I played this on a speedy skytrain but how fast does it get with The St. George’s Defence? Watch and find out but understand I am not posting out of pride, I am posting out of amusement.
A decent opponent outplayed me and then I blundered but I did not lose for it was I who checkmated him, commentary is provided. I confess I am quite proud of this, especially since I saw his mating threat late on and won the game by averting it.
Olcmarcus
Posted in Selected on-line games | Leave a Comment »
All you need to do is the watch the video on how I win this game, it won’t take long. Commentary is provided. I solemnly swear I played purely on instinct and never gave my moves any real thought.
Olcmarcus
Posted in Selected on-line games | Leave a Comment »
Some little on-line pipsqueak beheld my St.George’s Defence and tried to mate me in the opening! Okay it’s suspicious from the outset, The St.George’s Defence that is. But it’s highly transpositional, and so making use of the spatial advantage granted is not as simple as it may seem. You are welcome to see how I got my game together in the middlegame and took him to pieces, played on a skytrain too I might add. Some sound middlegame play here by myself, none of it required any real thought.
https://lichess.org/JrrvYmu9MGbt
Enjoy.
Mark.J.McCready
Posted in Selected on-line games | Leave a Comment »
Should we both warp and strictly adhere to Collingwood’s concept of what history is, we could argue that Bedfordshire was the stopover point of a Grandmaster smuggling ring during the cold war. With strict adherence to Collingwood, the claim is unchallengeable and irrefutable if and only if intentionality lies at the very heart of discourse thus of history too.
Ok so I have no evidence of the above claim concerning a smuggling ring in operation and neither has anyone else but that’s not the point. It’s unfactual but history, for Collingwood, is about establishing why people wanted the things they did, in particular what they had in mind. Since the governments played with their cards close to their chests always to resort to ‘the facts’ as Ranke would is rather pointless as you can never unearth them all anyway. A pertinent point is if we warp into the equation a dose of drunken deductive reasoning we could argue pre-conceived notions of my country’s strength in yesteryear doubled up as pretext for positional play left without discourse until now. Again its factuality or lack thereof remains inconsequential but also partially explaining why no Soviet or American Grandmaster showed their face in the Bedfordshire league despite its ‘locality’. Whether what found counts as identity-conferring is, perhaps, rather fanciful if not overtly playful academia. (Note to self@ Mark, if you recall you wrote an essay about Collingwood’s devotee Dray during your MA, and there was nothing fanciful or playful about that if you remember those long April days.)
Is it 2.30am already? Hmmm, abandon academic musing and conjecture for a game of blitz on-line then bed methinks… .
Olcmarcus
Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »
I am at present giving The Catalan a good look. It’s right for me but perhaps I have bitten off more than I can chew there. Nonetheless I read the following:
In written chess theory, every once in a while you get that jaw hits floor feeling. Or in my case both eyebrows raised fully, then remained fully raised for some time they did. A sentence began with a phrase that related to a concept rather above and beyond my own head. I have attached the page, see if you can guess what the four word phrase is, shouldn’t be too hard…think it took about an hour for the eyebrows to return to their resting places.
Mark
Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »
I feel as though I’ve been drugged and duped. Snatched from the off-line world and dragged into a murky on-line underworld courtesy of a dark descent full of twists and turns, the last of which knocked me unconscious.
Only if you fancy a game drop me a note. I had to join both https://lichess.org/ and https://www.chess.com/ and go under the username Olcmarcus in both…as you may know Olc is Gaelic for evil. But evil at chess I am not, just out of practice and tactically poorer than ever because concentration levels are at an all-time low.
If you want to play, you’ll probably win. I’m brilliant at blundering, I really am. Despite impressions gained by this site I genuinely am only a strong club player at best, and usually your average club player. Yes I’ve beaten an FM, yes I’ve drawn with an IM, yes I put up a solid defence for long enough against a GM rated 2620 once, but that aside -nothing.
Because quite a lot of people seem to like my site, I thought I’d reach out and we’d play. The choice is, of course, yours.
Marcus McCreadus
Posted in My own endeavours | Leave a Comment »
I’ve agreed to play in my first on-line tournament, now all the rage as pandemic sweeps the globe.
I became an on-line member of my home town chess club and that’s the organizational body.
It’s an unprincipled decision because the digital revolution we are currently undergoing is pernicious. You can’t compare on-line tournaments to those in the real world, to do so is ludicrous and unworthy of consideration.
But with a blind love of chess pushing the agenda, I shall participate, and try to be at my best.
Wish me luck. Being rusty I will most likely need it… .
Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »
I did manage to read Rowson’s book The Moves that Matter, carefully enough. It took longer than it should but he does appear to have remained remarkably adept at giving you food for thought and time for digestion. He did come under some criticism as there are factual errors, and some points made are rather contentious. His account of chess in Georgia and the gap in strength between men and women remaining unchanged was disappointing to read given that the policy introduced to invoke change has already done so, hence the reason that the majority of Georgian world champions are female. The latter third of the book has a shift in style which indicates fatigue. Some parts are below par for him, and feel rushed or without the reflection we come to expect from Rowson. Still, it’s a great book and well worth a read. Perhaps a little too ambitious but at worst only very slightly falls short of what it should have been. Anyway, that is nothing more than my own uncontested opinion.
Posted in Academia, Reviews | Leave a Comment »
Phew! so that’s the most engaging writing project of my entire life done, all that remains is what to do with all 38351 words of it. It’s most likely publishable but that’s not something I consider to be an achievement, so I will have to ponder further over that. Alternatively I may just include excerpts from that 1 weight lifted off my shoulders.
I’m sad to say my focus therefore ability went through the roof, which makes it much harder to read and watch anything as I can dismantle it in an instance, and usually offer improvements without much, if any, thought. Even the book that inspired me to undertake it, which is exceptionally high-brow for chess, almost certainly as high-brow as it gets. I can see where the narrative needs improvement and how continuity could be improved in places.
I was thinking about writing posts about the joys of writing about chess but perhaps I’ll change to the woes of focusing on something your good at instead. Beginning with ‘The woe of increasing your wordpower and the amount of investment in time and resources that will remain in play for good.’
Nothing chess-related to be added other than a rumination. If the author’s insertion of a quote does indeed apply to chess at its highest level as the author suggests, there is either a very strong argument to give it all up or as I narrative in my own piece, find something far better to do than play chess (which by the way is unsurprisingly easy) ‘The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win’.
Mark
Posted in My own endeavours, Personal Interest & Experience | Leave a Comment »
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A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
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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.
Gallery
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- I’m either 10 or 11 here
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- 1982, myself versus Brian from Sunderland.
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- At the Thai Junior chess championships. My daughter of course.
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- Pattaya 2011
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- 2011
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- Thai Junior Championships
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- 2008
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- 2011
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- Around 2011
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- 2011
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- Pattaya 2009
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- 2011
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- Kuwait 2008
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- 2012
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- 2012
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- 2011 BKK Chess club
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- 2011
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- 2011 Thai Open
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- 2011 Thai Open
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- 2013 approx
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- Around 2014
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- 2010
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- 2012
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- Around 2011
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- 2011
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- 2011
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- 2013
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- Around 2011
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- Around 2011
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- 2020
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- 2011
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- 2008
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- 2011
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- 2013 or thereabouts
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- 2010
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