Nice to meet you. I hope the offer is still open.
RB vs P
1. e4
P vs. RB
1....
1. e4 c5
1. d4
Nice to meet you as well. I notice that you mentioned on your profile playing quite a bit of correspondence chess. Did you play your games through Canadian groups or have you played in the ICCF and some of our U.S. groups as well?
I played a few correspondence games as early as 1972 when I was 13, but did not become a steady player until a few years later in 1975. I mostly have lived in small towns and driving to a chess club took some time and correspondence chess always was a good way to keep in practice for OTB tournaments, although after the mid 1980s I played considerably more correspondence chess than OTB. I guess settling down and married life will do that to you!
Anyway good luck in our games. It has been some time since I really have played on an 8x8 board for correspondence or server chess!
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3
1. d4 Nf6
I played in the Canadian Correspondence Chess Association as well as some smaller outfits that are probably no longer in existence. I played in the ICCF for a couple of years, long enough to complete a tournament but the pace was agonizingly slow and the cost of the postage was all the weekly allowance from my parents could handle, so I gave it up. I sure wish they had the internet back then.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 (Hb8)
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4
When the ICCF started organizing events through the Anglo-Pacific Tournament Bureau play-times became better. At least in those events you could play against people in countries that had a decent mail system, although the Eastern European delays were often as not increased by deliberate player delays. It would have been nicer to have server events in the 80s, but Fritz and company also would have showed up if computers had been that powerful.
I played in some obscure groups as well like Ron's Postal Chess Club, who was based nearby in Cincinnati at the time, or Zugzwang before settling on doing most of my play through CCLA and the APCT and of course ICCF. I probably played 600-700 games from 1975-2002, although more at the beginning. There were times when I was still in High School or College when I had 50 games going at a time. Once I started work and went up the rating scale I usually tried to limit myself to 20 or less.
Wow, that's a huge amount of games! I read that you've been paying lots of chess variants. I went to the Gothic Chess site back when it was rumoured Fischer and Karpov were going to have a Gothic Chess match. The larger assymetric board didn't appeal to me, for reasons I can't explain. Yasser spends some time talking about preserving the beautiful symmetry of the 64 squares. Would a 10x10, like the kind my Dutch grandfather played checkers on be as appealing?
The idea of introducing pieces into play seems a brilliant idea to me. The possibilities are abundant. One could, for example, introduce the second queen most decent chess sets come with in the same manner as the hawk and elephant are introduced in S-Chess and complicate play enormously.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 (Hb8) 3.Bc4/Hf1
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 (Hb8) 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5
The 10x10 board is interesting to play on a gives a more tactical feel or at least with Grand Chess with the piece density being at 40% it gives that feel. I have played about 20 games of Grand Chess through the Dutch site www.mindsports.net. Back in the late 90s and early 00s they held three Cyber World Championship tournaments for this variant. Christian Freeling, the inventor of this variant and Ed Van Zon(?) probably had 20-30 players participate in the three events. They even gave away a board and men for the game as well as a digital clock for the prize winners. Not too bad a prize since I think the board and men retailed above $100.00 at the time and the clock might have been another $60-$70. I don't know if you are familiar with Grand Chess, but unlike most chess variants that use a B+N or R+N piece the array was set up on three ranks more like Shogi than western chess. The game also lacks a castling move, but since the rooks are set up by themselves on the first rank they at least did not need the special move to get into the game. However just having to hoof it made the king's life a bit less comfortable!
I think entering the pieces also adds a new dimension and does get away from awkward arrays when you add the new pieces. I suppose if you want real carnage you could even add an Amazon, a Q+N piece and not just settle for the extra queen that many sets do have. I don't think that the symmetry is too big an issue. Once you are used to the boards 10x8 is O.K. to play on. Probably the toughest thing is to get away from thinking 8x8 when you are writing your moves down! However staying with an 8x8 board has the advantage of keeping the relative values of the minor pieces constant. On larger boards the Knights value dips vis a vis the Bishop. Also some of the arrays that put the knight next to the rook on the bigger boards make it harder to develop that piece effectively.
It hadn't occurred to me that the knights would suffer anemia on large boards. Other than Give Away, I haven't played any chess variants until now. It amazes me how quickly one can get lost with no access to the conventional circuitry of the classic game.
I was pondering the notation of S-Chess, thinking that instead of Nc6 (Hb8), for example) there is no reason one couldn't simply write Nc5(H). But, what about castling? Since castling on either side vacates two squares, is it permissable to introduce both the Elephant and the hawk in one move if they're available. In this case the notation would get really ponderous: 0-0 (Ee1)(Hh1).
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 (Hb8)! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4
Yes, that would be simpler notation since the entering piece has to go on the back rank square from which the piece moving exited. However adding the entry square does make it easier to refer back to when looking over the score. Also I think you can only enter one piece for any given move, so even for "short" castling the player would have to choose between the e file or h file entry for the new pieces.
One appeal to any variant is not having to rely on all those old book moves. For S-Chess there is more familiar territory, but I imagine that can be a double-edge sword. I imagine there are many variations playable in conventional chess that are not in S-Chess. Some as Yasser mentioned, we might not miss too badly, like the Berlin Wall! As a librarian and bibliofile I was always pretty well armed for openings in my correspondence games and I still have 2400+ chess books sitting around the house (both my ex-wife and Beth were very tolerant of all that space taken up!) not to mention those million+game databases. It however is nice to get away from referring to all that stuff and just play off the cuff....
Interestingly enough my aborted game in Brainking also followed a Budapest path although my opponent stopped playing after I played 3. de5. I guess he was not too interested in exploring things further. It would be nice if Brainking added Seirawan chess to their server, but I think the owner had a bad experience dealing with one particular proprietary variant.
Bughouse was probably the most common "variant" I have played, although occassionally I had talked friends into playing Grand Chess. Had you ever read Ed Lasker's old book, "Secrets I Learned from the Chess Masters"? That's where I stumbled on the Chancellor (R+N) and Archbishop (B+N) pieces for the first time, although they have gone under various others names both in the past and in more contemporary times. As teenager I thought it was a cool concept, but never really had an opportunity to play a game until I tried a game against Wayne Schmittberger through the Knights of the Square Table (NOST) postal organization. He won a nice game that later ended up being an example game for Grand Chess in Pritchard's "Encyclopedia of Chess Variants".
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8)
2400 books on chess represents a considerable investment. My mother worked in the acquisitions department of the Vancouver Public Library when I was growing up. Every so often a chess player would fall off the perch and his widow would ( gleefully I imagine) donate her spouse's of books on the game to the library where whoever was in charge of such matters would deem them unfit for the shelves and discard them. Before they were tossed or burned, there being no such thing as recycling in those days, my mother would alertly scoop them up and bring them home to me. Two beautifully bound volumes of the Chess Player's Chronicle, edited by Howard Staunton, still in mint condition, came to me that way, as did original tournament books commemorating great tournaments in New York, London, Scarborough, and elsewhere. I left them at home when I left at 18 and I suspect found their way to some Sally Ann somewhere after one of my mom's cleaning binges. Reuben Fine's 1932 Edition of MCO (revised) is all that remains of that collection, sadly.
Your right about opening surprises in S-Chess. The Sicilian is full of them, it seems. Your second move being a good example. I'm afraid I didn't respond to it in the best way, but I'll be ready next time.
I think Bobby Fischer would have been a wizard at S-Chess.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3
Converting to a Morra Gambit does seem like a good idea. The extra pieces will make the gambit even trickier. The ...Nc6/Hb8 idea in a Sicilian structure does seem to make the conventional open sicilians more difficult to play because of the attack on the queen after the exchange of knights. Still who knows, the hawk itself later might be a little exposed on c6 as well so maybe the loss of tempo is not so bad?
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1
Nothing like being an acquisitions librarian in a large city. Unfortunately in little Greenville we don't see too many chess books on the donation lists! It would have been nice to pick up a few of those 2400 books at somewhat cheaper prices, but at least I had 36 years or so to spread out the costs! (although I guess I had a few bargains like when friends or acquaintances would give up chess or the widow in Cleveland in the 1980s who was selling off her husbands collection) In any case I have few other vices with perhaps the exception of also liking historical board wargames, which also can take up a bit of space....
Do you remember what years those Chess Players Chronicles were? It was an interesting magazine, and I have a whole series of it, but only in reprinted form. A Czech publishing house, Moravian House, has reprinted a number of these. Stuanton lived up to his reputation of having an acid pen and it is entertaining to read some of the exchanges in an era before they had to worry to much about libel suits!
Funny enough it is ironic that you mentioned the Chess Player's Chronicle since I have been playing through games from the 1853 Harrwitz-Lowenthal match recently that appeared in that magazine. My chess library also contains a reprint of a more obscure publication called the British Chess Review, which was edited by Harrwitz himself from 1853-54. Staunton and Harrwitz definitely had nasty exchanges during the brief existance of Harrwitz's magazine and one wonders if Morphy had a chance to read any of this before he came over to Europe in 1858-59. If so he must have been rather naive when his own negotiations started to turn sour.
The Harrwitz-Lowenthat match is interesting because Staunton put Lowenthal up to playing this match promising to play Harrwitz later if Harrwitz won the match. However Staunton did not really want to play since he had already defeated Harrwitz back in the 1840s, although Harrwitz probably had improved in the meantime. Staunton thought Lowenthal was the much better player and did not expect to have to play such a match. Of course the follow-up match never occurred even after Harrwitz's victory! I imagine poor Lowenthal was not high on Staunton's list also when the match started to turn against him and this negative attitude was reflected in Staunton's annotations towards the end of the match. The match also was pretty interesting having a dramatic turn around. Harrwitz came from a 9-2 deficit to win the match by an 11-10 score with several draws thrown in!
Please forgive the history lesson, history in addition to books is another of my weaknesses!
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1 Nc6
No apologies necessary. Your fascinating note will send me back into the electronic archives in search of the games of Harrwitz. Thanks so much. I'm sorry I can't remember the years of those volumes. I recall they were beautifully bound. I don't recall any articles, just hundreds of games, each with a brief introduction and brief notes at the end that read like, "We believe King's Knight to his third square was by far the superior move."
I remember being impressed with the games Baron Tassilo von Heyderbrandt und der Lasa, who held the record for the chess player with the longest name until Octavio Figueira Trompowsky de Almeida arrived on the scene. Apparently Professor Nathan Divinsky of the University of British Columbia, has done a lot research into the Baron's life.
Michael Adams has said that he wasn't too impressed with the games of the old masters. Given that these men were turning over new ground without the benefit of much in the way of books, much less databases, the British GM's assessment of their play seems unfair.
Ray Keene has done a book on Staunton. Now that ordering books on line is easy, perhaps I'll order it for Xmas. Have you read it? I recall that Bobby Fischer spent a lot of time going through the games of the Staunton and his contemporaries and was impressed enough to name Staunton to his ten best players of all time list.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3
Many of those old magazines were nicely bound. The trouble is that in the originals many of the 19th century magazines even when you can find them will set you back more than a $150-$250.00+ an annual volume. I have to admit for a magazine that is a bit out of my price range, although I have broken down now and then to buy a 19th century tournament book for that amount. The trouble is if you start collecting magazines it can nearly be an endless and very expensive proposition. For periodicals, I have been happy enough to read and buy the reprints. At least at $25.00-$30.00 or so you can afford to buy a run....
Keene's book on Staunton is good and I read it a number of years ago. It has 60 games, mostly with his even games, although he may have played more games at pawn and move or pawn and two moves than regular even games! Incredible that the top players of that day could give this handicap and other higher ones to other strong players, but chess theory was still in its infancy and the proper techniques of simplifying a position to an endgame to bring home the point weren't always known to 19th century players. Even to those who probably did know it at least instinctively, they still seem to have preferred a more hack and slash style of play. When facing a good player this was not the best strategy even if it might have been more fun!
Returning to the Staunton book, one nice thing about this 1976 publication it was that it was early enough in Keene's writing career and like with his better known book on Nimzovich, he still was putting some work into the writing rather than trying to rush books out as quick as possible for profit as with so many of his more recent "instant match" books. If you can find Levy's book "Howard Staunton" as well the two compliment one another. Levy's has much more prose and reprints a lot of the controversial exchanges that took place in Staunton's magazines and columns with other players of the time. A Canadian fellow, Bryan Knight, also did a little book in 1974 ("Howard Staunton Uncrowned Chess Champion of the World") which reprinted a lot of material from Staunton's Handbook, The Chess Tournament, Chess Praxis and Chess Companion.
Modern players do have a lower opinion of the play of former days. 19th century players were definitely amateurs compared to today's players both in attitude and preparation. Many ideas yet needed to be discovered not to mention they did not have million game databases, informants and hundreds of new books and computer software appearing every year to study hours on end or to use as examples. However, even if they were more amateurish in their approach to chess, it is interesting using the games for instruction as many of the mistakes that are present there are a little easier to spot and are often similar to what we mere mortals do as well in our own club and tournament play.
By the way did you find many Harrwitz games? I wonder how many of his games still appear in databases?
Anyway I hope you had a Happy Holiday and sorry for my delay. Christmas can get a little hectic, but now it is back to reality and a few chess moves as well. Also never knew Trompowsky's name was that long. You learn something new every day!
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E)
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6
I found 154 of Harrwitz' games at Chessgames.com. Of these, only four were against Staunton, all of them losses. I checked the Chessmetrics site where it stated that Harrwitz was the highest rated player in the world for two years. Though he lost their match, the fact that Harrwitz took three games from Morphy, a couple with the black pieces, suggests he was one of the best in his prime. He certainly did better than Staunton who ran for cover when Morphy arrived in Europe.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7.Hxg6
Yes, Harrwitz does get a little credit for actually playing although his "moral superiority" over Staunton disappeared once things went against him in that match. He first began delaying play and eventually ceased althougher before the stiuplated 7 wins for that match were actually reached. Morphy probably should have added a "no show" forfeit clause like Lowenthal did in his match. Harrwitz actually forfeited a couple of games in that match to take leave to recover at the Ocean when things turned against him early in that match.
How did your Christmas Holiday go? My son is enjoying his new Wii console. I have to admit enjoying the basic Tennis game on that and I guess there is a bit of an advantage to actually playing real tennis since I have a 6-0 advantage over him today, although he did cream me pretty well in bowling, which is something I have only done once. Of course his favorite things are games that have Pokemon in them!
I saw there is an interesting discussion on variants to a variant. I think that if we want to bring back a viable Fianchetto, probably the suggestion made my Seirawan himself to make a drop an actual move rather than a bonus move when another piece moves out would allow safer King-side Fianchettoes again. Still I think it is worth playing the faster pace version a little first before trying to slow things down or restrict entry locations.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6 8. h3
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7.Hxg6 Bxc3+ and if 8. bc then 8.... hg6
I had a fine Christmas. The temperature dropped to -20 for a week. Ponds, Lakes, and even the large parts of the rivers froze as hard as concrete. After two weeks of this, snow fell for a week leaving perfect conditions for cross country and downhill skiing, skating, and snowshoeing. I gave my wife a pair of snow shoes so that she could come tramping through the woods with me. She give me Sirius Satellite Radio. I only listen to CBC, now I can tune into BBC, Radio Netherlands, and NPR as I drive my truck to nearest fishing hole. We're surrounded by miracles.
I was also given Ronald Wright's What is America? A Short History of the New World Order. It's a companion to two other books he's written on the same theme, A Short History of Progress and Stolen Continents. I found the latter two fascinating and am enjoying the former.
Wii--whee. Another piece of electronic wizardry, to be sure. A friend's kid has one. Do they have a Chess program, I wonder?
Panzerschiff? Mein Gott! Was ist? I've heard of a Panzer tank. Is a Panzerschiff a boat for transporting Panzer tanks? I've been meanng to ask.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6 8.h3 Be7
1. d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.de5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5.Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7.Hxg6 Bxc3+ 8. bc hg6 9.Qc2/Ed1
What can I say about Panzerschiff? It has become my standard handle on gaming sites. Naval history and wargaming is another hobby of mine and "Panzerschiff" is just the German name for any kind of ironclad or armored ship, although it most commonly referred to Armored Cruisers by the end of the 19th century. Later by the 1930s and after the amoured cruiser went the way of the dinosaurs, the three ships of the Deutschland Class: Graf Spee, Lutzow/Deutschland (renamed Lutzow to avoid the psychological damage of losing a ship named after the country) and Admiral Scheer were called Panzerschiffe. "Pocket Battleship" was used more commonly by we English speakers since the ships mounted a weak battleship armament on a Cruiser hull. They displaced approximately 12,000 tons and carried a main armament of six 11 inch guns.
As a kid I liked the idea behind their design where they could theoretically outgun other cruisers and run away from larger slower ships. However the idea was quickly flawed and by the beginning of the 2nd World War, two French Battlecruisers (Dunkerque and Strasbourg) could both blow them out of the water and have run them down as well as could the three older British Battlecruisers, Hood, Repulse and Renown, which has been in service since 1920 or earlier for the "R"s. So the concept was rather doubtful unless they could have reached the 31-33 knot speeds other "treaty" heavy cruisers had at the time. With their diesal engines they could make somewhere between 26 and 28 knots depending on what reference one refers to. However they did have a nice cruising range and Admiral Scheer before air power became too dominant actually sailed into the Indian Ocean. However flawed or not a certain fondness for the ships never wore off, I guess, and is why I still use the handle. In any case most of the good chess ones are used quickly, although I did play under "Vehrefisch" from time to time in the ICC.
Fortunately our weather in Ohio has not been that cold! The books you mentioned sound interesting. I have to admit not being too big a fan of my country's foreign policy and wars over the last 8 years and I hope we return to a more cooperative arrangement where we try to listen and consult with our allies before going off someplace half cocked.
Do you like to read History? We have a nice military history and Ancient History section in the Greenville Libary. One nice thing about being the head of a library is that one has a certain influence on what kinds of materials we order, although I have shown remarkable restraint when it comes to adding chess books! While Dayton has a nice chess club it still is about an hour's drive from here and most chess players in Greenville are just casual players and just need pretty basic books in cases where there is any interest in reading about chess.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6 8.h3 Be79. Bf4
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. de5 Ng4 4. Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5. Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7. Hxg6 Bxc3+ 8. bc hg6 9. Qc2/Ed1 Rh5
My reading is omnivorous. The only history I've read recently are recent histories. The most recent was Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, a fascinating examination of the application of the principles of Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics throughout the world by CIA backed dictators and ultra right wing governments. ( I wonder if the folks who award the Nobel Prize will revoke Friedman's prize posthumously now that the adoption his whacky economic theory, in whole or in part, by the the late great G8 has wrecked the global economy.) Before that I plowed through Thomas Ricks' Fiasco, so that I could get some idea of how Bush and the boys turned Iraq into Hell on Earth. In my youth I divided my time between the history of WW II (and though I came across the Hood and the Graf Spee and pocket battle ships, curiously, I can't recall a single mention of Panzerschiffe!) and tales of the Roman Empire.
Ronald Wright spends a lot of print on the crazy notion of Manifest Destiny, examining its religious underpinnings. He also argues that the politics of the Iroquois Five Nations, and the political praxis of other First Nations had a profound influence on the drafting of your constitution.
What's the population of Greenville? Terrace and its outlying regions has 12 000 souls when everybody's home. The chess section in out library consists of Chess for Dummies.
Thanks for the interesting stuff on warships. You knowledge is impressive.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6 8.h3 Be7 9. Bf4 e5
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. de5 Ng4 4. Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5. Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7. Hxg6 Bxc3+ 8. bc hg6 9. Qc2/Ed1 Rh5 10. e6
Well it looks like we might have shared a few books. If it is the same Friedman, I enjoyed his "Decline of Great Powers" that I read many years ago. I also read "Fiasco" when it came out a few years ago, and it definitely reinforced my view on how big an error the invasion of Iraq was at that time. On the whole I thought the proper response to the New York attack was a police action and in retrospect even 1% of the money spent to conduct both the war in Iraq and its twin in Afghanistan would have bought a lot of intelligence, not to mention assassins to knock off the guys who ordered the attacks in the first place. However just as Jr. High kids get pleasure out of thumping on one another, so do nations at times when dealing with their enemies. Alas, the dark side of human nature, which continues to be well illustrated by what is going on in Gaza now.
Your town might be the twin of Greenville. We have about 13,000 people and the town is the county seat of Darke County, which is a county pretty heavy into agriculture. Unfortunately like a lot of Ohio what light industry we have has fallen on hard times and we are having our fair share of lay-offs. In fact my cataloger at the library just had news her husband was in for a longer layoff after having been off a couple of weeks already around Christmas. We in government have not felt things too badly as yet, although library budgets have been frozen here for a number of years. We probably will have to do a bit of belt tightening and the timing for the recession could have been better. We just finished a 10,000 square foot addition to the library, which pretty much drained the savings that we had previously accumulated during the boom years in the 90s.
My library in Greenville probably has 30 chess books or so, although most are elementary, although I did donate a set of one of my earlier editions of the "Encyclopedia of Chess Openings", which I imagine has never been checked out! I helped out a couple of years with a High School Chess program, and thought I could justify buying a few books to help support that program, but in the end we never really had more than casual players. Even before the High School Program I thought the library should have at least one new chess book a year! If we had done a third year we thought about expanding the program to the Jr. High, but, Matt, the teacher who was behind it went off in another direction and his big interest since 2007 has been in helping kids at risk.
Have you worked with a High School program? While I have tought tournament players, both adult and scholastic before this was my first experience with trying to motivate casual players. I don't think I was particularly successful and never could decide whether I should do the "coach" thing and say if you want to be in the program you have to work or do as I pretty much did and let them have fun with the game and do what they wanted to do.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6 8.h3 Be7 9. Bf4 e5 10. Be3
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. de5 Ng4 4. Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5. Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7. Hxg6 Bxc3+ 8. bc hg6 9. Qc2/Ed1 Rh5 10. e6 de
Yet another seniors' moment. In my score pad, I'd written Rh5(E) and here I typed Rh5. I'm not sure it makes a difference.
So, Greenville is a small town, really small by US standards. We know layoffs in Terrace. a few years ago we had three two large mills running full shifts. Now we have no mills. That doesn't mean we've stopped wrecking our old growth forests. Now we fall trees and ship them off, along with the jobs that should be attached to them, like a dutiful third world country. Globalization is killing small business where you live and 'it's killing it here too. Thing is, the whole notion was bogus to begin with. It's trading with ourselves that kept us afloat economically, and trading with ourselves was more environmentally friendly. When our so-called leaders bought into "free trade" and globalized trading on a huge scale they embarked on a wrong headed paradigm that is now killing us all.
I was reading your last post with the History Channel droning in the background. Coincidentally there was an animated history of the sea battle between your country and Japan punctuated with real footage. It was a fantastic reenactment of the naval battle that almost sunk the Enterprise. Have you see it?
No, I've never taught chess to high schoolers. I've taught them fly casting and fly tying and fly fishing though. I'm thinking that utilizing the internet might be the best way to teach kids of any age the game. Kids are so adept at mastering compuconcepts and so facile at computer operation, and most schools are equipped with computer labs. It ought to be easy to get kids playing game after game after game, which we both know is the way to learn chess,
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6/Hb8! 3.Bc4/Hf1 e6 4.d4 cd4 5. c3 dc3 6.Nc3 Nf6 7. Qe2(E) d6 8.h3 Be7 9. Bf4 e5 10. Be3 Be6
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. de5 Ng4 4. Bf4 Bb4+(Hf8) 5. Nc3/Hb1 Nc6 6. Nf3 Hg6 7. Hxg6 Bxc3+ 8. bc hg6 9. Qc2/Ed1 Rh5 10. e6 de 11 Exd8+ 9...Rh5/E would have made the e6 idea a sacrifice rather than just an exchange as it is now. It's hard to say even against 9...Rh5/E playing 10.e6 anyway may be a better move than say 10. Ed5 or 10.e3 which are other "safer" candidates.
I wonder if that was the old Victory at Sea series or something more recent? The Victory at Sea was done in the 1950s and has some great battle footage shot from World War 2 sources. Some of the more recent documentaries often have quite interesting computer animated graphics some based on those done by such games as Rome at War, etc. I assume they were covering the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Carrier damaged there was cobbled together soon enough to participate in the Midway Battle, but alas it was not lucky enough to survive both battles. There was a lot of luck in those early carrier battles and the Japanese could just have easily have won the Midway battle if "luck" or providence had gone their way. Perhaps they might have anyway if they had kept their fleet concentrated rather than spreading it over half the Northern Pacific with the complicated plan they came up with for that battle.
Globalization has had its plusses and minusses. On our side our politicians and business leaders have been rather short sighted and the pursuit of maximum profits in the short term has arguably hurt our economies in the long run. However there have been good things and some formerly really bad places now have better standards of living overseas and even if in some nations are still only making "sweat shop" wages this is better than the often abysmal conditions many people had before starving on small farms in backward rural communities.
I forget the exact title of the book I read a few years ago who emphasized this, I think it was "On Poverty" and it delt with the truly horrific poverty in the developing World and not the "relative poverty" in the developed world. The author's point was that economic development is not a zero sum game and these gains in the developing world under "globilization" have often outweighed some of the negative impact on the developed world's economies generally to the overall benefit of both. Still I guess if you are one of the guys that used to make things in North America that "zero sum" logic is not so clear and again is it always the best idea to sacrifice your manufacturing capacity? I always had a little chuckle when people here would sabre rattle about China. It we ever went to war with China in a few months we no longer would have anything to buy in out stores and our economy would probably collapse before we could hope to defeat them in a war with all our wonderful military gadgets on which we have spent so much treasure!
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