My Chess Blog

" Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom " - Viktor Frankl  The most intriguing aspect of this universe is the Space . And it is also the most misunderstood ........ Thatyouareabletoreadthissentenceclearlyisbecauseoftheinterludesthespacebetweenthewordsandthesentenceandthepara.... Human mind is trained to think materially: In language it looks for words In music it looks for the notes  In everything it looks for something tangible.... Mind fails to comprehend the phenomenon.... the hidden force behind everything, which makes everything move or allow to remain. Mind does not recognise that which is intangible. In Chess.....the mind, more often than not, gets fixated with material: either it fails to perceive the loss of it or fail to let-go-off when it is necessary.  Holding on to unnecessary material leaves one with less space for mani...

"Strictly speaking, the life of Chess armies consists in the art of switching from one position to another" - David Bronstein Mulla Nasrudin went to see a psychiatrist. He said: " My trouble is that I can't remember anything, Doctor " " When did this start ?" asked the Doctor " When did what start ?" said Nasrudin When did what start!  Though this is part of the joke.....it hides great depths.....! Learning is such!   The truth is we don't learn anything.....anything new at all!! We learn to unlearn......forget......relearn.....forget..... ......do we learn anything at all....!? ....'knowledge' is a form of delusion..... When The Buddha attained enlightenment, people came to him and asked, " What did you attain ?" The Buddha said, " The question is meaningless, I attained nothing ." " Does that mean your labour, all these years, was in vain? Your years of penance, years of seeking, ...

"Never think you understood a work in physics if all you had done was to read someone else's derivation. The only way to really understand a theory, is, to derive it yourself..."   - Richard Feynman " Ramanujan's " (the great mathematician from Kumbakonam, India), E.H.Neville an English mathematician, said, " mind is free, or, shall we say, was the slave of his genius ?" .....and his genius was such that, he transcended the existing level in mathematics that his teachers and contemporaries in Kumbakonam knew, and there were no material available for him to do advanced mathematics. How was this possible!? Ramanujan had to reinvent most of the existing mathematics, that wasn't known in his hometown, in his formative years - and many later thought this as a constraint and perhaps, he wasted time in doing so. But, this for me is the key factor! Perhaps, this process of reinvention is what dug deep within him to reach and attain an und...

" In Chess, human intelligence achieves a creativity which cannot be explained away in terms of conditioned reflexes or the formation of habits. Mental habits and memory are elements in the Chess mind as a knowledge of his language is part of the equipment of an orator, or as a technique is essential to the musician. Beyond that equipment training ends, and the mind creates from its own resources and material. What a good chess player does is comparable, as a mental act, to what the inventor does, be he a scientist or a poet; an act of free imagination, which changes its own surroundings by the revelation of latent possibilities ." - Gerald Abrahams The language used for the title in itself is quite controversial.....the usage of "leveraging"....using the term Lever as a verb! Yet.....everything else in this world, the language should also be 'malleable' .....accommodative.....after all a language is a mere tool to communicate .....and it i...

"The night advances toward dawn, Dew drips from the bamboo onto my brushwood gate. My neighbour to the west has stopped pounding his mortar; My little hermit's garden grows moist. Frogs croak near and far, Fireflies flit high and low. Wide awake, it's not possible to sleep tonight. I smooth my pillow and let my thoughts drift." - Ryokan (18th Century Zen poet and recluse) .....and so did I.....! after having witnessed that great game...... .....and not without reasons, Tarrasch said...." Chess like music and love has the power to make men happy " Some of the many positions.....will stay ever on top of our minds........and keep constantly inspiring and giving us......great hope....!                            Bernstein - Capablanca, 1914           Capablanca - Janowsky, 1918                       ...