Temposchlucker

The choirs we are in have a series of appearences the coming time so I'm rehearseling a lot. I developed a new addiction: ear training and learn how to recognize relative pitch. I use a very nice freeware program, functional eartrainer , which has an interesting philosophy. Further I started with rithm exercises, which I found here . Usually I manage to stay away from mainstream hypes like Sudoku and the like, but this is fun. The addiction will probably not last very long because the little program works so well that I will achieve my goals in a few weeks. Margriet couldn't resist the Sudoku hype. So not much chess lately.

Latest update June 15, 2017 40/120, 20/60, SD/30 - means 40 moves in 2 hours followed by 20 moves in 1 hour followed by Sudden Death in 30 minutes. G/30 - means 30 minutes for the whole game SD/30 - means 30 minutes for the whole game G/5(5) - means 5 minutes game with 5 seconds per move increment. ACT - Amsterdam Chess Tournament AoA - Art of Attack from Vukovic AoAiC - Art of Attack in Chess from Vukovic APROP - Ability to PROject Positions (APROP). From the book "Chess master ... at any age" by Rolf Wetzell.  ATH - All Time High (rating) B - Bishop B.A.D. - Barely Adequate Defended BCC - Boylston Chess Club BOOC - Bishop Of Opposite Color BOSC - Bishop Of the Same Color BV - Board Vision CC - Correspondence Chess CCT - Checks, Captures and Threats CET - Chess Endgame Training 2.0 from Convekta C-K - Caro - Kann COW - Chess Openings Wizard (former Bookup) CPM - Checks Per Minute CPT - Chess Position Trainer CT - Chess Tempo CTA - CT-Art 3.0 from C...

Today I studied Lucena's and Philidor's positions. It is all very basic and simple. The weird thing though is that I read a 3-page article of Jeremy Silman about Philidor's position and there were quite a few errors in his analysis. Since I use the Nalimov tablebace this appears to be common among endgame authors. Indeed with a day or two studying the very basics of rook endgames a big step forward can be made. Once you know what to study, that is. In some way rook endings feel somewhat more familiar to me than pawn endings. The area is very broad though. I'm glad I finally started with it. I like to end with an encouraging citation of John Nunn - Secrets of practical chess. "The ability to play rook and pawn endings well is a great distinction between a master player and a club player. In simultaneous displays, it is noticable how the club players routinely lose completely equal rook endings, and how easely a master manages to escape with a draw from lost rook en...

Life is picking up, so I decided to reorganize my study somewhat. I have covered the first 7 chapters of SOPE pretty well. That means that I assimilated the very basics of pawn endings. There are 3 more chapters to go to be more complete. I decided to do them at a later stage. Now I started full throttle with rook endings. And all the time consuming problems as I met in pawn endings start all over again. Just because the lack of educational skills by the authors of endgame books. The most important part I have to master initially is K+R+p vs K+R. That is what I'm studying. I use the following books: Theoretical and practical endings - GM Max Euwe Fundamental chess endings - Muller and Lamprecht Secrets of rook endings - John Nunn In rook endings there is always a chance that I can sacrifice my rook in order to queen my pawn. That makes only sense if I master the remaining endgame Q vs R. That is won in 99% of the cases. 25 years ago Max Euwe (as all grandmasters in that ...

Please all give a Warm Welcome to our newest Knight, Pendrax the Slothful . He is going to take his time doing the circles. Dragonslayer seems to have gone 404. Marriage can have a heavy impact. Enfin we will speak him within half a year as Dragon the Stop-light or so I assume:)

Yesterday I trained K+B+N vs K. I downloaded a few chess engines to emulate different resistance. It took me about 3 hours to master the ending. 2 - 3 hours is a representative time to master any complex endgame position. There are about 150 basic pawn endings, so it will take 150 x 3 = 450 hours to master them. My initial estimation of 6 months comes rather close when studying 3 hours a day (150 days ~ 5 months) Everybody agrees that rook endings are more difficult than pawn endings. Probably that means that there are more than 150 basic rook positions and not that the average time to master a rook position exceeds 3 hours. So far I counted 190 basic rook positions, but I haven't a good insight in the whole area yet. This makes it very clear why endgame study isn't popular at clublevel. It just takes a serious amount of time. Lately I compared two kinds of positions (40 in total). Both with 2 rooks and a lot of pawns. 20 positions were rook endings, 20 positions were mate in #...

Seven weeks now I'm working on pawn endings and I'm getting a feeling for the basics now. I spilled a lot of time due to authors with little educational skills, but I worked my way around it. It is just a matter of familiarizing myself with about 150 basic positions. It was a lot of work to gather these positions and to sift the non-educational from the useful positions. I made a cautious start with rook endings. It is already clear that I have to go thru the same process of sifting there (bleah). It is difficult to play off endings against the computer. The first time I entered a position in Arena it reacted even before the very first move with "I resign!" Since the user interface of Arena is almost as bad as Fritz', it took me an hour to find out how to disable resigning. Most chess engines don't work very well in endgame positions (as Montse found out lately) so I use the Nalimov tablebases. Problem with that is that it often says something like "oh, ...

When I'm getting better at endgames it becomes clear that I have to get used to undeserved wins and undeserved draws. Now I have accepted long games as a good alternative for a crushing kingside attack I play much more relaxed. If an attack reports itself I go for it, if not, I quietly trade off all pieces. Yesterday I played an important game. Only the queens and a lot of pawns were left on the board. At a certain moment my opponent could force the exchange of queens. But he misevaluated the remaining pawn ending as lost for him. I knew it was actually lost for me. So he hadn't the courage to trade off the queens, which gave me the opportunity to queen a pawn of my own and he resigned. He had played the opening and the middlegame well. It is clear that his performance in the endgame nose dived. I assume that that holds true for most people at club level. In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king. The so called endgame experts at clublevel are most of the time the one-eyed....

To brush up my confidence here a few other examples of simple pawn endings misplayed by the masters. Can you do it better? diagram 1 Antsigin - N. Zhuravliov USSR 1952 White to move. White resigned here in drawn position! diagram 2 Berger - Mason Breslau 1889 White to move White played here 1. Ke4?? and lost the drawn position diagram 3 I. Rogers - E. Levi Canberra 1996 Black to move. Black played here 1. ... b5?? and lost the drawn game.

Finding my way in the endgame jungle takes me an enormous amount of time. To give an example: previous year it took me 6 weeks to find out where to start. I would expect there were lots of books out there that could help me to cut down on this time consuming process. A book that saves me 6 weeks research by just telling me where to start and why. But I haven't found any appropriate books yet. SOPE is a good reference work, but it does little to cut down on the efforts. Especially the habit to treat the exceptions without giving the general principles is wide spread among endgame authors. In such cases I have to work my way back. First I have to realize that the given example is an exception. Then I have to analyze it. After that I have to generalize it. Then I can formulate the general idea behind it, often only to find something trivial that could be explained to me in a few well chosen sentences. This process costs me days, every time again. Take for instance the pathetic case in...

I worked for a month and a half on K+p vs K+p (chapter 2 of SOPE). Chapter 2 is not about the race of the passed pawns (=chapter 3) or the rook pawns (=chapter 5) but only about two pawns on the same file or on adjacent files. Finally I am beginning to feel that I get some grip on these positions. I hadn't expected that mastering these seemingly simple positions would cost me so much time. But underestimating simple looking positions is common all the way up to grandmasters. Take for instance the next diagram from a game between I. Rogers and A. Shirov (Groningen 1990): diagram 1. White to move and win. There was no time trouble involved. Shirov (black) had headed for this position because he thought it was an obvious draw. Can you find the win for Ian Rogers? Now I'm so far that in these positions the first move I look at is often the right move. I'm still not fail proof yet but that will come in the near future. So time is ripe to get along with K+pp vs K+p. At least I ha...

Montse asked me a few days ago if there wasn't a simple method to map out the interference by two kings. Since then I played thru about a hundred postions. From that I distilled two simple empyric rules. I can't give a 100% guarantee that everything is covered with these two rules but at least it comes pretty close. I will put them to the test with real positions in the near future. The interference starts at the moment the kings are close to each other, at one square distance. I haven't taken a look yet what happens when the kings are approaching each other. There are 12 positions with the kings close two each other (12 hours of the clock). I have analysed two positions: 3 o'clock and 4 o'clock. All other positions can be derived by mirroring. The two kings have each their own target where they head for. On the paths to their targets the kings can shoulder away each other. diagram 1 White to move. red = the target of the black king blue = a blue square can be conqu...

To get a better picture of the interference between the kings in the endgame, it is useful to have a few expedients for better communication. The first is the windrose. diagram 1. A king can walk in only 8 directions. From now on I call these directions as their name in the windrose. Most activity in endings take place with the kings circleing around each other at one square distance. It is useful to have a convenient naming system for all 12 different rotation positions. diagram 2 To that end we think of it as a clock with the black king (the opponent) in the middle. The white king is at the end of the short hand. Horizontal opposition is 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock. Vertical oppositon is 6 or 12 o'clock and so on. The movements of the kings can be described with vectors (length = # moves, direction = according the windrose) and rotation. With these tools we can easy describe new rules. diagram 3. begin position (12 o'clock) end position (12 o'clock) Black to move. Begi...

I tested my empyrical formula's in a lot of situations with the Nalimov tablebases. They didn't let me down. Let me show you a random situation with two blocked pawns on the same file. diagram 1 Where would you put the white king if you had the choice? First you have to draw the draw zone. diagram 2 The basic measure is the distance between the black king and the white pawn = 4 moves The draw zone is based on the fact that the white king conquers the key square when the black king snacks the white pawn. Center of the draw zone = c4 = key square black pawn Diameter of the draw zone = 4 + 1 = 5 moves (white can afford to lose one tempo) Then you draw the win zone. diagram 3 Center of the win zone is the black pawn. Diameter win zone = 4 moves. Where you don't win or draw, you lose. diagram 4 Red = loss zone Then you have to find out where one king shoulders the other away when they walk on their ideal paths to their respective targets. diagram 5 Yellow = interference zone Whe...

Before I move on to the more complicated pawn endings with 3 pawns or more, I want to have a clear picture of all endgames with 2 pawns. Since a position with 3 pawns can become a position with 2 pawns by saccing or conquering a pawn. Why am I making such a big issue of this? Yesterday I came across a study of TCT with Kpp vs Kp. The author of TCT is of master level. He made fun of the majority of people who would move the h-pawn in that position, which would result in a draw instead of a win. He told that moving the g-pawn instead would be an easy win. So I checked it with my Nalimov tablebase and that move was a draw too! The only winning move was a counter intuitive king move he hadn't mentioned. So if a master, who has spend hours at the preparation of a study position for his students, still makes such errors, these positions must not be underestimated! Margriet and I couldn't find the logic behind the illogical-looking king move. But it was clear that knowledge of the und...