It’s tough to find a chunk of time

The reason that I’ve been on a book reviewing craze here on the blog lately is that I’m finding it hard to set aside a block of time to play a game that’s not blitz. Since I’ve gotten my journal all ready to go, I’ve been eager to break it in, but alas, I’ve not yet had the time. So instead of writing about my experiences over the board (virtual or otherwise), I’m writing about my chess library.

Not very exciting I’ll grant you, but I did want to get the book information into the blog at some point, and now’s as good a time as any.

The only chess that I’ve been playing for the last week or so has been on RedHotPawn. I’ve just drawn a game with my opponent from the Netherlands, which was a victory of sorts, since I salvaged a game in which I was down a fair amount of material halfway through. Perhaps I will use that as my first analysis game. The game that I am playing against my buddy at work has stalled – he hasn’t moved in two or three days now. I’ll have to bug him about it tomorrow.

I enjoy playing on RHP, but I’d like to be able to sit down and play an entire game with decent time controls – at least 30 0. It’s tough to do that though. Once the kids are in bed, I’ll jump on the computer and try to get a game going, but on WorldChessLive it seems like everyone wants to play blitz. While I wait for a game, I’ll usually end up getting distracted by blogs or email or something, and then the wife will want me to come hang out with her.

Now I love my wife, but we definitely do not share the same interests or hobbies. She doesn’t believe that playing chess with someone I don’t know over the internet is at all interesting. Actually, she just doesn’t believe that chess is at all interesting. She gets her fix from knitting. Holy crap, does she love knitting. You would not believe how much friggin yarn is in my house. Maybe if I got her to knit me a chess set or something she would start to like chess.

I think I need to be disciplined enough to take advantage of the small opportunities I’m granted. If I have an idle hour, I need to turn off the email, ignore the call of the blogosphere, and get into a game. And I need to join a community where getting a game with standard time controls is easy. I need to join ICC. I’m gonna do that this weekend, I think.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War

I picked up this book by David Edmonds and John Eidinow at the same time that I got the Pandolfini book, at the Crown Books liquidation center. It cost me $5.

This book chronicles the famous world championship chess match that took place in Iceland in 1972. The players were Boris Spassky, from the USSR, and Bobby Fischer, from the US. Fischer ended up winning, becoming the first ever (and still the only) world chess champion from the US. Not only does the book chronicle the event itself, it also describes Bobby Fischer’s rise to the top.

It also details the state of Soviet chess at that time, and Soviet life in general. Spassky was world champion, and his title afforded him perhaps too much leeway within the Soviet government. They allowed him to pick his team, and let him practice without much oversight. There are many that say that Spassky did not prepare properly for the competition, and there were several games in which he makes horrible blunders.

The games played over the board were but a small part of the competition. Fischer nearly didn’t show up at all, and only did so after much persuasion. Spassky had to wait to see if he would play at all. This extra stress may have caused him to perform poorly, and midway through the competition he was suffering greatly from stress. Bobby’s continued demands and commands caused a lot of stress for everyone involved.

Bobby Fischer is an amazing chess player. But he is also an amazing ass. His behavior leading up to and during the competition was deplorable. His behavior continues to be deplorable. He is an anti-semite, despite the fact that he himself is Jewish by birth. He’s made several horrible comments about the September 11th attacks in the US. It is a shame that the only thing that he seems capable of doing well is playing chess.

I really enjoyed this book, not only for the chess history, but for the glimpses it gives into life in the Soviet Union. I recommend this book, whether you enjoy playing chess or not.

Pandolfini’s Ultimate Guide to Chess

Continuing my quest to get a good grounding in chess fundamentals, I read Pandolfini’s Ultimate Guide to Chess by Bruce Pandolfini. Pandolfini is a well-known chess instructor, most notable for being Josh Waitzkin’s mentor (as seen in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer – he actually had a cameo). I found the book at a local bargain bookstore for $5. Score!

The information in the book is presented as a conversation between a chess student and his teacher. It starts off by explaining the rules, and then jumps into the good stuff: fundamentals, tactics, analysis, strategy. The teacher and student play a game, which they discuss fully. The student asks intelligent questions, and the teacher answers. Gradually, the student becomes more knowledgable about the game, and starts to answer his own questions. As the student progresses, so does the reader. I enjoyed this format – it seemed to read faster.

The information in the book was good. It reinforced a lot of the stuff that I learned from the Seirawan book, and added some new thoughts. It stressed the importance of developing your pieces, and maintaining an advantage in tempo. The information was presented clearly, and there were plenty of diagrams.

The endgame was covered very briefly. This book tried to tell you how to get to a favorable endgame, but didn’t really explain how to close the deal once you got there. I didn’t really mind this however – I’ve got another book for that.

I enjoyed this book, and I feel like I have a solid grounding in the fundamentals. Now I need to play play play, to ingrain those fundamentals in my gameplay.

I recommend this book to novice players that are looking to get a solid introduction to chess fundamentals.

Play Winning Chess

I have a bunch of chess books that I have read, so I thought I would start reviewing them. I will eventually have reviews up for all the books in my chess library that I’ve read. There are still quite a few that are unread, so hopefully this will spur me on to read them.

Anyways, I’ve added a special page to hold my chess library, so check it out (no pun intended).

The first book I’m going to review is Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan. This is the first book in the Winning Chess series, which is now published by Everyman Press, but I actually have two volumes from the early 90s, when the series was published by Microsoft Press of all things. For the beginning to intermediate player, this series is excellent. By the time you get through the entire series, you’ll be well grounded in the fundamentals and well on your way to becoming a class B player (or higher).

Play Winning Chess is a good book. I was looking for something that would start me gently on the path to mastery, and I think that I chose well. The first part introduces beginners to the game, but the sections of the book that discuss the four elements of chess and their principles are very good. I felt that they gave me a good grounding in the fundamentals.

The four elements of chess are force, time, space, and pawn structure. Seirawan explains each of these elements, and then outlines several basic principles that are related to the element being discussed.

The text is very accessible, and enjoyable. Seirawan got me excited to start playing seriously. His enthusiasm is contagious.

I would recommend this book as a good introduction to chess fundamentals.

ICC, here I come?

I am getting fed up with the severe lack of players on World Chess Live. I just logged in, and there were three non-computer players seeking games. Three. That’s just sad. For giggles, I logged in as a guest to ICC to see how many people were seeking games. Holy crap! The seek graph was lit up like friggin Vegas. And that was after I hid all the computer players.

So yeah, I’m thinking that I might switch to ICC. Everyone and their grandpa seems to be on there. And they do have a Mac client of sorts, which would mean that I won’t have to use my wife’s Windoze machine to play.

I’ve put a one year membership to ICC down on my holiday wishlist. Seeing as there isn’t much else on there (except for a new chess clock, since I still have one of those old cheapo wind-up ones), I’m hoping that I get it.

Sorry WCL. I’ll still drop in from time to time, but I’m running with the popular crowd now.

Journal Fetishes and Other Stuff

I took the advice of one of you commenters out there, and decided to start a journal for my chess games. The idea is that after each game, I will write down all the moves, along with a brief summary of what I was feeling during the game, or what I was trying to accomplish. Then, at some later point, I will come back and analyze the game, sans computer – just my meager wits. I’ll write down my thoughts – what I think I did right, what I could have done better, etc. After this is done, I’ll run the game through a computer for analysis. I’ll look at what the computer came up with, and look at how that was similar or different to my own analysis. I’ll capture all this information in the journal.

There are two goals here: to learn how to analyze a chess game, and to become a better chess player through analyzing my past games, and my lines of thought during those games.

Sounds reasonable, yes? So what’s with the title, you ask?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled with journals and journaling. So when it comes to the choice of what to use for my chess analysis journal, you must understand that any old spiral-bound notebook just won’t do. Oh no. I want something that is enjoyable to write in, and something that will be enjoyable to look at. It must be archival quality as well, so that in 20 years, when I’m Expert level, I can look back at all these games and say “what a blundering idiot I was!”

I purchased a brand-new Moleskine lined notebook. I love Moleskines! I love that they come with a ribbon bookmark, I love the accordion pocket in the back, and I love the elastic band that holds the notebook closed snugly. The paper within is archival quality, and I enjoy the way my Pilot G2 gel pen glides across the page. Ok, I’d better stop here. You get the idea though.

I’ve also decided that I’m not going to analyze my Blitz games at first. I’m going to focus only on Standard games. I’ll analyze my Blitz games eventually, but until I am comfortable with the analysis process, I feel there is more value in diving deeply into my regular games.

Ok, enough for now. I’m going to go fondle my journal.

A victory present to myself (’cause I deserve it)

After my miraculous victory described in my last post, I decided to reward myself with a new chess book. I stopped by the local Borders on my way home from work to browse the chess section.

Quick Aside: I’ve noticed that the chess sections of the local megabookstores have grown smaller as time has gone on. This is sad. I guess they need to make more shelf space for all the encroaching poker books.

I was planning to get My System, since apparently one is not a true chess player unless one has read that classic. The store didn’t have it – bummer. What they did have was a copy of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. I know that many people list this book amongst those that have most improved their game, so I decided to give it a try. Yes, Bobby Fischer is an anti-semitic, anti-American douchebag, but he’s a douchebag that can sure play chess.

I’m a little more than halfway through the book now. It’s got an interesting format. At the beginning of each section, there is a brief explanation of a particular concept, followed by an example or two. The rest of each section is dedicated to chess problems involving the concept, and subtle variations on the theme.

I think that this is an excellent way to learn various concepts. By working through the various examples, the point is really driven home, at least for me it is.

The focus on the book is a bit narrow – that of tactics and combinations that lead to checkmate. He talks about back-rank mates for a while, and removal of the guard, and breaking through a pawn defense around the King, often with a sacrifice of some sort. The narrow focus allows each subject to be examined in some depth, and when each section is over, I feel like I am left with a solid foundation on which to build.

The layout of the book is interesting. When you’re holding the book open, you only read the page on the right. The top section of the page is the answer to the previous problem, and the bottom section of the page is the next problem. The left-hand pages are printed upside-down, so when you read all the right-hand pages through to the end of the book, you turn the book upside-down and continue to read only the right-hand pages, which used to be the left-hand upside-down pages. Simple, no?

I thought that this idea was a novel concept until I reached the halfway point and turned the book around. I usually like to read a bit at lunchtime, and I felt like a bit of a jackass sitting in the mall food court reading from a book that to everyone else looks upside-down. I suppose I’ll get over it.

I’m feeling good about what I’ve learned so far. Whether I will remember any of this stuff during a game is yet to be seen. I can only hope.

 

Basking in the afterglow of a fine fine victory

Let’s step away from the woes of Blitz tourneys for a moment. Put my 0-fer-everything record out of your mind. Right now, I would like to share with you the highlight of my chess comeback thus far.

Several posts ago, I mentioned that one of the things that got me back into chess was a guy at work that I would play on RedHotPawn. He’s rated in the high 1600s (currently 1686), and he would pretty much slap me around while I stumbled through my moves.

To help me learn my newfound opening, I started a new game against him about two weeks ago. I opened with the King’s Indian, and was able to adapt to the moves that he threw against me. I got into the middlegame about even, and held my own for awhile. We exchanged queens, which left me with two rooks and a bishop, and him with two rooks and a knight. The middle of the board was locked up, but I had better mobility along the queenside flank. I was able to work this to my advantage, and he ended up losing his knight to my discovered attack. He resigned immediately.

Victory! At long last! After losing eight straight games to him, I finally WON! Woot woot!

You can’t see this, but I am dancing around the room right now. Yes, it’s a par-tay!

Here’s the PGN of the game for all to enjoy. I’m sure it’s one for the history books (well, my history books anyways).

[Event "Challenge"]
[Site "http://www.redhotpawn.com"]
[Date "2007.10.17"]
[EndDate "2007.11.08"]
[White "PeteyD"]
[Black "GuyFromWork"]
[WhiteRating "1279"]
[BlackRating "1686"]
[Result "1-0"]
1. Ng1f3 d5 2. g3 c6 3. Bf1g2 Bc8g4 4. O-O Nb8d7 5. d3 Ng8f6 6. b3 e5
7. Nb1d2 Bf8c5 8. e4 Bc5d4 9. Ra1b1 Bd4c3 10. Bc1b2 Bc3xd2 11. Qd1xd2 Bg4xf3
12. Bg2xf3 d4 13. c3 c5 14. c4 O-O 15. Bb2a3 Rf8e8 16. b4 b6 17. Bf3d1 cxb4
18. Ba3xb4 Nd7c5 19. Bb4xc5 bxc5 20. Rb1b5 Ra8c8 21. Qd2a5 Qd8xa5
22. Rb5xa5 Rc8c7 23. Ra5b5 Nf6d7 24. Bd1a4 Nd7b6 25. Rb5xb6 1-0

Anyone know of a good way to embed a little PGN viewer in a blog?

I’m off to lose more Blitz, but I’ll be doing it with a big ole grin on my face.

How to approach reviewing one’s own games?

I played in another tournament on WCL tonight. Another 0-4 performance. The first game I was paired up with someone rated in the 1800s, and the game looked drawish towards the end. However, I tried to push the situation and paid for it. I offered a draw, but he wouldn’t accept it, and I got impatient. Sucks for me.

After that, it was all downhill.

So now I have a whole bunch of losses that I can analyze. I can analyze them, and hopefully become better from the analysis. There’s just one small problem – I have no idea how to analyze a game.

I’m thinking that I might play through the games again and try to determine where things started to go wrong. Then I suppose I could sic a computer on the game and have it tell me where exactly I started sucking. However, this doesn’t sound very appealing.

So I appeal to you, the chess blogosphere. Does anyone have a system for reviewing/analyzing games that makes the process interesting and dare I say fun?

Anyone? Please?