My Chess Blog

For men may come and men may go But I go on for ever.... - Tennyson   Could there be a better allusion to Shri.Dakshninamurthy Sir .......and what he meant to us....all the Chennai based Chess players..... with the exception of Vishy, perhaps..... .....than  Lord Tennyson's fond reference to the Brook : the dwelling place for birds, fern....men.... for .......his house in Govindu Street, T.Nagar, Chennai ......was a brook.....which bred many chessplayers.....a few Grand Masters..... and was a place of reverie for many.....who just came to be with him....revel and keep coming..... .....few almost lived there......! A brook.....is a lifeline.....gives it all......always flowing....takes nothing And this brook was flowing in his grand love for the game......generosity.....towards chess lovers..... To this brook.... ......some came for stealing joy of chess.......playing, reading....and learning..... .....and some.... Yet, "The Brook"..., took noth...

Marcel Duchamp the French sculptor and painter.....who incidentally seemed to have played chess and attained Master's title in 1920's.....wrote: " Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another "! How true! The only piece which cannot be 'eaten' is the King.....a symbolic concession given to this majestic game not to let it go barren... .....and Chess, as many in the past have said, is an imitation of life....in all ways! Every game is an incident.....a phase......a chapter.....as in life.... Here is a political parallel....! A study by Janish in 1850.....is depicting the state of Tamilnadu today! In the above position, the Black King depicts the hapless state of the 'common man '......surrounded by...... ......who looted everything and trapped him shutting all the doors.....one by one..... 1. f3 gf3 2. ed3 cd 3.Bf5 ef5 4.Rd4 cd4 5.a8=B Bd5 6. Re6 de...

" Part of normal human development is learning to notice less than we are able to. The world is awash in details of color, form, sound - but to function, we have to ignore some of it.....Yet, the world still holds those details. Children sense the world at a different granularity; attending to parts of the visual world we gloss over,; to sounds we have dismissed as irrelevant. What is indiscernible to us is plain to them.... " - Alexandra Horowitz (On looking) Well, " looking ", " observing ", " perceiving "....are the keyholes of any act of creation. These terms are diverse and deep in what they mean to us....different people.....and at different times and situations! Trying to understand them on face value.....reducing them to merely what they mean as per the definition, in the act of creation, will be a gross injustice that we do to what we try to create....or simply create! In most of the cases, when we create or describe a creati...

While writing on Spassky, Kasparov wrote......: " while working on Spassky's games, I discovered that his play does not lend itself to a distinct division into any clearly expressed components, thus making it unique and unrepeatable ." He further writes, " But at the slightest opportunity Spassky would nevertheless demonstrate his innate ability to find his way in complex positions, abounding in tactics and lacking customary guides. And in this aspect, Spassky is much closer to Chigorin, Alekhine and Tal " When it comes to acclaiming the great players in Chess, we find ourselves in the position of a Buridan's Ass.....named after the philosopher John Buridan, and the tale goes... A donkey finds itself positioned exactly halfway between two equally divided stack of delicious hay and because he lacks reason to decide one over the other, the ass cannot arrive at a decision and will die of hunger ! Yet.....! Well, Boris Vasilievich Spassky - the livin...

"The coordination of the pieces is an essential feature of any Chess formation. But as long as there is on the board a mass of forces of different character, and when their inter-relations are complicated, disputing the files, ranks, diagonals in the zone of important squares and close to the regions of the enemy castled positions, at such times it is difficult to distinguish clearly what is coordination, and what is simply the useful drawing up of reserves from the depths of the rearguard."   - David Bronstein Chess.....unlike free-rock climbing....is not a life threatening sport. In free-rock climbing, the climbers put their lives on line and climb cliffs as high as almost a Kilometre....90 degrees upwards..., without any support....and no option of returning back.... they just have to reach the top, (I am not hinting the other option...." slip....free-fall and death " as they would not have come to this business if that had been in their mind in the fi...

" Chess is boundless only in the overall number of possible combinations of moves by White and Black. In any particular game, the number of real possibilities is much smaller. And the stronger the player, the more restricted his choice at each step, since too many possibilities for him are taboo - the results of their actions can easily be predicted as giving a negative result ." - David Bronstein .... the number of real possibilities ....and ..... the stronger the player, the more restricted his choice .... Let me single out the above two assertions....as the comprehension of this is the real step forward towards great mastery and understanding of the game of chess! What the expression, " lesser the real possibilities and choices " essentially mean is the process of condensation, crystallization..... .....it is like condensation of a huge prose into a beautiful couplet.....poetry, which is impregnated with essence of what is pivotal. One of t...

"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...