The video above is an amateur's analysis of one of his own favorite games. He ignores some of the opening inaccuracies on both sides and presents no alternative moves for some glaring errors. However, in spite of the downsides to this video the presenter possesses and enthusiasm that is refreshing to me. This video is a great introduction to the Ideas of Jeremy Silman (as well as the uncredited ideas brought to chess education by GM Alexander Kotov, my personal favorite among chess thinkers). I recommend this to all viewers concerned with either learning the fundamentals of chess thinking or to those of higher level that are looking for good methods of presenting chess material to others.

I wanted to bring to the attention of the chess community at large a site I recently came across. A new and exciting looking website that is still growing. It is called simply WhyChess. They offer everything form free news and articles of chess interest to chess teaching and soon playing services. I'm not certain who is the mastermind(s) behind this website but they're thinking big and that's something I'm prepared to get behind and lend my support without being asked.

Truthfully, the site has not given me any kind of remuneration for this article. I've not even spoken with any of its representatives. I just happened to find it and I'm passing it on to you to look around and explore its features. Check it out!

The following correspondence game was played by me against an unidentified opponent and I thought that for my own benefit I'd go through it and give some commentary:

E33: Nimzo-Indian: Classical: 4...Nc6
White: Online Opponent
Black: Me

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Qc2 Nc6 5. Nf3 O-O 6. e3 d5 7. a3 Bxc3+ 8. bxc3

After this move the game enters a very dynamic but normally drawn character. I choose the most active move (albeit perhaps a little too ambitious).

8. ...Re8 9. cxd5

some people may criticize white here for releasing the central tension. However, they are overlooking the dominant position of White's two Bishops. White is trading one advantage for another -the central tension for an open field for his Bishop pair. Owever, Black is happy with this change because he gains a half open file for his rook.

9. … exd5 10. Be2 Bg4

Black appreciates a lead in development but can't really exploit it so the position her is roughly equal. White's plan will be to activate his drak-square bishop and black's will be to activate his rooks and try to trade off one of the enemy Bishop's to break up the pair.

11. O-O a6

in hindsight this may have been a mistake. The threat of Bb5 only trades off my least active minor piece for one of the demon bishops.

12. h3 Bh5 13. Bd1

This was a good chance for White to put in c4. He neglects to do so and Black has a chance to improve himself ...

13. … b6?

… but fails to do so. I mistakenly want to edge for a c5 break. I need to keep the game closed … not play for breaks.

14. Nd2 Bg6?

Simply trading bishops gives Black a powerful attack. I'm not certain what was thinking. Gain a tempo? Captures do that anyway (as the tempo gets passed back to you after a recapture).

15. Qb2 Bd3 16. Re1 Na5 17. Be2 Bxe2 18. Rxe2

I'm going to ignore the justification for the last few moves. Neither player has done very well but at least Black has a plan involving the c4 square. What is white's plan? At any rate Black is back on track. He is set up now so that white has an undefended rook, a trade on c4 will now result in white becoming passive and my remaining knight would dominate the terribly bad bishop.

18. … c5

well, I got the break I wanted !?

19. a4 Qc7 20. Rb1 Rab8 21. Qa2 b5 22. Nf3 Rb7 23. Ne5 Reb8 24. Reb2 Ne4 25. Bd2 f6??

after some inventive play I missed the best move. The worst part is that I looked at the move but considered the knight kick-out better.

26. Qxd5+ Kh8 27. Qxe4 fxe5 28. Qxe5

This turns out to be the decisive mistake. Fritz (yes, I said Fritz) gives the continuation 28. axb5 Nc4 29. b6 Qd6 30. dxe5 Nxe5 with White just better.

28. … Qxe5 29. dxe5 Nc4 30. Ra2 bxa4 31. Rxb7 Rxb7 32. Be1 a3

I think some players may be tempted to play 32. … Nxe5? When 33.
Rxa4 Kg8 34. Kf1 and again white is just better and on his way to fixing his biggest problems with an extra pawn.

33. Kf1 Rb2 34. Ra1 a2 35. Rd1 Kg8 0-1

White resigned with no way of stopping the coming queen without big sacrifice. I would describe this game as a muddle with the occasional spark of inspiration. I had poor plans in many positions but the thing I can honestly say is that I DID have a plan. A poor plan is always better than no plan. Sadly, this was a correspondence game so it just goes to show my skills have waxed old over the past couple of years. I need to get back into tournament play where the opposition is better prepared and I can start my analyzing engine (my brain) back up once more.

Hank has had difficulty in adding this as a comment to my previous post so I'm posting it here on his behalf:

Hello Colonel Crockett (and ChessVine readers),

I’m very sorry you took the comments in my blog post of July 24th as negative criticism. I did not intend my comments to be critical in either a constructive or negative way. They were just observations based on what I observed from your blog and noting what blogs did well in last year’s CJA awards. From what I saw of ChessVine’s posts, I consider it was an excellent blog or chess portal (take your pick) and I did like the Fisher book review (although I didn’t care for the book as much as you).

I try to write with a good humor and not take myself especially seriously. I’ve written on and off about my experiences with the CJA over the past 2 years, including my CJA entry last year that garnered the absolute lowest score (1 out of 12 possible points) of all 100+ entries and the entry I submitted in 2006 where I asked the judge of my section in person the day after the awards had been made public what he thought of my entry only to have him tell me he had never heard of it! I never thought my quirky blog would win (or even be seriously considered) and writing about the entire process was a lot of fun to share with my readers. Looking at the post in question with a different perspective, I probably made too much of my chances in order to contrast it to the stories of sure things not coming through that I followed it up with. I have posted my thoughts on winning the award on August 16th, but chessvines would have been a worthy winner.

Again, I think highly of your blog and I am very sorry for your disappointment at my post. I think congratulations are in order for both of us for being willing to risk rejection and submit our creative efforts to the judge’s scrutiny.

Regards,
Hank Anzis (http://brokenpawn1.blogspot.com)

The Chess Journalists of America awards have been announced and I'm once again a FAAAR second banana to a very good blog. Why aren't these brilliant bloggers competing against one another? I can only stand in “wonder-ment”.

This year my competition was a blogger by the name of “Broken Pawn”. To tell the truth I didn't have the time to analyze the competition for the Best Chess Blog Award but I felt like I had a decent chance with the articles I submitted. Broken Pawn submitted his blog after I did mine and in his own words:

“I reviewed the competition and see that there have been only 13 posts on their site all year (and most of those posts are merely links to other chess sites - no original content) and just 3 of those since May 1st (It was much more active last year). It’s inconceivable to me that I could finish second to this particular blog, but I’ve seen stranger things happen.” - Broken Pawn (HankAnzis)

I think this illustrates the negative side of competition. It has never been my purpose in the chess community to outdo anyone. I am at my heart a chess promoter … not exactly a journalist. I derive more pleasure from pointing people in the direction of useful information than in the simple retelling. I was very disappointed in Broken Pawn for his comments. I would have preferred that he made his criticism constructive so that others (myself included) might learn from their mistakes.

What mistakes have I made in my blog over the past year?

1) First and foremost it is a sign of disaster to allow your blog posting to drop in frequency. Set a pace that you can maintain. Over the past year my life has made such dramatic changes I don't even know where to begin. In the past I made a point to make at least one post per day. That was unrealistic. Don't make the same mistake.

2) I've never been a very prolific writer. I have a personal issue with those who do write verbosely, “A fool is known in multitude of words”. So in my opinion there must be a happy medium. Original content IS important in blogging and is sorely lacking on Chessvine these days. Quite simply I had nothing to say that someone else hadn't already said. At least that is the excuse I'm sticking with.

Bottom line: Don't say too little and don't say too much. Think of Goldy Locks, keep it JUST RIGHT with original content.

Don't make the same mistakes that I've made here on Chessvine. We all need to lift one another up and support all efforts to spread chess throughout the world. At times that does include constructive criticism. Get out there and blog, promote chess, and all the things that make the sport great. Most importantly … keep moving those pieces around!

For several years (probably since Kasparov vs. Deep Blue or maybe the X3D broadcast) a debate has been brewing on the ethics of real-time online chess game broadcast in international competition. I personally have no opinion to share on the issue because frankly it doesn't effect me.

Recently an article appeared by chessbase extending their views on the subject (fifteen minute delay in broadcast).

"Suspicion is rife in the chess world, and this can be very damaging to the game. Not just that more and more players may be tempted to use – and indeed may already be using – illegal computer assistance (those who are caught and admit to their wrongdoing inevitably say 'doesn't everyone do it?'). Even graver is the fact that not just the cheaters but everyone else is affected: soon nobody will believe a brilliant game. Recently we had the following conversation with a top GM: 'Did you see the 2570 performance by the 13-year-old Indonesian girl?' we asked (WFM Medina Warda Aulia, rated 2035, had just scored 5.0/7 at the Telin Chess International Tournament in Jakarta). Our GM friend's reply: 'So have you figured out which engine she was using?'"

To get a clear view of the changes chessbase has proposed take a look at the official proposal submitted to FIDE (PDF).

As I said this anti-cheating proposal hooplah came about long before now but it really came to a head earlier this year when the FFE (French Chess Federation) accused its own players of cheating and a massive backlash ensued. If you didn't know anything about that the chessbase link above has convenient links to those former articles as well.

Why do I consider this an issue of "chess tech"? Because of devices like the one featured in This Article. I think it is best to assume that EVERYONE cheats in international competition and then come to a fair conclusion as to how to detect the used devices and eliminate the non-cheaters from the list of suspects for the round. I'm certain FIDE will take its time deciding on this one and so nothing will be done in the near future except perhaps what chessbase calls "token measures" ... which happen so frequently.

Here is the announcement from the Chess Journalists of America (CJA):


Ramon A. Hernandez, Chairman of the CJA Awards Committee and Chief Judge, has announced the annual call for entries to the 2011 Annual CJA Chess Journalism Awards. The CJA awards honor the best in all facets of chess journalism. From journalism in print to those written and published online, the most excellent in chess articles, columns, photojournalism, infographics, layout and online are honored within their respective categories. Winners will be recognized in Chess Life and The Chess Journalist and will receive certificates."

[for full schedule click here or download the instructions in PDF format 2011 Awards Program Instructions. The entry for can be downloaded here.]

There is only three days left to submit an entry but if you're running around like mad trying to get an entry together you're not alone. It completely slipped my mind! aaargh!

Thanks to Natalia Pogonina:



1) Joanne Rowling is working on a sequel to "Harry Potter" called "Vladimir Kramnik".

2) Vladimir's Kramnik's glasses is an artefact that increases one's FIDE raing by 500 points.

3) One of the journalists asked Kramnik if he will start playing weaker without his glasses (see #2). Kramnik replied calmly: "What will happen if you subtract a constant from infinity?".

4) While Kramnik's classmates were busy proving the Pythagor theorem, little Vova proved that chess is a draw.

5) Vladimir Kramnik is not interested in all the chess positions, but all chess positions are interested in Vladimir Kramnik.

6) Candid Camera asked a cute blonde to approach Kramnik, ask for knight odds, while being secretly assisted by Rybka. Kramnik, being a true gentleman, decided not to win and made a draw.

7) Kramnik finds poker dull as his starting hand is always two kings.

8 ) Yet another eminent grandmaster has been delivered to the asylum. He claimed he can beat Kramnik.

9) Vladimir Kramnik doesn't wait for his opponents to make a move. Instead, he takes a walk and sends them the move using telekinesis when necessary.

10) There is just one player whom Vladimir Kramnik agrees to draw on move one - Peter Leko.

11) When Kramnik is playing in tournaments, book-makers don't offer odds for the winner.

12) In 1990 Kramnik was surprised to learn that the Berlin Wall has fallen, and promised he will "fix it soon".

13) After all, Botvinnik did create an artificial intelligence that plays chess. His name is Vladimir Kramnik.

14) Some openings are called after eminent masters. Chess is sometimes called "the game of Kramnik".

15) Vladimir Kramnik uses chess engines only to find out why annotators keep making mistakes when analyzing his games.

16) The Drawmaster character of the ChessMaster series is a pitiful attempt to imitate Kramnik's play.

17) Few people know that Deep Blue self-destructed after losing a chess match to Kramnik's tennis racket.

18) One day Kramnik was invited to the world chess puzzle solving contest. After he handed in answers to all the FIDE albums ahead of time, he doesn't visit these events anymore.

19) The statement "e4 is winning, d6 doesn't lose" is not against the laws of logic since it works only for Vladimir Kramnik.

20) The aliens who visited Ilyumzhinov have captured all the other planets of the Universe after defeating their best chess players. Unfortunately for them, Kirsan had Kramnik's phone number...

21) Kramnik solved checkers while being in the maternity home.

22) Kramnik says his wife plays chess on amateur level. Indeed, she still enjoys beating Rybka over and over again.

23) Kramnik was named the best painter of all times since no one can match his drawing technique.

24) Few people know that the Pepsi machine from the famous commercial that delivered a knock-out punch to Kasparov was just Kramnik wearing a special uniform.

25) Kasparov, Karpov and Fischer all failed to make it past round 1 of the "Who wants to be a millionaire" show since the question was "Who is the greatest chess player ever?" and the options - a) Kasparov b) Karpov c) Fischer d) Kramnik

The National Survey statistics that I mentioned in my previous article are from the following:

The survey was conducted online with a random sample of 576 men and women who have a child under the age of 18 who plays chess or is learning to play chess.

The Impulse Research proprietary online panel has been carefully selected to closely match US population demographics and the respondents are representative of American men and women who have a child under the age of 18.

Research was conducted in March 2011

As I said in that previous article use the available information for promotional purposes. Our ultimate goal should always be to get more people playing and enjoying chess!

Okay guys, it's been a while but I'm back with some interesting statistics for you. I got these stats from the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. I'm also including my commentary in Italics:

According to a recent national survey–

Of parents who noticed a change in their child’s grades since the child began playing chess, 93 percent said they’ve seen a positive improvement! Anyone who is interested in chess for any length of time knows this one to be true. I remember having little trouble in school or college ... I owe a lot to chess.

Parents whose children had improved learning skills since taking an interest in chess saw the most significant improvement in math, science and reading. Sixty-six percent reported improved math grades, 46 percent saw improvements in science grades, and 41 percent saw improvements in reading grades. I'd like to know what the differences between scores in Algebra and Geometry. That could constitute a significant understanding in how the brain functions in chess calculation.

Over half (55%) of children who play chess began playing between the ages of 6 and 8. Ninety-five percent of children began before the age of 12. The younger the better!

Go forth my friends and use these stats in your chess promotions ... I'll be looking into this survey and getting you the citations. Keep watching!

I need this video that was uploaded to youtube by Eugene Potemkin translated from Russian into English:

When I was first asked to review Frank Brady's new book my first thought was that it would be yet another biography of Bobby Fischer and interchangeable with any of the others. It's difficult to write a review for a book that's a poor carbon copy of a hundred others. This book brought me into its realistic world of novelized history very quickly. And it doesn't let up its interest grabbing until Bobby's final act.

In general the chess community collectively knows quite a bit about Fischer - his madness, his genius - but men like Frank Brady were given unique opportunities to socialize with the man behind the sensationalized media hype and for him to share the experience and research with a variety of readers is a gift that I have come to appreciate more than I expected I could.

It's a common thing for biographers to jump from the novelized history to a poorer form of chronological history: “this happened, then this, then this, ...” However, moving from one scene in Brady's new book to the next is the most seamless effort I've ever read in biographies in general.

Mr. Brady writes the Championship Match between Fischer and Borris Spassky in a somewhat different manner than the rest of the book showing a greater depth of focus by the author. The change is understandable in the context and the greater focus acknowledges the event as Bobby Fischer's magnum opus. However, unlike the kid glove handling(s) of the championship I've read in the past there is a more honest approach. A view of both sides as being in high tension. Not just Bobby giving unrelenting demands but the soviet chess machine's reactions to the interference by Dr. Max Euwe (then FIDE President) and other such unique circumstances. It is also noteworthy that Borris Spassky shines as a sportsman by not objecting to the match continuing after Bobby's strange behavior.

A reader becomes intimately familiar with a number of the "players" as well as with Fischer himself through this work. If you like Bobby as a chess genius this book is a must read. If you think him completely insane this book is a must read. Likewise, if you enjoy biographies or usually pass them up this is still a book you must read. If you know nothing about chess and have never played before in your life this book will still hold your interest (with my personal proviso that some of Bobby's seemingly strange behavior is excusable in the chess community in general). Get your hands on a copy of this book. I highly recommend it. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.

New York Times Review
Salon.com Review
Wired Review

I've always thought GM Viacheslav Ragozin was a remarkable chess trainer. Many are the stories of the practice matches between Ragozin and Botvinnik, etc. In an article for Chess.com GM Julio Becerra brings the point home! check it out

Saw an interesting brain teser today that I had never before thought about ...

Q. How many knights can you place on a chessboard so that none of the knights attack one another?

A. (drum roll) 32! Knights always attack squares of opposite color so if you out 32 knights on all the black or the white squares they can't capture each other! I didn't really have time to think about this problem before I was given the answer. I wonder how long it would have taken me otherwise?

Also, here is an older idea but still a huge challenge if you don't have the answer (and by answer I mean the concept to victory). The knights tour ... from any square on the board move a knight to all the other squares without moving to a single square more than once.


(that's a touring knight, btw)

Here is a simple knight's tour from the corner

Source(s): Alexandra Kosteniuk, Chess.com

Open letter regarding the Women’s World Chess Championship 2010 in Antakya/Hatay

We, the players of the Women’s World Chess Championship 2010 in Antakya/Hatay who have signed this document below, would like to share with the chess community and FIDE our thoughts about the level of the organization of the recent women's world championship.

The reason for this letter is to make the governing chess body, FIDE, aware of the problems that exist. We are chess professionals and would like to see the women’s chess world championship as the ultimate chess event which should be organized at the highest level. After qualifying for this prestigious event, we have to pay our own expenses to come and play in this championship. As such we would like to feel that we are the participants of a world chess tournament rather than are being overcharged, starting from the transfer and ending with the hotel.
There are certain points we neither understand nor accept, and to avoid disappointments in the future, we would like to express them now, so that next time around, the same problems do not occur.
Hotel and location:

Full board in the Hotel Anemon Antakya for the participants of the championship cost 130 Euros. The regular price for the same hotel with no food is 60 Euro per day. The hotel was located far away from the center of Antakya on a noisy, dirty road with nowhere towalk around.Some players tried to book their rooms through the official website of the hotel, where the room price per day was about 65-75 €, including breakfast. Obviously the remaining 60 € could be spent for a very adequate lunch and dinner. But they were informed that the hotel was booked out, and it was impossible to book a room without going through the organising committee.

Even though normally only the players are forced to stay in the official hotels, in Turkey everybody who came with a player needed to stay in the same official hotel. Which made the participation in the world championship even more expensive for players who decided to come with their trainers. It's an easy way for the organizers to force the players to pay more than they should.

The participants were given rooms in a four-star hotel, overlooking a dirty and very noisy highway, with unhealthy air conditions and nowhere to go walking at all! The walls between the rooms were so thin, the players could hear what was going on in the rooms next to theirs. Due to to all these conditions, the level of rest and preparation needed for players for such an important event was lower than usual.

Comparing to Nalchik 2008, where the players were obliged to pay only for accomodation and could buy lunch and dinner either in the hotel or in restaurants nearby, in Antakaya we didn’t have a choice. We had to pay for the food, but in the first few days the players were left starving, since the size of the portions offered were quite small and there was no buffet to choose from. In such important events as the world championships, since participants from all over the world are taking part in the event, we believe that some variety of food has to be proposed.

The price of 130 €, given the location and market conditions, was unreasonably high, and players and their families had no choice but pay for poor service at prices far above market value to the organizers.

Considering all of the above, we would like to ask FIDE that even though the prize fund hasn’t changed or improved since 2001, at least the venue of the championship shouldn’t become more expensive, and the event should not be located in places where conditions seem bad and unhealthy for the participants.Transfer & Registration Fee

The participants were charged 40 € for a ten-minute trip from the airport to the hotel. A local taxi would have been DRASTICALLY cheaper, and these taxis had room for at least three players. So basically we were being overcharged!

The players were also asked to pay a "registration fee" or deposit of 100 Euros, which is something new for the World Championship, and not convenient for the players.

Organisation

Even though, this time, there were no politically interfering circumstances as in Nalchik, most players seemed disappointed when comparing this World Championship to previous editions. There we were no guides or warm welcomes for the participants in Turkey.

The first game of the first round was played in the Archeological Museum of Antakya which is a very beautiful place but was absolutely unacceptable for a serious chess tournament. All the noise of the road was heard inside the Museum and was disturbing to the players. A decision to move even a single round from the regular hall to another location is absolutely unacceptable for such high profile events.

There were also not enough qualified arbiters for the first rounds, especially for the tie-breaks. From the coverage of the championship, you could learn that coaches and other players who didn’t play helped the organizers to monitor the rapid games during the tie-breaks.This should be absolutely avoided.

Next Steps:

The 2010 Women’s World Championship was a real disappointment for most of us. The impression we got was that the organizers wanted to spend the least amount of money, while earning as much as possible from the players, which is unacceptable for such high profile events.Therefore, in order to avoid such unpleasant situations in the future, we ask FIDE to take more serious steps for choosing a city-candidate for such important events. A FIDE representative, preferably a female player, should visit a site which is bidding for such an important event before it is accepted as the venue by FIDE. Before being accepted, the organizer of a future world championship should sign a special contract with FIDE, guaranteeing minimum quality of organization. All the points we discussed in this letter (quality of hotel, food, opening and closing ceremonies, hall of play, payments from players, etc.) should be specified in this contract and none of these should be changed before the event or without notifying FIDE.

We are also asking FIDE to improve the contract that all the participants sign before the world championship, as some points are not acceptable such as the requirements for the players to wear any clothes or brands that FIDE proposes (point 4.4).

The contract between FIDE and the players for the upcoming world championship should include the name of the hotel and the exact price the player will need to pay and exactly for what services. That price should be reasonably close to market prices for those accommodations.We hope that FIDE will take into serious consideration this open letter and will make sure all these very important questions are addressed in order to ensure all future events are held with fair conditions for the players.

Elina Danielian
Nana Dzagnidze
Jovanka Houska
Tatiana Kosintseva
Alexandra Kosteniuk
Maia Lomineishvili
Evgenia Ovod
Amina Mezioud
Lilit Mkrtchian
Elisabeth Paehtz
Anna Muzychuk
Maria Muzhychuk
Natalia Pogonina
Marina Romanko
Irina Slavina
Soumya Swaminathan
Anna Zatonskih
Natalia Zhukova
(in alphabetical order)

I'm sure that most people have heard the legend of the "great master and the rice" and other such old tales regarding chess but I urge you to read an article by my friends at chessdom that I recently discovered. They produce a great many quality articles over there so if you're in the mood to navigate the site please do so! Just don't forget about little old me over here.

Firstly, i'd like to thank Yelena Dembo for brining this article to my attention. She posted a link to the Chessbase article on her website and I've been ill lately again so I wasn't paying attention. From Chessbase we get the long and the short ... I'll publish the 'short' here. Ali Nihat Yazici TCF President issued an opening letter and he summarizes this this way:

"These last few weeks, we started to communicate with the General Secretary of ECU to finalise the details of this event and then, as a result of insulting and condescending behaviour on her part, we requested the intervention of the President of the ECU, Mr. Silvio Danailov. None of those attempts have however worked, as you will see from the various emails and letters sent, and we were completely neglected by ECU management. This is really a big disappointment for me considering that I was the first person celebrating the victory of ECU President just after election and wishing him good luck in the next four years."

As a small aside (bringing positive out of negative) I LOVED the events banner:

Merry Christmas Everyone!

For those of you that don't know skype is a handy online tool to communicate with voice and video with other skype users around the world or in the next room.

And for those of you who are curious about why I'm bringing this service up on a chess site ... wonder no more ... skype has an add-on or "extra" where you can be in a call with someone and play chess at the same time! Of course in my search for informative links on the topic I came across some pretty disheartening news. Along with said chess support there has now emerged a convenient way to cheat at chess on skype. see the link HERE. I have no idea what the strength of this cheating helper might be but just in case I wouldn't bet the deed to my house on a chess game on skype.

I'm not as interested in chess variants as I used to be but I find a variant interesting that says all over its main page "Recommendation: To understand the complexity of MCX4, it is necessary to be a regular chess player."

Check it out for yourself: The Official MCX4 website

1. Scan the opponent’s games using a chess database or (at least) the games from the tournament – usually available online. Pay a lot of attention to his/her openings. Try to understand what positions he/she prefers, and which he/she plays badly. If you have enough time, try to compile a complete dossier on him/her – psychology, weaknesses and strengths in chess, current chess shape, physical shape, motivation, time management, etc.

2. Depending on a variety of factors (tournament situation, opponent’s style, your own wellbeing) you can choose an opening variation (or a few of them, depending on how broad your opponent’s opening repertoire is).

3. If necessary, study the variation in more detail, try to find new ideas.

4. Rehearse the lines before the game (normally the higher the level of a player, the longer it takes).

Check out her Full Article

My friend Michael Ciamarra give a Fine sendoff to GM Larry Evans:

Chess Grandmaster, 5-time US Champion, journalist and chess columnist Larry Evans died last week of post-operative complications following gall-bladder surgery in Reno, Nevada. He was 78 years old.

Read The Full Article

ROFL ... Thanks to Natalia for posting this to her blog and thanks to Eugene Potemkin for posting the video to youtube!

Letter to FIDE
To: FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov & FIDE World Championship Committee.
Reference is made to the ongoing World Championship cycle.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my decision not to take part in the planned Candidate Matches between March and May 2011.

After careful consideration I’ve reached the conclusion that the ongoing 2008–2012 cycle does not represent a system, sufficiently modern and fair, to provide the motivation I need to go through a lengthy process of preparations and matches and to perform at my best.

Reigning champion privileges, the long (five year) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion.

By providing you with four months notice before the earliest start of the Candidates as well as in time before you have presented player contracts or detailed regulations, I rest assured that you will be able to find an appropriate replacement.

Although the purpose of this letter is not to influence you to make further changes to the ongoing cycle, I would like to take the opportunity to present a few ideas about future cycles in line with our input to FIDE during the December 27th 2008 phone-conference between FIDE leaders and a group of top-level players.

In my opinion privileges should in general be abolished and a future World Championship model should be based on a fair fight between the best players in the World, on equal terms. This should apply also to the winner of the previous World Championship, and especially so when there are several players at approximately the same level in the world elite. (Why should one player have one out of two tickets to the final to the detriment of all remaining players in the world? Imagine that the winner of the 2010 Football World Cup would be directly qualified to the 2014 World Cup final while all the rest of the teams would have to fight for the other spot.)

One possibility for future cycles would be to stage an 8-10 player World Championship tournament similar to the 2005 and 2007 events.

The proposal to abolish the privileges of the World Champion in the future is not in any way meant as criticism of, or an attack on, the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand, who is a worthy World Champion, a role model chess colleague and a highly esteemed opponent.

Rest assured that I am still motivated to play competitive chess. My current plan is to continue to participate in well-organised top-level tournaments and to try to maintain the no 1 spot on the rating list that I have successfully defended for most of 2010.

Best regards,
IGM Magnus Carlsen

Check out Pogonina's new Blog Post. I've been trying to tell people in the chess community for several years now that Social Media is a necessary part to the business of promoting chess worldwide and comments like "please use tweets to contact me, not DMs" means that a few of you are listening! WOOT!

After all this time wailing to the wall I see a great many results to my efforts. Just a few years ago I could count the number of chess related social media mavens on one hand and now it seems to have exploded. I could just give all of you a big hug ... but I won't because that would be weird.

Ok, so I've seen EVERYONE doing articles on Kramnik's victory at Bilbao and being one of those people that simply follows the crowd I decided that I should write a full article on it myself. PAUSE Okay, I've decided not to write a whole article on the event because Chessbase did a nice job of journalistic coverage and I have no opinion on the result either way. I didn't follow the tournament because to be perfectly honest I didn't have the time. Things have been coming at me for the past month (you've probably noticed a lack in posting articles recently as a result).

Anyway, in the Chessbase article on this event I think it ilustrates rather clearly the duality of chess ...



What makes one player happy makes the other unhappy. There is a balance in this game of ours. Food for thought.

Here is a new wallpaper for chessvine fans (or chess fans in general). Click Here

Can Will Taylor (no relation to me, FYI) become a Grandmaster? Let's keep and eye on this guy! I'm rooting for you, Will.

Chessbase Article on Will

Will's Official Blog "Road to Grandmaster"

Why are Karpov and Ilyumzhinov big buddies now?


It seems to me that could have been a plan all along ... I hate chess politics.

Perhaps Karpov is one of the aliens?

It's not surprising that Betsy Dynako is the wonderwoman of American Chess photography. She has a clear, concise, and yet completely absorbing way of communicating with a reader.

Take for example her recent article on her blog about the armwrestling match between Sam Shankland and Dean Ippolito.

Check out this great action shot Betsy took:



Also, as a quick note, I'd like to mention that Dean Ippolito is planning on breaking a World Record check out the details at ChessWorldRecord.com

I listened to Nigel Davies opinion recently on a chessplayer that had become notorious in the news as a thief ... see my brief google search here. It seems that in the news this man, who by my understanding is only of average strength maybe a bit above, has suddenly taken on the character of a grandmaster at the game.

To those who pay attention this is nothing new. In local newspapers the best player in elementary school is referred to as "Chess Champion" and similar stories abound. I don't mind the local embellishments when it comes to school kids but I think the chess community needs to educate the lay-journalists that over-characterize pseudo-patzer thieves, murderers, and con-men. What do you think?

This video is the first in a series (I won't post the whole series). As chessplayers we should be willing to explore all methods of developing good health in order to play better chess

okayyy ... I was reading this article from The Independent and in an interview FIDE President Kirsan Illyumzhinov is descibed as saying:

"You do realise ... that chess is a 'cosmic game'? Excavations have shown that chess was played with similar rules, in various continents, centuries ago ... There was no internet before, so how did it get across the world? It means that it was brought from somewhere."

I am tempted to think that chess was brought here by aliens just to mess with our puny human brains but I think when I finally decide to run fro FIDE president I'm not going to admit it ... it just seems smarter.

I know I mentioned this once before but I think this information can't be spread enough!

It is very apparent that GM Nigel Davies has some righteous anger concerning chess teacher charlatans that charge exorbitant fees for sub-par instruction. That's the subject of his recent Tigerchess Blog article.

In that article GM Davies says the following about selecting a chess coach:

"First off the guy should be able to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, so you should look for decent PLAYING STRENGTH from someone who has ACTIVELY PARTICIPATED in tournaments. Ideally they should still do so; when players stop playing they get all sorts of unrealistic notions.

Also note that anyone who claims that mastery of chess or any other art form can be achieved via some quick fix is a charlatan. Watch out for too much sales patter, manufactured qualifications (for example attempts to show linkage with well known PLAYERS), use of puppies to show how nice they are or a focus on players who will improve just by virtue of getting older (the young!). Also watch out for the teaching of opening tricks starting with Scholar’s Mate (for the under 8s) and progressing on the Fried Liver Attack. This stuff may achieve short term results but at the cost of a player’s long term development."

I couldn't agree more!

See A Trend?









Salym Petroleum



The Chess Community should make an effort to keep these sponsors but also to expand sponsorships into other countries.

"Accordingly I’d like to say a few words about how one should select a good coach for the sake of both the genuinely good coaches and those who wish to master our noble game. First off the guy should be able to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, so you should look for decent PLAYING STRENGTH from someone who has ACTIVELY PARTICIPATED in tournaments. Ideally they should still do so; when players stop playing they get all sorts of unrealistic notions.

Also note that anyone who claims that mastery of chess or any other art form can be achieved via some quick fix is a charlatan. Watch out for too much sales patter, manufactured qualifications (for example attempts to show linkage with well known PLAYERS), use of puppies to show how nice they are or a focus on players who will improve just by virtue of getting older (the young!). Also watch out for the teaching of opening tricks starting with Scholar’s Mate (for the under 8s) and progressing on the Fried Liver Attack. This stuff may achieve short term results but at the cost of a player’s long term development." ~ Nigel Davies Blog

Bravo, Nigel! This is precisely the sort of thing I've been preaching on this blog for the past two years!