Chess Magazines And Opening Knowledge

Chess players are thoroughly spoilt these days with a variety of chess magazines.Informator, New In Chess, Chessbase.... lots and lots of chess material and a huge number of them devote their sections to opening novelties.

Truth be told, for a patzer like me, I don't need to know Kramnik's 21st novelty move in the Catalan or Vishy's 37th new move in the Ruy Lopez.

So why do chess openings seem to grasp our attention so much?

The Chinese have an idiom,"A good start means that you're halfway to success."

I apologise for sounding like a fortune cookie but I learnt a valuable lesson on Wednesday night in my loss.

I misplayed my opening. Instead of going with my tried and trusted response to 1.e4, I did something crazy and duly got whalloped. You can say, that after the 6th move, I spent the rest of the 40 odd moves trying to repair the damage, leading to more holes and weak squares appearing all over my position.

In short, the game was effectively over in 6 moves.

Anyway, back to chess magazines. If you're looking to improve your opening knowledge, I'm giving a quick run-through some of the major ones (I apologise for leaving out TWIC - The Week In Chess) - they would be more than sufficient for the average club player.

Chess Informator/Informant. I got my hands on a very very old Informator (borrowed it from someone) and I was scared off my pants by the amount of knowledge that was present in there. This isn't some Uncle Bob's home cooked analysis, you're looking at heavy duty opening theory and annotations (Informator uses the well-known method of using symbols in their annotations so there's no words in their explanations). If you are thinking of making chess a career, this probably belongs to your must-have library. For the amateur (below 2000), I give this a miss.

Chessbase Magazine. I acquired a dated Chessbase Magazine 121 and found it was wonderful. Chessbase magazine tackles the chess theme in a slightly different way. The DVD format is of a huge help - you get Chess done - the multimedia way, you get a nice array of multimedia videos and chessbase files to work through for some of the opening knowledge. However, I was a bit disappointed in that Chessbase sometimes inserts "fillers" (you know how it's like when you go to catch a movie, and the cinema operators try to show filler movies to grab your attention like "Coming soon to a theatre near you" when all you want is to get the actual movie to start?). It's a bit like that. However, what I was disappointed was that some of the videos were in German! Errr... ok. Okay, I know Muller speaks in his native tongue in his Endgame videos but really, Chessbase should cater for a more international audience and trying to stick in a few videos in German with no equivalent videos in English gives you that same feeling of having the rug pulled from under you and gives you the feeling of being left out. One of the problem I realise is that the opening knowledge is not one that is catered for beginners but rather for people who already have a pet opening repertoire and looking to explore other possibilities within their repertoire. So if you're looking to have a bit of fun where you can relax back and work through possible improvements in your opening repertoire and at the same time, catch up on recent chess events/competitions, then this DVD is for you.

New In Chess. I love this magazine. I am fortunate in that my local library occasionally purchases them. It's fairly lightweight and I find them to be fun to read! Think "chess for the masses ie. the non-super Grandmasters" and you'll know what I mean. It contains both serious and fairly lightweight columns, giving you a nice balance between the amateur and the more serious.

And finally, we come to one of my favourite websites on opening theory, Chesspublishing.com. They have a variety of subscriptions but I found the best value for this site for an amateur like me is probably the 3-for-2 subscription. For about AU$50 odd bucks a year, you get periodic updates on 3 of your favourite openings for the price of 2. This is more than sufficient for you to use in tournament play for players under a rating of 2000. They also have a forum for you to air your views, and you get to mingle with like-minded players.

Updated note: Lest it be misconstrued, I don't subscribe to any of these magazines on a regular basis. They were more for curiosity, rather than anything. In tournament play at patzer level, getting a few of those Starting Out books based on your favourite repertoire and maybe 2 more serious opening books is definitely more than enough for the typical club player. In the end, your opening repertoire is designed to ensure you don't suffer as I did. Tactics, strategies and endgame training should still be the mainstay of your chess training.

Winning Is Everything, Right?

I basically lost my head and naturally lost my game playing on Board 1 for the U1400 NSW Grade Matches Round 2 last night.

However, an amazing incident happened. My opponent was from St George. He was slowly but surely going to win his game. We reached the position shown with White to play.

Suddenly, he moved his right hand, grabbed the g-pawn, moved it to g4, say,"Check!" and hit the clock.

I was stunned. Mainly because he had just completed an illegal move. I didn't know what to do at this point as clearly he made an illegal move, I told him that he can't do that and he realised to his horror what he has done. He then tried to take back his move but I stopped him and say,"You can't do that."

The arbiter (TD) Bill Gletsos was not around and had briefly left the hall and I tried looking for him and found him sitting on the sofa just outside the room chatting to my brother-in-law Steven. I informed Bill about the illegal move.

Bill subsequently told me that the correct procedure was to give me an additional 2 minutes. I told him that I do not know how to set the clock in this way.

So we both made our way back to the board and surprise, surprise, he had moved his g-pawn back and had instead used the Rook on e5 to capture my Rook on f5 and was acting like nothing had happened.

When questioned about it, he lied through his teeth and said,"Yes, I played Rook takes Rook."

At this point, I was so disappointed with his response. He was in a totally winning position and there was really no need for him to do this kind of thing.

Can you imagine that, a player playing on Board 1 with a rating of 1360++, playing against an unrated player (me) in the Under-1400 Grade Matches just didn't want to own up that he made a mistake.

The incident was resolved after his team captain spoke a few brief words to Bill and the clock was adjusted and the game continued.

I resigned a few moves later.

Lest it be known, I have no qualms about losing. I played like crap and thoroughly deserved to lose and I applaud him for his good play.

The reason I didn't know what was to be done was because this was the first time it had occurred to me. I take part of the blame in not knowing what I should have done.

My brother-in-law Steven subsequently told me that what I should have done, is to ask a fellow player to keep watch over the board while I go look for Bill and to make sure my opponent recorded the move on his scoresheet so there is no denial in the future.

I will keep this in mind.

I am just thoroughly disappointed with my opponent's behaviour. This isn't some multi-million dollar competition. It's just a game for crying out loud, playing for some silly rating number that does not make you a better human being or a worse one should you win or lose.

After the game, nevertheless, I gave my opponent a little hand on the shoulder and congratulated him for his win and told him that there was no need for him to do what he did because the penalty was only adding an additional 2 minutes on my clock.

It was only after the game when I asked Steven if I should have approached Bill in this instance and he told me that what I had done was correct. But what I also did wrong was to leave the board unattended and didn't wait for him to record the move else it was a my-word-vs-his word thing. Steven told me that my opponent's team captain didn't believe him either and which was why my clock was adjusted.

Just in case you're wondering, my opponent isn't some young kid. He's easily over 40 years old.

This was my first game in a Grade Match. Now I know the kind of players I can expect from St George. Btw, he never did apologise for his behaviour.

Welcome to the world of competitive chess. Win with grace and lose with dignity indeed.

Sigh.

Chess Players Are A Pretty Sad, Lonely Bunch

You know your hobby is not acting in your best interests and is probably affecting your social life when one of your favourite websites starts doing product placements like this:


Could be worse. My first reaction was that one of my favourite GMs, Sergei Movsesian underwent a really amazing sex-change operation.... (that's because chessgames.com tends to put the player's photos at the exact same spot where the ad is).

Hmm..... I wonder how many hits that advertisement generated.

NSW Grade Matches Results So Far

Ryde-Eastwood Chess Club
Performance Grade Results

(NB:Ryde-Eastwood players highlighted in bold
- note that the names highlighted in bold
DOES NOT MEAN these players have White)

____________

Under 1800

Liu, Steven Hern (1779) v Talum (?), Lito (u/r) 1-0
Escalante, Lorenzo (1742) v Mejzini, Jack (1607) 0-1
Zielinski, Konrad (1679) v Foong, Tze Weng (1621) 1-0
Christensen, Joshua (1651) v Greenwood, Norman (1530) 1-0

Club Standings
Place Name Score
1 RYDE EASTWOOD 3 pts
2-3 MANLY, NORTH SYDNEY 2.5 pts
4-5 ST GEORGE DRAGONS, ST GEORGE SAINTS 2 pts

____________

Under 1600

Hickey, James (1594) v Ruan, Jack (1557) 0-1
Hale, Dennis (1591) v Papantoniou, John (1629) 0-1
Mikolajczyk, Les (1473) v Ruan, Harry (1459) 0-1
Chiara, Vince (1389) v Gu, Sean (1361) 0-1


Club Standings
Place Name Score
1-2 ROOTY HILL, ST GEORGE SAINTS 4 pts
3 MANLY 3 pts
4-5 NORTH SYDNEY BROWN BEARS, NORTH SYDNEY GRIZZLIES 2 pts
6 PARRAMATTA 1 pts
7-8 BONNYRIGG, RYDE EASTWOOD 0 pts

to play against Bonnyrigg tomorrow (Wed) at Ryde-Eastwood RSL at 7.30pm

Likely Opponents from Bonnyrigg

Blazeski, Krste (1647), Todorovski, Marjan (1587), Banovic, Milko (u/r)

____________

Under 1400

to play against St George Dragons tomorrow (Wed) at Ryde-Eastwood RSL at 7.30pm

Participants
Douglas Eyres (1222), Simon Parker (u/r), Greig Edwards (u/r) and Chee Tan (u/r) with first reserve: Luke Farrugia (u/r)

Likely Opponents from St George Dragons
Taric, Omar (1361), Keuning, Patrick J (1358), Ollivain, Thierry (1342), Johansson, Par (Peter) (1335)

Out Of Shape, Out Of Touch

Boy, am I not only out of touch with chess, I am also badly out of shape.

I logged onto FICS and promptly got caned in 10 successive games.

Fun, fun, fun.....

Tomorrow I intend to take my module exams for module 3 and 5. The end of my school term is fast approaching and I cannot be lax now with the final hurdle and graduation from this class just 5-6 weeks away.

As for chess, I need to rework from basics all over again. I've forgotten some of the lines I played in response to 1.d4 and 1.e4 and I suddenly found myself ho-humming just 4 moves into the some of the games.

The problem herein I feel is that after studying chess, not all of it gets into long-term memory so I would need to re-train my brain when the time comes.

That means on Wednesday morning and lunch-time at work, I need to cram in my opening repertoire and sharpen my tactical and positional skills again.

I need to start playing blitz the odd while so that I can remember the moves.

On a separate note, dk and Phaedrus have started a collaboration on a global eBook for middlegames. If you are interested and have the necessary time to help them out, please drop them a note on the link. It's a massive undertaking and I sincerely hope that this project becomes successful.

That's all for now.