My Chess Blog

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!

"I am the interval between what I am and What I am not...." - Fernando Pessoa In order to understand a game of Chess.....even Tennis, Golf, Snooker....or any such game....why even Cricket - if you consider a Batsman or Bowler in isolation.....in order to understand the choices that are being made..... ......you need to indwell in the mind of the player....or even best, talk to him on his choices.... .....even though, they may not well articulate their inner thoughts.....the wordless, shapeless, featureless abyss within...., that is the closest one can get! Everything else, the live commentary, the written commentary.....and this crap....is all approximation....guesswork..... "White's first "merely good" move. "Best" by unanimous consent is 3.N-Qb3" .....wrote David Bronstein in Zurich 1953. To the question, " Is the first move really an advantage ?" Bronstein wrote, " The opening advantage here is consider