My Chess Blog

....no he is definitely not haughty ....he literally meant what he said! If you take cognisance of what others say.....then you will never become what you can become. After all, that is the definition of being at the top....staying at the top - no place for the other and others viewpoints! It is said that Groucho Marx will say boldly and quickly, what the rest of us might think but are too timid to say !  He once wrote to the President of a Hollywood club....." Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member" . What Carlsen said quickly and boldly is what everybody....even a ELO 2000.... would " like to say " when someone says something contrary to what they think! American writer Simone Elkeles wrote...." Opinions are like assholes (no it is not a bad word), everybody has one ...." ......so has Kasparov and Kramnik and million others who voiced in private.....all of us have one. Meanw

"What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do" - Aristotle  ......Not much to write about the second game. .....yet it was not a boring draw ........as it happened in the past ...... It had certain moments of interests .......      .......and....hence I shall deal with the REST DAY! Is this a state of rest......? NO! Both the army is in readiness.....erect and ready for action.....a calmness which conceals huge rumble ....beneath....!.....State of inertia.....but..... Possibly the most complex position!! ".....a longing for the articulated and immeasurable, for eternity....To rest in the arms of perfection .....a desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?" Thomas Mann asks this question through the mind voice of Aschenbach  - his protagonist in Death in Venice! Let us deal a bit with .....rest....beingness......nothingness..... .....but to understand this, we

"The problem is that, on the board, one sees only the outward aspects of the position - the placing of the pieces - and the interconnections between them are concealed from view...."  - David Bronstein It was pleasing to see a fight on the board......after long! .....and possibly most of it happened on the board....! Caruana - Carlsen, WC 2018: Game 1 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6 4.Bc6 dc6 5.d3 Bg7 6.h3 Nf6 7.Nc3 Nd7 A slight deviation from what he did in Tata Steel 2015 against the same opponent, to avoid what could have happened....then!  Carlsen played  7.....b6  (instead of ......Nd7), then and the game continued....  8.Be3 e5  9.OO .....the last two moves reflects true chess perception in over-the-board-play....whomsoever you may be.... Magnus or his challenger or......perhaps.... even god ! Both the players had overlooked the possibility of..... 9.Ne5! Ne4 10.Qf3!   .....perhaps, they may have seen it.....but perceived it dif

" He would never give up, even if the victory seemed impossible " - James Allen on Michael Schumacher The above quote fits Magnus Carlsen ....every bit. And if Fabio Caruana lives up to that..... we are in for a great match! " The very top, like the summit of Everest is weird territory, impossible to understand unless you have actually been there ..." said John McEnroe on becoming No.1 in World ranking! YES! ......it is a weird territory .......because the one who reaches the top...is alone! There is no place for anybody other than the No.1 person, on top! That requires some getting.....prerequisites certain qualities..... Greg Norman , the great golfer said, " I tend to believe that I'm right until proven wrong....and I had learnt early about DIN and DIP.....'do-it-now' and 'do-it-proper...no matter what the task on hand was !" What does he mean? .....and what it means to us in Chess!? Well, before getting to that..

“That Shadow, my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering, How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits, How often I question and doubt whether that is really me…!” - Walt Whitman “That “I” that floats along the wave of time, from a distance I watch him With the dust and the water, With the fruit and the flower, With the All he is rushing forward. He is always on the surface, tossed by the waves and dancing to the rhythm of joy and suffering. The least loss makes him suffer, the least wound hurts him – Him I see from afar. That “I” is not my real self; I am still within myself, I do not float in the stream of death. I am free, I am desireless, I am peace, I am illumined – Him I see from afar.” - Rabindranath Tagore The above two poems.....have a striking similarity.......written by two great poets at different times and different geographic locations...... Thoughts synchronise! Great sp

" We learn from History that we do not learn from History " - Hegel ........   Gerald Abrahams substituted " history " with " experience " and wrote "good chess players are always struggling to give the lie to Hegel's dictum...." that one only learns from experience the fact that one does not learn from experience "! Pawn grabbing is a Sin .....we know this from history. The emphasis is on the word ' grabbing ' which indicates that the act is done at the cost of something else.... ....neglect of development.... ....neglect of King safety.... ....and a Grandmaster is well aware of this....yet..... Virat Kohli too is well aware of the danger of poking outside the off-stump and in such English conditions. Yet....he flirted with danger in a over by Woakes yesterday.....and was reprieved once....yet he perished to the same shot to the same bowler in his next over! Istratescu, Andrei - Anand Nadar, Abu Dhabi - 2018