Too nice, even in a social game a win with a Bishop sac & using what you have been learning is worth a lot, it doesn't matter that your opponent made a mistake not giving himself an escape, someone has to make a mistake for there to be a result.
Well done!!
I should have included in my last post that I found social games a good place to test things out without the usual pressures of a tournament or even club play. Also the most valuable thing I got out of the Stonewall was the ability to win with a sacrifice. I learned a lot about tactics from that opening if I got to play it out with no weird moves from Black.
Maybe we should take a quick look at pressure sometime because it does effect how your thought processes work. What we discuss here or play in a social game is very different from a room full of ppl trying to kill each other OTB with clocks ticking, ratings at stake, prizes etc. or in your case knowing that a lot of ppl here are waiting to see how you did & analyse your game.
Jaglavak, I just had a moment to come back and look at the computer, and I read your post. You are very clear. I now understand what you mean by target, and by control. And I understand that we have not yet discussed combinations or improving pieces. Its good (helpful) that you clarified the distinctions, and that you clarified what we have not yet discussed. Thank you.
@QueenTakesKnightOops: thanks for affirming that playing the social game and winning it was 'legit'. It was helpful to me.
I have to decide what opening I will play tonight; whether to go back to the Caro as Black, the QG as white, or the stonewall, given that I haven't had time to review any of those openings, and I won't get back to the computer until later tonight when I get home from chess club.
So just lieave it up to me, and I'll do my best. I think the simplest, and most direct thing to remember regarding opening is 1. it doesn't really matter at this point what opening I choose as long as I don't do anything overtly stupid, like move a lot of pawns, or refrain from castling in the belief that by not castling I am keeping my K safe, and 2. Play everything like the middlegame, look for targets, look for what is being targetted by my opponent, 3. calculate the targets as many moves as I can (usually 3 i.e. 1.5 moves, but I figure I could push that a little higher...I'll try). And 4. When I realize that I'm being emotional or thinking, think of it as playing music...I need to be looking/listening, not thinking/feeling. In playing piano the listening is what drives the playing. In chess the looking should drive the playing. Anything that is other than looking is a distraction from the playing. This is an 'eye' activity.
I continue to follow this fascinating thread in hopes of learning what various very good chess players are trying to teach Somebodysson. I am in somewhat the same position he is in that I know the various rules and principles of chess, but don't seem to be able to execute them very well.
The latest statements from Jaglavat continue to give me hope, but at the same time seem to be missing some vital elements. My problem is that he states lots of negatives (don't do this, don't do that). What needs telling isn't just what not to and not to think, but tell us what TO DO and TO THINK. He states he has developed "an internalized move selection method" and I say Yes Yes -- tell us more. Give us some details about that method. That is what I want to hear. But nothing follows, so still all I realize is what not to do and think.
I don't mean this to be negative. I have tremendous respect for Jaglavat and everything he has written, but please Mr. Jaglavak, can you please take that one step further to complete our education by giving us the details that are still missing?
I guess its no secret now that I am a fan of the Stonewall Attack as a club level opening. I find it interesting that Jaglavak rates it as high as he does & I like his comment that it is slightly better as it delivers Mate in the middle game (if you get it right)
As we are starting to clarify the concepts of targets & mobility the Stonewall raises some interesting questions.
The Stonewall name actually refers to the pawn structure ie pawns on c3, d4, e3, f4. This pawn structure is proven to be of value both in the Stonewall Attack & Defence but it does effect the ability of the DSB & Queens rook to participate early in the game. So if, you decide to use it you will need to play by Jaglavaks principles very precisely as you have fewer pieces at your disposal.
Now this may be a good thing, less pieces means easier board vision & fewer lines to calculate. You can adopt all Jaglavaks principles possibly in a more manageable fashion. But you need to get it right. Tactics abound in the Stonewall, many with sacrifces as you found in your recent social game so I think it does have merit as an opening that fits with targeting & mobility.
So I'm not trying to push you into it because its a favourite opening of mine, but if you do decide to use it maybe what I am saying will make sense. Comments welcome Jaglavak, I don't want to send him down the wrong path if I still haven't got all your concepts straight yet.
hi everyone. My opponent was no show tonight. I have three tournament games coming up on chess.com in the next week. I'll post them as I have them. In the meantime I'll continue to do tactics puzzles in a mad scramble to imprint patterns into my head, and I'll continue to try to look for all targets, i.e. all pieces I can attack with pieces, in my tactics puzzles. Keep up the good work everyone. I'll do my end of it. 
Does this happen often? What a let down! I was looking forward to the game.
jojojopo wrote:
Does this happen often? What a let down! I was looking forward to the game.
Me too! Its happened twice in three and a half months at chess club,and its happened twice out of five games on chess.com tournament! So chess.com has the worse average. But, to be fair, probably several of the people I was scheduled to play on chess.com tourney were first timers, so the undependable ones hadn't been weeded out yet. I play tonight online. I'll post as soon as I can. Its a late night game.
i'm looking at this on my phone which is only semismart. Am I missing something? Where are Jaglavak's posts? I'll get to a computer in an hour so I'll look again, but this is...weird and unusual.
bizarro. Account closed. All of his posts vanished, except where people quoted them. Bizarro. We live in strange times. I'm going to post my game as soon as I can after its over. QueenTakesKnightOops, hang in there. This is too good an experiment to drop it for one or two people's diassapearance. QueentakesKnightOops, your description of "I didn't turn it off so much as when I caught myself doing the evaluating I'm used to doing I caught myself and said 'move, Move' was nice. I want you to keep posting the results of your experiment. And jojopo, I think we can proceed with an attmpt to create a game of improving our targetting. for e.g., when I went over the casual game I played a few days ago, (and I know I didn't post it...I will when I get to it, probably Thursday), I realized I didn't make what could have been a winning move earlier...but I didn't take that move seriously because it 'looked' too transgressing of maxims. It involved pushing a pawn that should not have been pushed according to the conventional maxims (pushing king pawns, etc). So part of targetting has to include considering all targets, and somehow paring down those targets quickly, efficiently, so that you can focus down on a few targets, and eventually choose one.
I'd like us to together create a targetting-generator game, in honor of Jaglavak who graced our pages for that great time! And who knows, he's probably going to be lurking under another assumed name. Jaglavak, by the way, is not his name; its a species of ant. Literally.
Your report on Jaglavak's departure is truly a sad one. He gave so much to many of us and I had hopes that even more would follow.
If you are out their with a new identity, Jaglavak, please let us know!
He was banned for cheating http://www.chess.com/home/game_archive?member=jaglavak
He was about 2500 without an OTB title. I don't think we will see him back.
What! Seriously? How do you know this? I was suspicious about his ratings,his online,turn-based rating was so high,but in comparison,his other ratings were so low;and that is very untypical for ratings.Initially,I payed attention to what he said, later I decided he was a windbag.The longer this thread ran the more suspicious I became of him,but I am mildly surprised by this turn of events.That guy reeked of ego.
Sombodysson, I think it is more about how you approach the game more than anything else. If you look at it less "tit-for-tat" and just play your game with a plan in place, you can make things happen. That being said there were probably spots were if you sac'd a minor piece you could have totally blown up his position.
Just changed the url link of a game archive to his name, but he's on page 3 of the cheating pages. Banned 21 hours ago.
hi everyone. It will not help us if we let this thread become a discussion of Jaglavak, or of cheating. It actually makes no difference to me on this thread whether he was cheating or not; his cheating or not is actually completely irrelevant to me insofar as I'm interested in what he had to teach, which was compelling, important, and unusual. I did not look to him for ethical leadership, but for chess pedagogy.
There are plenty of threads on chess.com which discuss, or more properly speculate on how chess.com purports to catch cheaters, and if you areinterested in those please go to those threads. As you well know, I am not a cheater, unless I 1. am a completely failed cheater, who can hardly win a game even with cheating or 2. I'm actually a GM who deflates his rating so that I can attract interesting advice in an attempt to learn what the opposition is teaching.
In either case, that is not why you are here. You are here because there was a very interesting conversation, started by me, and sustained especially by my ongoing conversation with Jaglavak, and sustained by a few other very generous and excellent individuals, including McHeath, Yaroslavl, QueenTakesK nightOops, and a few others.
I invite everyone to conti nue participating in the conversation about targets, targetting, and my games.
but first, I have a game to play in ten minutes.
soon, somebodysson
great posts QueenTakesKnightOops and Jaglavak. Yes, Jagalvak, I understand your distinction. A target is a piece to win or a pawn promotion square. Any other square is a something that I may threaten to occupy, possibly in order to win material.
Still, doesn't that leave most moves in a game 'position improving' moves? Or do I need to start looking for moves that will initiate combinations? Am I looking for combinations most of the game? If so, I understand. It is very clear how that would eliminate postional and maximal thinking.
(on another note, since QueenTakesKnightOops mentioned his game with his wife...I plahyed an informal, untimed game with my old chess buddy last night. I moved 1. d4 and when I saw 1....d5 I decided on a lark to try the stonewall one last time. However I moved Nf3 before moving f4 so I never moved my f pawn, and instead I concentrated my efforts on Bd3, preserving the Bd3 on the b1-h7 diagonal, and on bringing my Q to the h file and lifting the R to the h file. It worked. I sacked the bishop on h7, gave check with the Q on h5, and my buddy moved g6 in a mistake, thinking this would give an escape square to the K. I gave mate on h8 with my Q, backed up by my R on h3, and no escape square for the B king. However, I really won this game by my opponent misunderstanding how to give the K an escape square. A better player would have made me give chase to a fugitive K.Still the game was a good taste of targetting the K, and tasting the blood. The taste of blood was good. And, my opponent tried very hard, successfully, to not take a tantrum about the loss, and I tried very hard, successfully, to feel peoud of myself, and especially felt that I had done you guys, my study group, proud.