Body language

Poker face

Well, let's get the psychology right - by immediately saying "play the board, not the person" and "No fear!". Get your attitude right - as well as that all-important body language.

Did you think that body language is only important because of the effect it has on others? Not so, it affects the way that YOU behave, think and feel, not just the other person. Of course we all have a duty to present a confident and happy demeanor to the world on the grounds that, by so doing, we are helping other people to walk tall and get the most out of life. But if you yourself adopt a confident pose (stand tall and look the world stright in the eye) this inevitably affects your thought processes - to your own benefit. And you'll play better chess.

In a similar way there is nothing worse than saying something like "Oh, hi, I hope I can at least give you a decent game" etc etc. As it says in the Desiderata prayer "You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here". The English way is to apologise for existing - which of course inhibits all that we are and all that we are prepared to do.

Best to develop a poker face. Obviously if your body language reveals your shock that you have just made a blunder, then your opponent will look carefully to see what it is (whereas otherwise he may well have missed it). And it will help you to avoid looking foolish if you can somehow prevent the look on your face changing from triumph to consternation as you realise that the brilliant move you just made was, in fact, a blunder.

We are social beings and so it is hardly surprising that we can give away critical information non-verbally (see also my post entitled "Consciousness / Religion / Blitz chess"). It is easy to fall into the habit of studying a particular part of the board, the part "where the action is". It's not simply that our opponent will then know where we are making future plans - but also that our eye movements can reveal the individual piece movements that we are thinking about - and hence the combinations that we are considering. It's not even cheating, it is a natural human instinct to observe others - and processing the data thus gained is carried out at the subconscious level. You will perhaps know the feeling when you suddenly "know" what the opponent is thinking, as if telepathic ("Me? I don't get telepathic - just experience "déjà vu" as I realise I'm once again in that same miserable losing position I've seen so many times before!").

Etiquette

You will probably be aware of the "touch and move" (or simply,"touch move") convention. This incorporates two notions. One is the rule that, if you touch a piece, then that must be the piece you move. Secondly, once you have moved a piece to a new square and then let go of it - there it must stay. Of course it is possible, even abiding by the rule of "touch move", to make a nuisance of yourself - as Polly experienced in her game described in my post "A Chess Journey".

For example, waving pieces in the air for a while, before allowing the piece to land on a square, is naturally distracting for the opponent and, worse, prevents them from their natural right to have the (complete) position in front of them, no matter whose turn to play it is. It's not against the rule of "touch move" - but it's against sporting etiquette, by any standard. And if you cannot win the game in a sporting fashion, then you haven't really won the game at all.

Internet

So who are these people who send messages like "Warning! Dumb ass move!" or some such - during an internet game, whenever their opponent makes what they consider to be a bad move? One imagines they have some notion that "winning is all" and if they can get a win by foul play, then it's OK. As has been theorised many times, blitz games on the net attract a great number of young, testosterone-driven, males. Fortunately, there is the facility to prevent messages being sent during play.

To tell the truth, I don't actually use this 'blocking' feature, having got to the stage where I don't really care what they do all that much. If they do happen to send something in an emboldened strong colour I might scroll the message out of sight if it's distracting me and that's about it. But I WILL put them on my 'NoPlay' list as being unworthy of playing against on any future occasion.

Once I even responded with some jokey remarks, just for the fun of it - because I was in the mood, I guess. Funny how our reactions turn on a knife edge depending on small, immeasurable events and whether we happened to get out of bed the right side that morning! It's all down to chance, to live, die, play chess ... whatever! So it's probably best to be as philosophical as possible and try not to let the irritations put you off the game.

As Keith Richards says - "It's great to be here. It's great to be anywhere.".

Read more...

Chess (SMYSLOV) and music (OPERA)

Vasily Smyslov's ability in opera-singing once again reinforces the link between music and chess, as we are reminded in the Guardian article which records his recent sad death. Here is their first paragraph:

"Vasily Smyslov, who has died aged 89, was world chess champion for a year in 1957-58 and among the game's best players for more than two decades. At his peak, Smyslov was renowned for his strategic and end- game play, and more recently he set new achievement records for a grandmaster in old age, reaching the world title semi-finals at 63 and maintaining his strength into his 70s. Yet chess was only his second career option, after he failed to become a singer with the Bolshoi Theatre."

We note that the article refers to his "belief that smooth interplay of the pieces was the key to practical success" - and links this belief to the title of his autobiography "In Search of Harmony". You can hear him singing here.

I originally wanted to base this game on a fantastic game he played against Tal for which "kingcrusher" at ChessWorld provides an excellent commentary on a YouTube video . To play through the moves alongside a vigorous debate of all the variations you can also go to ChessGames.

OK, so Tal is busy "being Tal" in that game, whilst Smyslov, the purist, searches for the harmony and perfection that we should perhaps all aspire to in our player. I say "perhaps", dear Reader, for I know you secretly yearn to play your "Wonder Game" in which you dazzle us with your brilliant sacrificial combination! But that's another story.

So I'll pay homage to the ex-World Champ in a different way. Nothing profound, because in trying to dredge up some ideas I once had about harmony, I am now only able to come up with something you may feel is a little trite. If you know something about music you may want to postpone reading any further until you've looked at the diagram in the left-hand column of the blog, to see if you can puzzle out what I'm doing without any explanation. Yes, it's the pretty picture, based on a chessboard.

I'll make a link between musical chords and a chessboard. It's to do with the chords you make on the white keys of a piano, using your thumb, middle and little finger (or "pinkie"). So we are playing the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes in a sequence of five adjacent notes. Start with middle C and you have the C major chord, C E G, thus:

C E G = C major

D F A = D minor

E G B = E minor

F A C = F major

G B D = G major

A C E = A minor

B D F = B minor diminished

If you extend the 1-3-5 pattern for the G major chord to 1-3-5-7 then you have G major seventh. If this chord is used in a song alongside F major and C major then you have enough to play the famous "12 bar blues" sequence (root, sub-dominant and dominant).

Anyway, I just started to think about the basic scale of C ie C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. After all, it's 8 notes and a chessboard is 8x8 - so why not write all of these (1st) notes on the board, joined to the corresponding 3rd and 5th notes to make some sort of pattern? It looks like a flower if I colour the major chords a different colour from the minor ones. The result of all my machinations looks like this:

If you get interested in this then you can investigate the "Chord Wheel". Sadly it shows how the internet has degraded so much that the concept has been eagerly transmogrified into a saleable item, as you can see by googling. The "Chord Wheel" is a standard part of musical theory. The best I can do is a PDF file which you can get from Marty Jourard's article in Gig magazine.

If you would prefer a broad view of music theory you might like to investigate Edly's Music Theory for Practical People.

So that's my homage to Vasily Vasiliyevich Smyslov, chess grandmaster (world chess champion 1957-58) who died on 26 March 2010. I shall call it "The Lily of Vasily".

Read more...

Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2740) vs Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2748)

Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2740) vs Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2748) - Round 9 of the 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament, (March 2010)

I am calling on the (unpaid) services of the, largely fictional, Mr_Toad (of ToadTryouts ) to offer his reaction to a recent game in the 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament , (March 2010). He does not profess to be conversant with modern opening theory, not is he able to offer top rate analysis. But he hopes you will enjoy his initial reactions to the game, really just to spark off your own thoughts and ideas (which Mr_Toad would love to read about in the comments on this post, if you would care to make them).

I think it's a really nice game.

Read more...

A Chess Journey

I'm so impressed with the resilience shown by one of my commentators (oh, alright, that should read "only" commentator!), here at Celebrate Chess, that I would like to introduce her to you.

Polly is clearly a strong-minded and resilient person (well, she is Taurus). Her blogs are a revelation in terms of trying to get to grips with our motives for playing this "oh so tough" game and an inspiration to chess players everywhere. And I was fascinated by her "quest to play a tournament in all 50 states"!

Here's an excerpt from one of her posts, thus:

"All the sloppy piece placement and clock slapping was starting to annoy me, but I wasn't going to get into it with him. However I was on the verge of losing it when he plays 41...Bd3 and takes his hand off and then grabs the piece again to move it elsewhere. I said "You took your hand off the piece, you have to leave it there." He continues to hold on to the bishop and says "I want to think about it." I tell him there is nothing to think about, he has to leave the bishop on d3. He puts the bishop back on b5 and keeps telling me to stop it, stop it. The funny thing was at that point I wasn't saying anything. If he wanted to use his time to think about a move he was going to have to play that was fine with me. He had about a 10 minute time advantage, so any free time would make me happy. However I was prepared to stop the clock and get the TD if he tried to make any move except Bd3. At this point we've drawn a bit of a crowd. Everyone likes a good chess argument. This had the makings of becoming a good one".

The denouement makes for exciting reading, so I hope you'll track it down. As someone who is now largely restricted to internet play, this is perhaps a timely reminder that not all OTB stuff is chivalry and good comradeship! Contrary to the view frequently expressed by those who don't play chess, OTB seems to test our interpersonal skills to the full. Not to mention the resilience that we need in order to keep coming back for more. Will we win or are we going to blunder (again)? Why is it always US who gets into time trouble, not the opponent? And why do I always see a great move just after I spent a long time in skilfully locating, and playing, the worst move on the board?

(if you read this Polly, please let me know that you are OK with this post, as I was not able to contact you via email)

Read more...

Keep it "fresh"

It's easy to get stale. You've been working on the game so hard that it suddenly stops being a game and becomes WORK. Happened to me a few years back and I just stopped playing the game completely. So keep it fresh, find different situations that force you into changing your outlook, make you use different strategies. In this way you will develop into a more rounded chess player.

So maybe, instead of studying the opening books, you could record some opening lines in an easy to use format. This will allow you to see any gaps in you opening repertoire. I'm thinking of the free Chess Position Trainer program. As far as I can see at this stage, the program is first and foremost for categorising your opening variations - the ones YOU want to use in your games. Here is their description:

This chess opening software will change the way how you create, manage and study your chess opening repertoire. It will become a major time saver for your daily work and make it even fun to train your chess openings. Even if you have never before created your own repertoire this chess software will make it a piece of cake.

Classical chess game databases use pseudo-chess-games to represent your chess repertoire (by using endless variations). CPT is following a more natural way by using a position database where every position is stored only once and transpositions are instantly discovered. It's more like an editable chess opening tree.

    * Very intuitive and customizable user-interface accompanied by a printable 65 page manual.
    * Import or enter your chess opening repertoire and manage it with ease.
    * Use more than 70 training options just for the chess opening alone - unbeatable capabilities.
    * Use the applied flash-card concept making chess training more efficient and fun than you ever dared to dream of.
    * Train your own repertoire blindfolded - no other chess software let you do that.
    * Use special functions like running your (internet) chess games against your repertoire, backsolving and other sophisticated features.
    * Many more unique features make Chess Position Trainer a unique chess software.

Put your chess books, CD's and chess game database to good use and manage your chess material with Chess Position Trainer!

Version 3.3 is can be found on their community page - which seems to be a better download site than the one you arrive at via their Home page .

Continuing with the theme of 'staying fresh', I have stumbled upon other ways of playing chess on the net. My usual poison is the Internet Chess Club (ICC) whose membership payment provides a full range of services. I have never regretted joining up with them! But there are alternatives available - and they are free. And you can try interesting variants such as the so-called 'Fischer Random Chess' - which renders opening theory null and void (an appealing thought in many ways).

One is called the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) and is described as having "over 300000 registered users", being "one of the oldest and one of the largest internet chess servers". So FICS has a worthy pedigree and certainly "does the job". Having used it for some time now, I confess to finding it hard to find my way around the (Babas) interface, certainly the controls are not 'intuitive'.

A better one is at the 'Chess Boss'. This one is relatively new and is improving all the time. I find it a little awkward to choose opponents of a particular strength. Players seem to be chattier and more polite than on the FICS, so it's a valid option (includes various chess variants, including Fischer Random).

The best of the free options for me is 'Chess Hotel'. It's a little easier to invite players of a particular strength

It's always 'fun' to compare a free service with a paid one. I confess to a personality, forged as a northerner in the post-war fifties, which always has a tendency to go for "something for nothing"! In this case it seems to me that the paid ICC service has a lot of advantages over the free services. For me it's well worth investing in.

The ICC offers great support for its members, a huge variety of events and tourneys that you can join and lots of videos and other materials eg graphs to show how your rating has changed over time. It's like anything else, you make a decision about what you are getting for your money - and if you don't intend to actually use the extras that are on offer for a payment, well, just use the free service.

Read more...

Blitz games - Part 1

If you only have 5 minutes in which to make all of your moves, chess becomes a different game.

One of the first things that you learn (or not, as in my case) is not to dwell on any single move for too long. In fact this can give rise to a deliberate strategy of playing your opponent into time trouble. Give him/her lots of possible moves to choose from - OK, you can't do this all the time, but you may notice an opportunity now and then. Is it ethical to do this? Yes, though initially you may be a little uncomfortable with the idea.

Whether blitz play has a beneficial effect on your normal game is debatable. I was given to understand that it would help my "chess sight" in the sense of analysing positions at a glance - the gestalt concept. Training yourself to develop your ability to judge positions in this way (before embarking on lengthy analysis of variations) was supposed to carry over into your OTB play. I spent a few years determinedly trying to improve my blitz game - I may not have improved my chess to any great degree - but it was certainly an exciting way to pass the time and I had a lot of fun.

I still play, but, at the time of writing) I don't take it as seriously [that changed as I report a year later in 'Blitz Games - Part 2'). I think you have to be careful about the openings that you choose. It's very easy to get into a rut and play the same opening line over and over again. Do take a minute before you start a blitz game to think about the opening you want to play. Perhaps you should only play a sharp (or sacrificial) line if you're feeling full of energy (conversely, if you're feeling tired, go for positional stuff).

Before I talk about an idea I recommend for OTB blitz play, I will just point out that I recently used blitz games to practise some new opening lines. It's an entertaining way to get some experience of an opening that you have just added to your repertoire under your belt.

Now let's suppose you are playing blitz with a friend. Let's just even up the game and stop things from becoming too one-sided if one of you turns out to be stronger than the other. For the first game, both players have the same amount of time on the clock (could be any number of minutes, not just 5). For the second game the winner of the first has one minute less than they did for the first game - and the loser gets one minute more. If this idea is repeated over a few games, the stronger player eventually finds himself having to play so fast that mistakes begin to creep in. A balance is reached and it becomes difficult to predict the winner.

Good luck with your blitz play - and don't hit the clock button too hard in the excitement!

Now for two, very different, blitz games on YouTube. The first (not so serious) shows how much fun you can have with blitz. Watch it at your own risk! The second (Nakamura vs Carlsen blitz playoff - Aker Chess Challenge) includes comments from the players (courtesy of ChessClub.com) and is followed by the full moves (from Susan Polgar's blog) of the game in an interactive format for you to look over at leisure.

Read more...

You know the moves - now what?

So you have learnt how the pieces move and you also know about checkmate. It is of course the next stage which is difficult.

You've put on the roller skates and persuaded your friend to support your first few steps. But there is a moment when you have to step out on your own and you are immediately faced with all sorts of questions about turns, stops, controlling your speed and so on. The end is most definitely not in sight!

In one sense there is too much information available and a lot of it seems contradictory. For example, one page of an opening text will tell you that an isolated pawn can be an advantage, yet a few pages on it shows you a position in which it is a disadvantage. It can be a little bewildering, especially when the author cheerfully suggests that "once you have a little experience, you will be able to see the weaknesses and strengths of a given position more clearly". That's not particularly useful advice, however well-intentioned it is.

In this post I will try to set you on the right path. I believe it to be a question of attitude, of being patient for a while. Crucially you need to be able to hold unresolved thoughts in your mind without getting upset with yourself for not having solved them as quickly as you would like to (or thought you might be able to).

This last point is a huge problem in all areas of education of course. Consider Adult Education, where people try to squash themselves into seats designed for youngsters, full of doubt about their ability to cope with the rigours of a classroom again - they remember their last school day as one of the happiest of their lives. Many do not adapt well, the chief problem is having to admit to a state of ignorance. And, yes, it is uncomfortable for anybody when they feel that they should know something - but they don't.

So you really do have to accept that you cannot learn chess right away, that you cannot, for example, judge the strengths and weaknesses of a position at a glance. And that compared to many others you are a complete novice. There are two things to point out here:

1. Don't compare yourself to others. As is pointed out in the Desiderata prayer, "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself".

2. If you insist on introducing a competitive element then track your own progress in some way and try to play better this month than you did last week. You may even keep a written record of your progress, perhaps in terms of learning new opening lines and so on. At some stage you will gain a chess rating of some sort and then you can track your progress in a much more quantitative fashion.

So tell yourself that the games you are playing at this stage are merely practise games only. You should avoid any slight tendency to think that your reputation, your credibility is on the line here. You will play better if you can calm the "chattering monkey", if you can play with a clear mind and sweep all the extraneous thoughts about how little you actually know about the game and all the rest of the distracting thoughts that so often prevent us from achieving our true potential.

You need to get playing, step out on your own. By all means read the stuff about controlling the centre, developing your pieces, not moving a piece more than once during the opening and so on. That's fine - but you MUST try out your own ideas without feeling too uneasy about breaking the guidelines. That's really the only way to learn. Be a "rulebreaker".

We can all play this game, even you and me. We can certainly improve our game if we have the time and the inclination. Naturally it helps enormously if you study the game afterwards, especially if you can get a second opinion on the validity of your moves. If you want to show me one or two of your games, perhaps where you cannot see where you went wrong - I would happily look them over. I'm not a very strong player, but that's not the point, is it? You just need a second opinion, someone to bounce ideas off.

So good luck with your chess. I promise you that if you persevere with the game you will have a friend for life. Here is a video which will encourage you to keep trying and to gain confidence in your abilities.

Here are the moves of the game, as well as a photo of the players. A full article from CHESSBASE NEWS about the event at which the game was played is at "She had him on the ropes!". The title is explained by the CHESSBASE introduction which asks "How often have you been a piece up against Garry Kasparov? How often in two separate games? Well, 17-year-old Elisabeth Pähtz did, and had the world's strongest player fighting for survival in two games."

STOP PRESS:

I just discovered a great set of chess learning/training videos at 'The Chess Website', which is now one of my recommended sites listed at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!

Read more...

Defeating stronger players

In a simple position your strong opponent will see all that there is to see and will exert better control over the situation than yourself. They'll make sure that all of their pieces are defending each other and will anticipate all your threats well in advance. They can calculate straightforward positions better than you can.

So what to do? The obvious answer is to avoid the type of position where everything is in plain sight, where everything can be determined. If, on the other hand, the position is a "mess", they too will find it harder to calculate variations and this is when opportunities arise.

The problem is three-fold. Firstly, it is often difficult to steer into such positions - and, secondly, our usual instinct is to avoid such anyway (because we all like to feel that we are in control of the game, that we can see all the strengths and weaknesses). Thirdly, we don't always recognise such positions for what they are. Myself, I can easily create "messy" positions, no problem - but they are usually riddled through and through with weaknesses.

As on many other occasions in life we avoid this type of analysis, largely because we suspect it will not lead to any solution, merely reinforce our doubts about our ability to overcome difficult problems. But if you can rise above this negativity you will actually find the pot of gold waiting for you at the end of the rainbow! In other words, you may not be a Grandmaster who has all the answers , but your goal is to "Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best" - Henry Jackson van Dyke, 1852-1933, Germantown, Pennsylvania.

In this case, we recognise that a large part of any success against stronger players is governed by our choice of opening. Yes, I am saying that you need to go back to your studies - even just comparing some of the positions that arise from various openings. This does not have to be arduous, you don't have to do a complete analysis of ALL the lines. Be creative when it comes to 'studying', enjoy the process, fit it into your normal schedule and don't immediately say "Oh, I haven't got time for that!". Maybe you could try out a few new openings in Blitz play, just to investigate the type of middle game positions that arise. I just want you to look at some new positions, not analyse them to death!

Here is an inspiring example of what can be achieved with the right approach. It is taken from the 8th Gibtelecom Masters - where the Black player, Victor Havik (Elo 2093) was up against Ivan Cheparinov (Elo 2660). According to the ratings, Black should have been squashed like a bug! I shall only comment on the 'fireworks' that took place at the end - if you would like to see the match with photos of the players and an excellent commentary, then you should visit http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6098.

Read more...