Temposchlucker

 Now the dust has settled around the scope of the trick, it's time to have a fresh look at the implications. For those who haven't followed, the trick is what John Watson describes as "concrete calculation" and what I describe as "understanding". It is exactly the same. The only difference is that it didn't speak for itself for me until now. The reason that I call it understanding is because I have to understand it yet, while the titled player already understands it. So he doesn't realize that that is the problem. Before you call it understanding, after you call it concrete calculation. Knowledge is superficial. Because you can construct what knowledge does we are inclined to think that we understand the matter. But construction is done by system 2. Hence it is slow and error prone. Understanding is about the same knowledge, but now you have absorbed it. You know what it does without the need to construct it by system 2. It is ready for immediate use...

 Due to the work of prof. Adriaan the Groot, we nowadays mainly think of patterns when we think of calculation. The more patterns we have collected the better. Some of us (me) will add the frequency of occurrence to that. The transfer problem is how to teleport the knowledge from one position to the other. We solved it by focusing on conceptualization of the solution. Pruning of the tree of analysis is done by logic. Logic is destructive by nature, and it shows which variations are not worth calculating. And the latest finding is understanding. In understanding, logic and patterns are combined, while system 1 and system 2 look over the shoulder of attention. How does this work in practice? Black to move 2r5/4k1pp/p2p4/BpnPp3/4q3/5Q2/PP1K1bPP/3R1R2 b - - 5 28 The pattern at hand is the following killbox: From this pattern we can build the following logical narrative: To get the rook from c8 to c2 we need to clear the c-file with tempo Nb3+ does the job White is now looking for a mov...

 Citation from an interview with Sindarov in El País "Like Gukesh, the rival he’ll be thinking about night and day from now until the end of the year, and almost all the other chess stars born in the 21st century, Sindarov has not studied the classical masters. He has not read the My Great Predecessors series, where Garry Kasparov, the world champion from 1985 to 2005, meticulously analyzes the best games of the great champions since the 19th century. That book was considered the “Bible of chess,” at the very least essential reading, even for the Norwegian player Magnus Carlsen, the current undisputed number one at 35.   But not for geniuses in their twenties or younger: “It’s very rare that I read books. My coach insists on it, but I prefer that he teach me things at the board. For example, I’ve never looked up games of great champions of the past on my own, like [Cuban player José Raúl] Capablanca [who was champion a hundred years ago] or [Soviet player Mikhail] Bo...

 Complexity arises when I see a lot of dots, but fail to see the connection. I don't see the dots as one, but as many. And since the mind cannot handle many, my mind is easily overwhelmed. That has especially been the case in the opening. I played many openings with white, the Italian, the King's Gambit, all kinds of gambits against the French, the Aljechin, the Caro Kann, the Sicilian, I played the Polar Bear, the London, the Barry Attack, the white Sniper and a lot more of which I forgot the names. I learned little of it. Yeah, a lot of dots, but I failed to see the connection. The past three years, I played the Colle Zukertort. That is a system opening. Meaning that you play the same moves over and over again, no matter what your opponent does. That is a desperate remedy against being overwhelmed by variations.  After three years, I finally get a bit the hang of what I might be trying to accomplish. There are about 20 themes that play a role. The dots are connected to a cer...

  Epaulette mate Swallow's tail mate Dovetail mate

 I play the Colle Zukertort for three years now, and I'm very successful with it. In the previous posts, I told you that I'm ready for the next level, which is deepening my knowledge about the attacks that can be derived from the Colle Zukertort. I mentioned the video I use for that. Basically, it fills in the Vukovic gap. The part of the game between opening and starting to commit your pieces towards the kingside attack. After which there is no going back. The same is true for black. For two years now, I play Hammer's first repertoire with black , by GM Jon Ludvig Hammer. It solved my problem that I always got into trouble with black. Basically it is a simple repertoire against everything meant for players below 1400. But anyhow, it solved my problems with black. I am starting to run into the limits of this repertoire, and I feel the need to replace certain variations with more ambitious lines. The good thing is that I can keep everything else the same. by the way, I won a...

 Currently I'm watching the comments on the FIDE candidates tournament 2026. The commentators have an average rating of 2670. During the comments, an eval bar of the position generated by Stockfish is shown. Sometimes (often?) the eval bar shows a different judgement of the position than the commentators. Sometimes the eval bar shows a stubborn 0.0 judgement of the position, while the commentators have a clear preference for one  side which they wish to play. And at other moments the eval bar swings to one side, while the commentators are struggling for minutes to find where the tactic might be hidden in the position. It takes a bit away the mystification that we tend to surround the titles with. Which is a good thing, because we get a chance to get a more realistic and objective view of what is going on. When I started this blog back in 2005, I always was convinced that there was one specific trick that stood out where a grandmaster relied on. Over the years, I unearthed...