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| Feb-06-05 | | Granite: Black playing with the isolated pawn and he exchanges queens so early? It's harder to use your extra space and lines for attack without the queen and it relieves some of blacks cramp as well, I didn't understand his plan. |
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| Feb-06-05 | | iron maiden: Having lost the previous game after three consecutive draws, Petrosian was probably already in a defensive frame of mind. |
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| Feb-17-05 | | Ruylopez: Hey folks, can you guys suggest a site where an unskilled player is likely to get his (or her) questions answered? This site has a lot of very strong players and maybe I should try my luck elsewhere. Any suggestions? Thanks. |
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Feb-17-05
 | | beatgiant: <Ruylopez>
<maybe I should try my luck elsewhere>
This forum welcomes players of all levels. But if you want to discuss a famous game like this one, you have to be patient because there are a lot of discussions going on.<Can someone show me how Fischer wins after 34. Bc4?>
The immediate threat is 34. Rh7 Rf6 35. Rh8+ Rf8 36. Bf7+ Kd8 37. Rxf8#. As <Gypsy> pointed out above, 34...Ne6 drops a knight to 35. Rfe7+ and 36. Bxe6. And little counterattacks like 34...Rc8 35. Bb3 h3 36. g3 merely delay the inevitable. After that, I see nothing better than 36...Ne6 37. Rbe7+ followed by 38. Bxe6. White wins a knight and still has the powerful rooks on the 7th row which will probably win even more material in the near future. |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Ruylopez: Thanks, Gypsy and beatgiant. I play on Chessmaster 9000 against "players" with ratings around 1400 and win often unless a) I fall into what is clearly an old trap or b) get distracted. Alhough my time is limited, I'd like to hone my skills. I'd appreciate any suggestions you may have. |
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Feb-18-05
 | | Gypsy: <Ruylopez> Where, in your opinion, lies your biggest weakness? |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Ruylopez: Gypsy: Endings. And I know only the basic openings. |
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| Feb-18-05 | | OJC: < Ruylopez > Euwe and Hooper's "A guide to chess endings" is a nice inexpensive book on endings; I hear Fine's book "Basic Chess Endings" is a great classic but have no experience with it. For openings, I found taking Fischer's advice and playing through the variations of "Modern Chess Openings" more than enough study. |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Ruylopez: OJC: I really appreciate your feedback! |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Albertan: Ruylopez and OJC, a new edition of Fine's "Basic Chess Endings" (revised by GM Pal Benko) has been published. You can read about the new edition here:
http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_re... |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Jamespawn: OJC: I heard Fischer suggest that too. Did you play through the openings? Including the footnotes? How long did that take you? |
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| Feb-18-05 | | OJC: < Jamespawn > I played through most of the main lines of all the openings in MCO this past summer. I've probably gone over 1/3 of the footnotes but I think this is not too important the first time through the book. Going through the main lines and reading the chapter introductions should be all a club player needs. Thanks for the info < Albertan >. |
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Feb-18-05
| | Gypsy: < Ruylopez > For basic endings, I'd suggest a three stage approach: (1) a fairly thorough study of pawn endgames first; (2) rook endgames second; (3) the rest of them, especially B vs N, as they come. Two recent books I can recommend are <Muller & Lamprecht, "Secrets of Pawn Endings"> for the pawn stuff and <Ian Snape, "Chess Endgamess Made Simple"> as a general practical reference. These will give you the general skill set in simple endgames solid enough. The true crux and the biggest payoff avaits afterwards, in the phase of transitions into endgames. This is probably a full plate. I would not work on openings at the same time, just play those by the seat of pants for now. How are your tactics? |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Ruylopez: Gypsy and OJC: Thanks for the book suggestions. Gypsy, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "tactics." Probably not that great.
I'll pick up a couple of books and maybe start playing by correspondence (or its online equivalent). |
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| Feb-18-05 | | Hesam7: Is Ian Snape the brother of Severus? |
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Feb-18-05
| | Gypsy: < Ruylopez: ... I'm not quite sure what you mean by "tactics."> I should have said <calculating abilities> instead of tactics. Sorry about that. Here is the point: Calculating ability of a player can be usefully decomposed into two aspects: (i) the ability to find moves, and (ii) the ability to see results of sequences of moves. The former requires alertness, the latter concentration and it is kind of hard to keep those in ballance. Do you feel you are more likely to simply miss moves or do you feel you are more likely to see results of say 4-move variations incorectly? |
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| Feb-19-05 | | Ruylopez: Gypsy: Now that you define "tactics," I'm not too bad at that. I'm better at finding moves than at seeing a 4-move variation correctly. |
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| Feb-19-05 | | Rama: RuyLopez, for me it was most practical to study just a few openings. For instance if you play e4 then you can avoid spending time in study of the d-pawn games. As black, pick a system for each and study only those. Learn how to transpose into what you know! My method of study was to play in a postal tournament. This gave me time to explore in depth my chosen openings. For many years my participation in the 1975 Golden Knights postal tournament was sufficient preparation. (It went on for years; I got into the 3rd round.) |
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Feb-19-05
| | Gypsy: <Ruylopez: ... I'm better at finding moves than at seeing a 4-move variation correctly.> Here is an rexcercise for this; it's designed to work well with chessgames.com environment. One needs an extra board, or two windows with the Sjkbase game-viewer opened (simply one needs an ability to move piecess around by hand -- on some board). Choose a game to play through and we are ready to begin. (1) Look at the position after L moves and play the next K moves in your head. (Do not go into side variations, just play in your head the moves of the game.) (2) Go to a fresh board and put up the position as it should be after the L+K moves. It is preferable to put the position up at once, not one move at a time (ie, go Rg5 right away instead of, say, Rf3-f5-g5). (3) Replay the last K moves of the game using chessgames and compare the two positions. Count the number of inacurate placements you made. (4) Repeat from the L+K to L+2K and so on. Best to just go through whole games in K-move blocks when practicing this way. There is nothing wrong with starting with modest K (say, K=2). Once you are making virtually no placements errors, increase K. Let me know if my description makes sense. Good luck. |
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| Feb-19-05 | | Ruylopez: Gypsy and Rama: Thanks for the tips. Gypsy: That's an interesting exercise you suggested. I'll definitely try it. By the way, today I ordered A Guide to Chess Endings and Capablanca's Best Chess Endings. You guys have been very helpful and I'll keep you posted. |
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| Feb-20-05 | | Rama: Gypsy, you are very analytical.
I really don't know what did it for me. I was a C-player for many many years, then all of a sudden I was playing at Expert strenth. I had a chance to play a lot of games against people who were good but didn't know the "book." So I began to rely on tactics. Maybe that was it. Averbach's "Chess Tactics" helped me there. A lot. |
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| Feb-21-05 | | DutchDunce: This is one of two games featured in the "The Basics of Winning Chess" by Jacob Cantrell. It's a quick read - 1/8 of an inch thick. Not a bad beginner's book, and at an attractive price. |
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Feb-23-05
| | Gypsy: <Rama> Yours is an inspiring post: a jump of some +400 rating points after letting your tactical talent and common sense play superseed scholarly opening learning? What a great tale! I strongly suspect that, for a chess player, opening study is in fact a dangerous, mixed blessing activity -- a great boost if done right; but just a debilitating cane to lean on if done wrong. |
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| Feb-25-05 | | Rama: Yes, my whole attitude changed concerning chess. I no longer tried to play "correctly" just better than my opponent. And once I started winning, I gained confidence. Within a short time I had a reputation! It really was fun to defeat someone 4-500 points higher than me. My high point was the 1986 open section of the Minneapolis Open where I went in rated 1650 and scored 3-2 vs opponents whose average rating was 2100+. My final game was on Board One against the Minnesota State Champion Mike Zelkind. (I lost.) |
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| Feb-26-05 | | DutchDunce: Here's some advice for sub-expert players from a regular writer for Chessbase:
http://www.chessbase.com/support/su...
I haven't tried out the advice yet but it sure sounds good. However, it takes Gypsy's comment about openings even further, essentially discouraging the study thereof. Bad news for me, because I love openings. Maybe that's why I don't play so well. |
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