My Chess Blog

" Some sort of pressure must exist; the artists exist because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world " - Andrei Tarkovsky   Chess is an art.....and imperfection is its art!  .....and it is the duty of a Chess master to look for harmony amidst the chaos....spontaneously......and not look for certainty through his excessive ...... As Alexandra Horowitz wrote...." One trouble with being human - with the human condition - is that, as with many conditions, you cannot turn it off. Even as we develop from relatively immobile, helpless infants into mobile, autonomous adults, we are more and more constrained by the ways we learn to see the world ." The challenge lies in how we emancipate ourselves from the deluge of 'knowledge' that is staring at us....rendering us dazed....immobile or turn us into morons and...

" The direction of the brushstroke is no longer an aid to the reading of forms. It is without any support from structure that the beholder must mobilize his memory of visible world and project it into the mosaic of strokes and dabs on the canvas before him. The image, it might be said, has no firm anchorage left on the canvas - it is only "conjured up' in our minds ". - Gombrich   .....and so is perception in Chess....whether you are the onlooker or the creator of a game! Generally, I only scan the games in the tournament sites and other Chess portals......to select instructive ones.....but thanks to my friend Sagar , I watched the commentary by Karpov in Biel site on the rapid games for about 30 minutes.....pure gold.....a rare occasion where you get to witness the legend in flow! I shall give you a glimpse of it....before moving into my subject article... This was a position from Pelletier -Harikrishna, Biel Rapid - 2017 . Looking at W...

" Men and women were out in the woods To celebrate spring To celebrate the festival of flowers The moonlight was smiling down on an empty city... A lone traveller Was on the road, ....in the moonlight, With the birds singing overhead, He walked on.... Alone.. .. "                                                               - Tagore " Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! The shot will only go smoothly when it take the archer himself by surprise !" said Eugen Herrigel in his great book..."Zen in the art of archery" Some of the strokes by Roger Federer must have taken him by surprise.....when the master is in such flow state as he is in....now.....and most of his strokes takes us.....the lesser mortals....by great surprise! And so does a move like..... ......Nb8!! in the above...

" I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. " - Dziga Vertov   The revolutionary Soviet film director speaks for.....and on behalf of the 'static camera! Though, the camera...." that mechanical eye " showed the world the way only " it " can see.....it allowed men to see something extra....something beyond....something that " it " did not know when it captured....a particular picture.....a particular period of time.....a particular part of what will become...History! The camera has the capacity to capture only reality.....what is!  And this " what is " encompasses human possibilities as well as human fallibilities......evoke human brilliance.....as well as allow him to be at his banal best! It is not a replacement to " the eye " - the biological camera....but compliments it...

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is the portrait of the artist, not the sitter" - Oscar Wilde In his seminal work; " The act of creation ", Arthur Koestler  writes....quoting Sir Frederick Bartlett - the French psychologist....who said, " Even the most elementary perception have character of inferential constructions " ....that " even the inferential process, which controls perception, again works unconsciously....or below the level of consciousness ... " Well, then, what is self portrait!? What you proffer is not self portrait! It is just pretense. What shows up...inspite of you is self portrait! In chess too, the game should happen " inspite of you "....then it attains the quality of great self portrait! .....everything else.....irrespective of the result....is only a copy....a poor imitation......crap...! There were a few great masters who attained this level.....and the prime amongst them was David Bro...

" Cricket is a simple game. Once you cover the stumps and the ball is outside your body, there is no way it can hit the woodwork. The only way you can be out is by making a mistake ." - Garry Sobers No need to introduce the great man.....and explain what he said.....simply!  Yet..... take my word.....being simple and doing simple things is the most profoundest and difficult thing in life! You can never eliminate mistakes.....but embrace them and by embracing them,, you evolve and understand what IT means.....and thereby get better and better and commit lesser and lesser! Take for eg., if you are afraid of darkness, the only way you can overcome that fear of darkness is by going through dark areas and not circumventing it or avoiding it!  To dispel ignorance you have to experience and go through ignorance.....and this very process lights a flame of awareness and dispels ignorance! So, to overcome or limit the amount of mistakes that one commit, you need to understa...