Sunday 15 February 2009

Holes in Chessmaster Academy

The snake has sneaked into my happy Chessmaster Academy universe. I had studied Josh Waitzkins chessmaster course earlier and thought I'd jump this time straight into mastery quiz for beginners and see where I'm standing.

Here's the first position I've strong reservations against:



Josh Waitzkin says with his well articulated clear manner: "Here white has mate in four. What's the first move?"

The snake is whispering from my shoulder: "Here white has mate in two. What the hell is Josh talking about?"

Do you see it?

Ok. I should be understanding towards teaching a point. Climbing a ladder is a good endgame technique. But what happened to being flexible in every moment to see how things actually where instead of applying some laws of nature that do not necessary apply? And how many seconds did Josh actually stare at the position?

And another position that has a problem:



"Here white has mate in five, but this one is a little tricky. Take your time. Recreate the pattern we found before."

Ok, I am willing to take the pattern but I want to apply to this position. Josh has mate in 5 in mind. But I've got something better. Mate in 4!

It's not THAT hard. I'm not sure what to make of it. This mastery quiz. Did I pass it or not?

3 comments:

Drew said...

Something tells me either Josh really didn't write some of these comments, or he didn't really look at the position.

Lauri said...

Yeah. The third point of view to consider is: if somebody else was writing this, what happened to his or her evaluation of position?

I guess who ever made up this position was blinded by idea! "Let's have couple of positions when white wins by climbing ladders against black king." These kind of strong ideas can proove troublesome in life, in chess, in chess problem making if you just follow through the idea and don't pay close attetion to what the situation, the position actually is.

ecs said...

uh, 1.Rg1 forces ...Kh6 then 2.Rh4#