Jacqueline Piatigorsky

Most chess players remember Jacqueline Piatigorsky (born November 6, 1911) only as the lady behind the fiasco that ended the 1961 Reshevsky-Fischer match.  What happened was she and her husband had established the Piatigorsky Foundation which helped sponsor chess in public schools and chess for underpriveledged and disabled children but its primarily purpose was to support the Piatagorsky Cup Tournament.   However, the first competition under the sponsorship of the Piatigorsky Foundation was the Reshevsky-Fischer.  The match was to be 16 games with the first 4 played in New York City and the next 8 played in Los Angeles and the last 4 back in New York City. There had been difficulty in setting up a time for the 12th game because as an Orthodox Jew, Reshevsky couldn't play on the Sabbath, so the game was scheduled after sundown, (9:00 pm).  Later Mrs. Piatigorsky realized that starting by at 9 pm, the game wouldn't end until 2 am. which she thought was too late.

The committee rescheduled the game to start at 1:30 pm the next day, but Mrs. Piatigorsky wanted to see the game and this starting time would conflict with a musical performance her husband was giving.   So, on her own, she scheduled the game for 11 am that morning. Fischer, who would not play that early in the morning, became infuriated that she had consulted neither him nor Reshevsky, threw one of his hissy fits and using language that was fit for the gutter, stormed out in protest, Reshevsky wisely said nothing and was declared the winner, collected his prize money and returned home.  The match was tied at 5½-5½ going into the disputed game.

 
For an interesting article written by Mrs. Piatigorsky written when she was  90 years, visit  HERE. 

Born Jacqueline Rothschild she had every advantage growing up but she led a secluded childhood, with no friends, was dominated by sadistic or uncaring nannies, saddened by parents who would visit her and her siblings only rarely, she claimed to have never have been out alone until she became an adult.

She was taught chess by an English nurse when she was 6 years old and convalescing from peridonitis, but she was mostly interested in tennis and golf. She had a circle of acquaintances and played chess with people like Marcel Duchamp and Sergei Prokofiev. Prokofiev was a strong player who once defeated Capablanca in a simul.  Prokofiev  partnered with Mrs. Piatigorsky in bridge and would often make demeaning remarks against her during their games. They only played two games of chess.  The first was a draw but she won the second  and Prokofiev refused to play her again.

She married her husband, Gregor, the renowned cellist in 1937.  Being Jews, they fled France for the United States when it threatened to fall under Nazi control.  While in New York Mrs. Piatigorsky began playing correspondence chess.  In 1949 they moved to California where she met Herman Steiner who encouraged her to enter tournaments. In 1951 she tied for next to last in the U.S. Women's Championship.  Steiner died suddenly in 1955 right in the middle of the state championship.  He had a club called the Hollywood Chess Group to which many celebrities belonged, including a lot of women players.  After Steiner’s death Mrs. Piatigorky took over the club that was renamed the Herman Steiner Chess Club in his memory. In 1956 the club hosted the California Women's Championship.   Mrs. Piatigorsky finished third behind Sonja Graf-Stevenson and Lina Grumette.

In 1957 she took part in the first Women's Chess Olympiad played at Emmens, Netherlands and scored a very respectable 6 wins, 3 draws and 2 loses. In individual games, she beat Merete Haahr (Danish Women's Chess Champion in 1952, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1967, 1970 and 1975), Beth Cassidy of Ireland, R.P Foggie (the 1955 Scottish Women's Chess Champion) twice, Berta Zebinger (the Austrian Women's Champion in 1955 and shared in 1967), Ms. Welter of Luxembourg. She drew against Miroslawa Litmanowicz (the 1968 Polish Women's Champion-to-be), Éva Karakas (7 time Hungarian Women's Chess Champion), and Antonia Ivanova (6 time Bulgarian Wome's Chess Champion in 1951, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1958 and 1967). She lost to Kveta Eretova of the Czech Republic and to Ursula Altrichter (East German Women's Chess Champion in 1954). She played second board and won the bronze medal.

The First Piatigorsky Cup Tournament was held in 1963. Fischer was invited but demanded a $2000 appearance fee but was turned down so didn’t play.  Petrosian and Keres shared first place Najdorf, Panno, Gligoric, Olafsson,Benko and Reshevsky also participated. She seemed to have really disliked Fischer, but because his standing in the chess world, she also invited him to the 2nd Piatigorsky Cup Tournament in 1966. To her surprise, Fischer accepted without demanding an appearance fee.  She wrote, "in the Second Piatigorsky Cup, Fischer played under the same conditions as everyone else. I think I was the first person ever to stand up to him."   In this tournament Fischer finished the first half of the double round event in last place, then in a surprising surge, finished in second place a half point behind Spassky.

This tournament was unique for another reason:  Mrs. Piatigorsky wrote, "Until then, the only way the public could follow the games was by setting up magnetic boards and having youngsters run back and forth, moving pieces on the board to adjust to each new position. It was cumbersome. So I invented a new system with overhead projectors and electric clocks so the public could not only follow the games comfortably, but also the time control."

Sidebar:  For an interesting story on the chess sets used in the Piatigorsky tournaments, go HERE.  Visit HERE for a Sports Illustrated article.

Mrs. Piatigorsky was not only a woman’s chess champion but a tennis champion, author, sculptor and a member of the Rothschild banking family of France. The daughter of the enormously wealthy and influential banker, Édouard Alphonse de Rothschild, and Germaine Alice Halphen. She was born in Paris.

She and her husband were also patrons of the arts and in 1985 created an endowment for the New England Conservatory of Music to provide the "New England Conservatory/Piatigorsky Artist Award" which gave the recipient a cash prize and a series of concert engagements.  In her forties she developed an interest in sculpting and arranged to take lessons from a professional.  A Los Angeles area gallery put on the first exhibition of her works in 1976. Widowed at the age of sixty-five, she continued working and playing tennis into her nineties and remained active in sculpting.

Sam Sloan wrote an interesting article describing his 1965 meeting with her which you can read HERE.  I was able to verify that Mrs. Piatigorsky was still living in 2008 and was unable to find any obituary, so assume she is, at the age of 100, still living! A fascinating woman.

Check out the instructive way in which she defeats many time US Women’s champion Mona Karff in the following game.

GM James Tarjan

In the 1970’s and 1980’s one of the most exciting US players was Jim Tarjan (born 22 February 1952) of Sherman Oaks, California. At age 17 he was selected to the American team for the 1969 World Students' Olympiad and was a member of the winning American team at Haifa 1970 and was selected again at Graz 1972.

He finished second at an invitational junior tournament at Norwich 1972, with 12/15, behind Gyula Sax. His best results in international tournaments include first at Subotica 1975, first at Vancouver 1976, and first equal at Vršac 1983, along with Predrag Nikolić and Georgy Agzamov. Other good finishes included tied for third at Chicago 1973, tied for fifth at Venice 1974 with 7.5/13; and tied second at Bogotá 1979, with 10.5/14, behind Beliavsky.

Tarjan played in several U.S. Championships during the 1970s and 1980s. He was fourth at El Paso 1973 with 7.5/12. At Oberlin 1975, he tied for sixth with a score of 6.5/13. At Pasadena 1978, which was the Zonal qualifier, he tied for second with 10.5/14, and advanced to the 1979 Riga Interzonal where he scored 8.5/17. Tarjan's last competitive tournament was the 1984 U.S. Championship at Berkeley, where he tied third, scoring 10.5/17. Tarjan earned his IM title in 1974, and his GM title in 1976.

He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and like many of the best US players of the day, gave up chess in 1984 while in his early thirties, in order to pursue a more stable career as a librarian. Tarjan was a player with a very aggressive style but away from the board, he was a very nice person. Tarjan is the brother of the well-known computer scientist, Robert Tarjan.

The Art of Stealing

…by IM Jeremy Silman…great old article on Chessdotcom.

Brilliancy by an Average Player

It’s not often average players can produce a truly brilliant move, but after making a speculative, but unsound sacrifice, Black unleashes a really brilliant conclusion. His 29th move was very pretty. White’s rating was ‘Class B’ (1600-1799) while Black’s was ‘Class C’ (1400-1599)!

The Great Blitz Tournament

After the completion of the World vs. USSR match held in Belgrade in 1970, Fischer remained in Yugoslavia for a time.  Organizers tried unsuccessfully to get him to play in the “Second Tournament of Peace” to be held in Rovinj and Zagreb, but he surprisingly agreed to play in a 5 minute, double round blitz tournament held in Herceg Novi in which some of the best blitz players in the world at the time participated: Tahl, Korchnoi, Bronstein, Petrosian and Matulovic.  Fischer very rarely played blitz and the specialists were happy to see him participate because it was believed they would give him some ‘lessons’ in blitz play.  Surprise!  Fischer lost one game to Korchnoi and drew one game each against Hort, Uhlmann, Bronstien and Reshevsky and won all the rest, in most games taking only about half of the time used by his opponents.


1-Fischer 19

2-Tahl 14.5
3-Korchnoi 14
4-Petrosian 13.5
5-Bronstein 13
6-Hort 12
7-Matulovic 10.5
8-Smyslov 9.5
9-Reshevsky 8.5
10-Uhlmann 8
11-Ivkov 7.5
12-Ostojic 2

Interesting Position

In the November issue of Chess Life, GM Alejandro Ramirez, who tied for 1st-7th, gave some interesting analysis of his game against GM Julio Sadorra. Look at the following position:

Of this position Ramirez wrote, in part, “A swift glance will reveal nothing more than a normal KID/Benoni setup with Black having a ton of dark squares and White having a nice space advantage. A deeper study reveals that Black doesn’t have a plethora of dark squares, he has one: d4. This square isn’t even heavily controlled by him; as soon as White is able to play b4 and put the N back on b3, he will have full control over d4. White will then have a space advantage on the Q-side, the K-side and the center. Black, unlike most Benonis, has no targets. The d7-N has no squares. He doesn’t want to trade on d5, and at the same time he doesn’t have a useful move. Houdini might think that this game is about equal. I think Black’s position is awful.”

This is a good example of GM thinking about squares and such, but did you get that part where he said, “Houdini might think that this game is about equal. I think Black’s position is awful.”

This illustrates a point I’ve made elsewhere in this Blog that when an engine evaluation differs from a GM’s, trust the GM! I put this position into my program and let Ivanhoe (we already know Houdini thinks the position is about equal) look at it for about 10-12 minutes just to see what it came up with.

Ivanhoe also thought the position was about equal, giving White a 0.11 advantage. But…and this is important…when you jump to the end of the variation, the advantage changes drastically to nearly 2 Pawn’s in White’s favor.

This has to do with the ‘principle variation’ which is described as the line the engine believes represents best play by both sides if it has been set up to display thinking. CCGM Robin Smith advised that when looking at the PV, don’t pay too much attention to the whole line that is displayed. Never believe the programs PV all the way to the end. The first move displayed will be the move the engine thinks is best, but after that, all bets are off.

His advice was, after letting the engine run a sufficient amount of time, paste the moves into the game then jump to the end of the evaluation and step backwards through the moves. Using this technique will often result in your seeing something quite different than just looking at the initial output.

Such is the case here. After 10-12 minutes, Ivanhoe displayed the main line to move 11.Rd1 and evaluated the position as nearly equal (0.11), but when I stopped the analysis and went directly to the position after 11.Rd1, the evaluation was almost a 2P advantage for White, which is actually more in line with Ramirez’ evaluation. Stepping backwards we see that Black could have possibly improved with 7…Nxb3 or later with 10…Nc3.

My goal here is not to provide a complete analysis of this position, which is something I’m not capable of doing anyway, but to show, or rather hint at, the way GM’s look at positions when evaluating them. Of particular interest in this position is Ramirez’ comments when he is discussing squares. Also, it is another good example of the proper way to use engines to analyze games. In some positions you still can’t, even these days, rely solely on their output and you can’t just plug in an engine’s principle variation and think you’ve got good analysis. It still takes some investigating on the part of the human and you can’t get top notch evaluation by spending 15 minutes on a position like I did in preparing this post. That’s why titled CC players even with engines need days to evaluate positions in order to arrive at the best move.

Still, even we average players can learn a lot if we are willing to put some effort into analyzing with engines and do not, like most of us, just let it analyze our game at a few seconds a move and think we have come up with the best lines.

Amateur Chess

The AmateurChess Organization (ACO) is a new chess organization that will organize world championships for amateurs, youth, and teams, starting in 2012. The ACO stands primarily for fun in chess and for social exchange among chess players. The ACO is a fully independent organization, and see themselves as a complement to FIDE, not as competition.

Question: Is this a political maneuver against FIDE by people who don't like the current president?

Hand held Chess Programs

Here’s an interesting site if you are looking for a hand held chess program.

http://kantack.com/chess/index.htm

From the author’s Blog: Originally I only reviewed handheld chess computers. Later I expanded my reviews to include other chess-related merchandise. In addition to handheld chess reviews, you'll find at this site: reviews of a few tabletop chess computers, a chess clock, and even a book covering scholastic chess

AVRO 1938

      The AVRO tournament was the last major chess event before the Second World War. The older players were pitted against the up-and-coming youth. Youth triumphed and a new era of chess players was to dominate the chess world for many years to come. The AVRO tournament belongs to history and few of today’s players remember it, but it still stands as one of the greatest tournaments ever.  The final standings were: Keres and Fine 8½ (14), Botvinnik 7½, Alekhine, Euwe and Reshevsky 7, Capablanca 6, Flohr 4½.  Keres won on tiebreaks by virtue of his 1½-½ score against Fine in their individual games.

        An indicator of how strong these new generation was, Capablanca had only lost 26 tournament games over a span of 29 years but lost four games in this event. He suffered a mild stroke during this tournament which was largely responsible for his poor performance.
       The tournament was organized in the hope that it would provide a challenger to Alekhine, but it was not an official Candidates Tournament and the outbreak of World War II put an end to any thought of a match until the FIDE organizedthe 1948 match tournament after Alekhine's death in 1946.  In that event the six surviving AVRO participants (Capablanca had also died) were invited but by that time Vasily Smyslov had eclipsed Flohr, so Smyslov replaced him.  Fine refused his invitation and for the rest of his life, felt he should have been granted  the special privilege of a match based on his AVRO results.  It was clear to everyone except Fine that he was no longer among the world elite.
       Salo Flohr, then of Czechoslovakia, had been nominated the year before AVRO as FIDE's official challenger for the World Title. Samuel Reshevsky and Reuben Fine achieved brilliant results in various competitions in the mid-thirties and the twenty-two-year-old Paul Keres who had made a name for himself in several strong tournaments and the olympiads.
       Alekhine had won the rematch against Euwe and  there were some other players who had laid claim to the World Championship title. Capablanca, who had lost to Alekhine in 1927, was still planning on a rematch against Alekhine so the Dutch radio company (Allgemeene Vereenigung Radio-Omroep) decided to organize the tournament in the belief that the winner of the tournament, if it wasn’t Alekhine himself, would earn the right to challenge him in the next World Championship match.
      There was some political turmoil at the time the tournament was held and it was apparent to most people that a second world war was about to take place.  As a result of the political situation, Salo Flohr, who had previously accepted his invitation asked to withdraw because Czechoslovakia had already been occupied and his family devastated. He request was denied and so he played but this took its toll on his play.
      Reuben Fine, who later abandoned chess,  was considering pursuing his career and he also asked to withdraw, but his request was also refused. Years later, in his book Lessons from My Games, he explained his success in AVRO. "Perhaps it was as a result of the decision to give up chess that I played with a new determination there."  Arnold Denker writing in The Bobby Fischer I Knew wrote, "Doubts are always the enemy of blind dedication, which is so essential for aspiring world champions. Unemployed from 1939 to 1941Fine saw that a future dedicated to chess was bleak at best, and he obeyed the dictates of common sense, returning to school in the mid-1940s..."
       Fine lead from start scoring 5½ out of the first six games, winning against Botvinnik, Reshevsky, Euwe, Flohr and Alekhine. Then in the 7th round he lost to Keres who finished the first half of the tournament only a half point behind Fine. In the second half Keres drew all of his games while Fine lost two.  Fine did beat Alekhine twice, thus winning his mini-match against the World Champion.
       It was the worst showing in his career for Capablanca. Capablanca and Alekhine, the oldest participants of the tournament ,complained that each round was played in a new town which made it difficult for the older players.
      As a result of his victory on tiebreaks, Keres was supposed to have gained the right to challenge Alekhine to a match for the World Championship, but before the tournament in his speech to the participants and organizers Alekhine stated that, although the tournament was conceived as a candidates' competition, he was not obliged to play a match with the winner of the tournament unless the met his usual conditions.
       The result was Botvinnik challenged Alekhine to a match shortly after the end of the AVRO tournament but the outbreak of World War II ended chess activity.  Botvinnik considered his third place in this tournament a serious failure because his victories in Moscow and Nottingham had made him feel confident that he could win AVRO also.  In this event Botvinnik won two games (against Alekhine and Capablanca)  that have been considered  his most outstanding masterpieces.

You can download all of the games in Chessbase format HERE.  You don’t have to study the games; just watching them play is rewarding.

A Chess Record by Chuck Berry

Weird View on Chess Problems

       In 1936 Chess in the USSR magazine ran an article titled “Confusion in Composition” by Botvinnik who wrote, “the basis of chess is practical play” and advocated a “merciless” fight against abstract compositions.  Botvinnik’s campaign against chess problems not derived from real games also happened to coincide with a Soviet crusade then taking place for realism in art.
       Botvinnik favored endgame studies that might have arisen from real games and he condemned abstractionists who preferred unusual themes that were unlikely to arise from actual games.
       GM Yuri Averbakh commented on the period saying, “Things like chess composition which were so far from anything relating to everyday life started to become the center of political discussions.”
       During the Soviet purges of the 1930’s Rostoslav Alexandrov and Alexander Rotinyan were expelled from the Soviet chess federation because some of their problems had been published in Nazi Germany.  Their publication had not been approved by the proper authorities before being submitted abroad.  After WW2 when Alekhine was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, the Alekhine Defense was renamed the Moscow Defense in the USSR.  After his death, Alekhine’s name was rehabilitated and Kotov and Yudovich writing in The Soviet School of Chess, called him Russia’s greatest player.
       In The Sorcerer’s Apprentice David Bronstein, tongue-in-cheek, called Botvinnik “a good communist” so most likely Botvinnik, who was a snake anyway, probably wrote the article to get his “brownie points.”
       Incidentally, after Alekhine’s death there appeared in Al Horowitz’ magazine, Chess Review, a big brouhaha over whether or not Alekhine’s games should be published.  Many letters to the editor from the well-known and not so well-known appeared in the magazine on both sides of the issue.  Horowitz took the stand that he was going to continue to publish the games.  Alekhine’s sudden death pretty much ended the debate.

Micro Game

I came across this micro-game the other day. It illustrates several points that I’ll let the reader figure out!

Instructive Game by Taimanov

The following game by Taimanov makes chess look easy.  It’s instructive because it shows how N outposts, squares and short maneuvers and play on the files come into play in GM games.

Pontificating

       As you all know the latest version of Houdini (Houdini 2) is no longer free.  I am sure this probably has something to do with the downfall of Rybka.  No matter. You can now purchase Houdini 2 Aquarium (supports up to 6 cores and 4 GB of hash for about $60 and Houdini 2 Aquarium Pro (supports up to 32 cores and 32 GB of hash for about $95). What does this mean for the average player who just wants to analyze his games? Nothing.  And what about the serious CC player who is playing at the titled level?  Again, I think the answer is nothing.  The reason is because at the titled level they know enough about chess to know when the engine output is suspect.  Still, they will want the best equipment available, so they will make the necessary purchases.  So, who is going to suffer?  Only those CC players who rely solely on engine generated moves but most of them will not get within sniffing distance of a CC title anyway. They will lose a few more games to guys with better equipment and the slightly stronger engine. Both groups will continue to lose to strong IM’s and up who are using engines, even if the engines are a few points weaker.
      I’ve been reading some bulletin boards about various chess engines and the big brouhaha about cloning and who stole what from whom.  Mostly it’s howling at the moon because all engines have relied on previous advances by other engines.  Any time a computer programmer sets out to write any kind of program, he studies the source codes of similar programs. 
       In order to get a new patent on anything all you have to do is make a small improvement on the existing design and you can then market it. Ideas have always been built upon by artists, musicians, philosophers, scientists, engineers, etc.  This is not the same thing as forgery. A copy of a work of art that is claimed to be an original is illegal, but a copy is not. Musical compositions are often given different arrangements.
       So for people to say that for a chess engine program to be legitimate it has to be written from scratch doesn’t make any sense. Even if all the programmer does is take a previous program and tweak 25 or 50 points more out of it, then he has what in any other field would be a patentable improvement for which he would get full credit.  That’s how new discoveries are made in the scientific field so why are chess playing programs any different.
      The programmer of Rybka, Vasik Rajlich, acknowledged that he used many ideas from the open source program Fruit whose source code is easily available on the Internet. Then all of a sudden he was accused of cheating when the International Computer Games Association took the action after an investigation into claims Rybka was a derivative of other chess engines. It was suspicions of cloned engines that led to the formation of the ICGA Clone and Derivative Investigation Panel.
      This whole mess reminds me of the idiot on one of the chess forums a couple years back.  The question came up about a German book of Boris Spassky’s games that Bobby Fischer used in preparation for their match.  A couple of us old timers remembered reading that Fischer did use such a book and I even found a copy of it for sale on e-Bay.  The ad on e-Bay said something to the effect that this is “the book Fischer used in his match preparation...”  So what did the guy go berserk about?  He said that until he read something written personally by Fischer saying he used the book, he would not believe it.  He even went further and criticized the e-Bay ad by claiming it was fraud for the seller to claim it was the book Fischer used to prepare for Spassky.  Why was it fraud?  Because the seller wrote “...it was the book Fischer used...” and this guy was taking it to mean it was the actual book, the one personally owned and fondled by Fischer.   Some people will believe what they want to believe no matter how much proof you offer and no amount of proof will ever be enough.  And then some people just like to nitpick.
      The rule about writing down your move after you play it because to write it down before you make it constitutes consulting notes triggers my gag reflex.  Give me a break!  For years and years we wrote down our move before we played it (or after if you wanted to...nobody cared).  Sometimes, on second thought, a player would scratch out his move then write down another one, but NOBODY ever dreamed of calling it consulting notes and therefore cheating. Heck, I’ve even seen guys tell their opponent, “You forgot to punch your clock.”  It’s a rule violation but I never heard anybody complain.  I wouldn’t be surprised if these days there are those who would summon the TD and try to claim a win because their opponent distracted them.

The Chess Master and the Computer

       Perhaps chess is the wrong game for the times. Poker is now everywhere, as amateurs dream of winning millions and being on television for playing a card game whose complexities can be detailed on a single piece of paper. But while chess is a 100 percent information game—both players are aware of all the data all the time—and therefore directly susceptible to computing power, poker has hidden cards and variable stakes, creating critical roles for chance, bluffing, and risk management.

       These might seem to be aspects of poker based entirely on human psychology and therefore invulnerable to computer incursion. A machine can trivially calculate the odds of every hand, but what to make of an opponent with poor odds making a large bet? And yet the computers are advancing here as well. Jonathan Schaeffer, the inventor of the checkers-solving program, has moved on to poker and his digital players are performing better and better against strong humans—with obvious implications for online gambling sites.

      Perhaps the current trend of many chess professionals taking up the more lucrative pastime of poker is not a wholly negative one. It may not be too late for humans to relearn how to take risks in order to innovate and thereby maintain the advanced lifestyles we enjoy. And if it takes a poker-playing supercomputer to remind us that we can’t enjoy the rewards without taking the risks, so be it.

Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind by Diego Rasskin-Gutman, translated from the Spanish by Deborah Klosky, MIT Press, 205 pp., $24.95


Read the entire review HERE

GM Alex Yermolinsky On the Sicilian

“Chessplayers study openings to get favorable middlegame positions…it is much better to take on some openings that will serve you well for years to come than to restrict yourself to primitive setups designed to avoid theory.”

“There is no ‘chess made easy’ advice that would immediately improve your chess.  Widely disseminated promises to introduce ‘new methods’, to reveal ‘secrets of the Soviet School of Chess’, etc. are no more than smart advertising moves.”

“You know what happens when you’re mastering the Sicilian Defense, for example…many hours of work are invested into studying the main lines…and when you finally feel ready you get no chance to show your stuff…game after game you get to see side variations such as the Alapin (2.c3), the Closed Variation (with g3), the Gran Prix Attack (early f4), and the Rossolimo (3.Bb5). “

“While each of these lines may present its own positional and tactical implications, they can be successfully dealt with…whenever I see this weak stuff played against me I feel my confidence growing…statistics only prove the point.  Black scores at least 50%in those lines in today’s practice.”

“As a matter of fact, Black’s life is much easier in any secondary continuation after 1.e4 c5, rather than the Open Sicilian…where his position gets challenged in the most principled way.  Don’t shift your priorities – prepare for real battles.”

“This doesn’t mean that the modern sophisticated openings are for GM’s only and that less experienced players should stick with offbeat lines.  On the contrary, I urge you to play the most complicated opening setups, but on one condition: you should play them not for fashion’s sake and not because somebody told you to, but because of the resulting middlegame positions.”

If you really want to study chess the way GM’s do, buy Yermolinsky’s The Road to Chess Improvement and let a Grandmaster show you what and how to study. In his review of the book, IM Jeremy Silman wrote, “I should mention that it is primarily aimed at advanced players, but it could not fail to help those above 1600. For anyone looking to improve and to understand the modern game in a fresh way, I believe that this is one of the most exciting and provocative works to appear in years.”

Groningen 1996 Video

Smyslov singing, speech by Najdorf…interesting video.

85 Reasons Why You Lose

I was looking over Bill Wall’s chess page and when I saw an article titled Reasons Why You Lose at Chess I had to check it out! So, thanks to Mr. Wall, here are the real reasons why we lose somewhat updated by me.
1-2011 is what he said; I thought he was talking about the year, not his rating
2-after the game, I noticed my opponent had two bishops of the same color.
3-as Black, forgot which way the pawns were moving in the endgame
4-attempted to checkmate, but blocked by one of opponent's pawns, which was hidden from view behind his queen!
5-Chair was too short to see over the pieces.
6-backward pawns
7-bad move in a bad position
8-bank rank mate was overlooked
9-beans and bananas for breakfast
10-boss came in while you were playing on the Internet at wor
11-castled into it
12check was overlooked
13-checkmate threat was overlooked
14-confused MCO column 12, note 6 with column 21, note 9 and lost queen
15-counterplay was overlooked
16-created holes
17-developed my pieces too slowly or not at all
18-diarrhea during the end game
19-doubled pawns
20-drawn game repeatedly declined by my opponent at least a dozen times
21-endgame ruined my superior opening preparation
22-endgame technique is weak
23-en passant move was forgotten
24-everyone watching my game agreed I was winning except my opponent
25-exposed king
26-faulty exchange
27-forgot to say "J'adoube" and lost Queen while adjusting it
28-forgot to stop clock while looking for the TD to ask what the time control was
29-full moon
30-glass chess set pieces opponent brought looked the same, lost Queen
31-got too fancy
32-greed
33-hallucinated or ghost affect
34-heart attack or stroke
35-hypnotized by opponent and a spectator named Dr. Zukar
36-I was winning on time until my opponent checkmated me
37-knocked king over while I tried to shake my opponent's hand in a draw offer
38-long diagonal threat was overlooked
39-lost on time while I considered my opponent's draw offer
40-lucky checkmate my opponent found before I could checkmate him
41-mishandled pieces
42-missed opportunity
43-neglect of center
44-noise
45-opening preparation poor
46-opponent did not follow my opening preparation that led to mate
47-opponent had beaten a master the round before - with an iron bar
48-opponent had no bra and bent over the pieces too much
49-opponent sneezed on the chess set; said he had a contagious disease or bird flu
50-opponent spent too much time in the book stalls during the opening
51-opponent would not resign when he was in a lost position
52-opposition of kings by my opponent
53-perpetual check didn't last very long to avoid the 50 move rule
54-played the King's Gambit Accepted and lost a pawn early on move two
55-poison pawn or piece was grabbed
56-positional errors
57-queen and king looked too much alike in this East European chess set; lost Queen
58-removed a defender and dropped a piece
59-right moves were made, but not in the right order
60-rook sacrifice failed when he took my Queen instead
61-sacrifice overlooked
62-sacrificed a piece, but then forgot why
63-stalemate avoided
64-stopped analysis one move short
65-studied How to Beat Bobby Fischer and was unprepared for other opppnents
66-sunglasses by my opponent blinded me from the glare
67-tactical error; faulty tactics
68-team captain said a draw was no good for the team, so I resigned
69-tempo loss
70-theoretical draw doesn't work in practice
71-thought rook and pawn ending was a draw; he had the rook and I had the pawn
72-time control must have changed; thought it was 40 moves in 5 hours, not 40 in 2
73-time pressure by my opponent; too much distraction watching the flag rise
74-toilet break was too long; shouldn't have eaten 4 burritos and tacos at once
75-transposed opening moves
76-tried for too much
77-uncoordinated pieces
78-underestimated my opponent
79-unjustified attack
80-unlucky pairing with Nakamura; played blitz chess and lost
81-weakened castled King's position
82-went out for a walk in the fresh air, forgot about tournament, kept walking
83-wrong rook
84-zugzwanged my opponent, but then he found a way out
And I will add…


85-after analyzing my correspondence game for an hour, played my move on the server but didn’t check to make sure it was the position I had been analyzing.