Commiserating with BDK

Ah, sweet, sweet internet access. I'm typing this from a hotel room; tomorrow I fly back home (about 10 pounds heavier from all the Christmas goodies). Before I left on my trip, I had read BDK's recent post on chess suckage. I'm sure we can all identify with his lament:

"It makes me wonder, sometimes, why I bother with this game if I'm going to suck so badly at it after more than three years playing. It's one of those games that I felt so bad about that I don't even want to analyze the game it makes me feel like s*** to even think about it."

Heck, yeah.

I strongly identified with his observation:

"I've also noticed that in real over the board games my chess vision is just not as good. I miss tactics I spot immediately when playing over the computer. I learned on the computer, trained on the computer, and almost always play on the computer.

"That has to stop. I've begun playing games on ICC using my actual board, using the computer only to relay my moves. We'll see if it helps. It feels hopeless sometimes, like my brain is permanently locked into a 2-D way of thinking, where all the pieces are always equally distinct and visible."

The last chess club before Christmas was a blitz tournament, and I truly sucked. I'm terrible at blitz, especially 5-minute games with no time increment (I typically play with a 12-second increment for internet games). I was struck by a couple things:

• lack of awareness of the whole board. In one game that I luckily won, my checkmating queen on d5 could have been captured by a bishop on a1 had my opponent not conceded. I would tend to focus on one region of the board and miss long moves or tactics in another region. On a computer 2-D board, it's easier to take in the whole board.
  
• absolute inability to play anything remotely resembling "real chess" a la Heisman at those time controls. My king was captured twice by missing checks while pressing my attack in time trouble.

With regards to the first point: even though I don't seem to have any trouble switching between 2-D and 3-D positions, I know that I retain material better when using a real board...whether it's practicing tactics problems, learning basic endgames, or deciding on opening lines for my repertoire.

As for the second point: I've only skimmed Kotov's Think Like a Grandmaster, but I recall one of his infamous pronouncements is that the thinking method ("think like a tree") doesn't change in time pressure situations...you just do it faster. This seems like a pretty stupid piece of advice on the surface ("gee, thanks!"), but it actually cuts to the heart of the matter. You have to train yourself to consistently play "real chess" so that it's second nature, even in time pressure. It's not enough to know how you're supposed to think: it takes practice to play "real chess" consistently.

I am currently playing a pair of games by email, and I'm trying to play "real chess" in these games. Even with days available per move, I'm not consistent. In one game, I analyzed a promising rook sacrifice but missed a killer response from my opponent. With the luxury of having as much time as I want per move, I still have to force myself to consistently consider my opponent's move, identify candidate moves, select one, and consider all of my opponent's responses.

Training myself to play "real chess" reliably will be like breaking a bone and resetting it. Playing "hope chess", particularly in ICC Blitz, just reinforces the same old bad thinking habits. I'll probably post more on this with a set of New Year's Resolutions.

From GP's Undisclosed Location in the Wilds of Canada...

I'm currently visiting family for Christmas, and internet connectivity is dodgy. I have some material ready for posting, but it'll have to wait for New Year's Day.

I managed to winnow down my books for the trip to:

• Alexander Alekhine's Best Games (Alekhine/Nunn)
• Anthology of Chess Combinations (Informator)
• 100 Endgames You Must Know (Jesus de la Villa)
• Rook Endings (Levenfish/Smyslov)

plus Lev Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Book for the airplane, and some of Karsten Mueller's endgame DVDs. Way too much material, objectively. I figured that being stranded without internet would be a good opportunity to crack open Levenfish/Smyslov and work on my rook endgames, but so far I haven't gotten that desperate.

I actually was able to teach my mom and dad some basic endgame stuff. Dad didn't humour me as much and we only did some stuff with the opposition and bare kings. Mom actually did fairly well...we moved on to some basic pawn endgame positions that I set up, and she even figured out the "underpass" herself on the second try.

My wife still refuses to participate. It's weird. Right now she's probably doing some logic problems or sudoku. As a chemist, she enjoys analyzing spectra and determining molecular structures. We've even played checkers once (neither of us could remember the rules, but it was still fun). But she won't even look at a problem involving bare kings and only 3 files. I tried to point out that it wasn't even chess at this point, only a harmless puzzle, but no luck. The closest I ever got was by equating the White king as a woman advancing her career, and that if it got past "the man" (opposing king) blocking her progress, it would reach the 8th rank and thereby shatter the glass ceiling. That, at least, elicited a "nice try."

iPod Touch Chess Applications?

I scored an iPod Touch for my birthday. I saw that there are several chess apps available, but I get the impression that the reviews are grossly padded by developer sockpuppets.

Anyone have iPod/iPhone chess apps that they particulary like? I noticed that at least one (Caissa Chess) mentions playing by email. This is of some interest, since I'm currently playing a pair of email games with someone from the club.

Rybka 3 Arrived, but...

My birthday gift to myself arrived...Deep Rybka 3 with the ChessBase interface. Unfortunately, one of the features I was most interested in--Monte Carlo analysis-- isn't working. Shortly after starting the analysis, the program crashes.

I just contacted ChessBase support. Hopefully the issue will be resolved in time for my birthday! I'm curous, though, if other readers have had a similar problem and know a solution.

Simple Forcing Variation

The following tactic is fairly easy to calculate, yet it gave me some trouble. I'm finding that, when calculating forced variations, I have more difficulty when I have a choice of moves than when my opponent has a choice of moves.

White to play:

4r1k1/ppn1bppp/q7/7Q/1nN1P3/1B1P4/PP5P/KN4R1 w - - 0 1

Black to play has a straightforward mate in 2 starting with 1...Qxa2+, so White's play either has to interfere with this mechanism, or be with check. Moves like 1.Nca3 or 1.Na5 don't lead to anything. That leaves two checks: 1.Rxg7+ or 1.Qxf7+. The former check doesn't seem to lead anywhere either (e.g. 1...Kxg7 2.Qg4+ Qg6).

1.Qxf7+ looks like an "obvious" queen sac, because after 1...Kxf6 the knight can move to e5 or d6 with a discovered, double, check. But which knight move?

Correct is 2.Ne5+, because on either 2...Kf6 or 2...Kf8, 3.Nd7#.

However, when I tried to calculate this as I would in an over-the-board game, I would stall at this point. I was seeing the king slipping out of the mating net with 2.Nd7, and didn't immediately see the mate after 2.Ne5 Kf6. That was enough for me to second-guess the entire line and try to find ways to get other first moves to work. In a real game I probably would have bailed out by playing a knight to a3.

This demonstrates both quiescence errors (not calculating out until all checks, captures and threats are spent) and not "thinking like a tree" a la Kotov (calculate each branch of each line only once). And yes, Kotov's technique has been criticized by others, but in general (especially for simple problems like this one) it's an ideal worth striving for.

Euwe Blunder

The next time you feel bummed out because you made some patzer oversight, remember the following blunder that Euwe played against Lasker in the Nottingham 1936 tournament:

8/pp4pp/2p1kp2/b7/2nP4/3K3P/PP3PP1/2B1N3 w - - 0 24

Euwe (Black) had just played 23...Bc7-a5, attacking the knight on e1. If White captures on c4, Black captures on e1. If white moves the e1-knight, Black moves their threatened c4-knight.

But what if White could move the knight with threat?

24.b4! Bxb4 25.Nc2! and Black is going to lose a piece. Euwe chose 25...Bd2 26.Bxd2 Nb2+ 27.Ke2 and resigned six moves later.

Capablanca Making It Look Easy

I've been working on Alekhine's tournament books for NY 1924 and Nottingham 1936. I've finished the first, but am still adding the annotations to my "Master Games" database (a real pain, because all the annotations are footnotes, so there's a lot of page flipping involved). I'm about halfway through the Nottingham book.

I keep finding that it's the little details that I find the most interesting. I don't retain much about the games as a whole, even if it won a brilliancy prize. Yet Alekhine can mention in a footnote "This move loses a tempo", and I can appreciate how such minor inaccuracies can lead towards a loss.

Similarly, I'm once again impressed by the elegance of Capablanca's endgames, especially against weaker players. One of my favorite chess books was Capablanca's Best Chess Endings by Chernev. If there is one player's style I would most like to emulate, it's Capablanca's ability to accumulate advantages and then win the endgame. A lot of the moves in these endgames feel natural, or even simple.

Here is a snippet from the game Thomas-Capablanca, Nottingham 1936, after White's 25. a4?



White's last move has weakened the b-pawn, and Capablanca proceeds to nail it down as a weakness:

25...Bxd4 My instinct would have been to retain the bishop, because there will be play on both sides of the board. Fritz seems to want to keep the bishop as well. 26. Rxd4

Alekhine gives 26.cxd4 Re1 27. Kg2 Rxf1 28. Kxf1 Ke7 29. Rc3 Kd6 30. Rc5 Rb8 31. Ra5 Rb6, which completely ties White up.

I looked briefly at 27. Rxe1 (instead of Alekhine's 27.Kg2) 27... Rxe1+ 28. Kg2 Rc1 29. Re3, where the white rook cuts off the king from running to the queenside. However, Black's majority is on the kingside and it looks like Black can work on both sides of the board towards a win.

Now, however, Capablanca's crisp play nails down the new weakness:

26... c5 27. Rd2 Rb8 28. Rb1 a5



The b-pawn is a fixed weakness, whereas Black's e-pawn isn't really weak. The king will move towards the queenside and help protect it. Black's king is then well placed in the center, whereas White's king is off to the side keeping an eye on Black's majority.

Capablanca concluded by playing on both sides of the board, using both his majority on the kingside and White's weaknesses on the queenside. The game concluded: 29.Kg2 Ke6 30. Rc2 Kd6 31. f3 g5 32. Kg3 h5 33. h4 gxh4+ 34. Kxh4 Re3 35. Kg3 c4 36. b4 axb4 37. cxb4 Rb3 0-1

The "simple idea" here for me was fixing the backwards b-pawn as a weakness. However, we can see a number of other classic themes in this example: mobilization of a pawn majority; play on both sides of the board and the principle of two weaknesses; centralizing the king; control of an open file.