonnais; John Cochrane, the most brilliant player that ever appeared in the chess arena; Richard Penn, the author of the quaintest book in the language, "Maxims and Hints for Chess Players and Anglers" (illustrated by Stanfield); Bohn, the bookseller; and Pratt, of Lincoln's-inn, the author of a book on chess, that was described by Professor Allen, of Philadelphia, as a marvellous mixture of 'Schoolmaster's English and Johnsonese.' These rooms were closed in 1827, through the failure of Lewis. The London Chess Club still prospered; and it was not until the year 1832 that a rival association appeared upon the scene. Early in that year the famous Westminster Chess Club was opened in a room upon the first floor of a coffee-house in Bedford-street, Covent-garden, kept by one Huttman. The new club was immediately successful, and under its auspices was played the celebrated match between Westminster and Paris in 1834.

The club was temporarily dissolved in 1835, and was reorganised in the same year, the members meeting in Mr. Ries's drawing-room adjoining the Divan in the Strand, of which establishment that gentleman was the proprietor. Here Howard Staunton, for many years the champion chess-player of England, made his first appearance, and here were played the games in his match with Poyert. In 1840 the West- minster Chess Club was again dissolved—the City Club still prospering—but it was once more revived by Staunton, and the meetings were held in Charles-street, off the Haymarket. Its career was brief, however, and it was finally closed in 1843.

In the same year a new chess club at the West-end was formed, at Beatties Hotel, George-street, Cavendish-square, and was called after the name of the street in which its first meetings were held, the St. George's Chess Club. Beattie's Hotel was closed in the following year, and the St. George's removed to new quarters at the Polytechnic. Here was played the first International Chess Tournament in 1851, and here the club remained until the end of 1854, when it became associated with the Cavendish, a newly-formed club in Regent- street, and soon afterwards moved to the house formerly Crockford's, in St. James's- street, then called the Wellington. In the year 1857 the St. George's removed to its present quarters, Palace-chambers, King-street, St. James's.

Meanwhile, in 1852, a -club was formed in the city, under the title of the City of London Chess Club, by a few amateurs of little note at the time. This association has since been strengthened by the accession of all the foremost English players, and is now, in point of numbers, and the chess force and public repute of its members, the strongest chess club in the world. In 1866 a chess club, reviving the name of the "Westminster," whose history we have recounted, was formed by a number of influential amateurs, but it ceased to exist as a chess club in 1875, when it was dissolved, and reconstituted under the name of the Junior Portland as a whist -club.

(http://www.victorianlondon.org/entertainment2/chess.gif)

Thanks for the thread. Have been watching.
Used to play in chess tournaments when I was a kid.
One time I pressed my side of the clock but didn't do it properly and my timer kept running.
Other kid didn't tell me for ages, but I caught him glancing and then realised.
I lost on time.
If I ever see him again, I will clock him.

OK finally got around to making a chess.com account. After confirming that I'm still rubbish at any kind of speed chess I've fired up half a dozen slow games.

This was the first game I finished. Being so long out of the game is my excuse for doing 3 stupid things in the first 6 moves (playing as black) - but luckily I had an opponent who let me get away with those blunders and recover

http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=57591890 (http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=57591890)

Apart from - "pay attention" - any thoughts on strengths and weaknesses would be particularly welcome.

Obviously I had to look up what the hell was going on right at the beginning and it turns out it was this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Queen_Attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Queen_Attack)

Including my response it was the King Pawn Game: Wayward Queen Attack, Kiddie Countergambit  :D which is a cool name but there's a subtle clue that I'd include the countergambit as a blunder with the notation wikipedia uses to describe it ( Nf6?! )

The opening is:
1. e4       e5
2. Qh5    Nf6

I think following the masses mightn't be a bad idea on this occasion, Jon: defend the pawn with 2...Nc6.

As for more general tips, you should never make a move without knowing why the other guy played his last move. That's a sure fire way to cut out 80% of those silly errors.

Your inclination to get the pieces centralised and working together was absolutely correct and you developed quickly, which is great.

You will improve from playing more, because you will get sharper and more in-tune with the game.

Just as yourself every time, "Why did he do that?"

Thanks, after the opening fiasco that was pretty much what I was doing. The next step being - 'is it something I have to react to?', or will my next attack force him to react to it so I don't need to worry about his plan straight away.*

I remember from when I played more regularly before that just playing more does seem to disproportionately improve your game - but this is basically the reason why I'm rubbish at speed games. However much practice I get I can't quite get the intuitive feel of making the right move at the right time. It has to be a thought out grand strategy for me to stand a chance.


*EDIT: the next step of my thought process being - can I adapt my plan of attack to take advantage of what he's planning to do? - the usual answer is no, but I found in that game for instance that the odd time where it is possible can be what changes the course of the game significantly.

You can spend all summer studying theory but it isn't the same as playing games.

It is the same for us all

In 1924, 16 nations submitted a team of its best players to see which came out on top. It proved to be a successful format and has been repeated about every two years since.

Today, there are expected to be over 140 nations sending forward their elite.

With a couple of notable exceptions (including Magnus Carlsen - although tbf Norway has no chance of winning and he does normally play), there is a wealth of Super-GM talent, as well as people at the lower end who would be little more than top county players here.

There is a separate tournament for women (a sister tournament?), which is standard fare, as nations simply don't have the strength in depth without Y chromosomes, so this offers an opportunity for competition.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8436 is the chessbase preview but you might well prefer to see the event's coverage by the Yorkshire Chess Association:

http://yorkshirechess.org/

There is even a gambling opportunity, with a £5 fantasy competition. Have a look at the site, because there are previews and tips. Remember that the higher the rating number, the stronger the player and the lower the board a person will play on, the weaker the opponent will be (you have to play in strength order, which isn't necessarily the same as rating - Gawain Jones will be playing ahead of Nigel Short).


EDIT: apparently entries for the fantasy competition are now closed. Shame I missed this yesterday or we could have had some fun with it.

I should also explain that the event takes place in Istanbul, in case anyone near Yorkshire was thinking of making a trip. No I've no idea either why Yorkshire Chess is covering the event, but it is and the website looks excellent.

In more pantomimey news, former World Champion, Garry Kasparov was cleared of the protest charges on Friday, following his dramatic arrest at the trial of the Pussy Riot band members.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8431

The biting allegation remains, although there seems to be evidence to suggest he didn't do it. Bonkers.

I want to recommend a chess book. It is called 'Simple Chess' by Michael Stean:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simple-Chess-Michael-Stean/dp/0486424200/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346149473&sr=1-1

It was written ages ago but it is a great book for anyone who is interested in chess, plays a bit, but would like to extend their play beyond simple tactics ("he moves there, then I move there" etc) and start understanding chess strategy and positional play. I remember it had a massively positive impact on my game back in the day.

Excellent stuff. I know next to nothing about Michael Stean, except that he was a prominent English player in the 70s and 80s.

I started out with an opening book. My father took me to a tournament and, while I was playing, he walked along the aisles, looking at what everyone was playing as their first move. Then he went to the bookstall (there's one at every chess comp) and bought a book on an opening that no one had played: 1.f4 (P-KB4). It was only a flimsy thing really but it gave me an edge early on knowing I was surprising the opposition.

The opening is still played but I wouldn't recommend deviating too heavily from the norm. Get the basics right first and then experiment.

On the back of that book suggestion, for those who have got a handle on the fundamentals - say anyone getting to 1200 - I cannot recommend highly enough the Super System of chess books: My System by Aron Nimzowicz.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/System-Chess-Classics-Aron-Nimzowitsch/dp/9197600539/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346155089&sr=1-1

There is not one great player in the last 80 years that hasn't read it. It is written simply and logically and is as relevant today as it ever was.

I am going to completely disagree with you about this one Tal!

I would strongly recommend NO-ONE to read My System unless they are already a very strong player. And by strong I mean a lot stronger than an average club player. I suspect it has screwed up the games of far more 'competent but not better than that' players than it has helped. This would include me. I read it when I was a decent club player (around BCF 135). I was simply not ready for his esoteric hypermodern ideas, since I had not yet fully internalised the classical concepts which he was attacking.

Obviously it is a wonderful book and hugely important/influential in the development of chess theory. And of course almost every top player will have studied this book. But benefiting from this book is only possible if you already understand a ton of other stuff, and without this knowledge it is going to harm your game not help it. Any player who reads this thread who has not already heard of My System would be far better off reading other stuff first and waiting a LONG TIME before reading Nimzowitsch. If they are good enough to benefit from this book they will already know about it!

Same principles behind which openings to play. Everyone should start off playing 1 e4 as White, and then move on to d4 later. They should answer 1 e4 with 1... e5, and answer 1 d4 with 1 ...d5. Only when they have mastered the concepts behind direct control of the center can they even begin to understand the hypermodern ideas of indirect control. You have to learn to construct before you can deconstruct. For the same reasons, most players would gain MUCH more from studying the classical games from a 100+ years ago than playing through modern grandmaster games from this era. And they'd enjoy them more too.

Edited to say: Obviously some of his concepts are really important for those just starting out in chess as well as more advanced players. For example his explanations of outposts, pawns chains and the blockade are really good, and much of this can be understood by less advanced players and will help them rather than confuse them. However, these things are also discussed in other books that are much better for players who have not reached the standard of being a strong club player. Obviously if a weaker player is reading this book in conjunction with a skilled chess coach then my advice above is less relevant, since the coach will know exactly which parts of the book to focus on and which parts to keep his student away from until later. However, I would be very surprised if any truly great coach would even begin to introduce this book to a student until he had worked on a TON of other stuff with him/her first.

Don't get me wrong, I think this book is ACE... and it should definitely be read at some point in one's chess development. I just strongly believe that most players read it far too soon.

Fair enough for you to disagree. I do stand by my view on it, though.

You are right that no one should try to run before they can walk and I would agree that understanding that control of the centre is important in the opening and such concepts is essential, but the same can be said of any book designed for already competent players - hence the comparison to Super System.

However, the thing that most frequently separates the stronger players from the others is that they are complete players and this is where the book helps.

The book should be hard to read; it should challenge, make you think, make you research and analyse. Not all of the concepts will be easy to digest but I don't agree that it would be harmful for sub1700 players to read it.

It is the kind of book you can go back to and I suspect that's partly what you are getting at.

It will always be true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If I came on here and explained that bishops are generally better than knights in the endgame, it wouldn't be long before I had a slew of complaints from people who had lost games despite doing as suggested.

Understanding the game isn't easy - I'll let you know when I get there :) - and there will be plenty of occasions I could dig out from my own games where I have played a move because of a particular concept (opposite coloured bishops, knight v bad bishop, attack the base of the chain, jumping off rooks), only to find I had made a fatal error because I had mis-applied the principle.

It is all a learning curve and this is why I believe it is (if not essential, because that is a strong word) useful for developing players to see what Nimzowitsch had to say.

Always keen for debate on these matters. The healthier the thread is the better.

couple of books I got ,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chess-Puzzles-Improve-Your-Game/dp/023399713X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346166168&sr=1-5

this one has some nice problems but it helps you look for pins/forks etc in games so improving it

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opening-Repertoire-Attacking-Player-Cadogan/dp/1857441966/ref=sr_1_33?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346166315&sr=1-33

below county level standard (2000 grade ) , there is no need to study chess openings , just a good understanding will do like this book
its better to study endgames than openings in general , they will come up at some point

All book suggestions are good and keep them coming.I think it might help if I address the thread more generally on this.

Simple, straightforward openings are always a good start. The aim is to develop quickly, find a safe haven for the King and have everything pointing in the same direction for an attack.

Kasparov says that the player who has completed his development first has "won" the opening. It's a simplistic assessment but not unmeritorious. The game is so much easier when you have completed your development (and by that mean made pawn moves to occupy or defend at least some of the central four squares, moved each of the bishops and knights into helpful positions (not necessarily attacking, but doing something) and decided what to do about the king (castle one way or the other, or leave it in the middle because you are attacking the flanks)) and you will play games online where the other chap only develops some of his material and you walk through him.

Lots of openings have all this in mind and the main variations will show that there is a typical plan for both Black and White. This is important because it gives you a starting point for your plans; you understand why the bishop moves to b5 in the Ruy Lopez, rather than c4 in the Guicco Pianissimo.

Misplaced pieces from the opponent are less relevant for new starters than for experienced players, but it remains the case that it is important for players of any level to put their own pieces on logical squares. You always want to make the best move on the board and the easiest way to get close to doing that is to have a reason behind every move.

When you tell some Railbird your exit hand and he says "you bet too much on the flop", you will likely have an answer prepared (even if it is mathematically and objectively suboptimal). The same should always be true in chess.

Don't fear getting the wrong move but know why you made it. When you look back and realise that was the root cause of all your problems in the game, you can start to work out what went wrong.

It's so easy for me to sit on a busy train and act like Socrates. I make, have made and will continue to make just about every mistake in the book. We can only try to improve and learn from those mistakes.

I feel the best chess book around has been overlooked.

(http://www.chess-game-strategies.com/images/book_chess-for-dummies_234x296.gif)

Also available in .pdf

Very chess content light; almost entirely narrative. One of the best known stories in chess: Bobby Fischer v Boris Spassky.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0571214126/ref=mp_s_a_6?pi=46x75&qid=1346274887&sr=8-6


(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41J9SSZPXGL._SX300_.jpg)


And the best chess film - genuinely highlights the strange world of junior chess - is Innocent Moves (later retitled The Search for Bobby Fischer):     

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Innocent-Moves-DVD-Joe-Mantegna/dp/B00009V8YD

I've spoken of a few characters on this thread so far, but I remembered one of my favourite stories this afternoon and it just so happens to involve our friend, Mr Blackburne.

It is a curious and charming quirk of storytelling that the background gets contorted, mis-remembered and embellished by the person telling it and, over the years, you end up with a mish-mash of details. In varying reports over the years, the incident took place in New York, Vienna and “On the Continent somewhere”. The words used vary just as much, apart from the most wonderful and glorious piece of Englishness you might ever encounter. Even Blackburne’s opponent differs! Rather than regurgitate the views of others, I shall tell you how I reckon it, as the kids say, went down…

Blackburne was playing in a tournament in 1899 against the Austro-Hungarian master Lipschütz, about whom comparatively little is known (including, I should add, his first name). A contemporary described him as a "frail little man, with a gentlemanly mien and manners and an extravagantly long, pointed nose - the Cyrano of Chess". As the name might suggest, Lipschütz was Jewish and, upon being checkmated by a Blackburne moment of inspiration, Lipschütz declared:

Der alte Geneff hat mich mattgesetzt!

From what we have learned of Blackburne, it will come as little surprise that he wanted to know what his opponent had announced to the crowd. He approached a man he knew and trusted, Jacques Mieses. Mieses was a strong player of the time and spoke both German and Yiddish. Blackburne explained that he knew “der alte” to mean “the old” and that “hat mich mattgesetzt” means “mated me”, but he had never heard of a “Geneff”.

Mieses looked sheepishly in the face of the dominant figure before him. He knew that “Geneff” is a Yiddish term for a crook.

Wisely, Mieses gave broad responses but Blackburne was having none of it. When Mieses offered that he was sure that Lipschütz would have meant it as little more than a jocularly endearing term, Blackburne realised that he would not be getting a straight answer out of his friend. Like a true Englishman, he had a better idea.

Blackburne asked Mieses whether one could be a Geneff and a gentleman at the same time.

Mieses thought for a moment, before assuring him that one could. With that, Blackburne thanked his friend for his assistance and went away satisfied. How could anything be considered an insult when it is possible to be that and a gentleman at the same time?

For those who like more chess than story, here's a particularly instructive game from another chap we've discussed before, Alekhine. Here is a link to the game:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1011854

This was one of the games Alekhine played in a simultaneous display in Paris in September 1913 and has been dubbed “Pratfall”, because the unwitting opponent was a Mr Prat.

I’m going to analyse the game a little bit, just so that those who want to take something out of it beyond the story can do so. Those who want to skip through can, of course, read at a pace that suits.

The opening is a Queen's Gambit. White doesn’t mind Black taking the pawn on c4 because it reduces Black’s influence on the centre and, if Black tries to hold on to the pawn (which he will do in some variations) with pawns to a6 and b5, White can attack those with pawn to a4 (one of the key concepts in Nimzowitch’s book My System is attacking the base of the chain of pawns and, in that set up, this would be attacking the b5 pawn. So, if Black elects not to defend the pawn, White can recapture with his bishop in a couple of moves and have a nice centre.

When Prat took the pawn on c4 in this game, he had already used a move defending the d5 pawn with e6. In doing so, he blocked in his light-squared bishop on c8, which, although far from terminal, is something Alekhine himself regarded as a subtle error.

What happens is that Alekhine begins to dominate the centre. Eleven moves in, White has those three lovely pawns on c3, d4 and e4 and two fantastic bishops, cutting Black’s position in two. The Black knights have so few squares. He’s done nothing obviously wrong; just been a little bit passive. And already he’s squirming in his chair, as Alekhine works through 20 boards, ponders briefly, makes another developing move and wanders on. 

15 moves in, now. Have a look at the position after Black’s fifteenth move. He is so cramped and White has an abundance of space. Here comes the killer blow. Remember how the light-squared bishop for Black hadn’t been developed? Well that means that Black is vulnerable on the white squares away from that bishop, such as the ones near the king. This is where the pieces all come together: the light-squared white bishop on c4 has that delicious diagonal towards the king. The queen has a path to hitting the white squares on the right hand side of the board, too. How to expose the weaknesses in the Black position?

16. Nxf7! 

POW!! BIFF!! ZOK!!

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r94AJzJZZaU

Alekhine himself comments in his book that, although White can get the piece back if he wants, this move was the start of an elegant combination he had seen.

After White plays 18.Bd6, even though Black has an extra knight, what use is it? He has an extra pistol but no bullets. You could throw a thimble over the pieces, they are that close together. Again, White has a completely commanding position and Alekhine was in no mood to let Prat off the hook.

On move 21, Prat manages to kick the bishop off that merciless diagonal. As is the custom in simultaneous games, when Alekhine approached, Prat would have made his move immediately and Alekhine would respond in something between 10 and 60 seconds. Alekhine made his next move and declared “Checkmate in ten moves against any defence, sir”.

How you like dem apples?

He didn’t even move the bishop: he sacrificed his queen! Prat resigned just before being checkmated. I should add that, at that time, it was common to declare that checkmate would follow in a certain number of moves, particularly when masters were playing amateurs. It wasn’t an angle-shoot!

A ten move forced checkmate, which started with a queen sacrifice, where only a twentieth of his attention was on that game.

Oh to be that good!

The stories are great and balance the thread. Who in the chess world could be described as the Stu Ungar of chess and why please?

Alekhine made his next move and declared “Checkmate in ten moves against any defence, sir”.

How you like dem apples?

Wonderful, absolutely wonderful.

I do hope you persevere with this Thread, Tally.

This book I must have!

Note to self - Waterstones, Kingston upon Thames, first thing tomorrow.

An interesting question. Cross-game/sport comparisons are something the press like to do (“he’s the Lionel Messi of snooker”...“he’s the Muhammad Ali of table tennis”...“she’s the Don Bradman of badger baiting”) and, although the comparisons are a bit false (none of these people set out to be anything other than brilliant in their own right), I can certainly offer a list of possible suspects. I love making comparisons

The obvious one is Bobby Fischer. He was an American for starters. He was a child prodigy, blessed with a brilliant gift, who took on the (USSR) establishment and won. He had his demons throughout his life and this led to his demise: an unpleasant and tortured fall from Grace. He died in exile, a shell of the man he once was. He was terrifically outspoken and, curiously, completely unable to understand sarcasm.

We have also discussed Paul Morphy, who was the best player in the world without question for some time, but retired from chess at 22 and never played competitively again.

Fischer’s style of play was similar to someone half a century before him: the Cuban master José Raùl Capablanca (these names all sound exotic until you translate them into English: Joe Whitehead, anyone?). Capablanca was himself a prodigy, beating the Cuban champion at just 12. He was an outstanding rapid player (where you play with 30-60mins each on the clock – doesn’t sound “rapid” but time controls at the highest level tend to give players 3-4 hours each) and won a tournament ahead of the World Champion (Lasker) at 18. By this time, he had moved to New York (he actually played baseball to a high standard) and he was merciless in simultaneous displays across the US.

Capablanca trounced the fearless American master Frank Marshall 15-8 in a sponsored match and Marshall insisted that his victor be included in the upcoming San Sebastian tournament of 1911, featuring the absolute best in the world (with the exception of the World Champion, Lasker). Despite objections to a relatively unproven 22 year old being invited to play against the elite, Capablanca produced a series of dazzling games, winning the tournament with six wins, seven draws and just one loss (that game being regarded as one of the greatest single game performances of all time – by Akira Rubenstein).

Unlike some of the characters we have seen on this thread, Capablanca was cautious in his style, developing his pieces quietly – generally nothing flamboyant – and outplaying his opponent with his incredible endgame technique. He drew fewer games than most, simply because he was able to outplay people from level positions in endgames (this is something Carlsen has been known to do in the modern game).

 After he became World Champion in 1921, beating Lasker over 14 games 9-5 without losing a game, he went on an impressive run of games, tournament and matches, becoming seemingly invincible. He played a 103 board simultaneous match and won 102, drawing just one. Between 1916 and 1924, he lost no games in top flight competition. He was, of course, the darling of the Cuban media, as well as the New York press, with no less than Che Guevara being a fan. He married but the relationship was troubled and, despite it bringing a child, it wasn’t meant to be. He lost both of his parents in the mid-1920s.

Capablanca was noted for his lack of diplomacy when discussing his games. He wrote a book in which he essentially told his readers that he had included everything a chess student would ever need to know. He even claimed to have “solved” chess; to have taken it as far as it could be taken. He invented new pieces to make the game more interesting, with a 10x8 board. He lost the world title in 1927 to Alekhine in a titanic battle over 34 games (often the title was decided by the first player to reach a certain number of wins and, here, there were 25 draws between them). The two players fell out during the match quite dramatically, with accusations flying both ways and demands that appearance fees be higher than the other person’s.

 

This was the start of the decline for Capablanca. Over the next few years, his speed of play slowed and he began to struggle on the clock, which was utterly inconceivable when at his best. In 1931, he retired from competitive chess, but for the odd exhibition.     

Like Mr Ungar, Capablanca made a comeback. Despite some excellent results against the elite players in the mid-1930s (including the new names like Botvinnik), he suffered from high blood pressure and his concentration was affected. Alekhine refused a World Title challenge when war was declared (Alekhine was now a French citizen). Capablanca was never the same as when in his heyday, though; he was just about invincible in the early and mid-1920s. He died at 53 from his blood pressure.

He is still regarded by some as the greatest player ever.

For offering something different, for character, for influence on the game, for drama, for the comeback, for the demons, for sheer brilliance, I’d propose Capablanca as “the Stu Ungar of chess.”

(http://www.yonne-echecs.org/chessplayers/JR_Capablanca.jpg)

A young Mr Capablanca .

(http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/62/92962-004-3DF12C52.jpg)

Here playing a simultaneous exhibition.

And here playing a friendly game with the Einstein lookalike Emanuel Lasker:

(http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media/69/18369-004-25AB8339.jpg)

The obvious one is Bobby Fischer. He was an American for starters. He was a child prodigy, blessed with a brilliant gift, who took on the (USSR) establishment and won. He had his demons throughout his life and this led to his demise: an unpleasant and tortured fall from Grace. He died in exile, a shell of the man he once was. He was terrifically outspoken and, curiously, completely unable to understand sarcasm.

I never knew that, but it suddenly prompts the notion that perhaps he was autistic, or maybe had Aspergers?

He always seemed a little "unusual", a flawed genius.

Pretty sad that he fell from gace, & our respect & affection, so totally. Not the first genius to do that, & sure won't be the last.

Very true. It is likely Fischer suffered from something along those lines. It later became a delusional paranoia, which drove him completely over the edge.

There are many stories of chess leading to madness (there is of course debate as to whether they start out not wired correctly and the chess was just an attractive distraction/outlet - chicken and egg). Another time, perhaps.

I'm nowhere near good enough at chess to be mad. Grateful for small mercies, eh?

Tal (and anyone else), it's interesting what was mentioned earlier in the thread about mastering the 'standard' openings for beginners and intermediate players and then progressing to other openings and styles of play.

I took a slightly different route to many when I used to play seriously.  I have always been inherently lazy, whilst also being very dedicated and committed to putting in 100% into something I enjoy. So basically, unless something is interesting to me or offers me exceptional benefits, I'll try to take the path of least resistance and cut corners where possible.  I had the same approach to chess.  When I was aged about 7, I had problems getting a good night's sleep.  I'd wake up in the middle of the night and read until I feel asleep. A lot of the time I'd read chess books and even get a board out and try things out, learn new opening variations, etc. My strengths in chess were my ability to read the game and could see what was happening or going to happen many moves ahead.  I'd be able to look at a position in the middle-game and see how a series of moves would give me a stronger pawn formation to take into the end-game and ultimately win the game. My end-game play was very solid, and if there wasn't an obvious 'quick-win' in the middle-game my tactics would be to see how I could get to the end-game with a positional or material advantage.

My chess coach and a lot of the books would discuss the variety of openings and the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. But I had a better idea (a limited one, but it worked well for me). As white, I'd always play d4 (I say always, I'd also mix it up a little of course, and did enjoy playing the English Opening as well from time to time). As black, I'd always play the Sicilian (dragon, accelerated dragon or Najdorf variations most of the time).  I'd NEVER play the Ruy Lopez, never.  My thinking was people studied the Ruy Lopez and its countless variations and so I wouldn't. Instead I read all about different Queen's pawn openings and variations, and the same for the Sicilian Defence.  I'd study variations and learn about the pros and cons, and I'd know that very few of my opponents would be as well versed in them, so even the variations that risked giving up a little positional equity if the opposition played correctly were 'profitable' to me as the opposition wouldn't have studied them in such depth and didn't know the correct lines to take advantage of the opportunity - meaning they missed it and I got the upper hand.

One of my main books for studying openings was Modern Chess Openings (edited by Walter Korn) - no idea which edition it was, but I'm guessing it's not very modern any more! 

My coach wanted me to expand my opening repertoire, and to start playing e4 as white, or e5 as black.  But to me this meant studying a whole raft of openings (Ruy Lopez, French Defence - yawn, and all sorts of other openings that excited me as much as a lecture by tikay on the iron-built bridges of 19c Derbyshire).  Of course, by sticking to my restricted opening lines it meant the good opposition players I used to come up against would know the openings I played and would look to catch me out.  The thing is, unless they studied hard, they'd have a job getting the upper-hand playing a variation that they weren't very familiar with - or they'd have to try something fancy, or something a bit daring that they wouldn't know that intimately themselves.

Can't remember what my point was other than there's so much to learn and study in chess, why not focus on your strengths and not try to be a jack of all trades and a master (pun intended) of none - and instead be a specialist.  Of course, it's not that simple especially against better opponents.  But I was lethal at blitz chess when I forced people down uncomfortable opening lines they couldn't just play through mechanically.  Those were the days...

How funny you should say that! Capablanca was known never to study opening theory, which is why he played such solid, reliable stuff early in the game.

1.d4 tends to offer quieter games than 1.e4, although it is interesting that you played the Dragon and the Najdorf, which are two of the most theorised and analysed openings in the book.

The reason I played 1.f4 as a junior is the same as yours though: no one else was doing it and it took them out of their established theory.

The reason I played Dragon and Najdorf (and studied them so much), is that I could play variations that others hadn't studied in such depth.  Often a bit of a gamble, because if they knew the correct lines (as those better than me put forward) then they'd have the upper hand.  But more often than not, they'd try to stick to the tried and tested lines despite me taking a bit of a detour and lining them up for a fall.

With d4, I love the battle down white's left flank (which would often develop).  With ..c5 I used to love the 'race' when white and black castled on opposite sides.

Capablanca was a genius.

Ty very much for the reply and like Tikay says its a great thread and long may it continue.

Possibly inspired by this thread or just coincidence, I have had a few games with my niece (6) and nephew (9) this week. I don't play the game at all, think I am clever showing them the four move check mate, but was very suprised how quickly they have picked the game up. The niece is particually good and can beat her brother and actually thinks 3 or 4 moves ahead which I found impressive after only learning the game a couple of weeks ago. You say to her what if this piece moves here, she will then say "yes but then this goes like this and them this can do this" etc. Just basic level 1 stuff I assume but it is great fun.

Wow long post from Kinboshi. He has an interesting diary that I read too but sadly I have even less to contribute to that one. The wife does say I need to go jogging with her tho :)

WARNING: Long post that was never intended to be long!!

Cliffs:

1. I discuss my thoughts on chess development and the best way to learn chess, whilst making vague comparisons to poker development.
2. I move on to the theme of poker, by discussing the best way to learn poker.
3. I talk a little about my own poker story/development, and offer some thoughts on why certain poker players have become great.

Kinboshi's story is actually similar to my own. I never built up a rounded chess opening repertoire and instead relied on playing mainly obscure opening variants. For example I played the Scandinavian Defence (1... d5) in answer to 1 e4, and specialised in the various gambit lines that often resulted from that opening. I played the exchange variation of the Ruy Lopez as White and developed a very good understanding of the quiet endgame that usually resulted. I played a couple of esoteric Nimzowitsch variations of the Advance Variation against the French Defence (having read My System).

Adopting this policy allowed me to save time learning openings, and also allowed me to get into good positions in competitive games more often than perhaps my skill warranted. However, it was most probably detrimental to my overall chess development and held me back from becoming a stronger player. I would have been far better served playing all the openings in my first few years and only settling on a specialised opening repertoire when I had become a strong player. I would have been possibly sacrificing some short terms results for the long-term benefit of becoming a better, more rounded player with a deep understanding of the game. Instead - although this is an oversimplification - I became a player who won a lot of games simply through trapping his opponents into worse positions in the opening/early middle game stages.

If I had my time again I would learn chess the way I recommended in my earlier post. I would start out studying mainly the old classic games from hundreds of years ago, and would play mainly the classical openings, experimenting with a ton of different variations. So I would start off with playing many sacrificial/gambit lines as possible to develop my tactics (I'd start as a LAG). Then I would start to play more strategic stuff concentrating on direct central control (I'd become a TAG). Then I would move on to more hypermodern stuff (I'd go through a complex thought stage and my play might actually get worse for a while). Finally I'd move on to modern chess stuff in which all the previous ideas and dogmas of chess history have been assimilated, balanced and combined (I'd finally find my own style, and would become a strong player). Following the path of historical chess development is probably the best way to learn chess if you are just starting out.

You will notice I made some vague comparisons in brackets to poker styles. I think this is actually extremely apposite. The 'best way' to learn poker probably is to play a super LAG style, even though you are very likely to lose money doing so. Make all those insane bluffs and ridiculous hero calls and crazy floats. Play 65% of your hands and 3bet half of them. Try to win every pot you can. You will do your bollocks unless you run very well right at the start. But you will become a good player far more quickly because you will be constantly trying things out, getting into tough spots, and putting pressure on yourself to make difficult decisions. Eventually, you will learn that the vast majority of the plays you have been making are total spew and you will tighten up a lot, whilst still maintaining the ability to make a lot of aggressive moves in the right spots. You have become a TAG. But you will be a really good TAG because of all the practice and experience you got whilst spewing around in the early days.

Then what likely happens is that you start developing backdoor aggression into your game, and learn about the right spots to play a loose passive style in the early streets of a hand. You start becoming more comfortable flatting raises preflop rather than 3betting, including from the blinds, and don't feel you need the preflop initiative all the time in order to make a hand profitable. You learn to float more often, and to bluff catch effectively, even out of position. In many spots you are actually quite cally and passive in the early streets, although in theory this is always with a plan/reason... often one that involves later aggression. This is equivalent to the hypermodern period in chess development in which Black refused to directly compete for the center, and instead sought to control it indirectly - before launching a central attack later in the game. This is also the period in your poker development in which you may actually play worse for a little while. It is difficult to play without the initiative and at first you drift into being a combination of loose-passive and weak-tight (just as when you first start playing hypermodern openings you will likely just get run over by your opponent's central control until you learn to effectively fight back). But once you come out of this phase and learn these new difficult skills you become a much better player.

My own development in poker has a bit of a story in relation to this. When I first started out I was not a young kid, I already had a wife and kid and mortgage etc. And I had a very small bankroll. I was unable to risk going broke, so I had to play in the most low-variance style possible. I was the biggest nit ever... I had to be to survive; I didn't have the luxury of taking wild chances, making crazy plays, and trying for sick spin ups. So I was not able to start out the way I advise, playing like a LAG. I suspect my poker development has been massively held back due to this. Most of the great young players (Tricket etc) started out as LAGs, and usually very very spewy LAGs at that. Obviously variance caught up with most of them and 99% of them vanished whilst they were still poor players. But the ones that got lucky in the first few years have gone on to become truly great players, because they put themselves in all those situations early on. If I'd have done that then I'd be very unlikely to be still playing poker now because chances are I'd have gone broke repeatedly in the first few years and given up. But if I had have been one of the lucky ones who survived long enough to become a good player by having a few binks then I'd likely be a much, much stronger player now than I am.

Also, when I was grinding NLHE online my game deteriorated for a while when I watched a ton of A.E. Jones videos and listened to his audiobook. He advocated a lot of interesting plays, including in certain spots some passive stuff on early streets, playing without the initiative a lot etc. At first this made me play worse because I was misapplying it (it's a lot harder to play without the initiative) and ended up playing a combination of weak-tight and loose passive. Eventually I assimilated it into my game and I became a better player for it.

If poker wasn't played for money then everyone should start out playing as a LAG, playing most of their hands and running loads of crazy bluffs etc. They will learn and develop much faster. Unfortunately, poker IS played for money and so this is not really possible unless someone is playing merely for a hobby and can afford to lose consistently for their first few years whilst they learn. So the 'right' way of learning poker relies on the player just getting ridiculously lucky not to go broke before he has become any good. I have seen a TON of players play like this, and vanish within a year. I have seen a handful of players play like this, run well (often without realising it), and therefore survive long enough to become great players. Maybe the best way to start out is to grind out a profit in the cash games playing a super-tight TAG style (so you don't have to rely on getting lucky to stay in the game), and then enter a load of small buy in tournaments and play them like a maniac (to develop your skills).

Wow!! This post has become unbelieveably long. I started typing and didn't stop! Oh well, I'm not going to edit it. Well done if you have managed to read to the end. Not sure if it was worth it though lol!

A very interesting post, honeybadger. Plenty to discuss there!

Good post Mr Badger.  Always an interesting read.

How about a story about me? Today’s word of the day is “COACHING”.

I have been fortunate to do some coaching in my time. The majority of it has been with 11-18 year olds but age really doesn’t matter. I have only worked with people who have at least a basic understanding of the game. By this, I mean they know the horse moves in an L-shape, they know you can castle both ways and don’t shout “Witchcraft!” when you take a pawn en passant. After that, it’s been a complete mixture of ability levels.

On the other side, I have been fortunate enough to have worked with two coaches. Once I had a decent grasp of the basics and had won a small junior comp, my dad approached an International Master who was there on the day of the tournament and asked whether he would be prepared to coach me. This would have been in around 1994. He was happy to do so and I went every week, with us spending an hour together at his house with my dad sitting in the corner watching. We would usually go through a game if I had played one that week, or otherwise it would be positions he’d set up and we would talk about how to play from there. Sometimes, there would be tactical (often checkmating) combinations to spot; other times, it would be just general themes to be aware of. We’d play a game against the clock and he would hammer me. After the session, my dad would stump up a crisp twenty pound note and we would be on our way.

We heard a couple of years later that there was a local, retired player who was now an excellent coach. He had an 18 month waiting list for players to get on, but was well worth it. He had two of the other top local junior players for my age group, I then discovered, and they could not sing his praises highly enough. Dad politely encouraged them to put in a good word for me and I managed to sneak into a higher place on the queue. When a gap opened up, I went to work with this gentleman. He was not as strong as the previous coach, but had still been a strong player in his day. He was in his 50s and had been a very strong junior player, up to playing in the Glorney Cup (a Home Nations tournament, where each selects their top 4 players under 18). He had then gone on to win the Major Open section at the British Championships (the top amateur tournament would be the best way I could describe it).

This chap wasn’t a bit like the previous one. He was a coach. A real coach. He started by asking about me: what books do you have? What openings do you play? Do you work well against the clock? Do you find visualizing a position easy (this is another way of saying “how many moves can you think ahead?”, but it questions more how well you can spot what else is going on)? Once I had answered and he had finished writing, we went through the openings I knew, move by move. He watched as I talked. After all this, he had a couple of pages of notes on me in his book. He asked if I had brought a game of mine with me and, as it happened, I had. We played through it. He stopped me after the fourth move, commenting that there was an improvement to what I had played. He stood up, walked to his bookcase, produced a green book that looked like Methusela had written it in his 20s and showed me the variation I had played. The author specifically commented that it was outmoded and that a different move was recommended.

I had the cheek to ask why. This is what really makes a coach. He closed the book and said “you tell me”. So we sat and discussed it. He listened to me piece together an argument, steered me with some careful questions and walked me gently to the correct answer. We played through the rest of the game, him making a couple of suggestions as we went, keeping the form to me giving all the answers, with him nodding like Mr Miyagi.

At the end of the session (2.5 hours was how he liked to do it, with a break for tea and biscuits in the middle), he went over what we had covered. I agreed. Dad paid him seven English pounds. Yes. He did it out of love for the game (there’s a catchphrase in their somewhere, CambridgeAlex), and as he did 3 sessions a day, the money covered his shopping bill and he was happy.

I went back next week and he suggested we play through a game from an old master – Alekhine. He explained that he was the founder of the modern way of playing and we spent an hour and a half going through one of the games. He stopped after a few moves to let me work out the next move (making sure I understood why I was making it). His questions challenged my thinking process – “what other moves are available?” “what was the purpose of Black’s last move?” “have you completed your development?” “should you attack with just pieces or do you need the help of a few pawns, too?” – and slowly I began to get into Alekhine’s head.

After a few weeks of those games, we worked on the tactical side of my game, which I had a talent for, but it was very raw (“spewy” might be a suitably pokerish adjective). We played through positions and, again, he coached me into understanding when the time was right to get aggressive and when a more measured response was appropriate. He showed me, with the Alekhine games in particular, that attacking is sometimes a means to an end – you can force the other guy to make weaknesses in his position and then all you do is swap the pieces off and win with a better endgame.

When I was deemed ready, we started on Tal games. Kid and Sweetshop would probably be fair. I used to come out of the sessions with a head that made me thing I’d eaten a tub of ice cream really quickly, but I couldn’t wait til the next session, two weeks later.

As the months went by, we started on Rubenstein, Petrosian and Fischer: the masters of the quieter, positional games. This opened my eyes to a different way of playing.

In the other hour or so each session, he gave me an opening repertoire. I took a purple A5 notebook in and he gave me a list of openings. We played through them and, when I was happy, I wrote them down. Usually 15ish moves of Black and White and a couple of variations.

It wasn’t long before I had a sizeable ‘database’. When I went back with a game, if I had deviated from the book line (let’s be honest: if I had forgotten the right move), he would say “what do your notes say?” and we’d have a look. There was never any shame in it; he knew I was keen to learn. When I came to a lesson bored with an opening, we’d learn something else and that would be added to the notes.

He retired a couple of years ago, now in his sixties. We are still in touch. He completely shaped the way I think about chess and the way I coach others. There is an enormous difference between a great player and a great coach.

Akiba Rubenstein

(http://www.chessgames.com/portraits/akibarubinstein.jpg)

He brought us a puzzle once. White to play and mate in 4.
(http://www.chessbase.com/puzzle/images/puzzle20-01.jpg)

I set my search rating to try and only play people who are better than me but I was getting thrashed quite often tbh. Put it back down to play people the same level as me and my record now stands at victory within 7 moves. wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Also downloaded Chessmaster 10 so will be giving that a go whenever I get a chance.

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=354900787 (http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=354900787)

Yes, well done.

If you want to beat better players, you might want to shore up the openings a bit: develop your pieces first and leave Her Majesty at home. 2.h5 is a bit of a time-waste and, although it doesn't immediately bring you problems, you'll find yourself a move behind in your development and wishing you hadn't played it.

Love the attacking, tho.

 Took me bloody ages, but got there in the end. Was looking for a mate with the rook down h, but black always had an escape.

Eventually went for a more radical approach, and there's the answer!

Wow!! I solved this one in my head. First time I've ever done that; I'm usually useless at chess puzzles.

At first I assumed it would be some sort of mate with the rook on the h-file, forcing Black to take the h2 pawn due to zugswang, and having the blacks pawns block in the King. But I couldn't make it work any way I tried. I was just about to go get a chess board and have a proper go when suddenly something flashed in my brain and I saw it. Obviously once you see the first move the rest is simple since it is forced.

Wow Kinboshi... we must have been doing it at exactly the same time, and having exactly the same thought process. Gutted that you beat me to posting by one minute!!!

I probably started earlier! I was also going to get my chess board, but only know where the pieces are and haven't seen the board since I moved a year ago.

Scarily similar thought processes though. I'd be afraid and disappointed if I were you :D

haha, thanks for being so polite. Yea, realise my openings are terrible, there is no rhyme or reason really. Most of what I try to do is just counter-intuitive. The amount of times I get myself into tough spots or think to myself "why did i just do that" is a joke. Hence the acquiring of chessmaster to iron out some of these kinks. As many have said, <3 this Fred.

I think the thought process we both clearly went through makes it almost certain to discover the real solution. Because in examining the original idea of mate down the h-file we already worked on the theme of the White King being placed on the f-file so as to block off the Black King's escape, and of course we knew that it would have to be some sort of zugswang motif to enable the final mate (although it turned out to be a much different one to that which we were both originally examining).

I am pretty pleased with myself since I can never do these things in my head - and not even that often on a board either. It is a bit scary that we were clearly simultaneously thinking the exact same thing though. Weird.

Took me less than 10 minutes, and I was 6-tabling PLO at the same time so not 100% focussed on it! Sounds like a brag, but just stating the truth ;)

Millidonk, one piece of chess advice I was given very early on (and it goes for poker too) is "a bad plan is better than no plan at all". Wood-pushing (making moves with no tactics or strategy behind what you're doing is going to hurt your chances of winning.

So have a plan, change it where necessary, and try to improve on it.

Could be as simple as "want to develop my pieces and get my king safely castled" or "get the minor pieces out and focused on an attack on the weak c-pawn" or even "I don't like it when I can't get my bishops active, so make sure I get them developed early to help my attack".

As Tal said, read up on some openings and have a repertoire of openings that have been well studied in your armoury. At least it'll mean you won't be at a huge disadvantage going into the middle game.

Took me 15 minutes, but I was watching the missus getting dressed and walking round in her underwear, so wasn't fully focused either (thin brag).

My focus was on the black king being blocked in by two pawns on g, and somehow the king having to take white's pawn on h3 allowing the rook to take the h-pawn for mate. This was a blind alley obviously, but think I got a mate in 6 this way, but that wasn't the puzzle.

Enough of the mental gymnastics, off for a 15-mile+ run now...

Yea, I always have a plan when I play poker. When I play chess I kind of go through the motions with my openings then when there is space I start with my plans. I am aware this is obviously a terrible strategy.

One thing I have noticed is that probably about 75% of my wins have been against people casteling. I try and avoid it most of the time. It just doesn't make sense to me, obviously freeing up the rook is helpful but pinning the king in the corner just seems terrible.

Wise words.

I'd go as far as to say don't force a plan until you've nearly completed your development. Whatever you decide to do (attack the kingside, make a break through the centre, swap the pieces off and outplay him in the endgame...), you'll need your pieces out.

A young lad once asked me while I was doing a session in a school "why do you need to develop?".

I said "picture the scene: it's November 1917. The Brits are in a trench in a dark, muddy part of Belgium. The Captain assembles the boys as shellfire rains overhead. "Right-ho lads. Orders are in from H.Q. Watson, you go over the top. Everyone else, stay here and play cards." And off goes Watson with his Tommy gun..."

It's an absurd example, but why would you attack without your full artillery?

Millidonk, if you didn't castle against me, I would open up the centre by exchanging pawns in the middle. With my rook on e1, pointing at your king, it would start to get pretty unpleasant.

Note to self. Incorporate castleing into my game.

A castled king is usually the safest king. Harder to get to than one in the middle, like you say it helps get your rook into play as well. If you elect not to castle, you have to be prepared to defend from attacks down both flanks and the centre. All at the same time as trying to launch your own artillery.

How many games you win and how good the people who you beat are is what is important - how quickly you win the game is irrelevant and if you're focussed on that you're just more likely to skip over some development which is going to hamper your game whenever you don't tie it up quickly.

Lurker in the thread coming out.

I'd really like to start playing a bit more seriously, but there's never time :(
I used to play as a kids, then after a break, had a regular game with a close friend of a similar standard.
I never really studied the game at all, rather, was aware that I was supposed to plan ahead and so worked it out as best I could.
Pretty much entirely self taught, so there'll be massive holes in my game.
That said, I don't think I'm terrible. Just uncultured :)

When I get time, I'll pick up a few of the books recommended and do a bit of reading.

One thing spurring me into action to improve, is I've taught my 7 year old how the pieces move and the rules, but I don't want to fill him with the bad habits I've doubtless got.

Hi Adam

Welcome to the thread.

The chess season is just about to start. There will be at least one club local to you (if you are in or near a city, there will be a few) and that club will have at least one club night a week. League matches tend to be every 2-3 weeks and last one evening (7ish to 10ish). Most are in licenced premises these days.

A club is a great place to start. Much as a bricks and mortar casino is a bit daunting but within 10 minutes you realise it isn't full of cowboys in ten-gallon hats that call everyone "boy", a chess club will welcome anyone with a basic knowledge of how the pieces move and be glad to have some friendly games with you.

You can take your 7 year old with you for an hour or two if you like. There are plenty of people his age playing chess in the UK.It's a great time to learn the game, while the brain is still developing.

As I have posted before, see if there is a tournament local to you on the English Chess Federation's website and pop along to watch. All ages, all abilities on view.

We all started somewhere.

I did think about a club.
Trouble is, my week already looks like this (on top of a stressful job):
Monday - Junior Cricket
Tuesday - U8 football training
Wednesday - bit of Web dev for UK Poker Calendar ( ;) )
Thursday - Pub poker night
Friday - glass of wine or three :)
Saturday  - U8 Football training in the morning / DIY in the afternoon / Gigging with a band (starting this month)
Sunday - U8s match in the morning / Band practice or DIY in the afternoon

I might do a bit of research though and if there's something Mon / Wed when cricket finishes, I might be able to shuffle stuff around.
I think it's good to balance the physical stuff he's doing with more cerebral activities like reading / Chess / Poker (he's a killer heads up)

Wish I could get my daughter interested in any thing, but she's 12 going on 18 and sliding into teenagerness at a rate of knots :)

There are always hight attrition levels in junior chess at about that age for girls and a couple of years later for boys.

It likely wouldn't be every week, but maybe one night, if you do get a free evening, it might make a nice change.

Quick one for you all: the new international ratings are out for September (currently come out every two months, but shortly every month).

Magnus Carlsen extends his lead and is getting closer and closer to the magic number Kasparov peaked at.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8451

England now has 4 players in the top hundred men for the first time I can remember. Michael Adams has been as high as 4th I believe, but is now one of a group of players from about 15-35 in the rankings that swap around regularly, as form spurts and slumps come along.

You might enjoy - or rather not - the ages of these people. Scary.

Hopefully I have got this to work...here is a game I played last night. Details to follow. I have the white pieces.

I don't have the technical wizardry of many of the people who access this forum, so, if you are more skilled, by all means convert this to a more accessible format and reattach it. It is simply a copy of the scoresheet I took last night in the game, lifted from a Print Screen into a Word doc.

You will need to understand basic chess notation, but I hope it's reasonably self-explanatory if you aren't sure. Capital letters denote pieces moving; lowercase are the coordinates of the square it moves to. If it is just a coordinate, it is a pawn moving to that square. If there is an "x", it is denoting a capture, so BxB would be a bishop taking a bishop.

o-o is castling kingside (remember that, Millidonk :) ). o-o-o would be castling queenside.

The game itself was the annual friendly our club, South Birmingham, plays against our local rivals, Olton. It is used as a warm-up for the league season, as most people haven't played over the summer. I was on board 9 yesterday and played a player who was a little below me in rating, but still competent enough. I played pretty well, if a touch rustily. He made a number of basic positional errors, which made my game significantly easier.

Take a look at Black’s pawn structure after the first 4 moves. He has put the pawns on Black squares and, as they are fixed there, the light squared bishop is the only one likely to get any room in the game, so that’s the one he wants to keep. He would be quite happy to swap the dark squared bishop off, because conversely I want to keep that one of mine. So, when he plays 5.Bg4, he plays right into my hands. As the game progresses, you will see that I am able to take advantage of his weak white squares.

There was nothing flamboyant in this game, really. I essentially keep him cramped and slowly come forward with my pieces. When he draws all his pieces to the kingside, I have positioned my queen to hit those lovely white squares on a diagonal and his pieces are a bit stuck. So, when he exchanges queens to free his pieces up on move 23, I capitalize by opening the queenside and taking advantage of his lack of defence over there. This was a theme of Alekhine’s games: he dragged his opponent’s pieces over to one side of the board and, because Alekhine had all his pieces well placed, he was able to switch his attack to the undefended side.

On move 30, I play a nice tactic of swapping a pawn of mine on d6 for one of his on g5. The idea is that I open the d-file for my rook and he is cut in two. He eventually resigned, although he played on for a little longer than he needed to, as the position was lost after about 35 moves. I wasn’t going to lose it from there. 

Better pieces made all the difference in this game.

If you want a bit of fun, by all means put the game into a computer and see what Mr Shredder, Mr Fritz and any others you have think of how I played. You will see that I don’t play all the best moves, but I generally maintain an edge from pretty early on. At even a decent level, that’s often all that is required. It is easy to look at how amazingly Carlsen and the others play the game, but there aren’t many out there who can get to that level!

Playchess.com now has a version for Android. I have just downloaded it and am very pleased with it.

It is an excellent site in desktop for playing online. The mobile version seems absolutely fine, too.

The software is free but it costs £7 for a 12 month subscription to play (so it's £7 then!)

It automatically saves your games and keeps score for you. You play with a clock in full sight. Nice and straightforward stuff.

While the rest of the world is playing in the Olympiad, Magnus Carlsen has other engagements. He has been in New York, causing as much of a stir as the world's number one chess player causes in New York.

The Huffington Post has been keeping an eye on proceedings and has written this report: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/lubomir-kavalek/magnus-carlsen-storms-new_b_1855241.html?icid=hp_search_art

You might like the story of Kenneth Rogoff, a chess Grandmaster in the 70s of some repute. He didn't pick up a piece for 30 years after that, becoming an elite economist. Part of Carlsen's visit involved a friendly game against Mr Rogoff.

(http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2012-09-04-rogoffcarlsen.jpeg)

The last round of the Olympiad has started and it could barely be closer, with three teams level on 17 match points in the Open section. China have a slight edge on tie breaks, but have the toughest game on paper today, against a strong Ukraine side.

Should they fail to win, or should they not win well, this would open the door to Armenia (led by the top rated player in the field, number 3, Lev Aronian), who play Hungary or top seeds Russia, who would expect to beat Germany, especially on the bottom two boards.

In the women's event, top seeds China are ahead by the tiniest of margins of Russia and both will expect to win their games today comfortably, so the question is how much they win by.

England has disappointed a little this time around, with losses to Vietnam and the Philippines spoiling an otherwise solid (if unspectacular) tournament.

Scotland and Ireland have held their own, while Wales are a little below their seeding.

Bottom of the table (apart from Congo, who withdrew after one game) is Burundi.

Here is the full list: http://results.chessolympiadistanbul.com/tnr77681.aspx?art=0&rd=10&lan=1&flag=30&zeilen=99999

http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/en/component/content/article/2-news-en/274-armenia-russia-win-gold-medals-in-the-40th-chess-olympiad.html

The results are just in...

China, going into the round marginally in front, lost to Ukraine (losing on boards 1 and 4; the other two drawn). Meanwhile, Russia and Armenia both managed to win their matches and, despite Russia winning 3.5-0.5 and Armenia winning 2.5-1.5, it was Armenia who claimed the Gold medal, by virtue of a complicated tie-break system.

In the women's event, China could only manage the silver again, after a storming 4-0 victory by the Russians over Kazakhstan.

A possible caption comp to follow...

(http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/images/stories/news_photos/Armenia.jpg)

Lev Aronian and his Armenian team getting overexcited

(http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/images/stories/news_photos/Round_11_Grischuk.jpg)

Part-time poker player, Alexander Grischuk, was unable to triple-rangemerge Germany's Igor Khenkin and had to settle for a draw.

(http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/images/stories/news_photos/Round_11_China_-_Ukraine.jpg)

Wang Hao and Vassily Ivanchuk (known by his friends as Chucky), avert their gaze from a pretty standard Nimzo-Indian (Nimzo short for Nimzowitsch; Indian refers to the first pawn move being only one square)

Not a great caption, I agree.

Please come up with better!

A silly little one for you.

Opening theory sometimes means you have to move the pieces in a specific order, else you fall foul of a cheeky trap.

The openings that start 1.e4 have more of these than 1.d4, largely because the games tend to be sharper and more open (you have exposed the king slightly more, after all).

This is a trap in one of the most common openings in the playbook: The Ruy Lopez. It is quaintly called The Noah's Ark Trap

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KskXvXxlkCM

 ;D

Email Notice at 20:31 "Your opponent MrSayNoMore has offered you a draw"
Email Notice at 20:32 "Your opponent MrSayNoMore has offered you a draw"
Email Notice at 20:33 "Your opponent MrSayNoMore has offered you a draw"

Email Notice at 20:52
"Game Over!
Your game with MrSayNoMore has ended.
...
[Termination "beloved_ltd won by checkmate"]"

ironically when he offered the draw I think it really looked like the draw was the final outcome, but when it swung decisively to me - he completely refused to resign and made me do all the boring work of finishing him off

One of the few genuine "angles" in amateur chess is offering a draw when you think you are losing (but you hope your opponent hasn't realised he's winning!)

I had Q and 2 pawns and he had Q and 1 pawn - but he had the initiative, I think he could have forced the draw by continually putting me in check without ever making a move to try and win it.

When you have fewer pawns, it is almost always a good idea to keep the major pieces (queen and rooks) on the board, as it gives you much better drawing chances: not only can you pick up the material deficit, you can get perpetual checks (even checkmate chances).

The trick is always to be aggressive, even when you only want a draw. The opponent then has to defend and your positional advantage often makes up for the material deficit.

This evening, our old friend, Mr Blackburne, teaches us why you should never play silly openings. The opponent was a nobody and the chess records are sufficiently brutal (or kind, depending on your point of view) to refer to him only by NN, which (along with N and AN Other) is a standard nom de plume for an unknown opponent.

Don't attack with just the queen or you'll find yourself in trouble!

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1029000

Note the comments on the game are from the great man himself. Did you see the finish?

Every time Blackburne makes a move, he develops another piece. Soon, white has only a queen out and has castled, while Black has everything pointing at His Majesty.

You can just see Blackburne stroking his beard, nursing a single malt...

I don't know if you have seen ChessFanatic's videos on YouTube. He mostly plays blitz and lightning chess, whilst shouting loudly over the top. Very good. He #lovethegame, no doubt.

Here he is playing about 15 games in 30 minutes. He nearly always wins, of course.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il0mwJUbnu0

Was not aware of this chap. Enthusiasm ftw, it seems.

I played my first league match of the season last night. As we have two teams in the division, we must face each other first game.

I knew who my opponent would be (all six players are ranked and your best plays their best etc) and that he likes to prepare openings if he knows what his opponent plays as white.

So, I spent 15 mins looking at an opening I have never played in competitive chess: the English opening. It starts 1.c4 (pawn to queen bishop 4). I had a few lines prepared by looking at some master games. I knew that there were no immediate dangers if I played solid, developing chess, and so it proved. I got into a normal game without getting into any prepared traps of his.

I went on to win the game.

I'm a believer of adjusting to your opponent. Not everyone is in chess tho.

A nice, synoptic article on the Olympiad:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8473

It includes five of the most interesting games of the week and they are helpfully annotated by a grandmaster.

Some details of the victorious Armenian team and the surprisingly high performing US team, the latter of which features the Wayne-Mardlesque Geta Kamsky:

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/istanbul/kamsky02.jpg)

Just me, right?

(http://www.pdc.tv/javaImages/3e/c8/0,,10180~11061310,00.jpg)

A preview of the latest major competition for you this afternoon: the Chess Masters Series Final. Chessbase.com reports: Five of the world's best players will be there: World Champion Vishy Anand, world number one Magnus Carlsen, number two Levon Aronian, number seven Sergey Karjakin and eight Fabiano Caruana. Joining them will be the ever creative Paco Vallejo. The double round robin is split between São Paulo, Brazil, and Bilbao, Spain. It starts on September 23 and is played in a glass cube.

It is the chess equivalent of the ATP Finals in Tennis, where those who have performed best in a series of tournaments are invited to compete in the final stage. This year’s features the world numbers 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8, along with the Spanish host’s pick: Francisco Vallejo-Pons (known as “Paco”).

Half the tournament is played in Brazil, with everyone then moving to Spain to finish the job.

Aside from the talent on display, one of the interesting features of this tournament is that the games are played in an almost ITV-esque glass cube. It is essentially soundproof, so the players are largely unaware of any crisp-munching, boiled sweet-twizzling, jumper knitting kibitzers.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Bilbao_2008_chess1.jpg/220px-Bilbao_2008_chess1.jpg)

(http://www.bilbaomastersfinal.com/wp-content/themes/twentyten-bilbao-2012/images/intro_04.jpg)

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2009/events/bilbao17.jpg)

The rest of us can only dream of such serenity!

Love the English. Added it to my arsenal, when my coach said I needed alternatives to d4 as white. Not sure it was exactly what he had in mind though :D

The thing about 1.c4 is that there are a few variations where you end up in positions that are very familiar to 1.d4 players. This can be advantageous, if you know your opponent won'tknow the black end very well (because he normally plats something else; perhaps something sharper). But it alternatively ruins the surprise if he is happy in that position.

1.e4 is typically much sharper but there's a fair bit of learning involved to feel comfortable playing it as white.

I'm someone who used to play 1.f4 as white.

I changed to 1.d4 and played that for about 8 years, pretty much exclusively.

Then I has a coach-induced change like you, but to 1.e4.

I now play 1.e4 or 1.d4 depending on the weather, how I'm feeling, the sort of game I want, my opponent, boxers or briefs...

Half the tournament is played in Brazil, with everyone then moving to Spain to finish the job.

That's a bit inconvenient, is it not?

Presumably it is due to commercial/monetary matters?

In short, yes.

It's the only tournament that does that. I think another part of it is ensuring that there is a tournament in South America. Just as FIFA likes to spread the love in football, so FIDE likes to spread the love in chess.

Is there much prize money or sponsorship in chess, seems excessive to have to play in Brazil then Spain.

You are forgetting something Jase. It's like poker - ALL Brazilian & Spanish players are totally crap. Apparently.

:)

The last World Championship has a prize fund of $2.55m, which was split 60/40 between first and second.

The biggest comps will be >€100k prize pools between 6-10 players. The Bilbao/ sao Paolo comp will be much bigger, I expect.

The big money is in sponsorship. There are some big markets out there: Russia, India and China in particular.

1. f4...

Loved that too when I was being very mischievous and wanted to annoy my coach. Not many know how to play against it as black, but you have to really know it well as white to not get yourself into a pickle.

So how many people approximately worldwide are making a living out of purely playing chess?

Tough question for an outsider to answer!

I believe that there are about 5 people in England making a professional living out of it. They would have travel and expenses covered, with a possible appearance fee to play in tournaments. Then they would get whatever they won on top.

Any Grandmaster or International Master would get a nice supplement to their regular income by coaching, books, DVDs, plus weekend local tournaments (expenses etc covered).

Most of the top 100 in the world will be professionals. Luke McShane is an anomoly as he works in the City.

Beyond that, it would be more varied.

From's Gambit is a very sharp response (1.f4 e5) and you have to be boned up on it or else you'll find yourself in all kinds of bother.

It's not one I'd advise, as it's always better to start out with an opening that helps you master the basics.

If there were a Blonde forum for all the chess world champions over the years, the top poster on PHA would be Dr Max Euwe. Euwe isn’t a household name to many, but he was not only world champion but also a truly great theoretician.

(http://www.rhc-eindhoven.nl/upload/verhalenbank_poost/Wereldkampioenschap-schaken.rien_.jpg)

Dr Euwe was born in 1901 near Amsterdam. He had a talent for mathematics and his studies led him into forging a career, obtaining a doctorate and going on to teach. He published a paper, proving that an infinite number of positions was possible in chess, using a principle I can’t get even close to getting my head around (feel free to explain this to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue%E2%80%93Morse_sequence).

He won the Dutch Championship in 1921 and was world amateur champion in 1928. What was particularly interesting about Euwe’s chess career was that he played much less often than others, as he had a full time job and a family. He played the very best in the late 1920s and early 1930s in a series of matches – Alekhine and Capablanca included – and did well, if only to lose those matches narrowly.

If I can call it a moment, his big moment came in 1935, when, after two months of games around the Netherlands, Euwe defeated Alekhine 15.5-14.5 to become the fifth World Chess Champion. Like Tal, he only held onto the title for a single cycle, losing it to Alekhine – I say losing, he was hammered (unlike Alekhine, who had given up alcohol in preparation for the match) 15.5-9.5 again in the Netherlands.

Euwe became a professor of mathematics in 1964 and, although he was long past his best over the board, he remained an ambassador for the game. He was President of the international chess association (FIDE) in the 1970s and published an incredible number of books on chess, catering for all levels of ability and on the complete spectrum of topics in chess: opening theory, technical play in the middlegame, biographical accounts, the lot. He died in 1981.

Why would he be the PHA guy? Well, as you might have guessed by now, his style of play was defined by his other interests: he was a rigorously analytical. His opening knowledge was second to none and he would approach a game by systematic and meticulous preparation. He was never frightened of complicated positions. This might sound silly, as it’s never actually scary to play chess. But positions where both sides are attacking and there are a number of perfectly plausible ideas each player can pursue (with only one optimal strategy) often put off all but the elite, and even some of them!

He wasn’t a tactical whizzkid like Tal or Spassky. He wasn’t a quiet, positional player like Fischer or Rubenstein. His modus operandi was to create imbalance in a position and test the opponent’s ability to calculate. The very best players (such as Alekhine and Capablanca) were able on the whole to match him and overcome his imbalances, but so many others struggled.

It is controversial to say this but, in a way, Euwe was more mathematician than chess player; even his chess was played like a mathematician. Fischer was a chess player and, frankly, wasn’t going ever to be anything else.

Here is one of Euwe’s greatest games: against the Russian master Efim Geller, in the Candidates tournament of 1953:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1042835

Geller launches a huge attack at Euwe, essentially trying to smash him off the board. In response, Euwe hits back with a shocking rook sacrifice, which leads to a sensational counter attack. It is like a boxing match where one guy comes out throwing huge combinations and swinging arms, only to find himself clobbered by a brutal uppercut; knocked to the canvas to the raucous hollering of a baying crowd. Ish.

The final position leaves White without any checks (he can check with his queen but he’d lose it straight away) and with Black about to checkmate him – for example, with Qf2 and then, when the king moves to d1, with Bf3 or Rg1, either of which lead to mate.

Shortly before Euwe played Alekhine for the World title, a Dutch radio presenter (called Hollander, incredibly) recorded this clip with Dr Euwe – communicating of course in Dutch – and with Capablanca – speaking in English.  The video starts with Hollander playing a game against Euwe and thinking he is lost. Capablanca then pops in and shows him how he can actually win the position. They then discusses the upcoming World Championship match.

I promise you that you will find what Capablanca says interesting.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuyMzb5_tlU

I LOVE these stories of the characters in Chess, keep them coming please.

chess is a scary prospect when approached with a serious and calculating head on.

I've got some game theory I've vids n books and was suprised to hear there are more different 'strategies' in chess than there are atoms in the universe... Try and get your head around that number.....

:)

His game is 20% bluff, in chess. It's all above my head but really enjoy this thread.

Infinite number of variations = yes
Infinite number of positions = no

You are of course right, Mr Boshi. World of difference.

It was late :)

2 things to say about this: one general; one specific.

In general, say you and I are playing and you make a pawn move which attacks my Knight. We both know it's attacking my knight, so what happens if I move something else? Would you be suspicious of taking my knight now? Maybe I'm intending to do something filthy if you do...You can't see it, but you are confident I haven't just missed your threat, so you conclude I am up to something. You decide not to take my knight and move something else. I checkmate you with my knight.

A particular characteristic of Alekhine's games is that he would force weaknesses in his opponent's position (maybe a weak pawn; maybe a square near the king that he can't easily defend). He would then attack that weakness, knowing that the opponent had enough resources to cover it. His plan was to draw the opposing pieces over to that side of the board and then attack the unguarded other side of the board! If the opponent could hold that, he'd probably make a second weakness in the process, so the cycle would begin again, only with the hapless opponent in even worse shape.

Levelling can happen in chess, and so can bluffing.

Is poker style "speech play" allowed, or prevalent, in top level chess?

No, in a word.

At the very top level, you could hear a dust mite pass wind.

I work with quite a few grandmasters. They all have over 2350 whatever that means :) they play and study almost every day and we get quite a few people travelling to get involved and challenge them etc. there's times when there really are a Lot of people spectating.

I played chess vs my parents every night for around 3 years and then about 4 times a eek for 6 years. I never ever studied and only ever played against them. I went to UNi and played va housemates and won prolly like 80/80 games. Another 1 year playing with parents 3 times a week.

How good do you think I'd probably be? Would I just be too exploitable? In a pretty quick learner and very enthusiastic about games and willing to study. How potentially good do you think I could be in say 1 year?

Way too difficult to answer almost any of those questions!

2350 would be on the cusp of being an International Master - well above my level - as you need to get your rating above 2400 (along with some other specific tournament criteria) to claim that title.

I assume you play poker with these people, when you say "work"? (Not a needle; just clarifying) From what I understand, a fair few of the master players in England make their money playing poker these days, even if their heart is in chess.

If you have absorbed the opening theory from these chaps, you might struggle against an opponent rated much lower who has a good understanding of the game and can outplay you tactically or positionally. If you have developed an understanding of the game, you'd need to get some theory in there.

Either of these can be coached/taught/learned.

Everything else is up to you. I have worked with complete novices (who knew the moves and nothing else) and got them to 1600 in 20 weeks at 40 mins a week. But it is completely subjective.

Plenty of people spend a lot of time reading Grandmaster books and going through games. How many people watch Premier League Poker and can remember nothing about the action as soon as the closing credits roll other than who won?

The people you work with are naturals. They are gifted players who "get it". The Grandmasters are one above that, too (2500+). The world elite (2700+) even more so.

Yeh we have 1 or 2 grandmasters or international grandmasters.

One of the guys is Matthias wahls who I honk has a rating of close to 2600.

I work within poker with lots of former chess guys but there are 500 of us so I guess always will be a chess guy.

I want to just learn myself rather than getting coached etc whilst chess was weirdly a huge part of my life I got over obsessed with it Even though I never read one book or watched one video. I'd go to sleep dreaming about placing my knight in position to check the king whilst able to take the queen in te next part.

I'm sure I sound like a massive massive chess fish.

I don't even watch te games that they play, supposedly they are super super high standard and the guys seem to enjoy watching. We had a 2480 or something polish guy come over today to do some poker stuff and he played a few games and was deemed to be reall good.

It's quite a cool environment.

Well, I'd start by getting a decent computer. That can be the sort you get free from the App Store (shredder would do the trick). For a laptop, I'd recommend Fritz, which is universally recognised as one of the very best because not only is it strong, it is compatible with a huge variety of training tools and DVDs.

Find an opening you're comfortable with (you find it easy to play and the position you end up in after, say, ten moves, is one you like) and maybe get a bit of familiarity with some of the more common variations (plenty of stuff on the internet for that). Minimal learning and anything you do will help you enjoy the games you play even more.

Have a look at some puzzles: white to play and mate in 2 etc. They will get you used to the sorts of patterns you find. Learn by osmosis how the pieces can work together. So much of chess is recognition (not memory; it's "ah this reminds me of a pawn structure I've seen before").

Read the odd (and do only read the odd, else you'll be bored senseless!) game analysis. Loads of them about - even I link to them occasionally. You will find an expert explaining why X played such and such a move. My advice would be to start with older games, as the modern ones are generally much more complicated. You can look at a game from 1920 and pick up as much than from 2012, at least until you are very familiar with the more complex stuff. YouTube might offer some assistance.
Oh and keep following the chess thread ;)

I think you've hit the nail on the head about not following the games these other chaps play. Why would I understand what Tom Dwan, JovialGent and Timex were discussing? If I thought I'd got it, I'd still have no way of knowing if i was applying it correctly.

One of the great beauties of chess is that you can enjoy it at your level, there's always more to learn and you can explore these at your leisure.
 
On reflection, that's three, isn't it?!

Btw I know of a new chess website opening that's going To be owned by a pretty huge company that will shortly look for both full time and freelance guys. They will likely look for really passionate guys who can help all levels of players and really help them learn. Some of your advice is excellent, would you being interested in such a place or too busy/occupies elsewhere,

I am busy atm but I would be mad to say no without seeing the details.

Feel free to PM me when it's all up and running.

Is that because it is not permitted within the rules, or is considered bad form, or just because the players are above it?

"Move your Knight if you don't like money, my friend" or whatever would surely cast doubt in villains mind?

FWIW, I think it's good they do not do it, whatever the reason.

There's quite a bit of subtle stuff that goes on though (and the less subtle stuff such as Korchnoi and Karpov the 'best mates', kicking each other under the table during their World Championship matches!).

I remember playing county games (for Northamptonshire U12s at the time), and being on board 1, that was the game that was on the large demonstration board for everyone to follow. I'd be playing the board 1 from another county who I'd played quite a few times in county matches and also in other tournaments.

Because the games went on for a long time (especially when you're an eleven year old kid), you'd make a move, press the clock and then immediately get up and go for a walk whilst the opponent had a think. Obviously, if there was an obvious move in response you'd hang around, but if it gave them something to think about you could wander around, see how other games were going, or go to the loo.

I'd often stand up and examine the game on the demonstration board.  Sometimes it would also be fun to walk round and stand behind your opponent and view the game from his vantage point.  I remember playing against a lad called Paul Janew from Warwickshire (wonder what he's doing now), and at one stage I was stood behind his chair and he was stood behind mine, both of us examining the board from the other side! Sometimes it was done to intimidate the opponent, but more often than not it was done to make it a bit more interesting.

So although speech play wasn't done, there were lots of unspoken actions you could do to try and 'psyche-out' your opponent.

Lol, I think that would irk me a little, if Villain was stood behind me.

Good stuff, love this thread.

Boshi finally comes clean. How do you do it in the rsq :)

But unlike in poker, there's no real advantage to be gained from standing behind them. It's not like you can see their cards. 

Cheating, although not common, did happen.  I was playing a tournament and a lad I was playing kept on going to the toilet.  I thought he'd had too much lemonade or something, but apparently (after some investigate sleuthing from my older brother) it turned out that he was going to the toilet and chatting to some older boys who were giving him advice on the game and what he should be playing. 

I was a few pawns down, and towards the end of the middle-game it wasn't looking good. Queens had been exchanged, but we both had two rooks and three of the minor pieces each. It seemed to be slipping inexorably into an endgame that I'd lose due to my pawn deficit. However, I wasn't going to lie down and accept defeat.  So instead I decided to go all out and attack, and if it went wrong then I'd just lose in fewer moves.  So whilst I was mounting my attack, the opponent would still be popping out to get his advice on what to do next, and his friends watching over the game seemed to be quite confident.  I was always a big fan of the knight, and thought many people underestimated how devastating they can be in the right situations. After a beautifully executed attack that combined my two knights and remaining bishop, I managed to force him into a position that meant I could fork his king and one of his rooks.  With that material advantage I then went on to take him apart and won the game comfortably in the end. 

I guess he needed cleverer mates :D

The walking behind your opponent thing is a way of literally seeing the position from a different perspective, too. It can help some players spot what Villain is up to.  Same goes for looking at the game on a demonstration board (if you are fortunate to do so - thin, boshi!)

Any weekend tournament will try to keep noise down to the absolute minimum. You get ticking clocks (almost exactly the same noise as the constant clickety-clack of riffling chips) but that is largely the only noise to be heard, apart from coughs and sneezes and the occasional "j'adoube" (said when a player touches a piece only to adjust it more centrally on the square and not intending to move it to another) or "check". An ungentlemanly conduct could result in a warning from the arbiter (TD) and possible sanctions such as exclusion could follow in extreme cases.

Despite the fact that you can be warned for talking near a game in progress (even if not about that game or about chess), some people wear earplugs while playing. MP3 players are banned.

I've seen players complain about their opponent sniffing all the time and find their cold-ridden opponent take umbridge by increasing the rate and ferocity of his inhalations. Actual rows have started over such absurdities.

The worst I ever saw was a game involving a blind player (they have their own board, aside from the main board, which has wooden pieces that the player can feel. The black pieces have a brass knob on the top so that they can be distinguished. The player - and the opponent - will call out their moves). The blind player was resting while his opponent thought. Perhaps because of a long weekend's games and poor air con, he fell asleep. He had not realised that his opponent has moved (because his opponent hadn't told him). The opponent not only didn't tell him, he didn't wake him up and went for a walk. The poor blind player ran out of time, despite the arbiter waking him and noticing that the opponent had moved.

I don't know what the outcome was of it all off the board, other than I thought the opponent was not a particularly nice person.

Would the oppo get a little cross with me if I just turned the board round the other way?

I confess, that would absolutely do my head in.

There is a chap in my office who sniffs incessently, & I have to fight the urge to go & offer him a handkerchief. Or teach him some manners. I understand hay fever & the like, thats wholly understandable & accepted, but regular sniffing just grates so. 

Sniffing seems so much more common these days. Ugh.

I know some of you like puzzles and some of you like stories, so I have a bit of each for you today; a carvery for the mind.

Get your gold coins ready.

The United States has seemingly had someone in the upper echelons of every game since we gave them a key to the place 250 years ago. Although chess history is saturated in Soviets, there has almost always been a Yank in there somewhere, swinging like Scrappy-Doo (not like the Krankies). Fischer, Morphy, Reshevsky, Nakamura and Kamsky are all star-spangled-banner-waving chess heroes, the last two being current Super-GMs.

I have missed a big name, though: Frank Marshall.

Marshall was a fearsome sort. Born in New York City in 1877, but moving to Canada during his school years, Marshall was the best player in Montreal by the time he was 13, despite only having learned the moves three years earlier.

(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/21/article-1340520-0C6A360D000005DC-408_306x350.jpg)

Marshall was able to challenge for the World Title in 1907 against the best player of the age, Emanuel Lasker, but was beaten soundly. In those days, matches were decided by the player who was the first to win a specified number of games, rather than seeing a player get one up and try to draw the rest. Lasker won 8, drew 7 and lost none of the games he and Marshall played. Tough to get more convincing than that.

His greatest weapon was his sensational vision for combinations, sacrifices and tactics. If Petrosian were a precision sniper rifle, with telescopic sight and infra-red technology, Marshall would be a blunderbuss. 

This is how I see Marshall: there are people and teams in every sport who are brilliant at beating the patzers; they get ahead quickly and are showered and changed before even the greats are through to the next round. When it comes to playing the very, very best, though, they get found out. Like the big servers in tennis, who beat everyone until they come up against the big four.

His style allowed him to be a giant killer, too, of course, and I’d be doing him a tremendous disservice, were I not to confirm that he was a feared opponent and played absolutely everyone. He held the US Championship title for 27 years and finished halfway up in what is often cited as the greatest tournament of all time: the 1914 St Petersburg tournament. This is a man who was in the top ten players in the world for some time.

The position I am going to show you this evening is taken from his game against Levitsky, played in Breslau in 1912. Levitsky blundered and lost a knight early on. When he went for some counterplay, Marshall played a move that immediately won him the game.

It is widely reported that, on witnessing this move, the spectators showered the board with gold coins, so awestruck and amazed were they with what they had just witnessed.

Here is the position:

(http://www.worldchesslinks.net/puzzle_02_009.gif)

It is Marshall (black) to move. He has a rook hitting his queen now, so he needs to think about that. The rook on h3 can’t be taken by White at the moment, because then Black will play Nf3+, delivering check and picking up the queen.

For those of you who spot the killer blow, remember that you have to see ALL of the combinations. When you go to bet in poker, you should have in mind what you would do if the villain folds, calls or raises. Same applies in chess: you don’t play a move because you are hoping the villain misses something and, if he doesn’t, you’re knackered!

Once you are satisfied – or had enough – here’s a walk through.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PPsK1QKVao

The killer move is exactly 5 minutes in, although you might enjoy the build-up.

If Sid Waddell had been around a century earlier and had commentated on chess, he might actually have exploded.

Having spent the last post telling you his life story, it was remiss of me not to mention Marshall's legacy.

The Marshall Chess Club was set up by the man himself in NYC in 1915. A frankly absurd array of chess talent has grown up playing there and it was the second home of Brooklyn's finest...Robert James Fischer.

It is still going today, almost a century on.

Quite an easy one this time :D

Try telling that to Mr Levitsky!

Exclusive footage - possibly - to indicate that Cambridge Alex and his mates have stopped playing blackjack in their home games and have moved to playing chess...

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_g_ZbGquSM

Chess scandal!

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8362701/the-evolution-cheating-chess

Got linked to by a tech news summary thing I subscribe to. Loooong article, but the techie interest is near the bottom where it talks about locks that are supposed to prevent the note taking app from allowing other apps to run, and whether they were circumvented, or he just never ran the note app in the first place.

Hilarious, Rex!

You aren't allowed computers or electronic devices of any kind in competition so it's odd that this was allowed at all.

Computers play so differently to amateurs it is usually easy to spot with a trained eye. There was a controversy during Kasparov's match with Deep Blue where he said the computer must be being helped by a human, as it couldn't possibly have seen the move with a computer brain. Never proved, of course.

The Turk was a fascinating story - please make sure you read that part of it, thread people.

I know very little about the chess world, but the article implied this eNotate software was approved for use by the North American Chess Association. Each copy registered, checks made, locks for the software so everything else is disabled, etc.

Pretty brazen to get away with it, and the article implied he'd could have done it since middle of last year based on a rather steep change in ratings:
(http://main.uschess.org/datapage/ratings_graphR.php?memid=12865803)

No wonder he was Mr Smiley.

Wish my sharkscope looked like that...

Really bad at chess. Concentration levels not what they should be

The first round of the Grand Slam Final in Sao Paolo (the one in the glass cube I spoke about a few days ago) has been completed and here are the results:

Vishy Anand ½ - ½ Francisco Vallejo-Pons
Levon Aronian 1-0 Sergey Karjakin
Fabiano Caruana 1-0 Magnus Carlsen

A sensational day of chess. Karjakin (who was once the youngest ever Grandmaster at just 12) walked into a prepared line by Aronian and, in a phenomenally complicated game, came out second best.

Vallelo-Pons will be pretty happy with his day’s work against the World Champion.

Perhaps the big story is Carlsen being beaten; not because he lost – Caruana is no slouch with the White pieces – but the way he lost. The position was pretty even and there seemed to be little play in it - it was drawn. As the commentators were dismissing the game as being over, anticipating a handshake at any moment, it slowly became clear that Magnus was intending to grind it out; to test Caruana’s endgame ability. This is a hugely underrated technique; the fact that the position is level doesn’t mean you should have to agree a draw. If there is play in it, we shouldn’t fear playing on.

Carlsen prodded and poked, getting tiny edges in the position until – to the amazement of the grandmaster commentators – he had a winning position. It was a triumph of endeavour and sublime skill in equal measure. There was a problem, though; he was running short of time and, in trying to make the time control, he blundered, missing the coup de grace and was lost.

Such a shame, because it was the most wonderful advert for Carlsen’s style of chess.

From Caruana’s perspective, it’s a fabulous start to the tournament. He would have had a pretty unpleasant afternoon, as defending marginal positions - particularly ones you are convinced are drawn but where the other chap insists on playing on – is uncomfortable stuff.

Here’s the report from Chessbase, along with some pics:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8504

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-n9Y181ekmAI/UGDtKWoeJJI/AAAAAAACZ3g/jabBSprHQXg/s1600/Caruana+vs+Carlsen.jpg)


Early on in the Caruana-Carlsen game.

I was a day behind, in case anyone noticed, so here are the round two results:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8507

Round 2: Tuesday, September 25, 15:00h
Francisco Vallejo 0-1 Magnus Carlsen
Sergey Karjakin 0-1 Fabiano Caruana
Viswanathan Anand ½-½ Levon Aronian

Another Carlsen endgame masterclass, but this time with no mistake. His opponent was happy to swap off pretty early but Carlsen wasn't worried, as he had seen further into the position and was able to capitalise on a tiny edge. A bishop versus a knight in an endgame with few pawns is often slightly better but where the pawns are all over the place, there's a lot more to work out. Even against a top 50 player, Carlsen showed his class.

Game of the day for the spectators was Caruana's demolition of Karjakin. From a standard Ruy Lopez position, Caruana made a nice move to get his dark squared bishop active. The analyst of the games on the link above points out that you should always be looking to improve your position. Makes sense, but not something people naturally do, when they are happy with their position or where they think it's drawn.

If you double up early in a tournament, it is tempting to sit back, when you should be playing optimally every hand. Just natural really.

The spectacular bit of the game was Caruana's double sacrifice, where he gave up both of his rooks for bishops, in order to blow open Karjakin's fortress. Caruana's own bishops were suddenly very much in the game, slicing the White position in twain. Poor Mr King was most displeased.

Two wonderful examples of judgment by two of the game's in-form young players.

(http://www.deccanchronicle.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_horizontal/article-images/Anand.jpg.crop_display.jpg)

Anand drew the day's quiet game with Vallejo-Pons

Don't gamble and not into chess in anyway but Tikays Tips and this thread are the ones I look most forward to opening in the morning.

Very kind, smashedagain.

The thread is better for interaction and feedback, as there are a hundred different topics, angles and styles I can employ on here, if it is what people want. As it is, I try to find a balance between the "tech" stuff, the reports of tournaments, a few history lessons and player profiles, along with addressing questions people have.

As ever, happy to keep it running for as long as it is wanted.

Those two "Daily Reports" are beautifully written & balanced, Mr Spurs Bloke, even a chess ice-cream like me can understand.

Keep them coming please, they are little masterpieces in themselves.


Carlsen prodded and poked, getting tiny edges in the position until – to the amazement of the grandmaster commentators – he had a winning position. It was a triumph of endeavour and sublime skill in equal measure. There was a problem, though; he was running short of time and, in trying to make the time control, he blundered, missing the coup de grace and was lost.

There is always time for the players to relax and for the journos to get a "they are human" story.

This time, a game of basketball, organised by Lev Aronian.

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/Grand%20Slam%20Masters/basketball06.jpg)

Vallejo-Pons skins Karjakin.


(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/Grand%20Slam%20Masters/basketball16.jpg)

Carlsen on the ball, with Aronian in pursuit and Karjakin - perhaps literally - keeping guard.


(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/grand%20slam%20masters/basketball10.jpg)

Karjakin did get the ball, too, and apparently was an adept finisher

Article today in the Washington Post about that Deep Blue match.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/26/nate-silvers-the-signal-and-the-noise/

Round 3 saw three draws, so it's as you were.

The games were all pretty complicated, so I shalln't say too much. The one you might want to look at is Calrsen's game against Karjakin.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8509

As played, Carlsen was the one pressing for a win, but he and his opponent both missed a little tactic that would probably have turned the game in the Russian's favour.

Scroll through the game but it's the position after Carlsen's 46th move that you should focus your attention on. The idea of it is to attack the pawn on e5, which he is now threatening with both the took and the Knight, with only the Black king defending. If White moves next, he plays took takes pawn check (Rxe5+) and the king has to move away.

The key to black's killer blow here is that the knight is doing two jobs: it is also covering the pawn on b2.

So, if black takes on b2 with his rook, the knight takes back and now fxe4 leaves the rook attacked by the king but without any squares. He is trapped.

So White loses a pawn and that might be enough.

It is unusual for one player of this level to miss that but both is a real rarity.

They are human!

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/grand%20slam%20masters/caruana03.jpg)

Fabiano Caruana drew with

World Champion, Vishy Anand

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/grand%20slam%20masters/anand03.jpg)

Both conspicuously absent from the basketball.

Anand is more famously into astronomy.

Has anyone played the "immortal jellyfish variation" yet?

:dontask:

...or did they decide it was a load of old carp?

There is a game called "The Immortal", he says, not taking the bait.

I'll happily post about that another time.

I thought you were robbed!

He was.  It was painful to watch too.  Just need work on your QM bullying techniques and you'll win some day.   :D

Some more pictures of the action - no RSQ answers involved (unless I win one, of course)

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q6b9IY2X_2w/UGL8DwxyuBI/AAAAAAAAMxQ/QjMNOVmFXMM/s1600/general2.jpg)

One taken by the world's smallest photographer.



(http://armenianow.com/sites/default/files/img/imagecache/600x400/levon-aronian_5.jpg)

Armenia's David Beckham (ish): Lev Aronian

Round four continued the entertainment with the headline game of the tournament so far: World number 1 versus World number 2: Carlsen v Aronian.

As we have seen, Carlsen has been getting into good positions from the middle stages of the game but has struggled to seal the deal, often as a result of the pressures of making the time control. In Aronian, he finds a man himself tipped to be World Champion one day and the most likely person to challenge Carlsen’s number one ranking in the near future.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8516

The game itself was a familiar sight for Carlsen v Aronian games: an incredibly intense opening and middlegame that stems from a well-known and highly theorised first few moves (this time, a Ruy Lopez, Berlin Variation). There’s more in the game than I’d be able effectively to discuss – not least because it would take me hours to work it out myself! – but the key bit is Carlsen’s move 27, where he missed a tactic that Aronian could use to win. It’s the sort of thing a decent amateur would expect to spot during a game without any real direction (by that, I mean, it is easier to spot a tactic if someone tells you there is one there).

You can play through the games on the link above and, for those of you unfamiliar with how it works, the bold moves are the ones that were played, while the normal text moves are from the analysis – what could have been played instead.

It is interesting to speculate why, for example, someone might play the right move in a league match against me, but the World Number 2 would miss it against the World Number 1. Perhaps it goes back to our discussions on bluffing and the power of the mind; that there might be an assumption that Carlsen knows what he’s doing, so these great opponents don’t look for those moves. That seems a little simplistic to me, because these guys make moves like that naturally, but Aronian would play RxBf4 in a simultaneous display or a blindfold game against a random patzer a hundred times out of a hundred.

Sir Alex Ferguson complains that teams always play better at Old Trafford. Might the reverse be true against Magnus? Might some players not bring their A-Game when playing against a guy known to grind down the opposition? That is plausible. Everyone – even the very best – has a bogey player; someone who, no matter what the circumstances, you never seem to be able to beat.

Kramnik – the man who took Kasparov’s crown, no less – had a spell where he just couldn’t get close to Carlsen; every time he looked to be winning, Carlsen would wriggle out of it and they would draw. Every level game would see Carlsen carry on and outplay Kramnik in the endgame. Again, this is the man who beat Kasparov by playing solid openings and outplaying Kasparov in the end game…and he is being taken to school by a whipper-snapper.

No sport is exempt from these phenomena, but it is always interesting when you see a great player missing something a section of the crowd would probably have spotted.

The amusing part of these debates is the armchair commentators like myself. I watch a footballer on a billion pounds a week get round the keeper and put the ball wide of the goal and I laugh at him, joke about how rubbish he is and sing “What a waste of money” from the stands. If the manager were to pull me down and say “come on, son, you’re up”, in the same situation, I don’t get past the centre-half and, if I do, I don’t beat the keeper. We don’t always appreciate the movement that got the player into the position to miss. 

The same can be said in chess, where I have described a surprising oversight and gone into all sorts of debate over why it happened, but only mentioned in passing the incredible recollection and calculation required to get to that position.

In the other games, Caruana beat Vallejo-Pons comfortably and he is the clear leader after 4 games. Anand has not exactly lit up the tournament and this is a theme that has seemingly dogged him for a goodly while, now. His games aren’t boring, but they won’t get reported when compared to Caruana or Aronian’s flamboyance or Carlsen’s surgical beauty.

OK so you read this thread from time to time but the techy stuff of what is going on in the games is a few levels above you. You'd quite like to know a bit more, even though you still enjoy the stories.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21L45Qo6EIY

The first part of an explanation of how to play chess. It assumes you know how the pieces move and not much else. Hopefully, that's the level of a decent percentage of the thousands of people (ish) who read this thread every day.

Any questions, post them on here.

Perfect lesson for beginners. Answered a couple of questions I was afraid to ask and learnt so much.

Why do they use a clock and if your time runs out what happens?

Fantastic video. Will be watching the others very shortly. Really makes you realise how much of a fish you actually are.

Clocks are used in tournaments to control the length of a game. In a standard game, there will tend also to be a set amount of time to make a certain number of moves (a time control, like you might get in rallying or cycling). In the league games I play, by way of example, I get 75 minutes to make my first 30 moves and the other guy gets the same to make his first 30 moves. Once Black has made his 30th move, we stop the clocks and add 15 minutes to each and we have whatever is left to finish the game - so, if I've used an hour, I have 30mins left to make all my remaining moves, be that one move or 100 moves.

If you run out of time, you generally lose. The only exception is where the other guy doesn't have enough pieces left to checkmate you and then it is a draw. The vast majority of the time, tho, it's a loss.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8518

The final round of the first half of the Grand Slam saw all three matches drawn. Anand-Carlsen is generally drawn (keep an eye out on that one, betting fans) and, although Anand made a small mistake after the opening, it wasn't enough for Magnus to get the full point.

It was a similar story between Vallejo-Pons and Karjakin, with the Russian not being able to convert a small edge.

Caruana will be relieved on the plane home, as he was very much against it, playing an Aronian in full swing.  Aronian created weaknesses all over Caruana's position but missed a slew of chances to seal the W. The commentators were surprised, but probably not as much as Caruana, who will be thinking himself very fortunate to be where he is. Remember that he was losing against Carlsen, only for Carlsen to blunder and lose.

Half time report? Caruana leads but if Aronian or Carlsen are able to sort their killer instincts out in the gap between now and the resumption in Bilbao, I can see one of them mounting a serious challenge.

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/Grand%20Slam%20Masters/roundfive08.jpg)

Carlsen goes for a wander early in the game to see what openings the other players are playing. Will he be back on song for round 6 on 8 October?

Hi Tal,

Something that fascinates me is the age of Vishy. In short, he shouldn't really be that good at his age should he?

(Cue no tikay jokes please.....)

Hi Baron.

Anand is 42. It's not uncommon to see players going back through history of that sort of age. Even today, Kramnik is 37 and very much among the elite.

Part of the problem is that there are so many younger players in that top bracket. It makes it look like a young man's game, where it isn't quite that simple.

Gelfand was the challenger to Anand's crown this year and he's 44.

This might help: a list of the top 100 players in the world, along with their year of birth:

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men

Plenty of younger players but the more experienced heads (in what is, let us remember, a game that relies on memory as well as calculation) aren't without mention.

Last year, Caruana was beaten by a former World Title Challenger called Viktor Korchnoi. He is 80. Now THAT'S amazing.

Isn't the modern game more of a young man's game though? I can't remember where I read it now but I remember reading that as the game has evolved the average ELO ratings have increased, software has become a big part of the game somehow this was all related to a younger average age at the top.

I'm hoping for Carlsen in the 2013 WC match anywho.

Ratings increase all the time, but there are two main reasons for that:

1. The amount of knowledge/understanding of the game increases;
2. As the opposition's rating gets higher, you get a higher rating yourself for beating them.

It is worthy of note (although likely an anomoly soon to be rectified) that Kasparov still holds the highest ever rating.

All that said, I think there is some truth that the average age of the elite player is getting younger. There's more travelling, more sponsorship commitments, more technical research, more interest in the young players.

It's not a million miles from being analogous to poker. Unlike in poker, there has always been a young prodigy around: Morphy, Reschevsky, Capablanca, Spassky, Fischer, Carlsen. Maybe Wesley So will kick on from where he is now and become the first Philippino World Champion.

Anand has embraced technology more than most. Kramnik, too, in fairness.

Which brings me nicely onto my next question.

Is the ELO rating any good for comparing players in different eras?

Whilst I've read a lot of criticism about the rating, no one seems to have come up with a better one yet.

I guess then, that is even more incredible based on the fact he was playing against players with a lower average.

I'll answer your question this way: George Best in his boots with his training methods and his lifestyle would not be a match for Messi. What if he had a dietician, predator boots, a cupboard of personal trainers..?

There have been studies on who would be the greatest player of all time on a level playing field. They're fun for pub chats but I don't take too much notice.

The best player there has ever been IMHO is Garry Kasparov. However, the second best is much harder. Maybe Anand. Maybe Fischer. Maybe Alekhine, Capablanca, Tal...Carlsen? He is the second highest rated player of all time.

Absolutely.

Edit: I should just clarify what I mean by that bold bit. Kasparov's 2851 from the year 1999-2000 is higher than any other player has been able to reach. Carlsen is currently 2843.

Understood - it's so subjective but only to those who know the game well. Unlike most other sports where everyone has a fairly valid opinion.

Thanks for clarifying.

With the exception of the group in Brazil, many of the top players in the world have been playing in London for the past couple of weeks. Simpson's-in-the-Strand is an iconic place to host chess and has a rich history. But that, as they say, is for another time...

As even the hardiest chess followers would struggle to maintain interest levels - and as there is a much bigger and more interesting tournament in London in December, details of which I shall discuss nearer the date (or just Google London Chess Classic) - I chose just to focus on the Grand Slam Masters Final.

The Simpson's tournament (even saying it makes me think Professor Frink is involved) has former World Number 1 and World Title Challenger Topalov, Super-GM Nakamura, one of the finest young players Danish Giri, England's number 1 Michael Adams and a number of other top players.

With two rounds left, here is the cross table:

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/london/london-tab09.gif)

Anything rating-wise over 2700 is outstanding. These are the ones who tend to be labelled "Super-GMs", which, while not a title, highlights that a GM rating will generally be over 2500 and 200 points is a fair old whack.

Despite being number 4 in the world in the latest ratings, American Hikaru Nakamura has had a royal stinker of a tournament. In his latest game, he lost to Michael Adams after a pretty silly blunder for a player of his level.

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/london/london-gp45.jpg)

You will also notice the huge percentage of drawn games from the cross table, which never makes for great punditry. When so many players are of a similar standards, that can happen, of course, but it is also frustrating for the spectators, who - as do we all - like seeing blood. Metaphorically of course.

A thought occurred to me this morning: I was reading an interesting article in the Sunday Times about the rise of women in society compared to historical expectations, and how they are now dominating education (58% of university entrants), and a lot of new entrants to the professions now (new doctors and solicitors are majority female), but then you see pics of chess tournaments, and they are all blokes. I'm assuming that if a women was ranked high enough, she'd be playing, so I presume there are few (none?) high ranked women? Any in the world top 10 at the moment? Top 20? Has there ever been a female in the top 10?

Was wondering why this was. Obviously there are considerable historic reasons for few women, but I suspect these days it is more likely to be neurological reasons - it's long been accepted that women's brains are different (on average), and I suspect the differences generally give men the advantage when it comes to chess.

What are your thoughts?

It's the same reason why there aren't many top women poker players or video gamers - women have better things to do with their time. :D

There's probably some truth in that, Jon :)

Jon will know that junior chess is much more even until you get to 11ish and then the girls' interest tends to wain. No idea why but that's what seems to happen. Whether boys are physiologically better-tuned for calculation and girls are better for more artistic ventures is a moot point, I suppose.

One exception in recent times is Judit Polar, one of three excellent chess sisters. A Hungarian, she is currently world number 40 (at 2705) but has been much higher. Her highest rating (2735, from October 2005) would see her today comfortably in the world top 20. I believe she was actually in the top 10 at that time. There's little between 50th and 15th really, though.

One possible is Hou Yifan who is playing a huge amount of chess at the moment and consistently climbing. She is the top girl in the world (born in 1994) and is 13th best when the boys are added. At 2605, she is a whole 100 points behind Judit Polar, but I would expect her to close the gap a little in the years to come.

All things in context: she was born the same year as Anish Giri, who is the world number 24 at 2730.

on Chess.com they have a feature which means you can have a game analysed by the computer which has a nominally high rating.

If anybody's interested in a bit of board analysis, what would your strategy be as white? or as black?

(white to move)
(http://i564.photobucket.com/albums/ss82/beloved_ltd/ChessAnalysisMove30.png)

IF anyone is bothered I could give the comparison to what me and my opponent actually did - and also what the computer thought we should do.

With a very preliminary analysis, I think white could comfortably secure a draw, but the same-squared bishops would benefit black slightly. Not sure white can force a win, with the rook/knight material disadvantage - would have to look at it in a lot more detail, and that would take some time.

... Be3

That would win white a pawn, and also enable an exchange with the knight for black's bishop - making the draw a lot easier, and possibly opening up some options with white's linked pawns against a lone pawn down the queen's side.

Nice idea. Would like to hear more views - no analysis too basic; no ideas too silly.

For those of you who want live action, here is a link to some live webcam streams of the games in the final round of the London grand Prix tournament I mentioned the other day:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8526

If Be3 doesn't Rf3 cause all kinds of problems for white?

Still thinking about this because I'm definitely in the 'basic' category but it looks like curtains to me.

If your point is that Black is attacking the Knight and the bishop, White can get around that by playing NxBf8+ and then moving the bishop away.

Doesn't black then just take the knight and be 2 rooks vs bishop and rook?

I seem to remember a previous post where you'd said that generally if you're in a material deficit you should be looking to keep as many pieces in play as possible.

Bear with me. I think this is the first time I've ever tried to think more than 2 moves ahead :D

There are no stupid questions, so don't worry.

You're right. There is already a material deficit, so the swaps don't change that.

Black is doing well, but it's a challenge to win it because the bishop in an open position can cover a lot of ground. These positions can end up in a draw, especially where Black runs out of pawns to force home.

You'd want to be Black, but the question is what are your tactics? How do you look to defend as White?

...and what would the computer do?!

That's a good point - you've pretty much suggested how white should continue. What about black - how does black win it?

Ok I'm going to give this a go. Never done this before so we'll see how it goes. I don't think I've ever made a move in chess that's taken more than a minute to think through so it'll give you an idea of where I'm normally coming from.

Initial thoughts as white are that I need to keep my pieces in tact. I wouldn't mind swapping a knight or bishop for a rook but black is unlikely to offer that up any time soon.

So I need to protect my knight which is under immediate pressure which suggests to move it. If I move it though my bishop is under threat so I can only move it to c7 thus threatening the rook. Rc8 then means I have to hop straight back at which point Rc6 means I have to trade off a piece.

So in order to avoid a trade off I have to put pressure on f2. Black won't want to swap his rook for my knight or bishop so this could buy me some time.

Actually whilst typing this I think I've seen a plan. Nf4 check. If Kxg5 Nh3 pins the king and rook. If Rxf4 we nab the rook. Hmmmm. Cancel that. Kf5 seems to ruin my life. Oh man!!!! I think I need to go to bed!!!!

Right then. Back to the original plan. Got to move that bishop to pressurise the rook thus buying my knight some time. Only 2 options. e3 or h4.

Ok something else has just occurred whilst thinking this one through. What does Rg1 do for me? If Rxe6 Bh4 gives me a rook for my knight. You know what, my brain's fried. I'm going with Rg1 and hoping that he doesn't spot what I'm up to. Can't see him resisting that seemingly free knight.

My head hurts :(

Meh. Kh5 muffs this as well.

Might just have to copy Boshi but without really knowing why.

I think as black I'd be looking to get my rooks linked up on row 2 so we can pressurise the king and maybe take out a few pawns.

This suggests that as white I need to prevent black from linking up his rooks on row 2 where they can pressurise my king and maybe take some of my pawns.

Do I win?

Be3 - Re2
Nxf8 - Rxf8
Bxa7 (the pawn Dan was after) - Ra8

White now has to move his bishop then Rxa2

Doesn't this position put white in a spot of bother?

Have I really just spent the last 2 hours of my life trying to figure out this chess problem?

 ;stickaforkinme;

If... Re2, then Nf4+ and black loses a rook for the bishop in the exchange.


On my phone, so might be missing stuff.  But Rg1 for white could be a giggle...

Oh yeah Rg1. That's what i meant when I said Ra7. Oops.

Great read, boshi and EvilPie. This is the curse of playing the game: you spend a lot of time being 75% confident and very little time above that! Let me try this another way:

Black has just played (let us assume) Re8 and we are White.

A good think should have 3 stages:

1. Why did Villain do that?
2. What am I going to play?
3. Have I missed anything?

1. Is nice and easy if we assume Re8 was the last move - he is attacking our knight and knows that, if we just plonk him on say c5, he can take our bishop.

3. Is just our final check to make sure whatever move we are going to make isn't a seismic blunder.

2. Is where the magic happens. In his great book, Think Like a Grandmaster, the Russian Alexander Kotov suggested we look at each piece and at all the squares they can go to. Once we've seen that, we should be able to whittle the moves down to 3 or 4 possible ones (this is easier if one of your pieces is under immediate threat). Then we play through those moves one by one and evaluate the position. Having done that, we choose the best move, knowing that we have looked at every move available. It's surprisingly quick as a process; much more thorough and gives you more confidence that you have found the best move.


That said, then, what are your options? Explain why they're on the list and give me a couple of moves for each line so that we can assess the position. Then we will have say 3 or 4 possible positions and tell me why one is better than the others.

If I told you most of the best players in the world have a similar system to this, would you believe me?

Still can't see much further than Be3. Not keen on Rg1, as I think any attacking threat fizzles out quickly and leaves white exposed to a back rank mate.

Tal, what are your thoughts? What line looks optimum for white?

As for black's strategy, well that's very much reactivate as white has the initiative in terms of being ableto dictate the next few moves at least.

Will be interested to hear what happened in Jon's game, but, having had a decent look at the position, my thoughts are:

1. Black is winning - seems easy to say as he has a material advantage, but White has a fair bit of play. White is playing to draw the game, short of something spectacular.
2. Black wants to keep the g-pawn if he is going to win (unless White makes a big mistake and loses more material - It is important always to assume that your opponent will play the best move on the board; never play a move hoping he misses a better response because even the fish have it sometimes). The key to this - the winning position, if you like - will be either queening a pawn or winning the bishop for it in the process. That's how we're most likely going to win.
3. Black wants to get the two rooks working to help that pawn.
4. The knight will likely swap off for the black bishop very shortly, as the position would be even better for Black if that got active.
5. White can win the pawn on a7 but Black can play Ra8 and win the white a-pawn. This will probably happen in the game, because White wants to swap off the pawns to stand a chance of drawing.
6. There will be loads of tactics once those rooks start flying round the board and both sides will need to be very careful they don't fall into a trap.
7. It will take ages to win it!

Am I close?

Bonsoir, mes amis!

We’ve seen some of the biggest names in chess history (with a few notable exceptions) but I’m going to take you back much further than we’ve been so far.

François-André Danican Philidor was by far and away the best player in the world for most of his playing career – perhaps as much as half a century – in the mid-1700s. His name lives on in both an opening (The Philidor Defence) and in an endgame position that is used in studies.

He was a remarkable figure in chess history because of just how much he moved the game forward. I have discussed previously that, every now and then, someone comes along and blows everything else away; they move the game forward a couple of notches without pausing for breath and everything that is done after that is done with reference to their work. Philidor is precisely one of those events in chess history.

M. Philidor was born in 1726 to a musical family (perhaps CambridgeAlex knows about one or more of the Philidors?) and himself became a competent composer.

(http://www.chessville.com/images/people/Philidor%20the%20musician%20Bust%20on%20Paris%20Opera%20house.jpg)

This is his bust at the Opera Garnier in Paris.

Little was understood about chess back then, although it was a common pursuit among the higher classes in Paris. Philidor probably learned to play as a choirboy in Louis XV’s own choir, while in what would now be infant school.

He took the game up more regularly from about 14 and he found himself playing frequently at the great Café de la Régence.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Cafe_de_la_Regence_inside.jpg/300px-Cafe_de_la_Regence_inside.jpg)

(http://www.chessnc.com/webapp/cnc/gallery/history/cafe-de-la-regence.jpg)

It is understood, while there, he played a “friend from New England”, who we know as Benjamin Franklin.  Philidor was schooled by the best player in France at the time but he went from being bludgeoned by him to beating him in a little over three years.

As was the custom for the best part of a hundred and fifty years afterwards, the best players would travel to play matches against the best from other areas and Philidor is recorded as having played matches against the Syrian player Phillip Stamma (absolutely rangemerging him) and the English number one, Sir Abraham Janssen.

The player considered the greatest contender at the time was a M. de Legal, but when he was beaten in a match in 1755, Philidor was roundly hailed as the finest player in the world without dispute.

After then, Philidor’s life was largely spent in London and he made his living playing chess from the Salopian Coffee House in Charing Cross, as well as the St James Chess Club.

We have seen some tremendous feats by players in the last Century in blindfold chess, but Philidor was probably the first to embrace it as a legitimate way of playing visitors. The story goes that he played three players simultaneously and allowed the third to play against him with a pawn advantage (in other worse, Philidor would take a pawn of his off before the game started – say the king’s bishop’s pawn) and still won all three. Spectators were so amazed, they were asked to sign affidavits to verify to others what they had witnessed. Could you imagine something so wonderful?

Sadly, Eighteenth Century France was not the most comfortable of places for someone who had a bit of money. Philidor was banished from the realm and so his later life was spent in England. He moved here permanently at 65 and it was here that he died in 1795. He is buried in St James, Piccadilly.

Philidor’s influence on the game was much more than his ability. He understood something that no one had appreciated before: the power of the pawn.

He wrote a book that was the lead authority on chess for a hundred years and, in it, he said:

« Le pion, c’est l’âme des échecs »

The pawn is the soul of chess

No one had put much value in pawns, but he realised how powerful a strong pawn centre could be and how strong a chain of them marching forward could be. It was visionary.

Here’s the man himself, anyway:

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ON5S6ZeYk9o/TtjZTeKBWcI/AAAAAAAAE_M/srH47d1SRi8/s1600/contre+gambit+philidor.jpg)

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1257921

A game where Philidor beats a gentleman called Captain Smith (one can only imagine...)

Watch how he uses his pawns to create space on the queenside and then uses the g-pawn and the h-pawn to open up the White King.



I've just found this picture and had to share! Which one is Philidor? Blindfold chess, ladies and gentlemen:

(http://www.blindfoldchess.net/images/uploads/philidor_exhibition.jpg)

I'll go through every suggestion tonight - but not altogether surprisingly - Tal does the best, in particular


5. and 6. are right as well, but end up not being relevant to the game as black screwed up, also it's not strictly connected to the analysis as it's related to this blunder - but...
;D

Thank goodness I was close! Could have been the closing post of the thread otherwise :)

In all seriousness, that was a very difficult position. Sometimes, at least at our level, you have not to worry about who is winning and just carry on playing the best move you can. In that case, you should almost always look to be attacking. The best way to draw a game is to attack because the villain has to withdraw his pieces to defend, which means you are less under threat.

It doesn't mean being gung-ho but active pieces, a good pawn structure (defending each other or able to do so; a passed pawn if possible - that is one the villain doesn't have a pawn he can take or stop it with - like the g-pawn in our study) and sensible, forward movement.

Great fun, Jon. Thanks for sharing.

I'd be confident as white that I could force a draw in that game. 

In practice, this might well be what happens a fair amount of the time. In theory, I'd say it's a winning game for Black. You would want to be winning this over half the time.

When the chess.com computer does free analysis it looks like it analyses the moves and if it's:

(a) sub-optimal it calls it an inaccuracy (?)
(b) a mistake it calls it a ... well, mistake (??)
(c) a big mistake it calls it a blunder (?!)

And it shows what it considers to be the next 5 most optimal moves for both sides

At the stage above I think it's fairly clearly that Be3 is the optimal move

My (white's) general strategy at this point is to try and use all my pieces to shepherd my pawns up for promotion - complicated by having to respond to blacks moves


Is where I'm coming from

The computer analysis more or less follows this - but gives black the initiative, rather than just trying to keep hammering white in the corner it moves his pieces over to position them to guide it's pawn down for promotion. Although it's quite hard to follow.

What black actually played after Be3 was to continue attacking with






That is Re2 - and I did play Nf4+ - but there was a bit of a screw up on both sides; bit of a blood bath and the end result is I lost both my bishop and my knight - but because black messed up even more than I did he lost a rook and a bishop.

It took me a while to remember what my next strategy question is but I've remembered now I'll post it by itsellf

white: A rook and 3 pawns v black: a rook and 2 pawns

if both sides work out that without the other side intefering you can both race a pawn and get them promoted, do you let your opponent get his pawn promoted queen in exchange for being able to get your pawn promoted to a queen?

Also - black promotes first so is a pawn down, but with the initiative


EDIT: I've played 40 long games (3 days per move) so now I'm analysing - hence the burst of strategic thinking

Sorry to ask a super noob question... but what and how do the moves you guys are describing mean?


I dont understand Bf3 or MW19 seems like a postcode! :D

The 64 squares are numbered by the column and row of the board. A-H for the columns starting from the left; and 1-8 for the rows starting from the bottom. So the first square in the bottom left corner is a1, and the top right square is h8 (always done from white's point of view).

Then capital letters are used for the pieces. So B=bishop, N=knight, K=king, etc.

So, Be5 means Bishop to e5.

Thanks, figured it was something like this... but i did wonder about the two 'views' and when you refer to which piece.. which rook etc..

If both your rooks (for example) can both move to the same square then you also add the square it started on.

Pawns don't get a letter, so if it just says a square number (like e5) then it means pawn to e5

Hi Jon. This is a difficult question to answer because it depends so much on the position.

In general, queening a pawn each makes the position much more complicated (because the queen has so many possible moves for you to work out) and the side that is ahead will generally want to keep it simple; both queening would tend to give the other guy a chance he doesn't deserve.

Endgames are more difficult than players realise because they are full of little tactics. The fact that Magnus Carlsen has been beating the best players in the world in level endgames is proof of this.

If the pawns are all on the same side of the board, the position might be a theoretical draw. By all means carry on, but be aware that, if the villain plays well, it might lead to shaking hands. Make him find the right moves, though, if you want.

And thank you for your examination of the position. Certainly encouraged some debate.

There are different ways of recording the moves and this is the modern way, called Algebraic Notation. Wiki amongst others explains how to do it

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_notation_(chess)

http://chess.about.com/od/tipsforbeginners/qt/ReadNotation.htm

When I first started playing, it was either descriptive or algebraic - and it was either or that was used, but not both together. I naturally combined the two in my notation as it seemed the obvious thing to do, and now it's pretty standard.

I remember being able to read chess notation of a game and be able to follow the whole game in my head without a board. I reckon I'd get lost after five moves now.

I'm not as good as I used to be either, Kinboshi. I used to be able to recall games but I struggle now.


A thought-provoking article on economics from a chess grandmaster turned economist Ken Rogoff. (This is the man who played Carlsen for a bit of fun on his sponsor-led visit to New York a few weeks back)

Cliffs: the birth of the computer age raised questions about whether it would put people out of jobs. It didn't. In chess, computers have changed the game and, rather than putting trainers out of a job, they're now paid more than ever, because they are able to utilise the resources better than anyone else.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8534

Forget Rastafish's "table talk". In days gone by, there were players who would stare at their opponent and drive fear into their hearts. We've heard about Alekhine, but here are some others:

(http://www.chessbase.com/columns/levpics/tal_1960.jpg)

Mikhail Tal


(http://files.chesscomfiles.com/images_users/tiny_mce/alexandrumag/garry_kasparov.jpg)

Garry Kasparov, who has openly discussed his use of mind games.

(http://files.chesscomfiles.com/images_users/tiny_mce/victhestick/fischerpic.jpg)

Bobby Fischer
 

(http://www.echecs-photos.be/BobbyFischer-photos/slides/1966%20Bobby%20Fischer%20vs%20Fidel%20Castro.jpg)

Of all the people to give the death stare to...


OK this one has no world champions in, but points for identifying the three people in the in the picture (I only know the one watching and the one on the left...)

(http://files.chesscomfiles.com/images_users/tiny_mce/fleiman/pictures/Lenin.jpg)

Sensational stuff in the latest round of the Grand Slam Masters Final, as we are now in Bilbao for the second half.

It was the leader against the World Number 1, with Caruana taking on Carlsen. The Italian/American had been the victor in their game in Sao Paolo, as Carlsen had tried too hard to force an edge, despite getting it, when he blundered. This time, the position was level and looked all but drawn. Again, Carlsen pressed. Again, he found an edge but there was to be no let-up this time, with the Norwegian showing a textbook finish to the game that makes commentators’ lives tremendously easy.

The other two games were the equivalent of nil-nils, with no real movement either way.

So, Carlsen closes the gap to Caruana’s lead as we go into the next game. Carlsen will have white against the bottom seed (Vallejo-Pons), so he could be the chipleader this time tomorrow.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8538

Also, any ideas on the people in the pictures above?

A more detailed analysis of Carlsen-Caruana is available now:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8538

The most wonderfully written prologue on this page, too; how does Carlsen tackle the fact that every player nowadays in that elite bracket has done hours of opening preparation, so advantages are hard to come by?

Today's fixtures are:

Round 7: Tuesday, October 9, 17h
Magnus Carlsen v Francisco Vallejo-Pons
Fabiano Caruana v Sergey Karjakin
Levon Aronian v Vishwanathan Anand

I am expecting Aronian v Anand to be a draw (it often is) and for Caruana-Karjakin to go the same way (after a loss, I expect Caruana to take no risks and be content to share the point). Carlsen might see this as his best chance (White against the bottom seed), so I am expecting a long game. Will he get enough to lead or will the home player score a shock victory?

(http://files.chesscomfiles.com/images_users/tiny_mce/fleiman/pictures/Lenin.jpg)

Chap watching - kibitzing - is Gorky.

Chap on the left is Lenin.

Not sure who Mr Yawny is.


Another player I shall be profiling in the future is Mikhail Botvinnik and he was a "reg" with the Soviet Elite (if that isn't an oxymoron)

Hot off the press!

Round 7 has been completed and here are the games:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8539

Incredibly, it all went as I predicted (if only this were what happens when I put money on outcomes), with Aronian and Anand never really getting going, Caruana seemingly struggling to find the sparkle he had in Brazil and sharing the point with Karjakin...and Carlsen beating Vallejo-Pons to share the lead.

Carlsen's win was a king's side attack but not the sort we see in the ferocious attacks of Tal, Shirov and the like; it is more composed but equally effective.

The modern player has tremendous calculational ability and has no fear of complicated positions that seem to offer the Villain a chance for some counterplay. That isn't how they see it, though; they are for the mostpart happy that they aren't in any danger.

Tomorrow's games could well see three draws, which is what happened in the third round in Sao Paolo. Carlsen and Karjakin often have exciting games but there is rarely a victor.

Anand is starting to get silly with his draws. There isn't much to take from his games at the moment and, for a truly gifted player, it's a shame that he isn't showing more oomph.

Here is the pic for the Bilbao leg opening ceremony. Can you remember which is which?

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aVYlygN4T14/UHQmbzgCGpI/AAAAAAAANz4/YcgMpUw801U/s1600/bilbao1.jpg)

Silly me! The caption of course reads: "Spain holds its first chess-themed Guess Who? Championship"


On a personal note, I have a match tomorrow night, playing as a reserve for the team above mine. There's a chance depending on board order that I could play a wildly attacking player - probably the chess equivalent of Mad Turk. Not everything he does is sound but his ability is often underestimated and any whiff of a chance for blood will be mercilessly seized.

I have two possible counter-strategies: step up to the plate and back my own ability to go toe-to-toe, engaging in a slugfest (from baseball to boxing and back again  - sorry); or to play on the counter by playing solidly and inviting him on, intending to create small weaknesses in his position which I can exploit as the game progresses.

As with poker, it is rarely a good idea to lock in your strategy beforehand in chess, although preparation is never a bad thing.

The games of Round 8 have yet to be reported in detail but I am aware that all three games were drawn (two sets of predictions in a row...weeeeee). So, it's as you were.

Some photos from the official site (Photos by Manu de Alba):

(http://www.bilbaomastersfinal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/20121011-07-pool-3-%C2%AC-ronda-133x200.jpg)

The anticipation is almost too much to bear for Magnus.

(http://www.bilbaomastersfinal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/20121011-02-pool-3-%C2%AC-ronda-200x133.jpg)

And now they are underway.


 It is a common feature - especially for Carlsen and Aronian - that the players will have a wander after about half an hour to see what the other guys have been playing in the other games.

(http://www.bilbaomastersfinal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/20121011-05-pool-3-%C2%AC-ronda-133x200.jpg)

(http://www.bilbaomastersfinal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/20121011-06-pool-3-%C2%AC-ronda-133x200.jpg)

I've mentioned this before but Anand is in a bit of a rut. He can't seem to win - or lose - a game. Eight consecutive draws is a little silly. It certainly can happen of course but a player who has been known throughout his career as creative and attacking is showing none of that now.

I would expect him to draw the remaining games from this tournament, in all honesty. He wouldn't want to lose as he'll finish below 50% and he's not showing signs he'll be winning any.

Tomorrow's game is against Carlsen and they generally draw their games.

What has made such a dramatic change in style?

On a personal note (to finish off this long set of posts), I found out yesterday afternoon that I was to be playing a different chap to the one I expected. This one I had a bit of a run in with last year, where he basically accused me of pulling a stroke. It was a misunderstanding but the chap is into his late 70s at least and quite frail. He was not to be convinced and left our club last year claiming that he was giving up chess.

In preparation for last night's game, I had a look at last year's record and learned some variations for the opening he plays as Black against 1.e4. He is a surprisingly strong tactical player and my equal in rating. He has been a much stronger player so was going to be a threat. I was satisfied that he would make a certain seven moves to start with. By preparing three possible lines, depending on what he did after move 7, I had the bases covered.

And so it proved. The game and the tactics were close to a game played in Illford in 1964 between two strong Brits of the day, Penrose and Clarke. It sounds like it was easy but far from it. It took a lot of hard work to make the right moves and keep the pressure on. I cramped my opponent, pushing him back to defend his position.

The trick then is to avoid letting him exchange pieces and not to open the position up with pawn swaps. Instead, I gradually got my pieces into the best positions and made threats against a few of his pawns, each time either forcing another pieces out of position or making him commit to a pawn move that would leave a gap behind.

After a threat to blast open his defences with a sacrifice, he had to concede more ground and his weaknesses became to sizeable and numerous. I found an elegant checkmate to wind the game up, which is always pleasing.

I know all this sounds general but I hope it explains a bit about the thought process.

Learning opening moves by rote is all well and good but there is a risk. What happens if the villain deviates? Say you know that villain will likely play 1.e4 and then king's knight out and then king's bishop out. So you learn what to do about that. What happens when he plays 1.e4 but then plays the bishop before the knight? Do you play the second move you were going to play? Or do you play the move you were going to play after he moved the knight (changing your move order)? Or do you play something different?

Let's make a poker comparison: Tikay says on Sky Poker one night that if a guy check-calls on a two-suit flop, then check calls the blank turn, then leads the blank river, he might well have missed his flush draw. You remember that. Good. You play at DTD one afternoon and you come up against Tal at the tables, who does just that. Now, you snap call with 22 and I show top set (hero, I know...). What you didn't take into account was that there was another player in the pot so I was leading into two players rather than one. A subtle change that might make no difference or might make all the difference.

Understanding > Knowledge

Can you post up your move list from your recent game? I'm sure like many I'm very intrigued.

Good question, Baron.

The obvious answer would be confidence. However, he hasn't played well for some time and - from an outsider's perspective like what I have - he's been in decline for maybe 18 months.

His world championship series was criticised for being a bit dull but it was as much Gelfand's preparation neutralising Anand's game as anything else.

Is his interest in the game waning? That's hard to know. He isn't showing signs of that in press conferences and he is playing plenty of tournaments.

Maybe he's just got a bit stale. That can happen if you play too much and he is in demand.

He is still a very, very strong chess player.

It seems today's players all get on very well. What are the greatest rivalries in chess in it's past and in today's game in your opinion?

Thanks Tal.

Karpov v Korchnoi are my Liverpool v Manchester United rivalry from my childhood.  But the biggest one for me is Fischer v Spassky.

Who was Liverpool?

Karpov, obviously - he won ;)

(He had a bigger rivalry with Kasparov though really)

:D

Were you firmly in one camp I mean?

Yeah I've studied most of Karpov v Kasparov, mbsfn to be a Russian chess fan at that time.

Kasparov was the current Barca side.

Simply the best ever, by a mile imo.

Capablanca and Alekhine didn't get on too well and are regarded as two of the all-time greats in their own right. That would be your Liverpool v Man U, I reckon.

Fischer v the USSR would probably be the greatest rivalry. He was a man on his own at times against eight Soviet players. There were odd results and draws that meant that a Soviet player won and Fischer was never backward in coming forward to put his opinion in. He frequently said the Russians conspired and colluded. This would have been the mid sixties, so Botvinnik, Tal, Petrosian, Keres, Kotov, Smyslov, Spassky and a number of others, with Fischer the only threat sometimes.

With the Cold War in full swing and chess just about the National sport of Russia under communism, can you imagine how important victory was for both sides?

Will do but will prob have a look at it myself to see whether there was anything interesting I missed first. Will put it up in the next week.

Post up the whole game, bit by bit, and let us amateurrecdonkfish examine it :D

Lol will ensure it's there warts and all. If I have made an error, it's more instructive if I explain what it is and why it's an error :)

There won't be any editing. It won't be like an American war movie where the truth that the story is "based on" gets horribly contorted for the Director's own ends (U571 etc), I promise.

There's a "player profile" that goes with the official tournament coverage. Here is Anand's:


Player portraits

Viswanathan Anand – the five-time champion wants more

There are already irrefutable arguments which confirm that Viswanathan Anand is one of the best chess players of all time: five-time world champion in all possible formats (knockout, tournament and long duels), and his career is not over yet. At the age of 42 (and after becoming a first-time dad in 2011) he has just recaptured the throne and is looking for more victories. One of the few that elude him is a win at the Masters Final.

Anand works very hard on his technique, between six and nine hours a day. He probably lacks that ‘killer instinct’ that distinguishes Fisher, Karpov and Kasparov, but he looks after his physique as much as or even more than they do. “Yes, years ago I realized that it was important. I am convinced that my two hours a day at the gym when I am at home are essential in order to withstand the wear and tear of the tournaments”, he explains, in perfect Spanish. As for psychological balance, apart from his family and chess he is also passionate about astronomy and economy.

The amazing speed of his reflexes, which allows for a display of brilliant moves in tenths of a second, frustrated his opponents since his first appearance at Linares in 1991, where an entire game took him scarcely half an hour. “The thing is, if I think, I don’t play well,” was his peculiar explanation. Today Anand maintains the same humility he had back then and is highly regarded in India, where in 2000 he was named Sportsman of the Millennium by popular vote and paraded in a horse-drawn carriage, with Chennai’s (formerly Madras) traffic cut off by a crowd which enthusiastically mobbed him. He once underwent a test to show that the right side of his brain, the side that controls intuition, is that of a genius, to which he replied, “I couldn’t care less about my mindpower”.

After his great victories, he always first thanks his wife Aruna, who he says “always takes perfect care of a thousand details”, and next he thanks his main trainer, Peter Heine Nielsen from Denmark. “I owe many of my World Championship victories largely to his magnificent work”. Karpov and Kasparov were never that generous to the people who aided them.

After toppling Topalov at the Sofia championship in 2010, Anand made it clear that he was still hungry for success saying, “The day you get used to victory is the end. I am as happy now as the first time, especially because this has been my most difficult victory, in which I suffered until the end. I remain with the ambition and especially the will to keep enjoying chess. Logically, winning is a big part of that, and I suppose that one day it will end. Nevertheless, age 40 is not a special number for me; it is simply the one that comes after 39. My professional attitude for the next two years is the same one that I had before my duel with Topalov”.

Subsequent events have been consistent with these words, although not without suffering. For Anand it had to come down to quick games (after the 6-6 of the twelve assaults at normal speed) to defend his title against the very tough Israeli Boris Guelfand at Moscow’s Tretiákov Museum this spring. He is already 42 years old but his opinion has not changed. “I see no reason to retire now,” he says.

Anand will continue to stir up excitement in a country with 1.1 billion inhabitants. “There are already more than 700,000 Indians receiving chess classes; of those, 200,000 are enrolled in my World Champion’s Academy. I hope to contribute to increasing that number”.

Just read a few quotes about Anand by his fellow players. Great stuff. Seems like one of chess' good guys and a genuinely great all time player to boot.

Well, a fantastic denoument to the Grand Slam it most certainly was.

In the penultimate round, Carlsen stole the show with arguably the game of the tournament against Anand.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8547

If I may be so bold as to suggest you have a gander at the video on the above link, you will be talked through the action by GM Danny King. Carlsen played a move - as you will see - that stunned the crowd. What it lacks in objective drama (unlike, say, that Marshall queen move we saw a couple of weeks back), it more than makes up for in brilliance; the key to what makes it special is that it isn't an obvious move. That sounds silly. Let me explain: Carlsen is attacking and has a clear plan that those watching - even the GM commentators, perhaps even the World Champion opposite - will be expecting him to pursue. However, Magnus has found a way to unlock the Black defence with a subtle and delicate change in the position, which turns a level game into a completely won one. That he played this move almost immediately shows he had it prepared for a few moves and that makes it even more spectacular. Please watch the video and let Danny explain it better than I could.

Caruana also won, which meant that it was all down to the last round, with the two of them at the top and Aronian just half a point behind. With Carlsen playing Aronian and Caruana against the bottom seed Vallejo-Pons, it was the Italian-American who would be the paper favourite, even if Carlsen had course, distance and momentum in his favour.

Carlsen also had the opportunity, if he were to beat Aronian as Black, to get enough rating points to overcome Kasparov's highest ever rating, which would be headline news.

Results, games and reports are here:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8550

It was three draws, albeit very different types of draws, that brought an end to the tournament. Carlsen had to do a bit of defending against a stern test from Aronian, but passed with the colours we are now used to seeing. Caruana had already decided he wasn't going to press for a win and agreed a draw with Vallejo-Pons in no time at all. It's pretty disappointing to see that, especially with the sponsors and fans paying good money to see these guys playing. However, putting a different spin on it, Caruana could see that Aronian was the one with the edge, so decided to take half a point himself and, with it, the clubhouse lead.

Anand gave it a better bash than he has all tournament, but Karjakin held well to hold him to a draw.

This meant that Carlsen and Caruana finished first equal, but the title would need to be decided by two blitz games between them (one of each colour). Carlsen won the first by virtue of the same opening Kramnik famously used to beat Kasparov for the world crown (the Berlin Defence) in a long game and he won the second by virtue of Caruana making a mistake in his opening recollection.

2-0. Carlsen takes the title.

Some cracking pics from the last day event, which you'll also find on the link above.

Aronian deep in thought. This is a common pose for chess players from 7-70:

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/grand%20slam%20masters/roundten-04.jpg)


It is also pretty common to see one player leaning back and relaxed, while the other is forward and fighting to survive.

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/grand%20slam%20masters/roundten-02.jpg)

I love the whole picture. The crowd in the background, the fact they are separated by the sheet of glass, the apparent serenity of it all.

And the final picture. Magnus in vitory hat:

(http://www.chessbase.com/news/2012/grand%20slam%20masters/roundten-09.jpg)

Caruana beating Aronian seemed to get little coverage considering the feat. He's had a hell of a tournament.

Where is the best place to watch live with a decent GM's commentary?

TIA

That's a fair point, as it was a good win. Caruana is the form horse in world chess right now. He is playing a lot and getting fantastic results. It is probably a bit like Everton (he says carefully) doing so well in the league atm. The results are good and the performances excellent, but it is the manner of the way Chelsea are winning that is getting the headlines.

Caruana's wins in this tournament have been a mixture of solid wins like the Aronian game and benefiting from some pretty big mistakes from the opposition like the Carlsen game in Sao Paolo.

It was the manner of Carlsen's win the other day that set the tongues wagging.

As for your other question, the Play Chess server is a subscription site but has live commentary on the big tournaments. That aside, there will usually be a review a day or two later on you tube

Hello

Well, you asked nicely, so here is my game from the other night. I had the White pieces. Don’t worry too much about the opening. It’s a pretty well known variation of the French Defence. Black played a bit too passively. It is a fine balance in this variation, because he has to consolidate and will necessarily allow White a bit of extra space. He has to be ready to open the centre up at some stage to bring the position level. I should point out that the computer has the position as being technically equal as far in as move 20, which I found a little surprising.

1.e4 e6
2.d4 d5
3.Nd2 c5
4.dxc5 Bxc5
5.Bd3 Nc6
6.Ngf3 Nf6
7.Qe2 Nb4
8.0–0 Nxd3
9.cxd3 0–0
10.e5 Nd7
11.Nb3 Be7
12.Nbd4 Re8
13.a3 Nf8
14.b4 Bd7
15.Bd2 Rc8
16.Rfc1 Rxc1+
17.Rxc1 f6
18.Nb3 b6
19.Nbd4 Qa8
20.Rc7 Bd8
21.Rc1 Qb7
22.b5 fxe5
23.Nxe5 Bf6
24.Bf4 Rc8
25.Rxc8 Qxc8
26.Ndc6 Qb7
27.Qh5 g6
28.Qf3 Bg7

I played one more move and my opponent resigned. I will leave my last move out of the record, so that you can find this yourself. If you do find it, can you find the answer if Black had instead taken the knight on e5?

As a follow up, have a look at the position after move 20. I played Rc7 with the intention of playing a specific move if he played the natural-looking Rc8. He saw what I was up to and made a decent response, although Qb8 was better. Can you see what I was up to?

For those who don't fancy playing through an amateur's game, can you tell me who this grandmaster is?

(http://files.chesscomfiles.com/images_users/tiny_mce/billwall/1974_Walter_Browne.jpg)

Here he is more recently:

(http://files.chesscomfiles.com/images_users/tiny_mce/billwall/browne.jpg)

Endgames are very much underrated, even by some good club players. If you have an edge in the endgame, it can be a serious advantage for the rest of the game, as you don't fear the position simplifying.

Quite often, you see draws at a club and county level simply because the position is level, even though there is plenty of life left in it. In a way it is like chopping heads up because, although some people say there is no luck in chess, if you don't know whether your opponent is any good in the endgame, getting into one could lead to triumph or disaster!

Here, you get a Grandmaster and commentator walk you through four recent excellent examples of the breed:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8557

For those who are yet to be familiar with the notation (so my game above just looks like gobbledygook - fair enough, say I), these are JavaScript, so you can play through the moves and see the notes.

Our chess/poker man is the American Walter Browne.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Browne

I know very little about him. Seems an interesting character. Would I be right in saying he was one of the people who was on the TV when chess was on Channel 4?

Chess on TV

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/television.html

A fabulous article from the incomparable Edward Winter's Chess Notes.

(http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/dias/television1.jpg)

Did this position lead to a TV murder? Columbo knows.

was your move Bh6 ?  , followed bt Qf7 & Ne7 looks good

btw he did have better of the opening but putting is bishops back jusrt closed his position in

My move wasn't Bh6.

Bh6 is the delightful answer if he had instead played 28...Bxe5, if that's what you mean, because 29...Bg7 is met by 30.Ne7+ Kh8 31.Qf7 with mate to follow next move on g8.

As for the opening, he did play too passively. The problem is that he has to find a pawn break to make space for his pieces but f6 is difficult without getting lots of protection on the e6 pawn.

I think what would likely have happened if he had played Bb6 instead of Be7, say, is that my knights would still have looked after the centre and his light squared bishop would have been inferior to the knights.

As a general point to everyone else, closed positions (ie, where lots of pawns are still left on) tend to favour knights over bishops. So, if you have knights rather than bishops after an exchange, don't look to swap lots of pawns off; keep your patience and keep the bishops with nowhere to go.

29..Bxe5 & 30. Qf8#

29. .. Bxc6 may work 30.bxB..Qe7 31.BxB & think blacks ok apart from the passed pawn

I think I've misunderstood. The moves as I wrote them ended with 28...Bg7
29. Ne7+ and Black resigned because, when he moves the king into the corner, I play Nf7 and mate.

just put it into fritz , 29. Bh6 & Be8 holds it

nice combination with the knights , well played

Hello

I've been away this weekend, trying - unsuccessfully - to make my fortune at the poker tables. I should have known better, of course.

Anyhoo, a little amuse bouche for you this morning. Last week, I put up a copy of a game I played where the villain got his pieces in too defensive a position, which left him with little space to move around in.

One of the best known example of a positional idea is a BAD BISHOP. Before you start making jokes that could take you headfirst to Hell in a handcart, click on the link below.

http://blog.chess.com/mauerblume/the-different-value-of-minor-pieces-good-knight-vs-bad-bishop

You will often see in a game - or in one you play yourself - a bishop pin a knight against either the queen or king (this means that the knight is attacked but can't move, else the bishop will have clear passage to take the queen, for example). If the bishop then takes the knight, the bishop will be recaptured, so which remaining piece is better, as one side has an extra bishop and the other an extra knight?

The link above explains when a knight can be better than a bishop.

If you did play through my game last week (and, by the way, if someone is able to convert it to a format on here that everyone can play through, that - I'm sure - would be much appreciated), you might enjoy seeing a game I used as the basis of my preparation for my match last week.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1106016

Black gets left with a bishop that looks like it is OK, but the pawns that are fixed on d5 and e6 mean it has very few diagonals along which to operate. Not only does this give him few lines of attack, it makes it easy for White to defend. Meanwhile the knights rule the roost.

Hi Tal,

I thought the very basic theory was, closed game knight better, open game bishop better?

That's a fair generalisation, but of course depends on blinds and stack sizes, etc.

As another rule of thumb, it's often better to have bishops rather than knights in the end game, especially if you have both bishops. There are always plenty of exceptions though.

It's all about mobility. On an empty board, the bishop has lots more squares to go to than the knight, so it is likely to be much more effective. To pokerise it, the bishop has a wider range.

As you add more pawns (bearing in mind you often defend a pawn with another pawn, so they will be on the same colour squares), so the range of the bishop decreases, if it is on the same colour as the pawns. The knight is less affected, as he can visit both colours of square and he can hop over any barriers.

As the one with the bishop, Capablanca said that you should look to fix your pawns on the opposite coloured squares to your bishop. Although this means you can't defend them with your bishop, you get three advantages:

1. You don't impede your own bishop;
2. You can attack/defend the square that the knight wants to use to attack your pawns (remember that, to attack a black square, the Knight must be on a white square); and
3. You have fixed your opponent's pawns on the same coloured square as your bishop, so he can hopefully pop round and gobble them up at his leisure.

A neat positional trick is to put a knight three squares away from a bishop, as it cuts out a lot of the bishop's possible squares.

Rangemerging a bishop. You heard it here first.

When playing the French defence, the most important thing (more than bishops or knights) is the patience of a saint.

I'm not keen on the French defence,

tried it once but all my pawns went on strike demanding more holiday and better pay

Black's objective from the opening is to obtain parity, because White gets the first move.

The French is generally seen as a slow and steady way of doing it, but we've seen how easy it is to be passive and give up any hope of getting level.

Swashbuckling openings >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Watching grass grow  ;)

Yes, the answer to the Ruy Lopez that bears Marshall's name is generally avoided by the elite GMs in competition when they are White, because of how sharp and dangerous it is.

I've buckled many a swash over the board in my time, I freely admit.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2006

Chess in the last 50 years or so has a rich history of debate, disagreement and dispute about who is the World Champion. You'd think it would be an easy exercise - just hold a tournament, invite the best players in the world to it and give the winner a laurel wreath.

Oh no.

Where would you hold such a tournament? What if that gives X home advantage? Who makes the decisions? Him? Well he's corrupt so fat chance!

Anyway, chess world champs historically get a free pass to the final match, so they shouldn't be involved in the tournament. But that isn't what happens in football, rugby, cricket...

There have been breakaway world championships, unifications and breakaways again. Now we have one world champ - Anand.

His predecessor, Vladimir Kramnik, was the man to dethrone Garry Kasparov. Kramnik played the top-rated player of the time Vessilin Topalov in 2006 in what was to become the most farcical championship match since Fischer v Spassky.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=52037

The two still don't shake hands and, funnily enough, don't play in the same tournament very often.

That is a link to tips for Tikay? Have I missed something

Brilliant!!!

This is known in chess circles as a blunder. Duly amended. The wiki page at the top is the most thorough but the link I have now added in the edit gives some of the details of the games as well.

Good to know the thread has such eagle-eyed viewers :)

Lol. Thought it might be a test to see who is reading. Get whooshed a lot in here but do enjoy the read

Right, it has been a while since I gave you a player profile and I know that those who don’t have as much interest in or understanding of the game itself nevertheless enjoy hearing about the great players in chess history.

(http://www.chessgames.com/portraits/paulkeres.jpg)

Paul Keres was born in Estonia in 1916. Students of European history will know that this was a country that had a number of owners in the first half of the Twentieth Century and the name above the door had a huge impact on his chess career.

Keres was a skilled mathematician and was fascinated by chess, collecting his own dossier of almost 1,000 games from newspapers and reports while learning the game, writing them out by hand.

He was soon established as an excellent player in his area and then his country, taking the Estonian championship in 1935. I have previously mentioned the Chess Olympiad that took place a few months ago. Well, Estonia’s finest was the top board in 1935 and caused a stir for his aggressive play. This was his first appearance on the big stage and he was probably in the top ten players in the world for the next thirty years.

Three years later, he won the AVRO tournament of 1938, which is regarded by some as being the strongest tournament ever played (all things being relative, of course), as Alekhine, Euwe, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Reshevsky and Flohr trailed behind.

In 1939, other matters took over and Keres was in Argentina, winning 12 of his 19 games (drawing 5 and losing only 2) for Estonia in the Olympiad, when war broke out. He managed to get home a little while later, first going through the Netherlands to play a match against Euwe, which he narrowly won - against the odds, it should be said, as Euwe was a more established match player and, we shall not forget, a previous World Champ.

The AVRO tournament victory should have given him a shot at the world title, but of course circumstances were against him and the Alekhine match never happened. That isn’t to say chess stopped; just that it was too difficult to organise.

One consequence of the time was that Estonia became part of the Soviet Union and, so, Keres became part of the great Soviet team; the Harlem Globetrotters of chess. In 1941, Estonia came under Nazi control. By the end of the war, it was Soviet again. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that would have been for those who lived there at the time, especially someone who would have been hugely popular in a nation of just a couple of million. His interview in 1942 to a Nazi newspaper was used against him, when he tried to escape Western Europe two years later. He was very fortunate to avoid deportation or worse and a Latvian player of the day called Petrovs was put in detention and died in prison.

In 1945, the USSR played the USA in a radio chess match. He would be an obvious choice for the ten man team, but was excluded and it is likely that this wasn’t a complete coincidence.

He did, however, win the Estonian Championship in 1945 without losing any of his 15 games and, in doing so, finished above some excellent “visiting” Soviets.

His dues paid, he was invited to return to the Soviet team in 1946 to play a radio match against Great Britain and you can see the details and some of the games here: http://amici.iccf.com/issues/Issue_07/issue_07_the_radio_match_grb-urss_1946.html

I say he paid his dues. It was clear that Keres was one of the very best players in the world, so he had an invite to every big event going. What remains a point of debate is whether he was able to make decisions for himself in those tournaments. Keres was the runner-up in the Candidates tournament (where the winner plays the World Champ) on four consecutive occasions and there are a number of stories involving him (albeit not only him in the Soviet era), where orders from above are rumoured to have been given, such that players such as Keres were to ensure that a certain player won the tournament.

No one will know for sure whether Keres played his very best in every game of every tournament, or whether, had he won a Candidates tournament, he would have won the world title. What is known is that he is regarded by many as being the best player never to have won a world title. He was the three time Soviet champion and has an incredible record in Olympiads (97 wins, 51 draws and 13 losses).

He died in 1975, shortly after arriving in Helsinki from Vancouver (where he had just won a tournament) and he did not make it back to Tallinn.

His funeral in Estonia drew more than 100,000 people.

(http://www.chessbase.com/images2/2004/keres03.jpg)

He was voted the Estonian sportsman of the Century in 2000 (admittedly, I’m struggling to think of the second and third, but this was someone who had been dead for a generation by then, after all).

He was regarded by his peers as one of the nice guys. He had few if any enemies and some have said this was partly why he didn’t dominate the game – Reshevsky suggested he lacked the killer instinct. Over the board, he beat nine World Champions (no one else has done that) and had positive records against Capablanca, Tal and Euwe. Not quite sure myself what more of a killer instinct is needed, to be honest!

Here’s a beauty of a game. He takes down no less than Capablanca with a magical combination: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1013271

(http://chessreview.co.uk/i/1959-bled/keres-fischer.jpg)

Here, Keres plays a young Bobby Fischer in 1959.

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. Nf3 Be7 6. Be3 O-O 7. Bd3 f5 8. Ne2 c5 9. b3 cxd4 10. Nfxd4 Nc5 11. g4 Nxd3+ 12. Qxd3 Nc6 13. Nxc6 bxc6 14. h3 a5 15. f4 Ba6 16. Qd2 Bh4+ 17. Bf2 Bxf2+ 18. Kxf2 Bxe2 19. Kxe2 Rb8 20. a3 c5 21. Kf3 Qc7 22. Rab1 d4 23. Qd3 Qc6+ 24. Kg3 Qd5 25. h4 fxg4 26. Kxg4 Qg2+ 27. Qg3 Qxg3+ 28. Kxg3 Rbd8 29. Rhd1 Rd5 30. c4 dxc3 e.p. 31. Rxd5 exd5 32. Rc1 d4 33. Kf3 Rb8 34. e6 Kf8 35. f5 Rxb3 36. Ke4 Rxa3 37. Ke5 Ke7 38. Rf1 c2 39. f6+ gxf6+ 40. Rxf6 c1=Q 41. Rf7+ Ke8 42. Kd6 Qh6 43. Re7+ Kf8 44. Rf7+ Kg8 45. Ke7 Re3 46. Rf8+ Qxf8+ 0-1

Hey Tal,

Just want to say I was in on page 1 of this thread and check it every day, thanks very much for posting. It has even got me playing a bit and definitely improving, although I am still a rec.

Not sure if you can parse the above, but if you can I would like some advice on this game. It stayed very even after the opening and I found myself with really no idea how to force an edge. I've run it through a computer and can see where my main errors are and (mostly) why they're errors, but even the computer's suggested moves weren't very +ve scoring and so I am wondering if there was anything I could have done to win this game, or after the opening am I just hoping my opponent makes a mistake? I'm white btw.

edit: 30. c4 was my attempt at a sacrifice, after that didn't work out I knew I was just trying to rescue a draw. Am interested if you can see any positive attacking moves before that one, not too bothered about after.

I'll have a look over the weekend and get back to you, sir.

Always happy to do things like this. What makes this thread work IMO is its diversity. I try to throw a bit of everything in it, so any games you have that you want a view on can only add to the fun.

Open to anyone else to comment, of course.

Thank you for your loyalty :)

Out of interest Tal do you have to input this in to a replayer and watch the game or can you just advise from the text?

Easiest way is to have a physical chess board next to you and follow the moves on that. People who play a lot at a decent standard can follow the game from just the notation without a board. Been a while since I could follow a whole game accurately like that and now I'd start forgetting where pieces are after about ten moves in.

I used to be a lot better at visualising games and positions. Playing less chess and more poker has had an impact on that, though!

I have a basic idea of the position from the text moves but if I'm going to give any advice or views on it, I'd want at least to play it out in a board, as I am not as confident in my analysis of positions in my head as I would have been a few years back.

Tal's a better player than me so I'd wait to hear his opinions, but I'm not keen on our opening line for this one at all.  You lose the attacking momentum early on, and also fail to castle your king, and that leaves you with a pretty weak position defensively - and I'd much prefer black's situation here than white's.

I'm also not keen on 4. e5 - especially when you decline to take his pawn after 7. .. f5.

Excellent, cheers for taking a look, yeah I was wondering if my lack of opportunities stemmed from the opening, but afaik this is all very standard, right? Is your preferred opening totally different from this or could you suggest a better move for #4?

It's not an opening I'd play at all - but I'm a bit weird as far as openings go.  It's probably a very standard line for white playing against the French, and not an opening I've studied in detail as I always avoided playing against it.

Let me have another look, as if it's a standard line (and not taking the pawn when black plays f5) then it must be theoretically sound.

Yeah, apparently it's a very standard line - but just looking through the discussions about it I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon.  The French Defence is like playing fixed limit poker with my gran, and she died about 10 years ago.

Have I taken this game down the boring road or is it mainly black's fault? Is there a way I could force the villain out of his comfort zone? I completely agree it wasnt a fun game but I was stuck for ideas the whole time.

It's black's choice to play 1. .. e6, so yeah it's his fault.  It looks like there are options for you to move it away from the traditional French Defence lines that end up in a boring 0-0 draw, but a lot of these can cause problems if you are up against a very strong player (but give you opportunities if they're not). Again, this is just stuff I've read today whilst scouting some chess forums, the way I'd avoid it is by playing 1. d4 as white (as I always do) ;)

Tal will probably be on soon to give you some useful advice :D

not looked through all the game yet , agree don't like e5 much but in general prefer to make a plan in the games , after he castled king side , I would look to attack his King , so get your king safe on Queen side first

as played after he played Qg2 , Qg3 gives him a forced mate after h5 , your king has to take & you drop your Queen & followed by Rook f5#

Ty mate, yeah the computer popped that mate up as well, I had no idea at the time! ;whistle;

Luckily the other guy missed it as well and I got a 2nd bite of the cherry...

Hi Skolsuper

Ok. I’ve had a good look at your game. The opening was basically fine. I really wouldn’t worry about trying to force something out of the opening. Imagine you’re playing a nit heads up. You can raise every button and play as aggro as you like, but if the villain isn’t going to play along you can only pick up the blinds. In some games – including some variations of the French – you have to accept that the villain is going to play solidly and you will need to build your winning game, rather than just trying to plough through him.

To address a point you’ve made about move one, 1.e4 generally leads to more aggressive than games than 1.d4. If you think about it, you are exposing the king straight away, so there is usually more of an edge to the position. There are some really sharp king’s pawn openings and variations, so if you want to play sharp stuff, my advice would be to stick to playing 1.e4.

Turning to the specifics:
9.b3 is a bit wonky, because you have quite a nice position up to that point, but space is at a premium. One of the best tricks from a positional sense in these openings - where there are lots of fixed pawns - is to work out which is your better bishop. It is often the one on the squares you’re pawns aren’t. In other words, it’s the one on d3. To keep it being a good piece, you:
a) want to keep it on the board, because villain’s pawns keeping his own light-squared bishop blocked in and
b) want to put your pawns on black squares to optimise the range of your best bishop.
So, to put it in PHA terms: 9c3 >>> 9.b3

When Black captures on d4, you have to take back with the other knight, because otherwise the pawn on e5 is hanging. He can’t play 10…f4 then, because you are threatening to take on e6 with your knight and fork queen and rook. This is one of the features of a 1.e4 opening: there are lots of little tactics in these positions and there is absolutely no time to waste, once the position opens up. But, the villain missed that he could take the e-pawn, so we dodge that bullet.

We can then castle happily, because we have a pretty decent set of pieces, we are ahead in development and Black still has to work out how he’s going to get that bishop on c8 into the game. By playing 11.g4, we decide we can go for the throat. There’s a logic for it, because Black is a long way from being in good shape with his pieces and his king’s knight is miles away from looking after the king. Against that, though, we aren’t ready yet to open the game up. If you had castled queenside and had a rook on g1, different ball game.

From that point, the trouble was you had lost a lot of the impetus in the position, which meant that Black could get back into the game, open up the diagonals for his bishops and get himself out of being cramped. If you remember my game the other week, that was a French defence not dissimilar to this one, but the key to my win was that I kept him cramped until I was ready to open the position on my terms. This is what you need to do; just keep your patience and finish your development.

25. h4 was a blunder and, when you recapture on g4 with the king, you might have seen since that Black has a forced checkmate in 5 moves. When you put your queen on g3 to block the check of Qg2, Black can play h5+ and it looks more than a little unpleasant from there.
 
As a general appraisal, a sample size of one is a bit tough, but I’d say you have a better grasp of the basics than your opponent, who was a little eager to swap off for my taste. If you keep your patience in the opening and the early middlegame, such that you can finish developing your pieces and castle, a plan will be easier to execute.

We all do it, but the point is that an attack is much, much easier when you have all your pieces developed. In this type of opening, although your pieces are a bit short of room, the villains’ are in much worse shape, so leave him with the problems and play simple moves that help your position.

Is any of that useful?

This will be geeky, so let's get that out of the way, straight away!

Have a look at this game: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1471200

Gufeld v Spassky, played in Leningrad in 1960. The future world champion, Boris Spassky, is beaten by your opening. Gufeld's light squared bishop is a monster of a piece, because he allows the position to stay tight and Black remains cramped until it is too late. Spassky was a brilliant tactician, but he was on the receiving end in this game. White castles and then looks to attack the enemy king with his pieces, rather than with his pawns (note that you generally have to make a choice between pieces or pawns as the main thrust of a kingside attack, because the pawns will get in the way of a fast-paced, crash-bang flurry at the king and could leave you exposed yourself if it doesn't work).

Cliffs: stick with the opening you've played, as long as you're comfortable with it, because there is plenty of life in it.  

Great post Tal.

But d4 is still the nuts ;)

Fantastic post. Unfortunately any chess discussion between us is going to be a bit one-sided for a while, all I can say in reply is thanks for the help  :)up