Rust

Nice little problem. Too bad I missed the solution over the board. I am very rusty.

A Wild Idea!

My next idea is to decrease My number of corr games to 2-4 and treat every post opening move as a Stoyko exercise.

Lost in Delay

My Chess Hero Dan Heisman says in a tweet:

"Playing openings that delay tactics not only does not avoid tactics, it delays your learning curve on chess' most important aspect"

I am not anywhere near a position from where I can question Dan's judgement but you cannot be a good student if you don't ask questions.

There must be some hidden assumptions behind the statement above which I fail to realize. I do not think that the amount of tactics lost due to the delay or that the time wasted (i.e. the delay) is significant.

Any thoughts?

The Stoyko Exchange

The Stoyko exercise (see the description at Dan Heisman's site) does sound like a good exercise but I have almost never found the time and inspiration to get started. I think I have done it at most three times and I am probably doing it wrong since I do not get the impression that I have gained 100+ points by doing the exercise.

The obvious obstacles is finding suitable positions and to find the "true evaluations" of the lines. Using an engine will give you evaluations in centipawns but that is not too enlightening.

Any suggestions on how to find suitable positions? Does it really matter which position you use? Is there any die hard Stoyko believers out there in the "bloggsphere" who would like to sharesome positions and maybe even some evaluations?

I would love to hear about your experiences using the exercise!

Simul at the office

Three members from a local chess club kindly accepted to give a chess lecture at my office and to play some simul games. Below is one of my games. We agreed to a premature draw to have time for a second game. I messed up the protocol from the second game but it was not as interesting but still a fine example of a fine player grinding down a generic patzer.

Note: James Stripes made some interesting comments about this game on his blog Chess Skills

Pogo-dancing in the mindfield

Endgames can be a silly dance on the knife's edge. Here is a snapshot from a recent training game (see below). Maybe Mr Fritz is in a joking mode or there are a lot of blunders to be made in the position.

Maybe Mr Purdy has some clever rule to help us survive similar endgames. I did not find the proper move but I did not get the proper(?) punishment for making the naturally looking loosing move (Kd5).

A great chess teacher Valeri Lilov pointed out the fact that this can be viewed as an example of Corresponding Square.There is a little more to be learned.

Well, Mr Fischer! You Win again!

After working through a chunk of the fine book "Chess Exam: You vs Fischer" I have to assume that Mr Fisher is too strong for me. So far My best effort is 5-7 loss (12 games) and My predicted final rating is 1394