Archive for December, 2024

Bedridden but so up for it nonetheless

Posted in My own endeavours, On-line journal on December 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

What’s the plan for today then for bedridden me, unable to walk anywhere, coutesy of the two bad accidents I had in the same day, where I learned the hard way that it’s far better to climb ladders than it is to accidentally fall off them and smash your knees and feet up after hitting the floor hard.

Here’s what I posted on social media about how today will unfold.

Mark. J. McCready, Asia

Updates on today’s chess.

I have to bring it to a close earlier than expected today. I am unused to being discombobulated by my own results. I play very aggressively, often seize the initiative and completely outplay the machine but then I go all wierd and make a complete mess of it. I am yet unable to work out why this keeps happening and left me in a state of disbelief. Before I was born my mother was told there’s no doubt he’ll grow up to be a useless bastard who is crap at everything. That’s not quite true but I have very little ability to assess me own chess and have left myself incapable of working out how things are going so badly wrong with such regularity. This may be because I haven’t had enough time to adjust to, and improve on the style I have adopted for the first time in my life. Most don’t normally change their style of play and I certainly never have. Perhaps it’s to be expected it will take some time before I can get it right, I don’t really know. I just know I keep letting myself down, and its making me wonder whether its really worth it or not. Even though I am putting more effort into it than ever before and enjoying it, my play does not exemplify this and it’s already becoming too embassing to continue on with.

I always think I know what I am talking about and I don’t like it when I can’t work out what’s going so badly wrong. I really should know already but just perhaps, I do need more time to adjust to the radical transformation in my play I have defined my play by. Perhaps I am being impatient as well as unwilling to address the situation. I will promise myself to take a closer look at my games to anaylyze how I go wrong but I am not confident this will change anything, and I amy just have to accept that when I am so gung ho I will get shot down. I am unable to define how chess played in the style I play is experienced. Never in my life have I wanted to stick it to my opponent so much and sacrifice left right and centre. But I am happy to say for the most part I really enjoy it until I cock it up. I was hoping to stay with the adopted style but perhaps it will only ever become something best forgotten about and not to be repeated as I am not good enough to pull it off.

Most importantly of all I am very happy to express much interest in my own chess. The engagement and purpose is more important than what was achieved by it, which remains undefinable courtesy of it overpowering me to disbelief. Hopefully I will remain impressive with my intentions and manifestations of engangement in my own play will develop further, something almost impossible to believe for a good thirty years easily I value contentment more than improvement and have done for quite some time. If I can somehow fuse the two together I will be very impressed with myself. It’s not the norm that I take much interest in my chess and never has been; therefore, it must be welcomed with astonishment or alternatively suspicion as it sounds to difficult to believe and must be a pack of lies. WIsh me luck.

And that concludes McCready’s thoughts on the day proving once again I am by far the greatest useless bastard on the planet and always will be as everyone knows.

Mark. J. McCready

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Throwing away certain victory

Posted in My own endeavours, My Own Games on December 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Opening remarks, I hope you enjoy the oginiality you are about to encounter, an approach opposed to conservatism too, and a sense of pride in my working class upbringing despite it being antithetical to what usually consitutes chess writings. It’s not part of the norm and rather unnerving I suspect. Good if it is. Finding your voice is an aim all writers hope to achieve and is of much greater value than and the opinions of those I have never met, will never know nothing of and have no interest in whatsoever, courtesy of their anonymity which will forever condemn their comments to not worth reading. However, I am willing to concede this post isn’t really worth reading as my account of myself and comments on the world are a little too playful to be believed…ah well, I’ll try to do better next time. Would it help if I said I am by far the baddest, meanest, toughest, most fearsome 1600 player on the planet, capable of finding any mate in one on the board provided I’ve still got a good 25 minutes on the clock still, and have never blundered more than 15 times in a game. I even know how to set the pieces up correctly and can get it done in less than half an hour usually, and if you gave me a pencil to write my name on the scoresheet, it usually take me less than an hour to work out which end you write with, not that I ever write the moves down though, I was told only trannys do that.

Having always been rubbish at chess, it’s very pleasing to redefine my approach and adopt a style of play hyper-aggressive when the intitiative is often seized by sacrifical attacks. I so very nearly beat my electronic friend tonight. I had the game completely won and was spoilt for choice on how to finish him off. But because I am not only rubbish at chess, I’m also a useless bastard, I went and bollocked it up, much to my disappointment. It was my every intention to really stick it to my electronic friend tonight and beat it for the first time. I almost wiped it off the board but got exited and forgot how rubbish I am and bound to mess it up. Which I did, as expected. Go have a look at the game and ask, how on earth could anyone throw that away? Don’t ask me, I don’t even know. It will be quite sometime before I can overcome the disbelief, I estimate about 25 years. It’s killed my interest in redefining my approach to chess completly, I’ll never believe I had it so easily won then blew it, my confidence in myself hasn’t just been sledgehammered, it’s been completely obilterated But to end on a positive note, I do have a chance I can succeed, and it’s only a 10,000,000-1 shot,so wish me luck. Lamentably, If I ever do play chess devoid of confidence, I am usually proper fucked and get massacred always.

To conclude, I sincerely apologize for not having the writing skills required to describe the absolutely appalling way in which I threw the game away. But I do accept in life there are sometimes things we experience we will never be able to understand or believe, I just suppose who are completely rubbish at something should expect this infrequently. But to inspire those who have read this, if like myself disbelief in how crap you are will remain ever present in your life, it is still possible to gain pleasure from playing. It happened to me once 30 years ago, and it’s safe to assume you will experience the same thing at some point in the next 40 years or so, like one of my best friends did. So it’s not all doom and gloom. But I should warn you when he walked into the car park after the match, he got a smack in the mouth and a kick in the bollocks for winning, and when questioned his opponent refused to say the name of the mental home he’d just been let out of too. So be sure you opponent is the amiable type and hasn’t just been let out of a mental home.

https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14451&p=313748#p313748

Mark. J. McCready

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The forging of integrity

Posted in Bedfordshire Chess, My own warped humour, On-line journal, Personal Interest & Experience on December 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Most in our modern world are unflective and uncritical of their own lives, satisified enough to stay within their own comfort zone and keep it that way. Much more interested in playing with their phone than making an effort to define who they are. Similarly most chess players can only be described as being exempt from the same criticisms if you are taking the piss. It’s the norm that chess players cannot offer rationally informed opinions as to why they play chess. Most will say they just like it, some will say they love chess, many will admit its just a hobby they’ve kept going. If you were to ask how do you develop meaning from chess and how does that bring value in what you do. This is not a question likely to be answered comprehensively by club and county players. This can only be answered purposely by referring efforts aimed towards improvement, the principle selling factor of chess literature. You may be told how they read a book to improve their game. That’s usually about the limits of the efforts for most club/county players who are generally uncommital.

This is partly because they are unaware that improvement itself is multifarious, and sadly that they tend to be poorly educated and adopt an uncritical approach to life itself and all it throws at you. Even Grandmasters, the best chess players on offer, are predomonantly poorly educated most have little or no ability to publish their achievements and are almost completely oblivious to standard literary and academic conventions, hence the reason why as a genre chess literature is decadent and something we should all be ashamed of.

I omce wrote an ambitious dissertation whilst finishing an MA where I had to reinterpret a seminal text and trace unformulated fragements of a concept which was much later developed further in a text towards the end of the authors unappreicated career. I happily went into overdrive with that, accompanied by persistence which pushed me on always. After 18 months research skills that still surprise me to this day, I was commended by several Ph.d students for how beautiful my writing was, told by my professor the amount of work put in made it very useful and insisted it be placed in the library so that undergraduates could benefit from the deeply informative contextualization that shaped it, I got a commendation too but was very glad to see the back of it. I began by readering the seminal text 11 times on the bounce and although this enabled me to understand how it was written and how certain chapters were really only consoldated lecture notes, I fell very much out of love with that text, always certain it’s been given far too much important and am unable to go near it ever again. It’s main criticism is that it’s overwritten, I would say its a complete fucking joke he should be thoroughly ashamed of, as should every person on this planet was stupid enough to read the fucking thing.

This and the numerous meetings I had with my professor, not to mention the defence of it I had to give of it to the entire department that afternoon fashioned and forged a critical mindset, which emerged as an undergraduate, since I came second in the entire year, scoreing 67.4 and only missing out on a first by 2.6 per cent but came on leaps and bounds as a post-grad. I’ve since had to train myself up with post modernism in order to avoid the mistakes usually made with regards to chess history. The good news is I have a deeply obssessive mind and know that if you can channel your thoughts in play you are provided with a massive engine for them. I am an educator and have been in education all my adult life. With so much to learn from the history of chess in our county.and how chess has flourished previously. It’s almost certianly the case that I am more equipped to educate those in charge of things much more so than anyone else, as its far easier for me to define how things stand presently as well as explain how things can be improved by describing that most crucial to be learnt from and implemented. Unforunately this may mean nothing more than me just saying my piece rather than inspiring people and prompting them into action, most probably they’ll just interpret it as extra effort they’ve been lumbered with and make no effort whatsoever. This will make me want to give up on them initally but the virute of my deeply obssessive mind will most likely obliterate that to kingdom come and push me on to persist and not stop persisting until they are suitably impressed with my intentions enough. I have very good relations and am not only well-repected for my blog, also described as a historian my county members, something I am uneasy with as I’ll never be able to define myself as one. I’m nothing more than someone who is pretty good at writing, it’s an art form I began practicising when I was 15 and I never stoped. Originality and creativity are what I cherish most of all, nonetheless, I’m nothing too special, except for when I write brilliantly but that’s not the norm, usually I don’t have much to say because I let my desire to write overrule the pronise not to write if I have nothing to say. But then if you don’t write to be read, all you are doing is letting yourself down. Only the history of chess in Befordshire has an intended audience, everything else is for me only. Despite this, I reiterate I am an educator and what began as I hope it could be learned from is moving towards a necessity that must be enforiced. Raise awareness, narrate our history so that it can be applied, deliniate the decline we are undergoing and demand action. I am more than capapable of achieving that -it’s a piece of piss you could say. Let’s move on from intentionality.

A likely consequence to all this, if I can make it happen, is to return home and become president of my club and county, then it will become my job to put a rocket up the arse of those shanghied into doing what I tell them to do when I tell them to do it. Far too proud of my working class beginnings to do it any other way. I know I can give it my best shot and remain satisfied that I did even if I fail to achieve what I set out to accomplish. Why’s that. Because Greek philosophy has stayed with me all my life, I know how important Socrates being told know thyself by the oracle of Delphi but should you buy into that and want to give it a shot, I’m sorry to tell you it’s a life-long task that is much, much harder than you might think. You have, in fact absolutely no fucking chance whatsoever unless you’ve also got a deeply obssessive mind like me. I know what I idealise and like Tennyson said in. In Memoriam, ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than never have loved before.’ And the most we are ever capable of is to try our best but as we all know nothing often come of that. Nothing to go mental over if I fail, something superceded by the the concession that learing is a life long process. and we can always move on lamenting that doing my best just wasn’t good enough, remembering to alter your opinions of those who did fuck all to help, redefining them as useless bastards I wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire.

I don’t need you to wish me luck, if I can make it happen, most likely I will succeed.

Mark. J. McCready

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2nd draw achieved

Posted in My Own Games on December 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Most unexpectedly, I am redefing how I play chess. Rather than faff about and not do veyr much, Against Lucas I have developed a style based on sacrificial attacks and relentless attacks on the king. I like it very much because when I gain the intiative I dominant the game and really stick it to it. I’ve already had many won positions but get a bit excited and fail to convert them. The intentional is to now reduce the risk in my play and opt for gentle pressure rather than all out attack all if I can’t find it, as I sometimes push too hard. Wish me luck for today’s game. I am going to stick it to my electronic friend I can assure you. Victory is not too far from being within my reach. You can see the second drw in the link below.

https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14448

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Sticking it to my electronic friend

Posted in My Own Games on December 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I got another draw with what could be decribed as the kitchen sink attack!

Sacrificial attacks in search of mate but couldn’t quite pull it off!

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Doing what feels right

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

With a 3-week christmas break from work, I flew into Bangkok as might be expected. I had hoped to visit the chess club the week I arrived and made it a priority but silly me fell asleep in the day it is open (Friday) and missed it, that being last week. I won’t let that happen this week and will bring my daughter and her mother with me. I also hope to meet up with my old friend Aek, who is much better than me and an old friend I haven’t seen in a while.

It may well be the case that the numbers will be low that evening, as a very great many leave Bangkok for the new year, and most likely I will either play little or no chess but this is immaterial. It remains the case that the sense of occasion is most important of all from visits to the chess club. By this I mean meeting up iwth old friends, enjoying the atmosphere, making new friends and so on as this helps me feel less guilty about being rubbish at chess. Since my daughter and her mother have both started helping out at chess tournaments regularly this year, I have noticed it just feels right to see them connected to our beautiful game. And sometimes we need to be reminded of what’s important, particularly if your lifestyle is as transient as mine unfortunately is. It is my hope that chess remains a part of my daughters life always, and so it makes me satisified to be in a chess environment with her whether she plays or not. Same also holds for myself even though I do seem to have chess on the brain these days. This, however, has come about because I enjoy writing about chess more than playing it and not because I am rubbish and ashamed of myself. To add further you could say I’m not as young as I was and the passion to play isn’t quite there…well that’s me being courteous. They only play blitz at Bangkok chess club, which is not so appealing shall we say.

So my hope is that I will visit Bangkok chess club which will be my only opportunity before I return to work and being there will help bring home what things are important. Simple pleasures serving as simple reminders. Hopefully Grace will enjoy it and be more open to going there in the future as well as scontinuing to help out at chess events with her mum. This is a definitive improvement on me turning up, going there on my tod, getting drunk and making silly videos, which I am happy to tell you are not going to continue, courtesy of the opportunities to go to the club becoming less and myself less inclined to act like a tit when there.

You may be curious as to what this all means? Yes it is true that despite my efforts when my daughter was younger, she has never taken to chess as I hoped she would. This can only be interpreted as a failure on my part. My efforts were unsustained and proved that not only am I a lazy sod but also a lazy git. and loving parents do not force their children to do things. Overall, she’s kept a only a slight interest in chess and rarely plays. So to see her showing more interest and being acquainted with the very thing that brought about her very own existence about does, to some degree, help appease my own failings…ah well, no one is perfect, at least I tried.

So as 2024 comes to a close I am happy to say that I am able to go to the chess club and do what feels right. That is a noteable improvement on the months preceeding where togetherness was absent and ill health accompanying my visitations. Just so I could go somewhere and converse with members I don’t really know just because they like the same thing I do, Self-assured I state, instead I am able to arrive at the club and benefit from an identity conferring experience. For I know what feels right and hope springs eternal. Maybe one day it will become the norm.

I hope that in reading this post it encourages or inspires you to question why you go to your chess club. By this I mean asking yourself what you get out of it and how you can get more out of your investested time and intentionality. You may find it develops more meaning and importance should you do so, especially if times have been hard most recently. You may, if you are fortunate find that contentment is more important than improvment and gain more from your time at your club as a result, Just a thought from someone left with an eternally enquiring mind, having studied Philosophy for 4 years after reading it solidly for 3 years.

Mark.J.McCready

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On the right path

Posted in My Own Games, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I am already benefitting noticeably from abandoning online chess and playing Lucas Chess instead. The engine I chose, Cinammon 1.2c. I have to be at my very best to stand a chance, and in the dozens of games already played, I only have one draw. But in most game I really stick it to it and gain a strong initiative, sometimes with sacrifices. I’ve nearly had it beat quite a few times.

The most obvious benefit being it has revatalized my approach, level of seriousness and begun complexifying my decision making process for my moves. It’s pulling my out of the malaise 4 years of online chess created. There is work to be done as I am still making mistakes but less so and they don’t usually lose my the games, more so the initiative. Correction there is not work to be done, there is much work to be done. This is quite okay as I am already enjoying it because my style has become very attacking, and I am already far better than what I usually am. Happy to play 10 games a day, after all, I am am holiday and have to rest up anyway after the accident I had a few days back. Here’s a link to the draw I should have won, illustrated by embedded pgn, so you can play through it.

https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14443&p=313683#p313683

Impressive huh?

MJM

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An unwanton depersonalisation

Posted in My own endeavours on December 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I am in the process of reducing down online chess to the point of elimination and reintroducing computer chess. The principle reason being I have picked up veyr bad habits with online chess and have become too used to weak opponents and bad moves being played against me. It’s had a very detrimental effect, so I have started playing computer engines to eliminate this.

But there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s all so depersonalizing. This is symptomatic of my ability because my primary focus should be my own moves and not my opponents. Play the board not the man as Simon Webb once said in Chess for Tigers, I need to starat complexifying my decision making procedure when I play because I have identified I don’t like it when I make bad moves: the more infrequent they become the better, More concentration required…

Hope springs eternal…

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Local & national

Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, tagged on December 16, 2024| 1 Comment »

We have Dennis Victor Mardle. Born and raised in Luton, a varsities champion who represented his country once in a match against Holland. Rarely out of England’s top ten players in the 50s.

We also have Michael McDonald-Ross, the man who Bedfordshire’s strongest player ever homegrown talent GM James Plaskett said was his toughest opponent ever in the Beds league in the 70s.

It’s 1965, the British Championship, and generations apart, they met over the board. The game itself was a draw and sadly uneventful, as the Sicilian Kan often is. Why is this game significant? It’s the first time two noted players from the Bedfordshire league met at the British Championship. They were both amongst the strongest our league has ever seen and met at the British championship in 65. I have no records of two eminent figures in Bedfordshire chess history doing so before them. If presenting Bedfordshire chess at a national level is important, this was the first recorded instance.

I did speak to Michael McDonald Ross about this and he does still remember the game. Fyi in terms of rating they were both about 2200-2300. Anyway, here’s the game, forwarded to me by Mr. Paul Habershon, he who continues to offer help and support when he can always.

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2064348

MJM

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Who Wants to be a Millionaire chess special 4

Posted in Trivia, Who wants to be a millionaire chess special, tagged , , , , on December 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Unlike the popular gameshow, features such as ‘ask the audience, phone a friend, and 50/50‘ are inapplicable here -sincere apologies. Unfortunately, there’s no money to be made from this also. 🙂 However, do your best but do it alone please -no googling!

Question 1 £100

Which piece sits aside both the king and queen at the start of the game?

A: Pawn

B: Bishop

C: Knight

D: Rook

Question 2 £200

Which of these is not an example of under-promotion?

A: promoting a pawn to a queen.

B: promoting a pawn to a knight.

C: promoting a pawn to a bishop.

D: promoting a pawn to a rook.

Question 3 £300

The term zwischenzug means what in chess?

A: an announcement of stalemate.

B: an inability to make any good moves

C: an adjustment of a piece

D: an in-between move

Question 4 £400

Which former world champion has a term involving a weapon named after him?

A: Steinitz

B: Lasker

C: Alekhine

D: Kasparov

Question 5 £500

Which maneuver can be classified as artificial or by hand?

A: castling

B: double check

C: pawn promotion

D: en passant

Question 6 £1,000

After 1. d4 is played, if black then plays 1. …b5, this is known as what?

A: The Czech Defence

B: The Hungarian Defence

C: The Austrian Defence

D: The Polish Defence

Question 7 £2,000

The fifth official world champion was from which country?

A: Germany

B: The Netherlands

C: Cuba

D: The Soviet Union

Question 8 £4,000

Former world champion Magnus Carlsen’s real first name is not Magnus but what?

A: Henrick

B: Oscar

C: Sven

D: Per

Question 9 £8,000

How many non-european presidents has F.I.D.E had?

A: 1

B: 2

C: 3

D: 4

Question 10 £16,000

Sans Voir is a term which refers to what?

A: Blindfold chess

B: Kriegspiel

C: 960 chess

D: Bughouse chess

Question 11 £32,000

The F.I.D.E 2004 World Championship between Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Leko was held in which country?

A: Germany

B: Italy

C: Austria

D: Switzerland

Question 12 £64,000

Who was the world blitz champion of 2021?

A: Hikaru Nakamura

B: Magnus Carlsen

C: Maxime Vachier Lagrave

D: Sergey Karjakin

Question 13 £125,000

Who, in 1991, was the last player to become Soviet Union Chess Champion?

A: Evgeny Bareev

B: Artashes Minasian

C: Alexander Beliavsky

D: Garry Kasparov

Question 14 £250,000

According to rule 7.3 of the 2023 F.I.D.E rule book. If a game has started with colours reversed, what is the most amount of moves that can be played by both players before the game is discontinued and a new game restarted?

A: 9

B: 10

C: 11

D: 12

Question 15 £500,000

The celerbated problemist Genrikh Kasparyan, known to be one of the greatest end-game study problemists of all time, had which title in classical chess?

A: CM

B: FM

C: IM

D: GM

Question 16 £1,000,000

Who won the first World Open held in New York, 1973?

A: Bent Larsen

B: Pal Benko

C: John Fedorowicz

D: Walter Browne

So there you are, well done if you did well. No money once again I’m afraid owing to being a poor English teacher. I do put thought into this, so if you got more than half right, you did well. Hope you enjoyed, you might even want to give it a shot yourself! 🙂

Mark. J. McCready

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