Monday, August 25, 2008

Thursday, August 21, 2008

That Pile Next To My Bed

Not much posting going on here lately, mostly due to time constraints - you know, stuff like work, relationships, travel, etc. Anyways, over at Likesforest’s blog, he shared his current reading list, and I thought that was cool so I’ll do the same. These are the books that I am currently working trough:




Other bloggers have commented on Heisman’s Tactics book before, and if you haven’t read it, take a look at it. It covers all the tactics you need to know and working through it a couple of times will definitely pay off.

Jepser Hall’s Chess Training for Budding Champions has one of the dorkiest covers in my chess library, but I really like the book. It’s a great comprehensive chess course for the intermediate player that not only addresses the fundamentals (pawn structures, how to develop a plan, etc), but also talks about HOW to study.

Then there is Kasparov’s My Great Predecessors Part II, which one could spend a lifetime studying… it’s got material that is way over my head (and probably many masters’ heads), but I’m mainly using it to study Botvinnik’s games, which I have really come to love (thanks mostly to drunknknite).

Last but not least, I continue to work with Alburt’s Chess Training Pocket Book. I’ve commented on this book before, and I still think it’s one of the best little chess books out there, period. It’s very compact so I take it most everywhere I go, and the 300 positions offer great lessons – not just tactical lessons, but positional, endgames, etc. If I had to make a top 5 list of books in my library, this one would be on it. And I was really excited to see that a sequel is coming out soon!

Well, that’s about it for today. I’m hoping to put up some posts soon taking an in-depth look at Rybka 3, which is on its way into my greedy little hands. Stay tuned.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

In Other News...



Ok so this is not related to chess in any way, but it's seriously cool... The Large Hadron Collider is close to beginning its particle beam tests. Check out the pics at that link, this stuff is just mind-blowing. Amazing to think that human minds can design and build something like that.

I am sure that thing beats Rybka hands down.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Getting My Endgame On

(The post title was inspired by this post).

I love Chessbase's endgame tablebases and use them a lot for analysis, but sometimes (e.g. when traveling and studying a book) I don't have access to them. So I was pleasantly surprised to just stumble upon this website, which makes tablebases for endgames with up to 6 pieces available online. Cool beans.