Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »
GM Michael Adams, arguably England’s greatest ever player, won a game in fine style against GM Maxim Matlakov at he European Club Championship with a deep move that had chess-playing friend Peter Frost in awe.
White (GM Adams) has just played 27 Bb3, a very deep move allowing a loss of material as well as structural damage.
You can play out the rest of the game here -Mickey at his best.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Someone once said ‘When I give check, I am never afraid’. Apart from the fact that the counter-check can give mate, it’s generally not a good idea to stop thinking in chess. Here’s an example of just that from the hallowed antiquity of 1987, taken from Burgess’s ‘Quickest Victories of all time’ (1998)
R.Huque – J.Hodgson London ‘Chess for Peace’ 1987
1 d4 Nf6
2 c4 c5
3 Nf3 cxd4
4 Nxd4 e5
5 Nb5 d5?!
6 cxd5 Bc5
7 d6? Ne4
8 Nc7+??
Instead of gaining a tempo, white now loses on the spot. Can you find the winning move?
8. … Qxc7!
9 Qa4+ Qc6 0-1
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »
As you might expect, the well-oiled machine that is http://www.chess24.com has brought us yet another wonderful video to watch. In the European Club Championships a non-European, namely Nakamura, is defeated handsomely by Swiss legend GM Pelletier, rated some 200 points plus below. Naka plays his familiar King’s Indian Defence and is lost before he knows what to do against a very clever piece sacrifice. An entertaining and instructive game is analyzed and explained in the vernacular by the multi-lingual, multi-talented GM Jan Gustafsson. Here it is, enjoy:
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »
More from GM Nunn here. Who wouldn’t play Ke5? (Note that white has a peak rating of 2732 and even he got it wrong!)
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Here’s an interesting read from a great book.
Understanding Chess Endgames, Dr.John Nunn (2009) pg. 13
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Firstly, complete with a style full of comedic cynicism that yours truly is quite jealous of, some advice on how to handle reading material from the Badmaster himself now follows.
(G.H.Diggle: Chess Characters – Reminiscences of a Badmaster).
- Bulging Bookshelves
Britain is, as never before, teeming with new chess works the purchase and study of which (the more sanguine reviewers imply) will rapidly ‘people this Isle with grandmasters’.
Speaking as an embittered local Bad Master of 50 years’ standing, we have our doubts. If no man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, can a chess player do so by steeping himself in ‘bookish theoric’? He may keep what chess he has in good running order – he may even pick up a few spare parts – but he will still be saddled with his original brainbox. The great Deschapelles, we are told, never looked at a chess book; Paul Morphy looked at very few; and those of us whose bookshelves bulge with semi-digested works, ‘without which no chess lover’s library could possible be complete’, are tempted to think, in our sombre moments, that left on our own we might have achieved fame -as it is, we shall die as we have lived, befuddled by the verbosity of pedantic humbugs.
Our own nasty suspicions of chess literature were first aroused in 1945, when the enterprising officials of the Lud-Eagle Chess Club arranged for a number of consultation games to be played there in public by the leading players then in London. On hearing what was afoot, we hied us to the Lud-Eagle in a state of delighted anticipation – here was a chance of actually overhearing the experts planning aloud – we expected not only an intellectual but a philological treat, for we naturally supposed that their consultations would be couched in the same mystic language in which they are depicted by 20th century annotators as thinking things out when playing on their own. Thus we hoped to hear, as we hovered ecstatically on the fringe of the crowd, such fragments as – ‘From the strategical point of view, Dr X, I am inclined to agree that P-KR3 is positionally indispensable; but a feeling of psychological malaise pervades me as though something more dynamic were called for; and incidentally (though I am loath to distract a man of your calibre with mere tactical trivialities) we must first liquidate the technical obstuction of our King being in check!’
But alas, all we did in fact hear was a series of muffled banalities such as ‘the snag is. the rook’s pinned’, ‘if we swap off, the Knight pops in’, and once (most deplorable of all) ‘you swore blind we could hold the bally pawn!’
We came away shaking our hoary head -and we are shaking it still.
July 1974
Secondly, on a more optimistic note, the most thoughtful and practical chess book I have ever read is the Scottish GM Rowson’s The Seven Deadly Chess Sins
Rowson is not just a grandmaster, more importantly he is educated with a Ph.D in Philosophy at Oxford. He is one of the few writers in chess that can improve your game as the primary subject of the book is the psychological states people play chess in -well worth a read.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 4, 2015| Leave a Comment »
GM Jan Gustafsson, all-round nice guy, huge fan of the Thai Open and the face of Chess24.com has put together an entertaining video. Enjoy.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on August 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged Vienna Open chess on August 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Peter Frost, a friend from Bangkok, has entered the Vienna Open and has taken a picture of the playing hall for us.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, Vienna is a beautiful city, rich in culture and history. Would a playing hall like that bring out the best in you over the board on a hot summer’s day if it has no air-con and water is not provided?
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on July 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Any ideas on who this is?
Unsure? Here’s some video action please click on the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAjaeGMB51c. It is of course Russian GM Peter Svidler, who as you may know is a genuinely nice guy. I have known for some time that he is a fan of cricket but he doesn’t talk about it much. With that said I have found an interview from the Yorkshire Chess Association. It’s worth a read for fans of both games, here it is: http://yorkshirechess.org/interview-with-peter-svidler/#comment-10170
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
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