My Chess Blog

"After reading every article of Bill, I always get the feeling that I actually learned something.....that I had broadened my understanding of Chess." - Kevin Spraggett  Bill  or William Lombardy would be remembered - if not for anything - his book titled " Understanding Chess - My System, my games, my life ".  If you have not read that.....you miss something...... He was a very unconventional teacher.....and his postulates defied conventional wisdom....and stood on their own merit.... rebellious !! .....a few of them.... " Castling is to be considered a waste of time, wrongly expended when there is almost always something more important to achieve! Thus castling is a passive move that nurtures the hope of King safety !" " Analysis is not Chess. It is an emergency condition by which we solve immediate problems during a game of Chess....analysis is overrated " " All weaknesses can be improved or transformed. The experienced...

"There is a time for living and a time for giving expression to life. There is also a time for creating, which is less natural. For me, it is enough to live with my whole body and bear witness with my whole heart. Herein lies a freedom." - Alburt Camus Meursault - the protagonist in Camus's phenomenal novel " The Stranger " said....after he was imprisoned and sentenced to death for an unintended......accidental crime....." When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man ". Does not we Chess players harbour a similar feeling after committing something which disturbed the equilibrium in a position......much later though, when the position turns hostile at us...indicting us for the crime which we committed unintentionally.....accidentally......! Like in life, in Chess too, things happen in-spite of us......and therefore.... Chess is an Art ! .....and like in life, in Chess too, we think we are...

" You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. " - Richard Feynman The fine art of Chess lies in transformations......which necessarily means, pawn moves.....and exchanges - in short those changes that happen in a position which are irreversible!  And every time a pawn is moved and every exchange that happens are critical moments! A player's mastery of the game is revealed in how he perceives and responds in these critical moments. Magnus Carlsen differentiates himself in this art....from others.....supported by his undiminishing tenacity and great love for the game ..... .by just playing for little things! Little things is what Chess offers....it is a highly resilient game; and it is the mind of the opponent, with its allied apprehensions, that makes it big!  As in life, in Chess too, we are offered choices.... every moment ...

"Who says my poems are poems? My poems are not poems. When you know that my poems are not poems, Then we can speak of Poetry!" - Ryokan  The Zen poet of 18th century is spot on! This is the essence of creativity.....poetry....pottery.....or......! Creation is a dialogue.....an intimate dialogue between the creator and that which is being created. If this does not happen, then we would be better doing a mundane clerical job creatively! This dialogue is not limited to the one you can have with your pieces and your opponent pieces (you may actually lure and induct some to......!) .....but also ' the seventeenth fighting unit ' as Bronstein claimed! He further said, ".... but after all, your opponent also has the right to make mistakes, which, I would venture to assert, we do not always notice. That means.....That means that Chess mistakes are not so terrible " We shall observe who what and how of this seventeenth fighting unit in this story!...

" Some sort of pressure must exist; the artists exist because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world " - Andrei Tarkovsky   Chess is an art.....and imperfection is its art!  .....and it is the duty of a Chess master to look for harmony amidst the chaos....spontaneously......and not look for certainty through his excessive ...... As Alexandra Horowitz wrote...." One trouble with being human - with the human condition - is that, as with many conditions, you cannot turn it off. Even as we develop from relatively immobile, helpless infants into mobile, autonomous adults, we are more and more constrained by the ways we learn to see the world ." The challenge lies in how we emancipate ourselves from the deluge of 'knowledge' that is staring at us....rendering us dazed....immobile or turn us into morons and...

" The direction of the brushstroke is no longer an aid to the reading of forms. It is without any support from structure that the beholder must mobilize his memory of visible world and project it into the mosaic of strokes and dabs on the canvas before him. The image, it might be said, has no firm anchorage left on the canvas - it is only "conjured up' in our minds ". - Gombrich   .....and so is perception in Chess....whether you are the onlooker or the creator of a game! Generally, I only scan the games in the tournament sites and other Chess portals......to select instructive ones.....but thanks to my friend Sagar , I watched the commentary by Karpov in Biel site on the rapid games for about 30 minutes.....pure gold.....a rare occasion where you get to witness the legend in flow! I shall give you a glimpse of it....before moving into my subject article... This was a position from Pelletier -Harikrishna, Biel Rapid - 2017 . Looking at W...

" Men and women were out in the woods To celebrate spring To celebrate the festival of flowers The moonlight was smiling down on an empty city... A lone traveller Was on the road, ....in the moonlight, With the birds singing overhead, He walked on.... Alone.. .. "                                                               - Tagore " Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! The shot will only go smoothly when it take the archer himself by surprise !" said Eugen Herrigel in his great book..."Zen in the art of archery" Some of the strokes by Roger Federer must have taken him by surprise.....when the master is in such flow state as he is in....now.....and most of his strokes takes us.....the lesser mortals....by great surprise! And so does a move like..... ......Nb8!! in the above...