Basketball coaches often talk about “playing the right way”. Execute sound fundamentals as an individual, cooperatively create and use space as a teammate, be heard and be polite, play hard and play clean, and so on. Winning is swell, but it really oughta take a back seat to playing the right way (in real life and beer commercials, winning is what matters most, which is a societal flaw). Chess is the same way, but the difference is that most chess coaches think teaching kids to play the right way is drilling them in master practice. Master practice is the right …
Category: chess
Did every old-timer get 30 years younger on International Chess Day, or was it just me
July 20 is International Chess Day, so I entered a marathon 5 3 tournament on lichess (rather than do the housecleaning for which I set the weekend aside). Against a 22-year-old Brazilian CM, I played like I was 30 again:
Bought, for $111
Bob Long was a chess publisher who knew what club-level players needed to read. One of the smartest things he ever did was to buy the rights to Cecil Purdy’s work. Purdy was the best chess teacher for students and average players. There are really two levels of chess teacher: The teachers who turn masters into grandmasters, and bad players into good players. Chessplayers are delusional halfwits who think they need the books written by the first type of teacher, when what they actually need is the material written by the second. Cecil John Seddon Purdy was the best of …
Two immortal performing artists and one chess teacher
There’s a comedian named Al Lubel. He talked about enjoying the sound of his own name. So he repeated it: “Al Lubel. Al Lubel. Al Lubel. Al Lubel. Al Lubel.” He’d do this for minutes. Then he demonstrated a sense for the right time to say: “Isn’t it funny that the more I say it, the more you wonder ‘who is this guy?’.” I think that’s one of the funniest things I ever heard, partly because when he broke to say “Isn’t it funny that the more I say it”, I was thinking “what the fuck, how long will he …
The hottest ticket and media credential in this town or any town
The organizer of the 2025 US senior open for chess fell ill. The usual path these days is to launch a pleasehelpme page, but this chess organizer said: Please play in my tournament. It’s in Illinois, weekend of July 25. So I’d miss Dallas at Golden State, but the Wings visit again in September. And there’s a Sky game I could do on the 27th. Only trouble is, it’s Indiana. Before I ask Sky media for a credential, maybe Golden State can find a job (and accreditation) for me.
Vlastimil Hort 1944-1925
Czech-German grandmaster Vlastimil Hort died Monday at 81. Hort was one of the best players in the world during the ’60s and ’70s, reaching the candidates matches in 1977, where he was knocked out by former world champion Spassky. Hort is well remembered for declining to win that match by forfeit, and instead giving an ailing Spassky one of his own timeouts. Hort set a record for conducting a simultaneous exhibition of 636 games in 1985. In 2006, he won the senior world championship at chess960 (honest, a senior 960 tournament is something for which I’d rekindle enthusiasm and ambition).
Playing against ex-students is the worst
I most dislike playing chess against opponents who used to be my students. If they bought into the methods that my coach taught me, it’s like playing against superior versions of myself — they’ve got everything I gave them, plus whatever else they picked up along the way. If they did not buy in, then I feel additional pressure to smash their stupid faces, in a manner to suggest: See? If you’d gone with the program, you would’ve won this game. I tried retired from over-the-board play, but following my lecture last week, the Kolty club asked me to fill …
From never expected that
I’m playing in an online tournament — a “thematic” — in which every game must begin with the Danish master Severin From’s invention 1. f4 e5. I like these events because as White, I can transpose to a King’s Gambit with 2. e4!, and as Black, the fun is quickly evident: 2. fxe5 d6 3. exd6 Bxd6 threatens mate in 3. A time control of 3 days per move is leisurely, at which some opponents disappear, or don’t show up at all. One chap timed out from the white side, so the second game of the doubleheader began, and I …