Metrowest Chess Club regular and fellow chess blogger Blunderprone has recently put together an excellent series of posts detailing how he uses his own games as fuel for his study plans. Parts 1 through 4 are available at blunderprone.blogspot.com. They’re a great read both for technical details for how to accomplish some of these things in Chessbase and for ideas about crafting your own improvement plan. Continue reading Halls of Shame
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Chess study begins with tactics. There are many tactics books, both of the instructional variety (with a fair bit of text introducing tactical concepts like forks, pins, skewers, etc) and the workbook variety (page after page of problems). I have some of these, but more and more I find myself turning to the internet for tactical practice. Chess requires a few different abilities which all fall under the heading of “mental toughness.” Sometimes, the best move in a position undoes one of your prior moves (like moving a piece back to the square it was just on). It’s psychologically tough to do that, but the best move is the best move. Another is the ability to assess your opponents threats with a clear head and stick to your plan when his scary looking move isn’t really so scary. Neither of these came up this week, but another one did: the need to play the position and not force things that aren’t there. I have a bad habit of wanting to just blow things up when the position is boring. Sometimes there’s nothing much to do, you just have to play simple, quiet moves and maybe end up with a draw. I’m bad at this. When I can’t find a plan I tend to want to just fling pieces at the enemy king. My 21st move in this game is an example of a move like that, and it lost me the game (as these sorts of moves tend to). A friend recently asked me for some advice on a DSLR purchase, ideally for under $1000. I put my thoughts together and this (slightly edited) is what I came up with. Since I took the time to write it out, I figured I might as well post it here in case anyone else is interested. There are plenty of other reviews of entry level DSLRs out there, and I recommend you do some more research before you take my word for it. I haven’t actually used any of the cameras that I discuss here (aside from my old D40). Sometimes you lose ugly. I’m still working out some of the typical things that you have to watch out for in the opening I’ve started using as black. Apparently, one of those things is the bishop sacrifice on f7. I ended up on the ropes back in round 4 of the October tournament after such a sacrifice. I was able to draw that game after a long struggle. This time around I was busted on move 11 and resigned on move 15. I’ve been messing with the RSS php code and feed options on the blog for a day or so, so if you see weird things, that’s just me. Wordpress is great, but has some annoying (to me) default settings. If everything looks fine, just ignore this…  Center Plaza in Downtown Boston - Photo by Steve Wollkind Round 2 of the November Swiss tournament at the MCC saw me paired against Walt Champion. Walt is in his 60’s and plays very solid chess. I’ve seen him around the club a fair bit (frequently holding off other good players) but didn’t have a chance to play him until now. I had white in a Closed Sicilian, and managed to get a winning position, but was distracted by paper tigers, couldn’t see a clear path to victory, and took a draw. This is two out of the last 3 games at the MCC now where I’ve taken draws in winning positions against equal or higher rated competition. I must be getting soft in my old age. Saturday I spent the day at Boston University playing in the 15th edition of the BU Open Chess Tournament. It’s always a fun day and brings out a lot of new players, and is (surprisingly) one of the few weekend tournaments that happens right in Boston every year. Maybe even the only one. I had a fun day, but learned a very valuable lesson. The lesson is: if you can at all reasonably avoid it, do not play in the lowest ratings section in a chess tournament. Saturday night I went out to The Magic Room in Brighton, MA to see the premiere of Black Fortress of Opium’s new video and photograph the set that they played. The Magic room turns out to be kind of hard to find. It’s pretty much just a room in a large building full of practice spaces and the like. A nice spot for a show though. The opening band was Jaggery and had a bit of a unique lineup. Fronted by a keyboardist/vocalist and filled out by a drummer, electric viola and electric harp and backing vocals. It also turns out that the keyboard player and lead singer is a friend of a friend from college, though I didn’t know this until after the fact. I feel I got some excellent photos of this show. |
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