This time it's David Bronstein

Yasser Seirawan tells a wonderful story on this video of how David Bronstein sixty and so year old player reached a position where everything was in its right place.

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?

Alternate ways of approaching the same thing

I've been working on Chessmaster drills the last days. One interesting change that I noticed after working this time on memorizing 4-6 piece positions. It was really difficult first. But today I begun to make stories in my mind to memorize them.

For example:



"It's black's turn and he or she promotes to queen. All of three pieces are in the same diagonal with one square in between. King is on c8."

Funniest stories are with all pieces. I've had shotguns and what else on the positions.

I'm still to find out how these drill exercises are viewed in chess training usually and how are they used and is there other posibilities to get on with them than chess software as Chessmaster.

Watching Josh Waitzkins interview on YouTube confirmed me on some of my ideas I've been forming on my mind about chess and gave more food for my thoughts.

Damppu demonstrates

My friend Daniel has had me in tough places in our encounter but has had some troubles finding comfortable positions against his opponents in FICS. He had a short break but now he is back and he is enforcing!

Here's a fine demonstration.

Kings Indian Attack

I had fortunate situation to try my Kings Indian Attack ideas against French defense but I was clearly outplayed by better opponent.

My thoughts and analysis.

Sailing in unfamiliar waters

Here's another really fascinating position that arose because two players had reached unfamiliar waters.

Success in preparation!

Really interesting positions arose this morning against my fellow FICS membe in Caro-Kann Panov-Botvinnik. It is setup I have prepared for reasonably. Preparation is difficult as you don't want to go too deep in your own thought processess as it is impractical as there are so many other ways game could go. So my preparation is pretty limited but still I knew couple of concepts out of which I could find ideas to work with in playground.

Here it is.