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Headline Archives
The headlines below do not include our regular weekly features, each of
which can be seen at it's respective archive page:
Here's what was
"New at Chessville"
between 1 July 2006 and 30 September 2006:
(9/26)
Topalov - Kramnik:
Games Two & Three from the 2006 World Chess Championship Reunification Match; with commentary
by GM Susan Polgar. Kramnik leads now 2½-½ after the
first three games. Catch all of the games, fully annotated by GM Susan
Polgar!
|
|
(9/24) Topalov - Kramnik:
2006 World Chess Championship Reunification Match; with commentary
by GM Susan Polgar. Kramnik wins game one with the white
pieces, leads match 1-0.
|
 |
|
 (9/24)
USCL Report - The Second Season:
Four weeks gone already in season #2, and already things are heating up!
Seattle and Boston are undefeated leaders in their respective divisions,
with San Francisco nipping on the Slugger's heels. This week sees
the West-leading Sluggers taking on the always dangerous New York
Knights, led by GM Pascal Charbonneau and featuring two (2!) women
players - IM Irina Krush & WGM Jennifer Shahade. Check out all the
news, standings of your favorite team, and study the
Game of the Week - FM Boris Privman
(New York) - NM Ilya Krasik (Boston) from week three of the season,
annotated by the winner, NM Ilya Krasik. |
|
(9/24) Review:
Chess College 1: Strategy by Efstratios Grivas, reviewed by J.
Evan Kreider. "Most chess players have their favorite chess
strategy books. Old-school folk tend to champion the classics by
authors such as Euwe and Nimzowitsch, while us new-school kids prefer
later works by authors such as Silman and Soltis. With his
three-volume Chess College series, it appears that GM Grivas
means to create a definitive set of works on chess strategy for a new
generation..." |
 |
|
 (9/24)
Review: Opening Instructor
(CD) by ICCF-GM
N. Kalinichenko, reviewed by Rick Kennedy. "Maybe you’re thinking
about finding something new for your opening repertoire. You might
have some upcoming Club games, and you’d like to learn a bit more about the
attacks and defenses your opponents are likely to play. Perhaps you
are doing some chess teaching, and you want your students to have access to
a reliable resource on a range of openings. In the “olden” (i.e.
pre-computer) days, you might reach for the latest copy of Modern Chess
Openings. Nowadays, you might boot up Opening Instructor,
from Convekta, the folks who bring you
Chess Assistant." |
|
(9/23)
The
Convekta Store
Chessville proudly announces
the grand opening of our Convekta Store! Check out our
low prices
on all of Convekta's famous chess education and database management
software.
|
Invest in
your chess future! |
|
|
(9/17) News & Notes with ICCF-GM Yoav Dothan. The seventh installment of GM Dothan's
insightful look at could'a-would'a-should'a positions, culled from the
games of today's masters! Today GM Dothan looks at positions
involving such luminaries as Tiviakov, Nijboer, and Almasi, along with a
selection of positions involving some lower rated players, IMs, FMs NMs,
even an expert or two! Look at the gems he's found, study the
hidden possibilities he's uncovered. |
 |
|
|
(9/17) Chess and
Pipeline Politics: "Kirsan Ilumzhinov, the colourful
president, both of the autonomous Russian republic of Kalmykia and of FIDE,
the world chess federation, won the FIDE election, held at the Turin
Olympiad early in June 2006, and thus retained his presidency of the
international chess body. He defeated the challenger, European
businessman Bessel Kok, by a handsome margin relying on the support of
virtually every non-European nation. Top players and European
federations may have no faith in him but paradoxically, he is probably not
the third world demagogue his predecessor, Florencio Campomanes, turned out
to be, but a far more subtle player on the world political and economic
chessboard..."
|
 |
Keene
On Chess
GM
Raymond Keene Sponsored by
Gothic Chess |
 Gothic Chess
is a chess variant that adds two new pieces to the traditional 16 in
each player's army:
a chancellor, moving like a Rook or a knight
(pictured), and an archbishop, moving like a bishop or a knight.
The board is necessarily expanded to 10x10 squares to accommodate the new
pieces. Learn more about
Gothic Chess here. |
|
|
 (9/17)
Move Prediction Exercise: July-August brings a
new MPE from Jim Mitch, aka
Prof. Chester Nuhmentz. This game is
the same one used for the
Chess
Visualization Training for September. For the greatest benefit,
visit that page first (if you haven't already done so) and work through that
exercise first. Or, for pure fun - jump right in and tackle this
month's Move Prediction Exercise.
|
Click on the portrait of Maurice Ashley
to try this month's Recon64 game selected
especially for the readers of Chessville:
Maurice Ashley vs. Robert Kempinski; Bad Weissee,
1997.
 |
September's game for visitors from Chessville
(Ashley vs Kempinski; Bad Weissee, 1997)
is packed with excitement at several levels.
Bold, gutsy moves are spread throughout the
battle. What's not shown on the board is
that the players were both undefeated and
fighting to break a tie for first place in a
major tournament, that Maurice Ashley was
fighting for his second Grandmaster norm, and
that Ashley's flag was on the verge of falling
just as he calculated a way to force checkmate! Similar to Predict-A-Move and Solitaire-type
chess exercises, Recon64 challenges players to
find candidate moves from games played by
masters. Players are encouraged to search for
several strong candidate moves in each position,
and are rewarded as long as their list of moves
includes the move selected by the master during
the game. As an extra twist, players invest
Recon64 dollars on candidate moves based on how
likely they think each move was used in the
original game. |
This game was also featured as September's
Chess Vision exercise for Chessville readers.
You're invited to try your skills at foreseeing the possible captures and
checks
while envisioning moves yet to be played on the board.
|
.jpg) (9/17)
Jude Acers On Tour: The
Man in the Red Beret is back at it again, this time at Metairie Park
Country Day School in Metairie, Louisiana on Sunday, September 10, 2006.
We've got a great pictorial report for you, illustrating another great
lecture and simul by the legendary master Jude Acers. See also
Acers' stream-of-consciousness recollections of years gone by, including
his encounter with Bobby Fischer, Acers Remembers -
La Carratera. |
 (9/17)
TheParrot's Show Cage #4:
Ty writes,
"Parrot, I just acquired an interesting
chess set off eBay, being sold as wood. Item #150020536282.
It certainly isn't wood. I believe the black pieces are horn, and the
white pieces are probably bone. But I've seen pieces just like
these white pieces sold as ivory on eBay: Item #220017675141.
The design appears to be French Regence. But the carving is very odd.
The pieces don't appear to be turned on a lathe, as their shape is
asymmetrical. I don't understand why anyone would carve a set in
this design without a lathe. I think an amateur hobbyist might...
but then why have I seen other pieces in this style on two separate
occasions? It's a mystery..." See other show
cages, too - start with the
Show Cage Index. |
 (9/16)
Interview with
IM Igor Zugic.
Here we present Goran Tomic's recent
interview with the
new Canadian Chess Champion,
International Master Igor Zugic.
Goran Tomic: Congratulations on your fantastic achievement,
winning the Canadian Championship. What are your impressions of this
tournament?
IM Igor Zugic: The tournament was very difficult. It
was Swiss System event with nine rounds and 65 participants - many
strong players among them. I am pleased with my play and result,
and I can see some progress when I look at my previous tournaments.
I took a bit too much risk in the last round, but it all finished well.
I was leading after the 5th round and I felt strong pressure because
there was a huge group of players a half point behind. I had to
win constantly to keep the distance and it was very hard. At the
end I had 7.0/9 and performance rating of 2687.
Interview Compliments of the
World Chess
Network
Photos courtesy of www.torontochess.org |
|
(9/10)
Review - A
Double Shot of Scotch:
The Scotch Game Explained by Gary Lane and
Starting Out: The Scotch Game by John Emms,
reviewed by Michael Jeffreys. "While I don’t normally
review two books at once, it makes a lot of sense here as both books are on
the same opening, were published the same year, and are both by popular
British authors. A quick look at the Contents page of each book
tells you a lot:..both books
cover almost the exact same lines. However, one major difference is..."
|
|
(9/3)
Smart Questions to Ask, or: Another
Angle of the Grandmaster’s Mind:
by FM Amatzia Avni (Inside Avni's Mind)
"A recent review in The
Scientific American (August 2006) by Philip E. Ross, described
various research results, probing how people become experts in their
field. The article listed several variables: talent, memory,
perception, motivation, storage of knowledge and the value of
practice. All very interesting for the general public; but one
feels that for the audience of club players, some practical tools
would be most welcomed.
When
The
Grandmaster's Mind
(Gambit, 2004) - which I consider to be my best book to date - was
published, a reader asked me if I had discovered something really new
in the course of the interviews I had conducted with the likes of
Gelfand, Smirin and Psakhis. Indeed, I had, and the most
illuminating phenomenon I observed concerns the first question the
strongest players asked themselves while encountering a fresh
position..." |
 Amatzia
Avni is an Israeli psychologist. He is a FIDE Master in both
game and composition, a former editor of the Israeli magazine
Schahmat and a regular contributor to Chess Monthly.
His forthcoming book "Devious Chess" will be released by
Batsford in April. Read
Chessville reviews of two of his earlier works:
Practical Chess
Psychology: Understanding the Human Factor (2001);
and The
Grandmaster's Mind (2004). |
|
|
|
“At first, playing chess will seem difficult. Then it will get
easier, before it seems utterly impossible!”
– from The Big Book of Chess |
(9/3)
Review: The Big
Book of Chess by Eric
Schiller, reviewed by Rick Kennedy. "Eric
Schiller’s latest book is a frothy, fun collection of instruction and
chessiana – the kind of title that I can see myself taking down from the
Library’s shelf, thumbing through, always finding something to smile at.
For the new chess enthusiast, it’s “big” but not too big (i.e. not
Mammoth), and the content ranges far and wide (if not deep) – the
author sees The Big Book of Chess as kind of an appetizer for the
newbie or the curious, avant the endless meal that is the Royal Game
itself..." |
|
|
(9/3) News & Notes with
ICCF-GM Yoav Dothan. The fifth installment of GM Dothan's
insightful look at could'a-would'a-should'a positions, this time combed
from the category-19, Dortmund
Sparkassen tournament games, including positions from Kramnik,
Naiditsch, Aronian, Svidler, Michael Adams, Gelfand and others!
Here after 13 moves Kramnik had a nice tactical shot that probably would
have led to an advantage. The variation is almost forced:
14.Qxh8 Rxc1+ 15.Kd2 Rxh1 16.Bxh1 Ba4+ 17.Qd4 Nac4+ 18.Ke1 Bc6 19.Qxd8+
Kxd8 20.Nc3 Nxb2. Instead, after...
|
Kramnik,V (2743) - Naiditsch,A
(2664) [E04]
Sparkassen Dortmund GER (3), 01.08.2006
      
   
 
 
    |
|
(9/3) Inside Avni's Mind: FM
Amatzia Avni's explorations into the machinations going on inside the
chessplayer's mind have produced several articles here at Chessville, each
one equal parts investigation, education, and entertainment. Learn
more about this psychologist and chess author, and see all of his articles
posted here at Chessville! |
|
(9/2) Editorial:
Who Cares? - Women and
Children in Chess.
An
Alekhine's Parrot
Special Report in four parts.
"Months ago the Parrot wrote to the USCF board via Bill Hall, Executive
Director of USCF, asking after standards in place to avert offense to
women and children in chess. These concerns, although according to
Hall were delivered to the board, have not been addressed nor even
acknowledged. Perhaps this is a cultural thing,
but in some cultures is not dishonorable nor some game of politically
correct words, to actively protect women and children from offence - in fact
it is considered manly..." |
|
(8/27)
USCL Player Spotlight:
The USCL Player Spotlight falls this month on GM
Eugene Perelshtyen, of
the Boston Blitz.
After sharing first place in the 2006 Foxwoods Open, Eugene Perelshtyen also
earned his third GM norm, thus giving him the well deserved title of
Grandmaster. At only 26 years of age, the future is bright for
Eugene, and Boston is hoping that he picks up where he left off last year,
with a fine
2.5/3 result while playing first board...Eugene
has had many other major chess accomplishments.
He won the Samford Chess Fellowship in 2002, an award that amounts to
$64,000, which is awarded to the top American
 player
under 25 years old. Eugene has
also led the University of
Maryland, Baltimore County to a few
Pan American championships from 1998-2002. Eugene also won the highly
prestigious
US Junior Championship in 2000. Below he
annotates his opening round game against GM Alex Stripunsky, of the New York
Knights... |
Photo courtesy
John B. Henderson |
|
|
(8/27)
Review:
Chess
Opening Playing Cards reviewed by Michael Jeffreys:
 I
Checkmate Your Full House!
“This is not chess, this is poker!”
- GM Gufeld to GM Hodgson after losing to him
Now you can play poker AND work on your chess game at the same time!
Synheme, a company out of Canada, has produced a deck of playing cards
that features a different chess opening on each card: 52-different
openings are covered. For example, here is the Queen of Hearts... |
|
Jessie Gilbert
January 30, 1987 - July 26 , 2006
FIDE Woman's International Master |
(8/20) Keene On Chess - Death
of a Prodigy: GM Keene looks back at the life and
tragic death of one of the brightest female stars on the British
chess horizon. "Jessie Gilbert -one of the brightest
female stars on the British chess horizon - aged just 19 -
tragically fell to her death from the 8th floor of a hotel in
Pardubice, Czech Republic in late July. Jessie was a titled
player who as a young teenager had won the Women's World Amateur
Championship - the only junior player ever to win a senior title
at that level at that time in any type of sporting competition.
Miss Gilbert was apparently alone in her room at the time of the
incident. Jessie was competing in the Czech Open Chess
Championship when the disaster occurred. Other English
players in the Pardubice tournament, which also included various
mind games such as bridge, draughts and backgammon, defaulted
their games in the 6th round as a mark of respect, and then left
the tournament to return home to England. |
|
(8/20) News & Notes 4 with ICCF-GM
Yoav Dothan: "A new collection of eight new games, the first being
a very nice sacrifice that gives an overwhelming pawns attack..."
|
(8/20)
Move Prediction Exercise: July-August brings a
new MPE from Jim Mitch, aka
Prof. Chester Nuhmentz. This game is
the same one used for the
Chess
Visualization Training for July. For the greatest benefit,
visit that page first (if you haven't already done so) and work through that
exercise first. Or, for pure fun - jump right in and tackle this
month's Move Prediction Exercise.
|
Click on the portrait of Viswanathan Anand
to try this month's Recon64 game selected
especially for the readers of Chessville:
Viswanathan Anand vs. Ivan Morovic-Fernandez;
Sao Paolo, 2004
 |
August's featured game comes from the 2004 Sao
Paolo Rapid Tournament. The tournament was won
by Anand, a player known for having superb
skills at managing the relentless time pressure
of rapid play. Grandmaster Anand summarized his
performance in this decisive battle:
"My win against Morovic is one of the best games
I played this year. After a short vacation in
Rio, I was totally inspired." Similar to Predict-A-Move and Solitaire-type
chess exercises, Recon64 challenges players to
find candidate moves from games played by
masters. Players are encouraged to search for
several strong candidate moves in each position,
and are rewarded as long as their list of moves
includes the move selected by the master during
the game. As an extra twist, players invest
Recon64 dollars on candidate moves based on how
likely they think each move was used in the
original game. |
This game was also featured as August's
Chess Vision exercise for Chessville readers.
You're invited to try your skills at foreseeing the possible captures and
checks
while envisioning moves yet to be played on the board.
|
 (8/13)
4th and Inches at the Goal
Line: IM Igor Khmelnitsky's latest article
looks at a similarity between chess and football. "The
2006 NFL season is approaching fast and the pre-season has
officially began last Sunday. One of the more exciting plays
in football is the "4th and inches" at the goal line. The
offense can pick a variety of plays, from using a brute force to
some sneaky tricks. The defense, on the other hand, is set
for the last "do or die" stand knowing that making a stop here
will provide a tremendous boost for the whole team..." |
Black to move and win |
|
Black has a
fairly simple strategy - give up the rook for the a-pawn and rush his king
forward to win White's kingside pawns. The problem though is that the
white king reaches the h1-square or is able to box the black king on the
h-file. For example: 1...Rc7+? 2.Kb8 Rxa7 3.Kxa7 Ke6 4.Kb6 Kf5 5.Kc5 Kg4
6.Kd4 Kxg3 7.Ke3 Kxh4 8.Kf2 or 1...Rh8? 2.Pa8Q Rxa8 3.Kxa8 Ke6 4.Kb7 Kf5
5.Kc6 Kg4 6.Kd5 Kxg3 7.Ke4 Kxh4 8.Kf3. Thus Black must be a bit more
creative and find the stunning... Find out the answer, in
4th and Inches at the Goal Line. |
(8/13) News & Notes 3
with ICCF-GM Yoav Dothan: "This column contains five game from the GM tournament in Biel, and four
correspondence games that I received with notes from the winners. I
add the invitation letter of the German Correspondence Chess Federation to
the next ICCF World Cup. I will be happy to
get comments or analyzed games – you can mail them directly to..."
 (8/13)
Review:
Grandmaster Chess
Move by Move by John Nunn, reviewed by Michael Jeffreys.
"Doctor John Nunn first published a collection of his games under the
title, Secrets of Grandmaster Play (which was co-written with
Peter Griffiths) back in 1987. (The book was given a massive
overhaul exclusively by Nunn, and reprinted in 1997 under the title
Secrets of Grandmaster Chess.) This collection covered his
career up to 1985. In 1995 he put out John Nunn’s Best Games
which covered 1985-93. Now that he is retired from professional chess,
he has just released the third and final book of his tournament games,
which covers 1993-2003. Because of the positive response to
Understanding Chess Move by Move (Gambit, 2001), Nunn decided to use
the same format for this book. However, there are some
differences..." |
(8/9)
Bobby Fischer Goes Public:
Fischer criticizes the Union Bank of Switzerland for using
discriminatory measures, reported by Einar S. Einarsson. In an lengthy
interview with Morgunbladid, Reykjavik, last Saturday July 29th ,
chess legend and world
champion Bobby Fischer revealed that he has been in a long and
difficult dispute with the Union Bank of Switzerland, one of the world’s
major banks,
since he received in April 2005, soon after
his arrival to Iceland from a
detention in Japan, a notification that the UBS intended to terminate his
account, which he had held with the bank for over 13 years since 1992...
|
|
(8/6) News & Notes 2
with
ICCF GM Yoav
Dothan: "Five
First Round Surprises" from the first round of the 3rd ACT Amsterdam
tournament, played July 15, 2006. GM Dothan writes: "In a
Swiss-system tournament, the highest-rated player meet the lowest-rated
player in the first round. Usually the highest-rated win the games
– of course, but in the 3rd ACT Amsterdam tournament the first round
produced many surprises. Please see the differences in the rating of
the players, in the next five games. The first example is an
excellent game of Mr. Yochanan Afek – the outcome certainly added some
rating points to him..." |
  (8/6)
Reviews:
The Sicilian Bb5 Revealed by Neil McDonald, and
The Bb5 Sicilian by Richard Palliser, both reviewed by S.
Evan Kreider. "Playing the White side of the Sicilian is a
tricky business. The Open Sicilian is a must for the professional player,
but what about the hobbyist? There’s always the Closed Sicilian or the
Grand Prix Attack, but I’ve never been convinced that these lines present
Black with any real problems – in fact, I’m pretty sure Black usually
breathes a sigh of relief and thinks “Well, I’ve at least equalized!”
Indeed, if White is looking to present Black with some real problems while
still avoiding mountains of theory, then the Bb5 lines – more specifically,
the Rossolimo (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5) and the Moscow (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6
3.Bb5+) – might just be the way to go. Frankly, it’s a little
surprising to me that these lines took so long to gain respectability, since
the ideas behind 3.Bb5 are perfectly sensible..." |
 (8/6)
Review: Devious Chess: How to Bend the Rules and Win
by Amatzia Avni,
reviewed by Rick Kennedy. "Amatzia Avni is a psychologist
and chess International Master. His interest in chess psychology
is shown in his books Danger in Chess: How to Avoid Making Blunders
(1994, 2003), Practical Chess Psychology: A Chess Player's Behavioral
Guide (2001) and The
Grandmaster’s Mind (2004). He also likes imaginative and
out-of-the-ordinary chess, as he showed in his Creative Chess
(1991, 1997) and Surprise in Chess
(1998). His latest title, Devious
Chess, subtitled How to Bend the Rules and Win, is related to
all of these books – but arrives with some packaging that will no doubt
frustrate or befuddle some would-be buyers..." |
|
(8/04) Free Chess Playing Zone:
While other sites may raise their fees or turn away guests, we say -
guests are welcome, and it's always free! So
 we've
brought back our popular playing site, courtesy of Convekta Ltd.
At the Chessville Free Playing Zone you can: play for free,
register for free, establish ratings for free, etc., and best of all -
there's no download required! This is a Flash site, so it's
perfect for those occasions when you can't download a playing site
interface. The chat feature lets you make new friends from all
over the world, and play all the chess you want! Get started, head
to the
Free Chess Playing Zone now! |
|
 (7/30)
USCL Player Spotlight:
The USCL Player Spotlight falls this month on WGM Jennifer Shahade,
 of
the New York Knights.
Jenn Shahade has been surprising people for most of her
career. In the 2002 US Championships, she wasn't seen as one of the
biggest threats to compete for the title, however she tore through the field
and won the tournament despite facing six GM's out of nine games. This
was remarkable because she had practically never beaten a GM before the
event, yet she managed to knock off GM Sagalchik, and drew with GMs Seirawan,
Fedorowicz and Kudrin. Jenn is always an exciting player to watch.
She brings a high level of focus and concentration to the board and her
attacking ability and precise calculation often surprises some serious
opposition. Sometimes her lack of intuition in more reserved positions
can lead her to time trouble and cause her to play less accurately than when
her opponent's king is in her crosshairs. For this reason Jenn often
has the most trouble against technical players, who do what they can to
avoid giving Jennifer the initiative. However Jenn often finds ways of
attacking opponents when least expected. In today's Spotlight WGM
Shahada
annotates her fine win against FM Matthew Hoekstra of the Carolina Cobras in
week five from last season... Also read a review of Shahade's
controversial book Chess Bitch (Women in
the Ultimate Intellectual Sport),
reviewed by Michael Jeffreys. |
  (7/30)
Reviews:
Winning Chess Tactics (Revised) and
Winning Chess Strategies (Revised) by Yasser Seirawan
and Jeremy Silman,
reviewed by Rick Kennedy. "Ok, while you were growing up you
learned the rules of chess. You’ve played more than a few friendly
games across the years. Even now, you manage to get one or two in at
lunch, plus maybe the occasional battle with a buddy and a beer after work.
In those, happily, you hold your own. Then again, there was
that recent trip to the local chess club, where struggling (in vain) against
that wise guy junior high school kid (and then, his younger sister) felt
like touching a hot stove: not something to be repeated any time soon.
What did they know that you don’t – and where can you get some of
that for yourself? Chances are, they’ve been reading the Winning Chess
series, by Yasser Seirawan: Play Winning Chess, Winning Chess Tactics,
Winning Chess Strategies, Winning Chess Brilliancies, Winning Chess
Openings, Winning Chess Endings, and Winning Chess Combinations.
If you want to know “what’s it all about?” on the sixty-four squares, maybe
you should, too..." |
|
 |
(7/30) Review: My Chess Battles with Bobby Fischer: Vols. 1 & 2
by Pal Benko (DVD), reviewed by Michael Jeffreys. "...there
is nothing like having the player himself take you through his own
games. Not only do you get to see many of the side
variations, of “what could have happened,” but even more
importantly you get a feel for the player’s thought process as the game was
going on. Like when Benko talks about being in time pressure or when
he could have taken a draw, but chose not to, etc..." |
|
 (7/23)
Black Is OK,
or the presumption of innocence in the game of chess:
by GM András Adorján. "In
criminal law, the suspect is entitled to the presumption of innocence
until it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is guilty.
It
might help me a lot if I was well-versed in law, but perhaps it would also
make my agrumentation bloody boring. So
what do I have in mind?
Let’s try to an unbiased approach,
and take the starting position of the chess game as our starting point.
Black
does NOT have to equalize, as it is not Black who has to prove
anything in the first place!
I presume - in the
spirit of the presumption of innocence - that the position is equal.
It
is White who has to prove that he can get an advantage..." |
| (7/23)
News & Notes: Chessville proudly welcomes ICCF GM Yoav
Dothan to the neighborhood! GM Dothan's debut article for Chessville features the
fully annotated final
round game from the recent 2006 Norwegian Championship between Super-GM
Magnus Carlsen (pictured) and GM Berge Ostenstad, as well as
general Correspondence
Chess news. Check it out today, and help us welcome GM Dothan to
Chessville! |
 |
|
 (7/23)
Review: The Steinitz Papers, Edited by
Kurt
Landsberger, reviewed by Prof. Nagesh Havanur.
“My mother always hoped that I would be
an author. When her dream came true, long after she had died, and a
book of mine was published, she would have been dismayed that it was about
the hated Steinitz family. My mother and Arnost Steinitz, my father, were
divorced when I was two years old. During March of 1938, a day or two
after Hitler marched into Austria, the telephone rang at my mother’s
apartment. While the German army marched beneath our windows, welcomed
by a tumultuous throng of enthusiastic Austrians, my mother, who had married
Ernst Landsberger some
fifteen months earlier, worked out a peace agreement with my father whom I
had not.jpg)
seen since the divorce. The two agreed that if the situation were to become dangerous I
was to return to Prague to live with my father, who in turn promised to send me to England as
soon as possible. I have no idea why my prescient mother demanded that
I was to be forwarded to
England at the earliest chance, but since my father kept his word, this pact
between my parents saved my life. At the same time it made me follow
the footsteps of my ancestor William Steinitz from Prague to Vienna to
London to the United States.” The author of these lines, Kurt
Landsberger is a great-grand-nephew of the great master. His quest for
the legacy of his famed ancestor resulted in the biography, William
Steinitz, The First World Champion (McFarland, 1995.)
The
present work has taken several years and traversing through three
continents. The account of the heroic efforts to preserve the precious
legacy of Steinitz makes poignant reading." |
(7/23)
New
Additions to our World Famous Links Collection: We're back at it,
searching out hot new chess websites for you to visit. This week we've
added EIGHT new sites for you to check out, including more shopping sites,
GM Ray Keene's publishing site, and a site dedicated to The Lion, an
opening system named after *Leo* Jansen, a Dutch player who
developed the system. Check these sites out today, or visit our
complete Links
index for links to thousands of chess sites all over the web!
 (7/23)
Review: Loss of Time and Space by James Pratt, reviewed
by Rick Kennedy. "Chessville readers know that I have a soft place in
my heart for small press or self-published chess books. So it was only
a matter of time before I tipped my hat to James Pratt, in recognition of
his booklet on the Brooklyn Variation of Alekhine’s Defense, 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5
Ng8!? Either of the two might be new to you, so let me give a little
background..." |
|
(7/16)
Keene on Chess: Chessville is proud to announce the
inaugural column at Chessville by GM Raymond Keene, OBE, one of
the most widely-read English-language chess authors of our age.
Keene's first offering is
An All-Purpose Black
Defence. "Starting this month, I want to suggest an
all-purpose Black defence to any White opening move – and it won’t
involve too much theory or the memorization of lengthy variations.
Prompted
by new research that suggests a key line ... has been revived with some
fresh ideas for Black..." Keene annotates five illustrative games,
including Veselin Topalov vs Gata Kamsky from the recently concluded
M-Tel Masters, Sofia Bulgaria, 2006.
Veselin Topalov |
 Gata Kamsky |
Keene, author of
more than 130 chess and other books, is sponsored by
Gothic Chess, a chess
variant that adds two new pieces to the traditional 16 in each player's
army:
a chancellor, moving like a Rook or a knight
(pictured), and an archbishop, moving like a bishop or a knight.
The board is necessarily expanded to 10x10 squares to accommodate the new
pieces. Learn more about
Gothic Chess here. |
Read also our 20-Questions
interview with GM
Keene.
Chessville is proud to welcome GM Keene to the
neighborhood! |
|
(7/16)
Chess Instruction:
Playing the first thing that crosses our mind, by FM Amatzia Avni.
"The general public is under
the impression that in a chess duel, intense calculation and strategic
assessment take place on each turn. Experienced tournament players
know better: there are in fact just a few critical moments in which they
pause for thought. Most of the time, players act more or less on
automatic mode, playing common-sense, ‘natural’ moves.
Here is an old debate: when handling an
ordinary position, where pawn-structures and game-plans are known and
familiar, should we concentrate on one reasonable move, or would it be wiser
to contemplate several options?
“Some people
claim that they end up playing their first idea 75% of the time or even
more. Does this mean that we actually see our best move immediately in
75% of the cases? No”. (J. Aagaard, in
Excelling at Chess
Calculation). Playing the first idea that crosses our mind has
obvious advantages, but also certain shortcomings. Let us look at them..." Also by FM Amatzia Avni:
Playing With
the Position;
You can't miss it; or - can you? |
|
 |
(7/16) Review:
Starting Out: The
Sicilian Dragon by Andrew Martin,
reviewed by S.
Evan Kreider. "The
Sicilian Dragon (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6) is an
immensely popular opening at all levels, from the local club player
all the way up to grandmaster. And why not? In some ways, the Dragon
is a microcosm of chess, containing as it does both the subtlest of
strategies and the most exciting of attacks and counter-attacks. The
only problem for most players is figuring out where to start. In this
book, IM Martin proposes to solve that problem for us. Let’s see how
he does..." |
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|
(7/16)
Move Prediction Exercise: July-August brings a
new MPE from Jim Mitch, aka
Prof. Chester Nuhmentz. This game is
the same one used for the
Chess
Visualization Training for July. For the greatest benefit,
visit that page first (if you haven't already done so) and work through
that exercise first. Or, for pure fun - jump right in and tackle
this month's Move Prediction Exercise!
|
Click on the portrait of Frank Marshall
to try this month's Recon64 game selected
especially for the readers of Chessville:
Frank Marshall vs. Mikhail Chigorin; Ostend,
1905.
 |
"... a real Fourth of
July fireworks
show from beginning to end"
-- Frank Marshall's own assessment of the game,
in
My Fifty Years of Chess. Similar to Predict-A-Move and Solitaire-type
chess exercises, Recon64 challenges players to
find candidate moves from games played by
masters. Players are encouraged to search for
several strong candidate moves in each position,
and are rewarded as long as their list of moves
includes the move selected by the master during
the game. As an extra twist, players invest
Recon64 dollars on candidate moves based on how
likely they think each move was used in the
original game. This game is also featured as
July's
Chess Vision exercise for Chessville readers.
You're invited to try your skills at foreseeing
the possible captures and checks while
envisioning moves yet to be played on the board. |
|
|
(7/15)
Chess Art: More of Kurt Waite's
exciting chess themed photography! Today we bring you the last couple
of
fascinating examples of Kurt's photo-art. Kurt started taking
chess themed photos in the fall of 2005 because, as he puts it, "there was a lack of creative chess pictures out there...and am
taking care of it myself!" While
he claims to be "just a postal worker by trade so I'm no
professional," his art will definitely
draw your attention for it's original point of view and, or course, for it's
overriding theme - chess! Thanks for sharing with us Kurt!!!
 |
 |
| |
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| Special Relativity |
Grandmaster |
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(7/13)
Chess As A Martial Game and As a
Means of Skills Development: by
Prof.
György Kende, Ph.D. "The relationship between chess
and military strategy, chess and skills development, chess and personality
development is far from being new. The timeliness of my publication
and suggestions is supported by the development of information technology in
the recent decades. In 2004 Swedish and Australian scientists achieved
substantial results in the research of the relationship between chess and
warfare by using computer technology and mathematical methods. Due to
the excellent information technological background of chess, the
effectiveness of chess education has substantially increased, as a result of
which, up-to-date methods of skills and personality development through
chess are relatively easy to work out and accomplish. This
publication, by presenting some scientific results, points at the
possibility of joining in the research on one hand and at the possibility of
exploiting the educational, skills and personality development applications
on the other."
|
(7/12)
GothicChess Tourney: At 12 o'clock noon on Saturday July
22, GothicChess will again have another "free money" tournament.
1st prize: $500
2nd prize: $300 3rd prize: $150
This is FREE TO ENTER
but you MUST register by replying to this post with the same exact name
that you have for Gothic Chess Live. This tournament is OPEN for all
players.
Time control: Game in 15
minutes with 10 second increment. If you do not have a
GothicChessLive.com ID as of yet, go to
http://www.GothicChessLive.com now and register for your free
account. For more information about this event -
click here; for an introduction to GothicChess -
click here.
|
_small1.jpg) (7/9)
Polgar Wins Women's World
Chess Cup: Susan Polgar has just won the Women's World
Chess Cup for the United States in Dresden, Germany. 32 players from 32
nations were invited. The format is exactly like the Soccer World Cup,
with the same 8 groups and the top 2 finishers of each group advance to
knockout match play. |
(7/9)
Philidor Annotates: A new
Past Pawns article from Robert Tuohey.
"Certainly, François-Andre Philidor (1726-1795) must be counted
among the fathers of modern chess. Indeed, any contemporary
introduction contains at least his eponymous defense, mate, and
dictum (“Pawns are the soul of chess”), and probably a game or two
by this early master. And yet, odd to say, Philidor’s own
textbook, The Analysis of Chess, (first published in 1748,
and then greatly expanded in a second edition in1790), is almost
unknown today..."
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 |
|
The Soul unto itself
Is an imperial
friend—
Or the most agonizing
Spy—
An Enemy—could send.
Emily Dickinson |
|
|
Curaçao 1962
One Book - Two Views
(7/9) Reviews(!):
Curaçao 1962 - The Battle of Minds That Shook the Chess World by Jan
Timman. In an unusual publishing event, Chessville today
presents you with two different views of this extraordinary book.
Both Prof. Nagesh Havanur & Michael Jeffreys are frequent contributors
to Chessville's review pages, and each brings a unique perspective.
"More than four decades after Curacao 1962, the
passionate debate over the tournament that changed the course of chess
history rages as fiercely as ever. Not the least because some of
its protagonists like Fischer, Korchnoi and Benko are still in our
midst..." - Prof. Nagesh Havanur (Read
this review.)
"While this book could have used a better editing job to
catch the mistakes, it is still an extremely important book, as it gives
you a close-up look at one of the most prestigious tournaments in chess
history..." - Michael Jeffreys (Read
this review.) |
|
(7/8)
Keene On Chess: Chessville is proud to announce that
beginning Sunday, July 16, 2006, GM Raymond Keene, OBE, one of
the most widely-read English-language chess authors of our age, will
begin to grace Chessville's web pages. GM Keene has
been an influential figure on the world chess scene for over thirty
years, as a player, organizer, and author. Educated at
Dulwich College and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he studied
modern
languages), Keene rose to prominence in the chess scene in the early
seventies. He won the British Chess Championship at Blackpool in 1971.
At that time the UK had no GMs, and its best known player was the highly
respected Jonathan Penrose (who famously beat Mikhail Tal in 1960).
Keene was part of the first group of British players to achieve the
necessary norms to become a GM - beaten to the finish line in 1976 by
Tony Miles for the title of first British GM. Keene, author of
more than 130 chess and other books, is being sponsored by
Gothic Chess, a chess
variant that adds two new pieces to the traditional 16 in each player's
army:
a chancellor, moving like a Rook or a knight
(pictured), and an archbishop, moving like a bishop or a knight.
The board is necessarily expanded to 10x10 squares to accomodate the new
pieces. Learn more about
Gothic Chess here.
Read also our 20-Questions
interview with GM
Keene. Chessville is proud to welcome GM Keene to the
neighborhood, and look forward to his debut article next week: A
Universal Defence. |
(7/4)
Free Games Download:
By request, we bring you today two new games collections: the Queen's Gambit
Accepted file contains 13,746 games while the Queen's Gambit Declined file
contains 27,547 games. Each comes in a zipped PGN file, and can be
found on our Games by Opening
page. Also visit Chessville's
Main Downloads Page for more free games, ebooks, and other goodies you
can download today, and it's all 100% free!
(7/4) Mad Aussie's Chess
Trivia: Another batch of amazing facts and events from the
wonderful world of chess. In today's batch you'll read about piece
values and pieces valued, a chess hustler and the Three Musketeers, a
Christmas Congress and a Christmas present, along with more than a dozen
more tidbits of chess lore from the Trivia Master himself, the original Mad
Aussie himself, Graham Clayton. Also visit Graham's extensive trivia
archives, with links to hundreds more items of interest at the bottom of
this page.
|
(7/2)
2006
Mayor's Cup Invitational: Prestige,
action and excitement in NY City at the 2006 Mayor's Cup
Invitational!
After many months
of preparing and planning, the 2006 NY City Mayor’s Cup
Chess Invitational tournament took place on June 25 –
26, 2006 at the prestigious New York Athletic Club. The
event was organized and sponsored by the Susan Polgar
Foundation in collaboration with the NY Athletic Club,
the NY City Sports Commission and the Office of Mayor
Bloomberg. This was the highest rated double round
robin chess tournament in US history. The average
USCF rating of the six players was 2665+. The time
control of the tournament was 25 minutes per game with 5
seconds delay. One notable name that was missing
in this event was Hikaru Nakamura, who was invited and
participated in the previous Mayor's Cup Invitational... |
.jpg) |
(7/1)
New Additions to our World
Famous Links Collection: We're back at it, searching out hot
new chess websites for you to visit. This week we've added ten new
sites for you to check out, including sites for
shopping, the English Chess Federation, several Russian-language sites, and a utility for changing Yahoo
chess notation to PGN, among others.
Chessville Headlines
|
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(8/27)
