Archive for the ‘On-line journal’ Category

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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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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Short and to the point.

Posted in On-line journal on October 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen a.k.a Magnus Carlsen offers a brief account with regards to the popularity of chess presently. He makes some interesting points. One inparticular is worthy of note. He said that ‘the peices are relatively powerful compared to other games’.

Highly agreeable but it wasn’t always so. Explaining that concisely is something I am uninclined to do. May I suggest you read from the following:

In particular this chapter:

Mark. J. McCready

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Generalized q’s…

Posted in On-line journal on August 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Here’s two more questions from myself, which you may or may not get.

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McCready and his crafty q’s…

Posted in On-line journal on August 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Here’s the latest, can you answer it?

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Does less always equal more?

Posted in On-line journal on August 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Although I have oftentimes told myself not to write if I have nothing to say, there are exceptions because the principle reason for writing is not to be read but enjoy the process per se.

I’m writing because I have, to some degree, lost touch with chess this summer. The amount of chess we have in our lives never is constant due to circumstance or other matters foreseen and unforeseen. In writing this I have decided, that I should address this matter and have more chess in my life, and start taking note of current affairs, and so on -keep more in touch with things if you will. It’s sometimes helpful to ask do I have too much or too little chess in your life as it may change without you noticing -just my opinion.

The good news is over the summer I talked myself into larger projects, firstly that I should write a history of Bedfordshire chess, then after that was dismissed, that I should write an essay on the history of chess in Luton. Prompted because the person doing a cracking job of running Luton chess club currently asked me if I could write a short history for something or other. I did that but its not really my thing, so an extensive -that may not be the right word- a fuller account will be written. So at least some, correction -one good thing has emerged. This helps counterbalance the missed opportunities to play OTB that have passed, as I did not visit the chess club so much. I stayed true with my intentions to remove classical chess from the agenda, and as it so happens the tournament I refused to participate in was cancelled anyway… .

It would have been nicer to have made more effort to read the two books I recently ordered, especially since they are both well-written. Never mind, plenty of time for that still. It would also have been great if I had checked if any one day tournaments were held over the summer. Again I didn’t that, as mentioned, chess took a backseat over the summer if you like. I did play on line but not so much, and most likely matters will continue in a similar vain. To some degree this was tied to a failed attempt to establish the etymology of the term stalemate, which I did not get far with even I have sufficient material currently at my disposal…ah well some things are harder than they seem sometimes.

So as it stands for the rest of the year I will have to conduct further research. There is always work to be done, and helping improve upon the periods that I am less certain of is, perhaps, a necessity. Other than that all I can add is that the history presented will be in the form of post-modernism -of that I am certain.

Little else to say except it would have been nicer not to have drunk alcohol when I did play at the club, since its the sense of occasion rather than improvement that matters most, and since when did alcohol help with such matters bloody drunkard .

So there you have it. Later in the month I shall begin research again with the eventuality being an essay on the history of chess in Luton, probably something around the 10,000 word mark. And if that’s not boring enough, you can follow the updates on what was Twitter and is now X.

I can’t really add more than that, it has been a quiet few months and I have something to do of which I am passionate about to be getting on with. How drawn into correcting the co-authors of Chess in Bedfordshire I will get is hard to be certain of but hopefully the reaction to the final product won’t be in line with theirs; namely, that the author (s) should be tied up and shot against a post. Or put differently the subject will be covered more extensively, half the bloody county was left out thus more wholesome in the narrative offered -which is all you are getting! And just perhaps the most recent attempt at research had its minor frustrations here and there due to traces of the past not being entirely compatible with the intentions of old Tom Sweby, whom I have come to know more so than before, as he remained the primary source. I am a little sad to say I don’t have a great deal of material to work with, as you might expect, but this is not necessarily a problem, depending on how you define history, there isn’t a great amount of reportage I can use as traces of the past but I will do my best nonetheless.

To conclude, I decided to abandon all attempts to improve on Chess in Bedfordshire as I don’t have enough material and don’t feel capable of it, The smaller project of a history of chess in Luton is what it will be. Perhaps, just perhaps, I do enjoy writing about chess than actually playing it, in which case, the next few months should be productive…well hopefully so. I ought to remember to thank Humuyan (the organizer of Luton chess club( for putting good ideas in my head and wonder less why I couldn’t have thought about it myself.

Editor’s note: answer to that coming within the next 50 years -that’s a promise!

Webmaster’s note: going to live to 100 am I? You sure?

I shall sign off here, sometimes I just like to write.

Mark. J. McCready

BKK

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Some of the perils of writing a blog on chess

Posted in My own endeavours, On-line journal, Personal Interest & Experience on May 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I shall keep this as brief as I can because I am too ashamed of myself to write extensively on the subject.

  • I enjoy writing about chess much more than playing chess.
  • I don’t know how long its been like that but I know its many years already.
  • I sometimes feel obliged to post content about myself even though I don’t like looking at it.
  • I lie to myself. I tell myself I write for myself only but its just not true.
  • I tell myself I am funny when I am not.
  • Posts can become uninteresting because sometimes I waffle on.
  • Challenging the conservatism rampant in chess was once an ideal that offended readers.
  • I like to give the impression that I am better at chess than what I really am.
  • If I focus on certain posts too much it gives me chess on the brain, and it takes days to shift it.

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I am a number

Posted in Chess, On-line journal on March 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I am a number -imagine how tough it is for an aficionado of the British TV Show The Prisoner to say something so outrageous? I can barely believe it. Confused?

Arguably the best British 60s TV Show.

Iron Maiden wrote a song about it too, it’s one of their better songs but by no means their best:

Not their only song on The Prisoner.

As you may, or may not, know FIDE went and readjusted the ratings for all those below ELO 2000 earlier this month. Somehow mine went up 87 points even though my last rated games were in April 2016. How did this happen and why? Put very simply: FIDE doesn’t like to play dominoes as much as it does watch chess. But do they like Domino’s Pizza?

I’m quite a bit better than my rating suggests. I very rarely play and am always rusty in tournaments, and that’s all I have.

First and foremost, if you’ve been playing chess for some time then you have may already conceded that, generally speaking, either there is much room for improvement with regards to FIDE, or perhaps they are not to be trusted as their history of getting things wrong is vast and stretches back in time way before we were born, given that context is always essential. This millennium alone, they have introduced new formulas and calculation methods, fought off inflation and deflation too, so one more adjustment is of no real significance if you are able to think outside of the box, as it were.

What do numbers tell you anyway? Why does it matter so much if they go up or down? As a Philosophy undergrad, I took great interest in being informed that mathematics is a meta-language since numbers don’t actually represent anything at all. What does the number 6 represent by itself? Six what? Does your rating represent your ability on any given day? Does it really? Doubtful, and highly so, since it changes all the time, sometimes without you even doing anything. There are so many external factors regarding performance over the board too, such as; current form, on/off days, mood, sleep deprivation, enthusiasm, age, desire, familiarity of opponent, to name but a few, and like I said FIDE who gave you your rating, does have a propensity to make a mess of things. Don’t believe me? Need an example? You might find this as revealing as it is entertaining. The intro alone refers to a rather scandalous ‘rating grab’ as GM Seirawan put it. Go to 50m 26s if you want to see how ratings can be shaped by politics within chess.

Damning stuff.

So why did my rating suddenly jump without me doing anything then? Long ago, I wouldn’t have been entitled to a rating since I am below ELO 2200. Then, as part of a drive to get more people playing they lowered it to ELO 2000. The policy then became to keep on lowering the bar to the point where players with ratings of ELO 1000 appear. They gain a rating almost instantly, not like before where you had to reach a set number of games before you were given one, one draw alone being sufficient. This has backfired and triggered deflation. This year FIDE decided an ELO rating of 1000 is too low, let’s move it back to 1400. Because they had noticed deflation has set in and everyone is losing points, since now you get someone with a rating of 1100 miraculously appear but his playing strength is more like 1500, partly because they changed the calculation formula some years back also. All this has had a domino effect, and FIDE does not like dominoes it would seem. Now we get 1500 players who are in fact more like 1800 players, I can confirm I have personally experienced this also and wondered how on earth my opponent -rated 1424- could play so well. So ratings are being pulled downwards because when you lose to those with a low rating you lose a lot of points. It’s had a knock on effect and FIDE doesn’t like dominoes Domino’s pizza.

Not FIDE’s favourite game.
Which town in England was the first to have Domino’s Pizza in 1985?

To counter this FIDE decided earlier this month that anyone rated under ELO 2000, such as myself, will get a boost…yes they like to play with figures. It could be said that people get worse at chess as they get older anyway, so most ratings will drop in time. Is this nothing more than some half-arsed PR stunt to make people feel better about their chess? Unlikely if viewed in context, its more likely efficacious than it is meretricious because the latest changes to ratings bear the hallmarks of an effort to cover up their mistakes standardize because they went and changed the formula back to how it was in the mid 2010s, to make them -the ratings- more fair and more representative of playing ability, which is FIDE’s way of admitting they made mistakes.

All this is important because chess players care about their ratings far too much. FIDE likes to objectify things and so we have ratings and titles. However, even titles are not as clear cut as people like to think and subject to all sorts of myth making. Since I am English, I grew up being told the first ever English Grandmaster was Tony Miles but this simply isn’t true. It was the problemist/composer Commins Mansfield who was first awarded the title in 721. So you are a Grand master are you? Okay, well perhaps you’d like to tell us what type of Grandmaster? Problemist? Correspondence? Classical chess? 80’s rap artist?

Grandmaster Flash and the furious five – pretty decent act.

Socrates was once told by the oracle of Delphi ‘know thyself’. Was he ever reliant on a number or title ever being given to him do you think? Unfortunately chess players do have a tendency to define themselves by their rating or title, hence the reason why they are significant even though they are epiphenomenal. If to be trusted, they can be seen as a good indicator of strength yes but quintessentially epiphenomenal to what lies within…well that’s my take on it anyway.

What am I now I wonder?

Here’s a puzzle I struggled with, what’s my level then? White to play and win in 4.

‘I’m not a number, I’m a man’. Or so says Homer Simpson in his parody of The Prisoner and its big balloons! The episode in the thumbnail is Many Happy Returns.

Patrick McGoohan, star of The Prisoner, was a chess lover and one of the episodes is about chess, it is called ‘Checkmate’.

This is a very average episode.

To conclude, I am a number (technically two numbers as I have an ECF and a FIDE rating and they are different) but not a free man as I am a father and my daughter comes first…ah well, could be worse. Not sure I’ll make a tv series out of it… .

My daughter and my mother.
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comins_Mansfield ↩︎

Mark. J. McCready

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Sometimes one is enough

Posted in My own endeavours, On-line journal on July 13, 2023| 2 Comments »

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

What to do with chess exploits this weekend then? Just how much chess do I want in my life? We do have the opportunity to frequent a new chess club tomorrow and also to visit the chessfest in London. https://www.chess-fest.com/

For that a quiet train ride on a Sunday afternoon is required, yes with the Wimbledon Men’s Final that afternoon to juggle too, but a first chessfest it is and win through is has done.

One outing per weekend for chess is quite enough thank you. I asked work to ensure I would be free Sunday, and so a Sunday afternoon of chess in London it be. I shan’t be dedicating myself entirely to it since The National Gallery just behind where the action kicks off in Trafalgar Square is quite something too. Last time there, mightily impressed with Canaletto I was.

So I might just play in a simul, well maybe, supposing it’s an option even. All in all it shall be quite enough methinks, and if its all too much, then more priority to in The National Gallery and the Wimbledon Men’s Final will be granted before I stroll off to Victoria Station where I shall catch a south-bound train to the coastline. Do I think an outing of chess this weekend is better off alone? Yes. Sometimes one is enough.

Mark. J. McCready, 8.23pm, Thursday, July 13th
Room 6, 114 Pevensey Road, Eastbourne.

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Only human

Posted in Chess, On-line journal on June 26, 2023| Leave a Comment »

‘Those that can do, those that can’t teach.’ -Proverb

The haves

Those who are titled, and classified as professional, interact with chess across a variety of mediums, the most prominent being electronic in today’s world. They can pick and chose aware that the future is digital.

Income from what they do may come from entering tournaments, classes/teaching/coaching, writing, online chess courses, commentary, sponsorship, online streaming, I could go on. I would imagine its a good life if Nietzsche is correct insomuch as we should ‘live by our passions’.

Most probably he has a good life

The have nots

You may not have a title, you may only be an amateur, nonetheless you are who you are. And don’t you love yourself? If not then you should because if you can’t then who can? Okay, so personal profit is not in play with regards to chess. So what is then? Personal pleasure or identity-conferring experience or social interlinkage or improvement or lack of a better idea?

Do you actually know why you play chess and what you get out of it? Is it important? Isn’t it important to know who we are and what we do? After all, that is how we define ourselves right? But where does all this lead? Put simply, knowledge is power as Francis Bacon once said. To get more out of what you do, you should know what you get out of it in the first place right?

Improvement or Contentment -the big question or is it?

The biggest of all questions should be what do you play chess for? Improvement, contentment or both (assuming that’s a false antithesis in play there). Improvement? Okay, let’s scrap that you can work it out yourself! May I suggest you seek out the right literature as a starting point then find your own way in? For the time being, let’s focus on contentment. Actually scrap that too -it’s too broad. Instead allow me to personalise matters then you decide to take whatever you want or so wish.

Consciousness -my only friend!

Loss of contentment = dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction = enquiry into what’s changed. I noticed that I was not playing to the best of my ability and that my play was too sloppy. I wasn’t thinking about my opponents moves enough or establishing threats in the position when it was my turn to move. Why? Online chess was why. I played too much and often at inopportune moments. This ushered in bad habits. Easily distracted, my thoughts wandered during my games all too easily. This ran through my mind last week during a game:

Conversation in a clinic

” ‘as ee got da krab?” (krab is a play on words with crabs. Crabs is English slang for pubic lice!?!)

” ee got da krab”

” ya see da smoke?” (da smoke means smoke produced when someone itches their pubes with such great intensity, smoke is produced)

“I saw da smoke”

It all got too casual. Things had to change. And change they would.

‘Of flesh and blood I’m made’

‘I’m only human, of flesh and blood I’m made. Human, born to make mistakes’. And so too my opponents from…well from now on from. Online chess was banished with thunder and lightening to keep it real, to make it fresh again. Online viewing banned too! OTB chess and OTB chess only now. Flesh and blood across the table was the order of the day. Once conscious of what was wrong, fix it so did I. Job done.

Yup folks, that’s me in the middle!

Mark. J. McCready, 9.40pm, Monday June 26th 2023.

My dark room, my home town.

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