My First Chess Prize! Guilt Free Bragging

A win is a win so I am willing to conclude that any prize is a prize? My swimming session with the sharks ended in a minor prize for yours truly. It might be stretching to far to take the achievement as a sign of the benefits of my chess studies. My results from the ICC Monthly Standard good be improved: Loss - bye - Loss - wo

I will probably join the March Tournament as well in a humble attempt to score >0 points in a more glamorous fashion!

Haiku!

Silman’s ”Complete Endgame Course” is a great leap forward in Chess Teaching. The fantastic idea to present the material on a need-to-know basis is just great. When will there be opening books using the same trick? It is somewhat amusing to glance through basic books on specific openings and see how the author presents lines 15-20 moves deep! Basic books!

Casually surfing the Internet for inspiration on how to face “d4”, I found the stamp sized introduction to a few openings. This basic website presented a few versions of the Dutch as follows: “This is the position Black is hoping for and here are the first eight moves black would like to play”

That is pure poetry! What else would you like to be presented to have a taste of the opening?
So, the next opening book I buy will probably be written as a single Haiku.

Family Champion

Hanna is helping daddy with a few basic set-ups in modern opening theory

Memorizing Chess Games

Memorizing chess games is suggested by some chess coaches (see for example "Cool Training Tip, Number Eighteen") as a method for improving the chess muscle. The Guru has decided to give the method a try.

Which games would you suggest?


Morphy vs The Duke will be my warm-up game. Short and Sweet! Some 17 moves of mostly fireworks.

Fellow Chess blogger, James Stripes, recently posted some interesting quotes on memorizing chess games.

GM Rashid Ziyatdinov states the following, according to James, in his book GM-RAM:

"If you know just one of the important classical games, you will be able to become a 1400 level player, know 10 games and you will be 2200 level, know 100 and you will be 2500."

Team Members Wanted!

I am interested in starting a team for the Leagues at Schemingmind and it would be very nice to recruit a few A.C.I.S. members on the team. It is unclear when the next season is about to start but I suggest that you join the excellent site right away for a few warm-up games/Team Matches.

Welcome, Chessteacher!

James F. Holwell has kindly accepted to contribute to the blog. Here is an example of the Teaching Games he offers at Schemingmind.com for free!

Chess Training Update

Tactics: 86/136 63%, 12.1 hours
Slow Games: None
Chess Book reading: A little


It is roughly what I can fit in during January but I would love to play more games.

Turn Based Chess

Scheminingmind is clearly my favorite site for turn based chess. I like the time controls and I like the feature that you can add comments to your PGN file which makes it easy to document your (flawed) thought process. Where Do You Play Turn Based Chess? Care for a game?