My Chess Blog

" The fact is that from the Renaissance onwards, almost up to our own time, architects have used the same basic forms - columns, pilasters, cornices, entablatures and mouldings, all of which were originally borrowed from classical ruins. It is natural that within such a long period tastes and fashions in building should have varied considerably, and it is convenient to have different labels by which to distinguish these changing styles. It is a strange fact that many of these labels which to us are simply names of styles were originally words of abuse or derision ." ....wrote E.H. Gombrich in his monumental work "The story of Art" ! The audacity of putting the Bishop on a8 square deliberately and have every pawn on that Bishop's colour, and the move such as 20.g4 bear 'those labels'! White: Vladimir Kramnik - Black: Fabiano Caruana This is a new position, as early as 11th move!! ---------- In the game between So Wesley and Shakhriyar (

" The unknown cannot be distorted or misrepresented "                                                                           - Arthur Koestler (in 'The Act of Creation) Wow! Both Vishy and Magnus took us for a ride in "jatka" - that most pleasurable ride on horse driven cart - the modern day fleeting flight in supersonic jet "engines" is no match for it!!  The hand carved masterpieces, replete with old world sheen, has a place which the machine cut creations can never belong! White : Vishy Anand - Black : Wesley So So just played 9) ....Nb8 and here Vishy surprised everyone with... 10) Ng5!?! A move just to brush aside all "why's" and "what-if's" and pose a counter question, "why-not"!? In Chess, unless it is an outright blunder, any move is playable.  When Black Knight can keep jumping back and forth on c6 and b8 square, his counterpart can also jump into thin air and be ready to vani

"Chess has been represented, or shall I say misrepresented, as a game - that is, a thing which could not well serve a serious purpose, solely created for the enjoyment of an empty hour. If it were a game only, Chess would never have survived the serious trials to which it has, during the long time of its existence, been often subjected."                                                                                                                  - Emanuel Lasker  And the problem stems from this very aspect of not considering Chess as a game....primarily. Lasker considered Chess as a fight and therefore, history records many instances of bitter feud, exploitations amongst great minds of this game, including Lasker. This has now trickled down far below and hence, most of the promising young talents burnout much before they could blossom!  This very basal human tendency to over exploit has lured them to resort to extraneous means like overuse of engines to aid progres

" If you expect science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we're going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and then look for some mystic answer to these problems. How a scientist can take a mystic answer I don't know because the whole spirit is to understand - well, never mind that. Anyhow, I don't understand that, but anyhow if you think of it, the way I think of what we're doing is we're exploring, we're trying to find out as much as we can about the world, People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not, I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, t

 " At first sight the infinite variety of combinations that are possible on the chessboard  may appear a most discouraging obstacle in the way of achieving success in the game ..."                                                                                -    Wilhelm Steinitz The Father of Chess was alluding to the number of permutation combinations possible to play the opening moves and Anish Giri certainly tried some weird options today which would have made Steinitz squirm in his coffin! Michael Polanyi, in his "The Study of Man" said something which all of us know tacitly(!), " We use instruments as an extension of our hands and they may serve also as an extension of our senses. We assimilate them to our body by pouring ourselves into them.  And we must realise then also that our body has a special place in the universe: we never attend to our body as an object in itself. Our body is always in use as the basic instrument of our own intellectua