Nova Daily - 29 March 2025

Hi!

Because I didn't want to write something about Harry Potter again (I think I could literally write something for each of this year's remaining blogs about the Potter universe), I decided to look through some of my chess literature. One of the New In Chess Magazines attracted my attention: the 2024#1 edition. On the front it reads that Matthew Sadler has called something "The finest chess book I've ever read." An intriguing clickbait snippet, but I was curious which book this would be. It turns out to be In Black and White, the autobiography by Dutch grandmaster Paul van der Sterren.

Originally released in Dutch in 2011, In Black and White was only translated into English in 2023. In its 768 pages the author lays out his chess journey, which took him to the Candidates in 1994. He doesn't stop there, and he explains in a very honest way how he experienced his decline as a serious competitor after that.

Honesty dictates that I haven't read the book in its entirety yet. Nor did I read its addendum, Mindful Chess. I did skim through it, and by this I became acquainted with a line that I now hold very dear. Several years back I got acquainted with the Bent Larsen quote "You can see that a chess-player is maturing when they change their openings." The quote below, which is the opening quote from the 1997 chapter in Van der Sterren, echoes this sentiment in a funny way, and I use it every time I'm being asked after my opening repertoire:

The road from e4 via d4 to c4 is inherent in human nature.

- Vlastimil Hort

The game

It took two attempts to get a game started. The first game I was to play was with black against a player who took too long to play their first move, meaning the game aborted. They did shoot me a friend request afterwards, which I take to mean it wasn't an intentional forfeit.

The second game, with white this time, saw 1.c4. For some reason my opponent went too far with their attempts to punish my setup and lost so much material within the first 19 moves that they felt compelled to resign.

My thoughts:

I'll be finally free tomorrow so I'll be able to catch up on some analytical work. Luckily two of this week's opponents were so kind to hand over the full point within 20 moves, which saves me a lot of time.