Optical Chess Illusions

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Monetizing La Maza

Well not exactly, but this newly launched on-line service gives you the opportunity to pay a lot of money for pre-packaged tactical lessons and its focus on improving "sight of the board" is downright La Mazian. The Knights will surely confirm that effort and commitment are the currency of chess improvement, not dollars or pounds sterling. Of course, calling it a chess gym is just silly.

Read "First Ever Gym for Chess Players: A new international web site guarantees to build your muscles - chess muscles that is."

BCF-Donchenko after move 8

The club played 8.c3 and Oleg responded 8...Be7. It's our move again.

What's your vote for White's next move?

See also "BCF - Donchenko correspondence game".

The Mating Game

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Way to go!

Congratulations to JG who scored 3-1 and tied for third in the 'Age 8 & under and Under 600' section at today's Massachusetts Scholastic State Championship Qualifier No. 4 at Milton Academy.

Photo: JG warms up against some old guy prior to the February 2004 BCC Scholastic. (by Carl Hoffman)

Fractal Chess

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Chess vandalism

[Peter Helzer's] most famous work in this region is perhaps the bronze Chess Player that until recently was seated at a granite table in Vogel Plaza. That work was damaged last fall when two men from Klamath Falls tried to steal it. "The men were arrested and convicted, but the Chess Player sustained about $3,000 worth of damage," said Bev Power, park and recreation department spokesperson. "Peter Helzer is repairing that for us and as soon as he is finished we will put it back in Vogel Plaza."

Read "Bronze Statues Of Girl Musicians Unveiled On Medford Sidewalk" from the Rogue River News.

A different kind of chess puzzle

Read "Alice, Bob and the coins".

Catching Up #2 - Chess Improvement Blogs

So much material, so little time... Here are some scatter shot bullets for now:

• The search for the Orange Knight is over. While Don has included him in a list of abandoned chess improvement efforts, I've simply removed him from the list of Knights Errant. Let's hope he's the only casualty of the group.
  
  
• Speaking of abandoned efforts, Don included Tim Hanke's Becoming A Chess Master site. While Tim currently spends most of his chess-related time on politics, this rating report is evidence that we have seen him across the board at the BCC.
  
  
• I did have a chance to join the Knights for a virtual roundtable at Pogo.com last Sunday. Live blogging the event didn't prove feasible (I don't know how one can simultaneously participate in and document an event in real time). In any case, it was good to have the chance to meet the guys in an interactive setting. Here are brief reports and comments on the meeting from Pawn Sensei and General Kaia.
  
  
• I've included a new section in the sidebar for Non-Knights Errant Chess Improvement blogs. Neither is a La Mazian - in fact Rakshasas doesn't hesitate to express his disagreements with the Knights' icon - but both provide interesting, worthwhile content. Check out this GM/IM game from Wijk aan Zee annotated by Pawn In the Game and Rakshasas' theory of chess improvement.
  
  
• A quick round up of recent Knights' posts: Don modified his program and kicked butt at his club tournament. Sancho just about hit the wall but ultimately decided to continue in modified form. Pale shared his top 5 learnings from reading the Knights' blogs (#4 is my favorite). Pawn took a few days off from chess and shared some reflections. The General seems to be taking a fairly academic approach to his training: evaluating his strengths and weaknesses and describing his desired thought process. Finally, J'adoube got so fed up with CT-Art that he wrote a string of posts documenting his concerns (here and here, too).
  

See also "Knights to some, de la Mazans to others".

Chocolate Chess Pie

From Family Recipes:

9 inch unbaked pie crust
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 Tbsp cocoa
1 stick butter, melted
2 eggs
1 small can pet milk
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt
1 c. broken pecans

Pour melted butter into blender. Add all ingredients, except pecans, and blend well. Stir in pecans, or add just to top. Pour into pie crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

What in the world is pet milk? I sure hope it doesn't come from cats or dogs!?

See also "Chess Pie".

Chess in Cuba

From Cuba XP:

2005 will be an intense year for Cuban chess players, whose first competition will be the National Women's Chess Championship.

According to experts, the tournament will be held this month in western Matanzas province, and will be attended by 12 female players.

One of the favorites to win the tournament is Grand Master (GM) Sulennis Piña, who is considered Cuba's best female chess player.

Read more...

More Chess and Football

At Mr. Blonde's Garage, Jay gives his analysis of why the Patriots will win the Superbowl (a very astute guy, that Jay). However, in making a chess analogy I think he chooses the wrong world champion:

Football can indeed often be like a chess match, and Belichick is the Bobby Fischer of football coaches.

To my mind, Bill Belichick doesn't remind me of a raving anti-semitic lunatic who refused to defend his championship unless he was provided special rules and considerations. I think a better choice might be Botvinik with his scientific approach to the game (assuming you can overlook his participation in Soviet political machinations) or Steinitz who just understood more about the game than any of his contemporaries.

John Watson is a blogger!

No, not our John Watson.

I'm the sixth result at Google when you search for John Watson and the fourth when you search for "John Watson" (with quotes). The guys ahead of me are: the John Watson who invented the behaviorism branch of psychology and the John Watson who writes and reviews chess books.

Read more...

I thought I might Google myself to see where DG the chessplayer ranks:

• I'm not the Rabbi from Michigan or the comedian from Florida.
  
  
• I'm not the Chairman of the Board of TelePacific (that would have been good!).
  
  
• I'm not the real estate advisor from New York or the President of Amer Kefir Co., makers of a low-calorie product originally fermented from mare’s milk.
  
  
• Ah, there I am on page 3 - DG the blogger.
  

• I found my first chess reference on page 6 of the search results.

Why not Google yourself? Who aren't you?

A Grandmaster in your hand

I haven't seen this one reported on the major chess news sites: A chess program for the Palm handheld platform defeated GM Jan Gustafsson 3-1 in an online match held January 22-24. Click here for the details and to replay the games. (Hat Tip: mypalmlife)

Mating with Knight and Bishop

The one we all dread, especially if time is an issue. For some reason I have found it difficult to internalize most explanations of the correct technique that I have read over the years. However, this article on "building a cage" seems pretty clear.

Winning on time

SIMONE AVRATINER is not a morning person.

It had been years - truly - since the fourth-grader had regularly made it to Louis H. Farrell Elementary School before the bell, so fiercely did she resist getting up and out the door.

Her mom, Faina, and her teachers tried everything... But their discussions, bribes, threats and pleas did nothing to reform the child's chronic school tardiness.

Finally, her mom and Farrell principal Marie McCarthy pulled a smart move: If Simone didn't get to school on time, no more chess club for her.

Check!

"I didn't think it would work," says Faina Avratiner, "because nothing else had."

But the next day, Simone was at her desk when the bell rang. And for the next 25 days, she wasn't late once - the longest on-time streak she'd ever had.

Read "Chess has unexpected benefits" from the Philadelphia Daily News.

Chess word play

At A Patzer's Tale, Daniel discusses how nomenclature affects chess thinking:

In chess we name all of the major tactics and even the not-so-major tactics because it helps us think about ideas more clearly.... When I learned about 'double-check' I had already conceptualized the idea but had not used [it] with regularity until then..... On the flip side, semantics can hinder development too. I dreaded the bad bishop for a while, until I read ... a quote from Suba, "Bad Bishops protect good pawns." Then I became enthralled with the bad bishop to [the] point a human can be enthralled with bad bishops.

Here are a few additional alternatives to common chess concepts which might expand our thinking:

• Doubled pawns = Dual outposts
• Isolated Queen Pawn (IQP) = IQP kingside mating attack formation
• g4 vs. the Semi-Slav = Kasparov's Junior killer
• King stuck in the center = King poised for the endgame

Can you add any of your own?

Chess and Intelligence

From Psychology Today, a piece entitled "Chess: Not All About Logic?":

Chess is not necessarily a game reserved for people with IQ scores on par with Einstein. In fact, chess strategy may rely more heavily on spatial processing than on logic and computational skills. Researchers at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of novice players during a match and found a flurry of activity in the parietal and occipital lobes, areas not associated with general intelligence.

"It's not what we were expecting," says Sheng He, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology.

Ugly Chart sums up the study nicely:

Researchers have discovered that bad chess players are not necessarily intelligent...

It's National Chess Week in the UK

From the Community Newswire:

A national children's charity is today celebrating after popular comedian and panto star Joe Pasquale took time out from his busy schedule to help launch the second National Chess Week.

National Chess Week, hosted by leading children's charity Barnardo's, encourages youngsters to put down the game controller, switch off the TV and engage their brains.

Throughout the week, which runs until January 30, events will take place nationwide including a 24-hour chess marathon, speed chess and an exhibition by a chess grand master.

Read more...

Chess and Football

At Stew's Bad Football Analysis, Stew is looking for feedback on the following supposition:

Football is what Chess would be like if the pieces were alive.

What do you think?