My Chess Blog

"Beauty in Chess is...and ever shall be associated with visual effects" - Tartakover Commenting on that great game Lasker - Napier , Gerald Abrahams wrote, ".... .a piece of Chess in which, once an imbalance is created, the quantity of material seems to remain irrelevant. Development is preferred to recapturing. After the battle, the counting of survivors !" However, in the game between Aronian - Rapport, in ECC 2016 , it is not just about the material shed....but....the way it was shed.....why even the way the game commenced....! Richard Rapport is known for playing godforsaken lines.....and this one arose out of Chigorin.... named after the Russian Chess God! Position after 27.....Rh1!! How come that Rook which was sitting on h8 landed on h1!? Well, Tartakover also said that the " mistakes can only be made by a strong player "....and Aronian surely must have tread some inappropriate path for landing in such a position....where Blac

"Some people have one great dream in life which they fail to fulfil. Others have no dream at all and fail to fulfil even that...." - Fernando Pessoa Like in life, where simple things.....and simple thoughts and simple deeds are the most profound and most difficult to entertain, do...... so in Chess ! .....simple moves are the most difficult to visualise, understand and.....play! Surgeon Atul Gawande writes thus, in his famous book "Complications": " We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do ." .....and what can we say of Chess....and the assumptio

At times, the seeds for a fine game is sown long before the game has begun....or just commenced! And it involves both the parties! Modern day Chess, has undergone a "change" as they say.....an inevitable change...where the endeavour is to take one's opponent far away from his database....into wilderness.... But....at times, this ends up losing the track for the player who indulged in this kidnap! Meanwhile, the game of chess remains the same....beyond this phase called "opening"....and travels on the well laid track provided by our past masters...which they discovered through their well intended experiments and love for the game. So, the aim of a player is to reach this stage unscathed....in the process of circumventing opponent's preparation and landmines....and get a position which is playable...! Dronavalli Harika - Michael Adams, IOM, 2016 The latest fad...."Giuoco Piano".... .....the move 3.Bb5 meets with the 'nig

" All good advice is already known. All rules of wisdom and self-control were put together long before our era, and since the time of Marcus Aurelius, nothing substantial has been added. Unfortunately, until now, these recipes helped very few people. ..." Dvoretsky quoting Vladimir Levi - a psychologist - in his book " For friends and colleagues ". As a m ark of respect to..... Dvoretsky ....the man who established a unique style of imparting chess knowledge.... .....did I say imparting....perhaps a slip of the fingers.... ....For....a good coach, teacher, trainer, guru or whatever term that you may give to this noble profession....means far beyond just imparting knowledge.... ...skills can be taught, rules can be taught....but the art of knowing...even so the art of attaining mastery, lies far beyond the realms of these trifles. A good coach teaches; a great coach....(or should I replace this term with guru ) inspires! Dvoretsky was an inspirational

" Let the reader not think that grandmasters are without sin: they get in time trouble, fail to calculate variations to the end,, make blunders and oversights..... " - David Bronstein In Chess....strategy and tactics are inseparable parts of the same coin... Also, every rules that can be stated in Chess, which are laid down under the 'pretext' of strategy & tactics, has an exception...which, the particular configuration on the board dictates... .....and the one who perceives this 'anomaly'.....emerges successfully! And, the 'hero of the script', in all these rules and its exceptions....is the Pawn!  Everything in chess revolves around the movement of this hero: his move forward or staying back; capture or non capture...., his associations with his co-actors and conflict with the opposing factors! Great Philidor was a true visionary! Vassily Ivanchuk - Garry Kasparov, Linares - 1991 A not so usual bind position.  Ivanchuk'

" The film artist's job was to learn his principles from a profound investigation of all arts and all levels of life, to measure these principles against an unfaltering understanding of himself, and if he then did anything less than create - with bold, living works that moved their audiences to excitement and understanding - he was neither good artist not positive member of society. " - Jay Leyda The strong words are that of the American film maker - who lived in first three quarters of the last century - on introducing the works of the great Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Will there ever be a second opinion on that....!?  Filmmaking is for the audience and if it does not reach....regale and enrich them....then what for!? .....but, a filmmaker should never forget that he is primarily an artist.....and what he creates is an expression of himself....he pours him into his creation....flows with his inner urge, instincts....and with the times that he lives in...

" .....there are a number of general problem-solving techniques, which mathematicians use all the time but seldom articulate ." - George Polya What that great mathematician said is true not only for maths....but in chess too!  By problem solving, it should not be wrongly construed that it is a tactical exercise....even solving a positional problem is problem solving....tactics are mere device which executes a sequence of moves which results out of positional considerations...preponderance. Polya further devised a way to approach the mathematical problem, which he called heuristic strategy .  He divided the heuristic strategy into four parts: understanding the problem trying to use experience from related problems to plan an attack carry out the attack. And finally.... ask yourself whether you really believe the answer you've got Mathematics is a vast space, unlike chess....Chess in not infinite.....yet ....what Polya listed applies in Chess too! Man

The woods are lovely, dark and deep! But I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep  And miles to go before I sleep                                                                                                      - Robert Frost Magnus Carlsen - Nils Grandelius; Norway - 2016 1.e4 c5; 2.Nf3 Nf6!? Dusted out from history.....or is it!? Hypermodern - as they used to call this approach.....attacking the center with a piece as opposed to using the pawns; and provoking the adversary pawns to 'over-advance' his central pawn! ......by the way, does it not obey the classical precepts.... Knights out before the Bishops!? 3.e5 Nd5  Nimzowitsch, the founder of this defensive setup....whose name it bears, had the audacity to take back to g8, a number of times! 4.Nc3 Nc3 Rubinstein has created some beautiful poetry in this Nimzowitsch's Sicilian! Max Euwe - Akiba Rubinstein, Hague - 1921 4.d4 cd4; 5.Qd4 e6; 6.c4 Nc6; 7.Qd1 Nde7!