Back…at least occasionally

     For the past few weeks it’s been cold as a booger outside (this is first day the sun has shown in about 3 weeks) so there hasn’t been much to do and with all of my correspondence games are over except one, I have been busy playing over games from Super Nezh: Rashid Nezhmetdinov, Chess Assassin by Alex Pishkin. Nezh was an early version of Tahl. His combinations were fantastic, if not always entirely sound. Every time I play over his games I get to thinking I could play like that, but, of course, I can’t. I know because I have been frittering away the time playing 15 minute games on Instant Chess.
 

 

     Instant Chess is a nice site; you sign in anonymously and play games against random opponents at random time limits, mostly 15 minutes per game, but on rare occasions you’ll be given a G1 or G30. The opposition ranges from beginners to fairly decent players; mostly the latter. It looks like it would be pretty nice site to join, but the $7.99 per month (join for 10 months and get 2 months free, that’s $80 per year) seems overpriced. Jessica Fischer has done a very entertaining bio of Nezh on Youtube HERE.
      The other book I’ve been looking at is Najdorf’s Zurich, 1953.  Most everybody says Bronstein’s is better, but I prefer Najdorf’s annotations. John Watson does an in depth review of Najdorf’s book HERE.

 

     The problem with playing anonymous games on Instant Chess is that there is no game score so you don’t have any record of them. The solution I’ve used is to simply use a scoresheet and record the games manually. I suppose you could also open a chess program in another window and use it to record your games, but the temptation with that might be to use the engine which would defeat the purpose of playing.
     Anyway, after playing over Nezhmetdinov’s games the temptation to play gambits and jump at the chance to make any reasonable looking sacrifice has been overwhelming and since you are probably dying to see one of my Instant Chess games, I have attached one. Over time, I may offer up some of Nezmetdinov’s games and/or some games from Zurich that are especially entertaining.