The Abysmal Depths of Chess

  November 1988, Position B White to play Christiansen - Andonov, St John’s 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 B White to play

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.

  November 1988, Position G White to play

  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.

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

  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.

September 1989, Position D White to play Hansen - Piket, Munich 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. Scroll down to see some commentary from me and the Masters’ feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Today’s Beat the Masters position, the 130th I've looked at, is unique. It's the only one so far where one side has two queens. I’ve often had problems in positions which have or lead to material imbalances. [INSERT LIST HERE] In my own defence, even GM James Plaskett   found today’s BtM tricky. "… perhaps the most difficult position yet to appear in this competition" , was Jimbo’s opinion - and he was to be the British Champion the following year. Levitt (not then a GM but he would get the title in the mid-90s)’s take: "An unusual position requiring original thought since players have little or no experience with two queens." Which is certa...

  September 1989, Position D White to play

July 1989, Position B Black to play to play Bareyev - Plachetka, Trnava 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.

  July 1989, Position B Black to play