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Summer Coaching 2010

Submitted by DrDave on

26th_May_2010: Summer Coaching 2010

With the close of the club championship (congratulations Graham) I am thinking about organising some coaching sessions over the summer (the latest phase of the blind leading the wossname).  If people would like this, I would like suggestions, and perhaps even volunteers, for sessions.

A bird's eye view of repertoires

Submitted by DrDave on

h3a name="13th_Feb_2010"13th_Feb_2010/a: A bird's eye view of repertoiresbr / /h3 I've compiled a spreadsheet of recommended White repertoires from various books, websites and other sources; it is interesting that some sort of consensus emerges, at least for the 1.e4 player, even though no one book recommends the complete list:br / ul liMain system: Scotch Four Knights'/li liAlekhin (1...Nf6): Exchange/li liCaro-Kann (1...c6): Panov-Botvinnik/li liFrench (1...e6): Tarrasch/li liPirc/Modern (1...g6): 150 Attack/li liScandinavian (1...d5): Main lines/li

How not to beat Andrew Greet

Submitted by DrDave on

An account of our Christmas simul

Genial Cornish giant Andrew Greet came to show us how it was done before Christmas, and I'm sorry it's taken me this long to catch up and do some notes.nbsp; Bob Jones was generous and prompt in his transcription of the games to PGN, so please don't blame him!

Having watched Gary Lane wipe the floor with us a few times, I thought I had a view about how it was done, but clearly personal style has a bearing too: Andrew seemed much less inclined to go for broke and played quite conservatively in the openings, content to go for a solid

Swindles

Submitted by DrDave on

Diligent explorers of this website may have found a little collection of the finest swindles that I had perpetrated in my career, up to the point where I established this website.nbsp; I pulled off another one so appalling that I thought it too should be displayed as a dreadful warning to others.nbsp; The serendipity of life ensured that a week or two before, hot new signing Tim Paulden had pulled off a win when a piece down in an endgame, and a week or two after, I witnessed Ian Jamieson come out with a win in a position that the most sympathetic reading would say was unpromising.

Chess Position Trainer

Submitted by DrDave on

I've been introduced to this very helpful piece of free software by Jonathan Morgan. It allows you to enter a chess opening repertoire, have it displayed to you and then it will test you on it.nbsp; If you don't want to enter your own, then you can download plenty from the CPT site.nbsp;

I'm working up some repertoires of my own before I send them for download to the good folks at CPT, but if you would like to test it/comment on them, then that would be most welcome.nbsp; First, download the software from:

How do Chess-Players Think?

These are extracts from Simon Webb's superb series of articles for Barry Wood's old CHESS magazine. Simon showed a panel of players a position and recorded their spoken thoughts for ten minutes. The articles are well worth digging out: obviously there is much more in the articles than I can present here, but it will give you a flavour of the sorts of issues that can arise. The joy of this technique, of course, is that you can repeat the exercise with the same or different positions in your own club.

 The positions are presented twice, one without commentary

Knight's Tour

Gunno Toernberg tells me he has been working on a computer approach to the problem: you can see his endeavours at: http://w1.859.telia.com/~u85905224/knight/eknight.htm where you can have ago on his Java board. 
Comments on: Martin Loebbing and Ingo Wegener, The Number of Knight's
Tours Equals 33,439,123,484,294 --- Counting with Binary Decision
Diagrams

Comment by the authors, May 15, 1996:

The number of knight's tours given in the paper is incorrect, since

Semi-Random Baseline Chess

Semi-Random Baseline Chess

(wild style 1 on Free Internet Chess Servers)

  White and Black play with piece arrangement, where each side's pieces are shuffled separately at random subject to two constraints:

  (1) because castling is such a big part of the game and adds so much more to planning ("I'll provoke a2-a3 so they won't castle queen's-side") the possibility of castling on either side should be preserved. After that, the pieces are randomly shuffled, subject to
(2) there being bishops of either colour square.

Is there luck in chess?

From The Master Game, Book 2, Jeremy James and William Hartston (1981). London: BBC.
'Chess,' said the Dutch grandmaster, Jan Hein Donner, 'is as much a game of chance as blackjack; or tossing cards into a top hat.' There was a pained silence, then a polite babel of disagreement: it was a game of the utmost skill; a conflict between disciplined minds in which victory would inexorably go to the more perceptive, the more analytical player; a duel of the intellect in which luck played no part. Donner

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