The Abysmal Depths of Chess

Position G, December 1988 White to play Kasparov - Wolff, New York Clock Simul 1988 Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move.

  December 1988, Position G White to play Today's position is a little different to every other Beat the Masters I've published so far.

Employers eh?   Strange bunch of chaps. They hire you to do a job and then they set about systematically putting obstacles in your way to ensure you can’t actually do that job. One day I must find out why they do it this way. All of which is my way of explaining that my month of immersion is much closer to coming to an end than I would have liked.

  November 1988, Position G White to play Lahav - Y. Grunfeld, Tel Aviv 1988 Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move.

  November 1988, Position G White to play

Black to play A chesser walking into a stalemate from an overwhelming position is a bit like a batsman getting hit in the box. Just as painful and similarly musing to absolutely everybody save for the person on the receiving end.

  October 1989, Position E White to play Shvidler - Levitt, Tel Aviv 1989 Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move.

  October 1989, Position E White to play

The big news of the week is Say Chess ’s new idea for a  Tactics Tracker  club. More of that later after I’ve had a moment to reflect on how going back to work has changed things.

  March 1989, Position G Black to play Fedorowicz - Dlugy, World Open 1988 Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move. Scroll down to see some commentary from me and the Masters’ feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If 'What Most People Do is Not the Way to Go'   ( KMKY 8 Nasty, Brutish and not Short ) is true, it counts double with regard to studying chess openings. All that theory out there, all those courses and all those videos … and yet most of us still suck when it comes to actually playing the game. There has to be another, better, way. I think there is. Or ways, plural, perhaps. One of the things we might do when it comes to studying the Sicilian Defence, say, is take 100 positions where … d5 is potentially on the cards, going through them one by one and deciding if Black should actually play it. More of that another day. For this post I want to look at anoth...

March 1989, Position G Black to play Contributions to the comments box are welcome. Masters’ feedback will be published tomorrow.

White to play Yusupov - Kasparov, Linares 1990 This, as you can see, is a position from one of Artur’s own games. He went on to lose but the game but he certainly went down fighting. If found it in Boost Your Chess, Chapter 9: The Use of Traps . Coincidentally it was the chapter turned out to be next on my list the day after I saw a tweet from Neal Bruce   talking about the importance of resilience in chess ... but that's only half the story.

March 1989, Position F White to play Dlugy - Gurevich, World Open 1988 Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move. Scroll down to see some commentary from me and the Masters’ feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Twitter There’s no pedant like a chess pedant. It’s what we do. Well that and play chess. When Matt (aka:  Why Must I Lose to This Idiot ) saw a silly quote on the twitter, he didn’t just decide that it was silly or agree with Kings Head Chess Club that it was silly he actually proved it was silly. Matt went off and found a tonne of games in which one side wins without ever moving backwards. He even dug up one from Unfeasibly Tall Coach To The World Champions Peter Heine Neilsen which lasted 55 moves. Top work. Dlugy - Gurevich, World Open 1988, however, doesn't make it...

March 1989, Position F White to play Contributions to the comments box are welcome. Masters’ feedback will be published tomorrow.

Good news.  Parkrun - a weekly free 5k run held at 700+ different locations in 20 countries around the world -   is coming back to Britain . Or maybe it isn’t . The clowns and jokers that constitute Her Majesty's Government continue to make a total fecking horlicks of COVID. Not a surprise, I suppose, but still hugely depressing. Still, it’s probably a good time to do Couch to 5k  again  anyway. It’s free, it’s proven effective and it gifts me a neat little lead in to a few thoughts on the difference between chess players and runners. What’s not to like?

  September 1989, Position E Black to play Neurohr - Niedermaier, Bundesliga 1988/89 Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move.

  September 1989, Position E Black to play Contributions to the comments box are welcome. Masters’ feedback will be published tomorrow.

Do you want to get better a chess but find yourself at a loss for what to do because nobody agrees how to adults get better at this game of ours? If so, this post is for you.