Chess is a Great Equalizer

Chess is a rare game where persons can compete with little regard for age or gender. Statistics show that given the smaller number of women who chose to play chess, statistically they are just as strong as the men. Likewise a child can learn chess and with a little help and some natural ability can quickly compete with adults.

Is there any other game like chess that is known around the world that can be played with such fairness?

The Joys of the French

I am playing the French instead of my prior CaroKann and Accelerated Dragon because of repertoire flexibility. For example in the advance Caro-Kann White can fairly force black to play his game. According to Peter Wells for example 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be2 Bf5 6.Nf3 e6 and we have move ordered into the Short System. Likewise in the Accelerated Dragon there are sometimes scant pathways available to equality.

But the French is wanton. There are many repetoire choices that push things from the Black side. For example after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 There is the Rubinstein including the Fort Knox, there is the Winower family, the obscure Romanishin line and the classical Nf6. Then if white does not play e5 but Bg5 then there is the Burn, the MacCutcheon, as well as the classical Be7.

In playing the French I have been truly crushed. But sometimes I got crushed in the Caro-Kann too. However by playing it over and over, I am growing into it. I understand what I am doing more and more. When I am losing, it is deeper into the game. And sometimes things really go my way and I get the benefit of a crush.

I am around game 45 of my 1001 Arabian Knightmares.

GM Kevin Spragett

GM Kevin Spragett

I am a man in my fifties. I have a job and family and play chess for a hobby. I work weekends so I am limited in when it comes to real tournaments. So I enjoy reading about and studying chess I play on FICS (as PrudentStudent) and am currently trying to learn Nigel Davies repertoire for old men (English, French, Franko-Indian). And I troll around the web looking for interesting chess stuff.

When I came across Kevin Spragget's blog http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com/ It quickly became one of my favorite stops.

So yesterday I e-mailed him a photo I thought he might enjoy, and he responded with a nice note of thanks. Getting this note from GM Spragett for a chess fan like me is like some old Philadelphia native ice hockey fan getting a note from Bobby Clark.

Kevin Spragett, You are a GM and a gentleman. Come through Toledo and I'll buy you dinner.

My Chess Dream

It is my thinking that Dr. King was a great man who did not close his understanding or his action after his famous "I have a dream speech." He went on to work against systematic economic exploitation and militarism. One year after his "Breaking Silence" where he came out against the Viet-Nam war, he was shot dead.

On to Chess:

I am around game 38 in my 1001 Arabian Knightmares project. I can feel myself getting a feel for some of the openings. But I lost another French today. She is a tough mistress, and I intend to make her come around.

As White I am playing the English, (Kosten-Marin lines) As Black I am using Nigel Davies e6 repertoire with the Lasker QGD against the specific, 1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5.

With chess, sometimes I am in heaven and sometimes in hell. But mostly I am in purgatory.

Caissa have mercy on me.

1001 Arabian Knightmares

1001 Arabian Knightmares is my project. The idea is to force myself to play 1001 games with a single opening system. This way I will learn it well and not be overly surprised by variations.

I play my games primarily on FICS. I play the slowest game at the highest rating I can find. After the game I write it into my 1001 Arabian Knightmares book, and look where the mistakes are. I look where we departed from book. I look for the shots and missed shots. I look for strategic errors. And I try to see how the endgame was played. I use my own head, then Chessbase, Fritz, as well as opening books and openind Dvds to do my analysis.

I am also slowly working through Jesus de la Villa's 100 Endgames you Must Know, Grooten's Strategy for Club Players, and Palliser's 1200 tactical exercises book.

I think I am at around game 24. So I have a long way to go. It is about learning, not about ratings. Still the ratings are a measuring instrument that offers some degree of assesment.

I like that I am forcing myself to play. I read that one of the reasons kids learn so fast is that they play more.

And it is fun. Winning is fun. Losing is even fun, if I can admire the skill of the other player, and they are nice.

I try not to let the malcontented one's effect me too much. Usually this is when I am winning, but not fast enough for my oponent's liking. Usually it is an endgame where I have a clear advantage and no need to rush. I play simple practical safe moves and secure the point. It seems to drive some people nuts.

I'll keep you informed. (Imaginary readers of this unknown blog)

Dreaming and Doing

I have been inactive because I forgot my password. And I didn't think I had much to say. And I don't think anyone is really interested anyway.

Every day I sign on and check out Elizabeth Vicary's Chess blog. I check out the Chess Vibes site. And I am delighted that Chessloser is writing again.

Chessloser brings a raw honesty to his chess. He writes things that many of us have thought but would not say. His wonderful love affair and occasional hate affair mirrors the experience of many with the mistress Caissa. Even Ivanchuk after a bad tournament was ready to walk away.
We all have felt like that and even done that. Tell it like it is Chessloser!

I have been tooling around with openings instead of playing. It is like a story from Mullah Nasrudin.

Nasrudin is on a train. The conductor walks up and asks for his ticket. He looks in his bag. He looks under the seat. He even looks in the trash.

The conductor asks, "Why don't you check your coat pocket?"
"Oh, I couldn't do that!" says Nasrudin, "Because if it is not in there I would have no hope."

It is like, as long as I don't play, I can imagine I'll do well. But once I play and screw up, I will have no hope.

I tell this story because I am like Nasrudin. I diddle around with my opening studies. I have a combination book in the Bathroom. I have chessbase, bookup, and a library of books, but I don't seem to get around to actually playing.

Chess opening study is to chess playing as pornography is to actual sex.

Chess opening study is to chess playing as anorexia is to eating.

So I have been making myself hang out on FICS. I look to play a fairly slow game G-30 or like last night G15:15. I do my best, then write it all down, and see where the mistakes were so I can do better next time.

My opening history does pay off from time to time. As White I have played 1.e4 c5 2.c3, 1.e4 e5 Scotch four knights (no Petroff), 1.d4 Colle-Barry-150 from Summerscale, as well as Trompowsky, I dabbled with 1d4 2c4 and now am playing 1.c4.

So on FICS as black when I faced 1.e3 e5 2.e4 (he or she likes to defend the open game) My scotch four knights worked out just fine. Of course it was not the opening but the tactics that made a difference. But familiarity with the opening brings a kind of internal equilibrium that makes chess sight stronger.

Peace

Giving Them Their Due

Okay this is the wonderful Dr. Savielly Tartakower, and Sultan Khan, Semmering 1931.

Mr. Khan won this the final game and defeated one of the great wits of chess, the good Doctor Tartakower.

Sultan Khan was neither a sultan or a khan, which means king. It was simply his name. In life he worked as manservant for a well to do gentleman from India/Pakistan. Although his results put him in the top ten chess players of his time, and despite winning the British championship three out of the four times he entered, and despite playing first board for England three times, the World Chess Federation never granted him a title. He was neither a Grandmaster or International master. It sucks to be a dark skinned man in a white racist world.

Dr. Savielly Tartakower on the other hand has a variation of the Queen's Gambit declined, and a variation of the Caro-Kann named after him. But I rather remember him for his sweet quotes like, "The mistakes are all there, waiting to be made." "It is important that all chess players have a hobby." "I had a toothache during the first game. In the second game, I had a headache. In the third game, it was an attack of rheumatism. In the forth game, I wasn't feeling well. And in the fifth game? Well, must one have to win every game?" "A chess game is divided into three stages: The first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second, when you believe you have an advantage, and the third... when you know you are going to lose."

Therefore, by the authority vested in me as a blogger of the Internet, I hearby confer the title of Grandmaster to Mr. Sultan Khan. I confer the title Grandmaster of Chess Aphorisms to the good Doctor Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower. And I confer first place to Grandmaster Sultan Khan for best hat.