Which personality type are you?

September 2, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Which personality type are you?
by inchessmemes

Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »

A take on the top three of all time

September 2, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

You’ve got to give credit to the current world champion for the way he handled the question. It centres around Fischer, Kasparov, himself, and who was the best. Such a question is easily dismissed but Carlsen answers it in a rationally informed manner -and well done to him for doing so! Well worth a listen.

Magnus shares his thoughts on the GOAT debate
byu/teolight332 inchess

Mark

Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »

Luton moves forwards

September 2, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

On August 30th 2022, a meeting was held at Luton Chess Club, in the library of the University of Bedfordshire. Around 12 people came and it was agreed that the club would meet there each Tuesday. It is expected that more members will join the club once the university opens its doors to students for the coming academic year. Should you need further assistance, do not hesitate to ask.

Mark

The Library, Luton campus.

Posted in Luton Chess Club | 2 Comments »

‘the chips are down’

September 1, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Welcome back to my blog after a hiatus of nearly a month. Once more I sit with the lights off and air con on, only this time there is a carefully placed humidifier below it for I have upped ship and sailed off to the desert. Although locations do, some things never change. Again I sit naked in front of my computer in the dark, yes it’s the middle of the night. There is a can of diet Pepsi to my side, which I have only just started. It is 12.41 am exactly, and having slept already, I am all yours. A fortnight ago I fell into the habit of going to bed at 6 pm and waking up in the middle of the night, this is no exception… .

Since the Olympiad, I have put chess to one side and just got on with my life. No games played on line. No on line events followed either. No chess at all for a month or so, whilst my glorious summer holiday ended and a working life resumed. I don’t know what constitutes downtime for I don’t know how much time must elapse, but we could say we are in one…well I just stopped thinking about chess per se. In terms of motivating myself to get back into our beautiful game, you could say ‘the chips are down’ with no allusions to jiggery-pokery in play, only the use of metaphor.

Today, a major event in the chess calendar begins:

All eyes will be on the world champion and the gathering of elite players he is pitted against. I won’t be following it for it starts past my bed time. But I do recommend you take a peek.

I will sign off now. I am in a land that fielded a team at the Olympiad which I could beat quite easily if I wanted to. Does this alter my interest in chess itself, I mean to be in a non-chess playing nation of sorts? Well it does but oh-so slightly. More importantly, life moves on and whether we like it or not we must readjust to changing circumstances and what they ask, or demand, of us. I am no longer on holiday and cannot watch chess tournaments unfolding at my leisure, as much as I may like to.

I will touch base again once I have thought of something else to say.

Mark. J. McCready 12.53 am, September 2nd 2022

Room 306, Helwa Apartments

Sakaka, Saudi Arabia

That’s me to your right,. Taken four years ago. Shot style: headbanging mode methinks.

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, My own endeavours, On-line journal, Personal Interest & Experience | Leave a Comment »

177th

August 9, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

The 44th Olympiad has come to a close in Chennai with a young team from Uzbekistan winning the gold medal. My home nation England faded towards the end and didn’t make it into the top ten.

Of the 188 teams registered to play, Laos finished in 177th place, which is better than what I feared last week when they were losing match after match.

So now that the spectacle is over, there is less to watch during the day. In any event it matters not as I have reached the point where I have to become fully focused on the upcoming weekend as my location will change and I have to say goodbye to my daughter for a while. Despite how well things go, life always has these changes it enforces on you from time to time, and just making yourself ready for them can be an ordeal in itself. Anyway, I hope you admired my rooting for Laos and all those odd little tales I threw in also. I’m prepared to admit that if you asked me which direction this website is going in, there are times where I don’t even know myself. I just know that I like writing… .

Anyway, well done to Laos for sticking at it, and let’s hope we see them again next time. Here’s a link to the final standings:

https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/olympiad-chennai-2022-open/11/2/1

Mark. J. McCready, 12.14am, August 10th

The very quiet and dark room I know as home right now,

Laksi, Bangkok

Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »

So that’s what it was

August 6, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

I will need to modify content and remove certain elements from my posts as I have put my finger on what it is. My social media habits are crossing over onto this site, meaning I think I am being listened to when I write. I am reaching out to people who aren’t there and that has to stop straight away. Content has, in places, become far too personal and I now know why. Okay, just reign things in a bit and should be fine.

Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »

Where the footage fails

August 6, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Curious state of affairs and it’s always a shame to see one of the great guys of the game go wrong. What the footage doesn’t show it that we are all human thus prone to error, and he had been playing for many hours already. A great shame for a result to come about like that although you could argue he’s already lost.

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/wgy009/sam_shankland_commits_a_catastrophic_touchmove/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »

Dead can dance

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

There’s an awful lot of things I cannot do in this world, and come to think of it, there’s not much I can do either…oh this is not a good start to the post, oh dear. Well anyway, I’ll be here all day if I start thinking about all that so let’s wrap it up by admitting I can’t dance (among many other things!). If I listen to A Flock of Seagulls whilst alone, I kinda can…well there’s this jive I’ve got with the headphones in. But honestly, I can’t dance on the dance floor and I know that, it’s always been like that. But I can tell when others can and cannot dance and so I must tell you that the link below has evidence that some chess players can dance and some cannot. I don’t want to say some of the video is embarrassing because it’s great to see people expressing their happiness but with regards to the stage being set on fire, erm, that’s not the phrase I would use. It’s more likely that the person who wrote that was on drugs at the time of writing. There’s nothing like that going on, in fact there’s not really much at all going on except people dancing. Well anyway, have a look and decide yourself but if you ask me, the person who wrote that was on something…well its either that or since it’s from Chessbase India, and there’s an Indian song playing, its bias in play. In addition, fashion police must have been busy that night methinks!

Dead can Dance -well you couldn’t to their music as it was too chilled for such a thing.

Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »

Laos doesn’t lose out

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

Facing the mighty Mauritius, Laos have secured a 2-2 draw. Even on board one there was a rating difference of over 700 points, and that was with the only rated player they had. It’s a very good result as they were huge underdogs. Laos: the dogs that don’t go down are climbing up the table. It might just be that they won’t finish bottom now, as was feared a few days ago. What’s next for these dogs I wonder? More dogged performances we could do with, maybe I might just give them an electronic bone for their performances. Those in their hill tribes scattered across the land might just be suitably impressed whilst they are breaking up stones or making sticks or squatting near bushes with smiley faces for reasons which cannot be ascertained, especially when belting by on your bike.

Are they interested in the Laotian chess team’s exploits?
Giving the dog a bone albeit an electronic one!

Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »

Skill shot

August 5, 2022 by mccreadyandchess

As we know, the world’s most popular form of entertainment is pinball, with an estimated 172 billion players worldwide. In some countries you are legally required to have a pinball machine in your house and would face arrest if you didn’t. I can’t remember the last time I spent less than 12 hours in a day playing pinball, it must have been some twenty years ago, if not more. Usually we start a game of pinball off with a skill shot and this is something we will find difficult to incorporate into chess. How are we going to do it? What we could do is on the first move we could have all the squares on the third and forth rank flash randomly, and the player with the white pieces, stops them flashing by pressing the clock, and so whichever square it stops on, he must move a pawn there. That might work. Black would have to do the same but we have the fifth and sixth ranks flashing squares randomly. It would have a significant impact on opening theory, almost destroying it but we can let that go. The important thing is to get it in and not worry about the consequences even if it angers some players because it’s your speed in the skill shot which will determine which pawn moves first and not current trends in opening theory. I will admit that will anger some players but there’s a lot of money to be made here and skill shots are a good test of reflexes and hand-eye coordination, two vital chess skills.

Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »