books

I was over town today for an appointment and had a few minutes to kill. Stopped in at a book store to browse their chess books. Soltis's "The Wisest Things Ever Said About Chess" caught my eye. I fanned through the book and saw a lot of sayings I had seen before and a few that I had not. For instance---"Chess isn't Tennis". Haven't seen that before. I read the explanation---This old Marshall chess club kibitz points out the deceptive nature of the back and forth, serve and volley rhythm of a middlegame: White makes a threat. Black parries. White makes another threat. Black parries, and so on. In that way white always controls the cadence of play. But the rhythm is broken if Black can reply with a move that both defends and attacks. Then he controls the rhythm. The tennis analogy is very logical.

Here is another one I didnt get---"You cant dance at two weddings at the same time." What the hey! I had to leave for my appointment and didnt read the explanation. Can anyone explain it?

Cheers

Fascinating book it sounds! I would say, maybe you cannot dance at two weddings, but you can certainly crash the second one and maybe get some free booze. (Don't try to do too much, like setting up a complicated queenside maneuver while throwing pawns up the enemy's king.)

doing a queen AND a king side attack?

Stopped in at the book store today and here is the explanation for " You cant dance at two weddings at the same time."

This is one of the oldest Manhattan and Marshall chess club kibitzes and explains why a piece and be fatally overworked. The piece tries to stop two passed pawns but fails because they are too far apart. Knights and kings are frequently vitimized this way. Bishops, however, can attend two weddings  if they can do it on the same diagonal. This is formulated in Mark Dvoretsky's rule:" For both the stronger and weaker side it is very important that the bishop should defend its own pawns and stop the enemy pawns 'without tearing' ---that is, on one diagonal." At the bottom of the page he gives the game Kramnik-Svidler Wijk ann Zee 2004.

Here is another interesting saying "Evaluate without calculating." What in the world does that mean?

See ya later

Makes sense, so many times I have "split" pieces this way.

Evaluate without calculating is what I do all the time. But if it said evaluate correctly, that would be different.

 Here is the explanation: "Soviet trainers urge students to size up a position without considering whose turn it is to move.  They felt that if students were told its White's move they will look for tactics as if it were a "play and win" exercise. As a result, they'll be biased in White's favor and over value dynammic features at the expense of static ones.

By appraising the position first, a player is freed of the tyranny of  "play and win" thinking. "Suspending the game in time is a useful way to teach students how to evaluate qualitative factors such as (pawn) structure and space," Kasparov wrote in How Life Imitates Chess. We do this by showing a chess position without revealing whose move it is." He then shows the game Topalov-Yusupov Novgorod 1995 to demonstrate his point.

Later

PS-Here's another one to chew on---

"Except for the mating move, there is no move that does not weaken some part of the position."

Why is it that you always only go to the bookstore for two minutes at a time?

Maybe he steals batteries like Uncle Leo.