A handful of nineteenth century players sometimes spent hours thinking about a single move. Alexander McDonnell was especially notorious.
Blitz and Bullet are not chess
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Ziryab wrote:
A handful of nineteenth century players sometimes spent hours thinking about a single move. Alexander McDonnell was especially notorious.
Was that over the board? I don't feel so bad now about taking 15 minutes or so on one move. lol
Amen to that.
Nov 26, 2020
0
#445
JeffGreen333 wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
A handful of nineteenth century players sometimes spent hours thinking about a single move. Alexander McDonnell was especially notorious.
Was that over the board? I don't feel so bad now about taking 15 minutes or so on one move. lol
Yes. Read up on the McDonnell — De Labourdonnais matches in 1834. Labourdonnais would play whist, socialize, and even have some beverages while waiting for his opponent to move. McDonnell seemed to try to see everything, while Labourdonnais moved almost instantly.
Five matches and a total of 85 games. Labourdonnais won four matches and prevailed in about 2/3 of the decisive games.
I had an opponent use 38 minutes once, and my reply was made in 22. That was the longest single move (both players moving) in my OTB experience. He had blundered a piece a few moves earlier and this was his last opportunity to create complications that would keep him in the game. It was also the reserve section of a state tournament and we were on board one in the penultimate round. Winning assured me at least a tie for first.
Ziryab wrote:
JeffGreen333 wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
A handful of nineteenth century players sometimes spent hours thinking about a single move. Alexander McDonnell was especially notorious.
Was that over the board? I don't feel so bad now about taking 15 minutes or so on one move. lol
Yes. Read up on the McDonnell — De Labourdonnais matches in 1834. Labourdonnais would play whist, socialize, and even have some beverages while waiting for his opponent to move. McDonnell seemed to try to see everything, while Labourdonnais moved almost instantly.
Five matches and a total of 85 games. Labourdonnais won four matches and prevailed in about 2/3 of the decisive games.
I had an opponent use 38 minutes once, and my reply was made in 22. That was the longest single move (both players moving) in my OTB experience. He had blundered a piece a few moves earlier and this was his last opportunity to create complications that would keep him in the game. It was also the reserve section of a state tournament and we were on board one in the penultimate round. Winning assured me at least a tie for first.
According to my sources, Louis De La Bourdonnais was rated about 80 points higher than Alexander McDonnell, at McDonnell's peak in 1834, and up to 250 points higher most of his career. Alexandre Deschapelles was actually De La Bourdonnais' main rival. Those two were the Kasparov and Karpov of their generation and were far above the rest of the field and together they dominated chess from 1821 until Howard Staunton came onto the chess scene in 1838. So, it doesn't surprise me that McDonnell needed a lot more time to give him a decent game.
mzamel wrote:
anyone above 1600 blitz is chess
I am a chess piece???
For my case yes those are chess
Nov 27, 2020
0
#450
JeffGreen333 wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
JeffGreen333 wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
A handful of nineteenth century players sometimes spent hours thinking about a single move. Alexander McDonnell was especially notorious.
Was that over the board? I don't feel so bad now about taking 15 minutes or so on one move. lol
Yes. Read up on the McDonnell — De Labourdonnais matches in 1834. Labourdonnais would play whist, socialize, and even have some beverages while waiting for his opponent to move. McDonnell seemed to try to see everything, while Labourdonnais moved almost instantly.
Five matches and a total of 85 games. Labourdonnais won four matches and prevailed in about 2/3 of the decisive games.
I had an opponent use 38 minutes once, and my reply was made in 22. That was the longest single move (both players moving) in my OTB experience. He had blundered a piece a few moves earlier and this was his last opportunity to create complications that would keep him in the game. It was also the reserve section of a state tournament and we were on board one in the penultimate round. Winning assured me at least a tie for first.
According to my sources, Louis De La Bourdonnais was rated about 80 points higher than Alexander McDonnell, at McDonnell's peak in 1834, and up to 250 points higher most of his career. Alexandre Deschapelles was actually De La Bourdonnais' main rival. Those two were the Kasparov and Karpov of their generation and were far above the rest of the field and together they dominated chess from 1821 until Howard Staunton came onto the chess scene in 1838. So, it doesn't surprise me that McDonnell needed a lot more time to give him a decent game.
Alexandre Deschapelles was La Bourdonnais’ teacher. By the early 1830s, La Bourdonnais had exceeded him in skill and was considered the best player in France. McDonnell had risen to the top in Great Britain. It was for this reason that the two played a series of matches. The first match was close, but won by the Frenchman. McDonnell prevailed in the second match. Through the last three matches, the superiority of La Bourdonnais was made evident, but McDonnell still won some games.
The ratings you are looking at were created in the late-twentieth century, and could not have been known to the players. They reflect the results of the matches. The players had only their games to determine who was stronger.
It was in the 1950s that numerical chess ratings came into existence. Before that, players were measured only by whether they could play with all the pieces, or whether they needed to be given odds. Deschapelles gave at least a knight odds to all of his opponents, except La Bourdonnais.
Ziryab wrote:
According to my sources, Louis De La Bourdonnais was rated about 80 points higher than Alexander McDonnell, at McDonnell's peak in 1834, and up to 250 points higher most of his career. Alexandre Deschapelles was actually De La Bourdonnais' main rival. Those two were the Kasparov and Karpov of their generation and were far above the rest of the field and together they dominated chess from 1821 until Howard Staunton came onto the chess scene in 1838. So, it doesn't surprise me that McDonnell needed a lot more time to give him a decent game.
Alexandre Deschapelles was La Bourdonnais’ teacher. By the early 1830s, La Bourdonnais had exceeded him in skill and was considered the best player in France. McDonnell had risen to the top in Great Britain. It was for this reason that the two played a series of matches. The first match was close, but won by the Frenchman. McDonnell prevailed in the second match. Through the last three matches, the superiority of La Bourdonnais was made evident, but McDonnell still won some games.
The ratings you are looking at were created in the late-twentieth century, and could not have been known to the players. They reflect the results of the matches. The players had only their games to determine who was stronger.
It was in the 1950s that numerical chess ratings came into existence. Before that, players were measured only by whether they could play with all the pieces, or whether they needed to be given odds. Deschapelles gave at least a knight odds to all of his opponents, except La Bourdonnais.
Thanks for the history. Yes, the ratings gaps that I gave were based on estimated ELO ratings. Someone put a lot of work into coming up with those estimates though.
backwardinduction wrote:
I agree now that blitz makes sense, like 10 min games. But I strongly reconmend chess.com to do something to limit the prevaling bullet "chess" among low-rating players, since thinking carefully is a good habit for low-rating players like me to improve.
Of course the authoritarian guy from China wants to limit what people do with their time when they play chess.
Ziryab wrote:
This site?
http://www.edochess.ca/
Actually, I got that data from this chart, but he might have gotten it from that website. Not sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2DHpW79w0Y
Redgreenorangeyellow wrote:
backwardinduction wrote:
I agree now that blitz makes sense, like 10 min games. But I strongly reconmend chess.com to do something to limit the prevaling bullet "chess" among low-rating players, since thinking carefully is a good habit for low-rating players like me to improve.
Of course the authoritarian guy from China wants to limit what people do with their time when they play chess.
Chess.com cares more about gaining paying members than it does about us becoming better chess players. So, whatever is the most popular time control is going to remain here forever. I'm guessing that bullet and blitz are the most popular nowadays, although they aren't my favorites.
Nov 28, 2020
0
#456
SimonSeirup a écrit :
GM Allan Stig Rasmussen from Denmark, recommend players to play blitz to improve.
He must be the only one!
Nov 28, 2020
0
#457
Marie-AnneLiz wrote:
SimonSeirup a écrit :
GM Allan Stig Rasmussen from Denmark, recommend players to play blitz to improve.
He must be the only one!
I took lessons from a National Master several years ago.
He recommended blitz to many of his students, especially the most timid ones, as he found that blitz forced them to make decisions at the board, taught them to value the initiative, and encouraged them to move past the hurdle of constantly second-guessing themselves, as "the ticking clock can't be pleaded with or reasoned with".
Nov 28, 2020
0
#458
I know a national master that think the climate change is a hoax and that the earth is flat!
The consensus among coach is for any beginners to Think! carefully on Each move!
Everybody is ignoring one huge elephant in the room
If chess was made to play the best moves every round, relying only on skill, then why were clocks made? I'm almost certain sometimes some grandmasters have to hurry because the time control isn't enough (in classical), so if what I said in the beginning is what makes chess "real" or "not", then, there is no real chess! Apart from unlimited time, but I'm going to make the assumption that clocks were added to speed up the game or something related (feel free to correct me) Blitz just enhances a feature that was added to the game, classical however, a little less.
If you have a reason with time, get rid of clocks. Then you pontentially have games that last hours at hand.
Because, at some point in time, somebody intentionally took too long to move. Probably to get his opponent to go on tilt or to stall because he was losing. If time abuse is taken too far, it could be considered a form of cheating, I suppose. I was once accused of taking too long to move, in an OTB game without clocks. It was a tough move, where I had to look several moves deep though, so I wanted to get it right. So anyway, clocks were invented to prevent "cheating", as far as taking a ridiculous amount of time to move. Having said that, I much prefer to play without clocks and my record is amazing without clocks (something like 95-98% wins). However, I'm sure that I took longer to move than my opponents did. I tried not to abuse it though.