Making Some Points
“Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.”― John Dewey, Democracy and Education It's been a while since I've posted anything in here and the best laid, or less than best laid plans don't always work out....
Books, Books and More Books
Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist the sight, although some players make use of them as if they conferred sight. - Jose Capablanca As part of my continued cleaning, here's a post I started writing almost 8 years ag...
A Tale of Two Graphs
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,..." - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities “Chess is rarely a game of ideal moves. Almost always, a player faces a series of...
A Blunderful New Year
The mistakes are there, waiting to be made -- Savielly TartakowerWelcome to 2017! I have been neglecting the blog for a couple of years, so I figured it was well past time to post something new. A quick update and then on to the subject of...
Changing Evaluations
I think a player constantly improves his understanding of chess with experience. -- Yasser SeirawanA couple of months ago, I started working on my first Stokyo exercise to try and improve my ability to evaluate positions, come up with ...
Taking a Stab at Stokyo, Part 3
It is better to overestimate your prospects than underestimate them. -- Magnus Carlsen (part 1, part 2) I'm not sure I fully agree with Magnus on the above quote. I would rather estimate my prospects accurately, but I understand what he is sayin...
Taking a Stab at Stokyo, Part 2
It is better to follow out a plan consistently even if it isn't the best one than to play without a plan at all. The worst thing is to wander about aimlessly. - Alexander Kotov Here continues my first attempt at a Stokyo Position: (p...
Taking a Stab at Stokyo, Part 1
Chess mastery essentially consists of analyzing chess positions accurately. - Mikhail Botvinnik Late last year I decided to try and work Stokyo exercises in to my chess study regime. As part of that effort, I posted a topic here (http://www.ch...
To TD Or Not TD? That Is The Question
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them?" -- Hamlet Why TD? Over the past couple of years I have been involved in a few different di...
The 99 Percent, Part 2
The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. – Savielly Tartakower In the last part (Part 1), I provided a couple of positions to ponder over. Here I provide the positions as puzzles. I didn't spend enough time on ...
The 99 Percent, Part 1
One bad move nullifies forty good ones. – I. A. Horowitz If the quote above doesn't make it clear, I'm not going to talk about politics; just tactics. The more fitting quote may have been the one about chess being 99% tactics but I decided tha...
Time Keeps on Slipping
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” -- from William Penn (slightly abbreviated/paraphrased) It has been a while since I have updated this ... almost two years in fact. Seems like time just keeps getting away from me. The Jopli...
It's About Time
"Of chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not chess." —attributed to both Irving Chernev and William Ewart Napier (source Wikiquotes) It has been a month since I laid out my plan to really ...
A Game Plan
"Amateurs practice until they get it right. Masters practice until they can't get it wrong." I have seen the the above quote, or variations of it, a number of times in different places. I don't know who originally said it, only that it struck ...