ChessFlash Goes Mainstream

Our beloved fellow blogger Glenn Wilson aka Tacticus Maximus has finally reached the exposure he deserves for his outstanding ChessFlash widget: it is now being used at the UK Guardian's chess column (see here, here, or here for example). I've been using ChessFlash since the early days and still think it's the best PGN viewer available. If you haven't tried it yet, please do check it out.

The Guardian? That's pretty friggin impressive Glenn. Congrats!

NBA & Chess

Ok this is seriously cool:

I want this chess table!

From TI's music video, "What you know"

I wish I'd studied chess as a child

Got my butt kicked twice at the club last night, from two brothers - one aged 9, the other 8. Arrgh.

Must... improve.

Chess Stud

I spent some time on the Playchess server last night, and the mysterious player "Raffael" was playing 4+1 blitz against some other GM. Many believe that Raffael is Kasparov. Well, I would not question it after seeing his performance. I saw four games, and he just took the other GM apart. It was awesome to watch. Ahhh must be nice to be that good...

Resolutions for 2009

1. No more than 3 ICC blitz games a day, and at least 4 games per week with time controls of G/30 or longer

2. Renewed focus and discipline in doing tactical drills daily – I’ve been a real slacker on this one. Shame on me, as it was the reason to start this chess blog.

3. Stop jumping from chess book to chess book without really finishing. Focus on one book at a time and get through it, no matter how long it takes. In other words, cure my chess ADHD :)

That’s it for now. It may not sound like much, but I believe it won’t be easy to pull this off - it’s hard to break certain habits :)

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, Quanza, Festivus, or whatever else you may or may not be celebrating. Hope 2009 is full of love and happiness for all of you! And maybe some chess success as well :)

I meant to analyze and post my tournament games, but it's been a very busy month so I haven't found enough time for adequate analysis, and I don't want to post some half-assed attempt. I promise I will get to it once my Christmas vacation is over :)

See you all in 2009!

Thinking Machine

Ok, this is pretty cool. In case you were wondering what it all means:

"When it is your (White's) turn to move, the chess board will gently pulse to show the influence of the various pieces. in the left image below, you can see waves over the squares around the king and (very lightly) over the squares where the pawns might capture. When the machine (Black) is thinking, a network of curves is overlaid on the board; see image at right. The curves show potential moves--often several turns in the future--considered by the computer. Orange curves are moves by black; green curves are ones by white. The brighter curves are thought by the program to be better for white."

More info here.

Dilemma

Chess is too serious for a game, but too much of a game to be taken seriously.

-Moses Mendelssohn

Rybka Wins World Championship

Hardly surprising, Rykba won the 16th World Computer Chess Championship. I watched some of the games live on the Playchess server, and most of them were spectacular. You can download the games in PGN format here. Check out the game against Hiarcs (2nd place winner) - awesome.

Hell Yeah!

USA Basketball Returns to the Top.

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.

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.

Back...

...from a beautiful vacation. No emails, no internet, just lots of sunshine, drinks, and fun. Took an endgame book with me but study was rather limited (mostly due to cocktail-induced laziness).

Mighty Magnus

In honor of Magnus Carlsen's 3100 performance at the Aerosvit 2008, I'm adding his blog to my sidebar. This kid just continues to boggle my mind. How can anyone be this good at 17...

I'm Not Dead

I just got home from some 10 days of travel. I didn't have any time to study or play during my trip, so now I'm really hungry for chess. I wish I could play in the National Open in Vegas this coming weekend, but something more important has come up. I envy drunknknite and whoever else will be at the chess festival... Oh well, maybe next time.

I'm planning a few more substantial posts, stay tuned.

Grandpatzer Blunders

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while even GM’s will make horrendous, patzer-style blunders. Case in point: As Chessbase reports, Etienne Bacrot (rated 2705) had the white pieces against Ernesto Inarkiev in round eleven of the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku and reached the following position.



He picks up his queen and plays 23.Qe7+??. Hmmmmm….. let’s see… how could black possibly defend against this deadly threat?

Maybe Bacrot should re-read those Heisman articles and do a blundercheck before he moves :-D

Beer And Chess...

...are a fun combination but don't expect to increase your rating.

Bobby Fischer's Legacy?

Have you seen this story? Do you think it’s for real? As much as I wish it were true, I have my doubts. It would be really cool to see new Fischer games if he did indeed play online since his “retirement”, especially if he played against some of the current elite GM's. And it would definitely make for some juicy news if all that correspondence was real. I just don’t buy it though.

The last email they show says it was “Sent: Sunday, 09 December 2008 04:08”. Well, obviously this date was doctored as I doubt Bobby traveled to the future to send it. Why shouldn’t everything else be doctored as well? It just seems too good to be true, I have to believe this is highly bogus. But it would make one heck of a story…

***Happy April's Fools day everybody!***

Insanity?

Samurai's post made me reflect on my current habits. It's really a little crazy how much time I spend on chess compared to other stuff. First off, I have so many chess books that I could probably spend every single minute of the next 10 years reading and studying them and still not finish. Whether it's tactics puzzles, game collections, strategy stuff, openings - if I'm going somewhere and I know I'll have a few minutes of spare time, a chess book goes with me. Then there's ICC - blitz, long games, tournaments. Lots of time spent on all that. And let's not forget the time spent on bloggin and reading blogs. Add to that time spent at my local chess club and on study sessions with buddies, plus OTB tournaments. Oh, and lately, I’ve killed way too much time with Chessbase and related software. I could easily sit in front of Chessbase all day long exploring stuff; the amount of information at your fingertips is just mind-boggling. I also just received my first copy of the Chessbase Magazine (which comes on a disc). It has tons of fun stuff in CB format (tactics training, opening analysis, endgame videos by GM Karsten Mueller, a video analysis by Shirov of one of his games, a couple of recent tournaments, and much more). Then I am going through a couple Chessbase Training DVD’s like Daniel King’s PowerPlay series and Andrew Martin on the Benko and the Trompowsky.

Ok, so tell me that doesn’t sound crazy? I mean, if I didn’t have to work for a living, I could literally do nothing but chess all day. I really love spending time like that, and probably will continue to do so. But honestly, if looked at from 30,000 feet, it’s kinda ridiculous. Chess is one heck of a vortex. Chess is crack. [ Thanks BDK. That assessment is a lot more accurate :) ]