Level of Strategical play
From different sides I was asked about the level of Strategical Play from Dvoretsky. Right now I have played only through 3 games. It is perfectly suited for my level and above (1750). I'm sure it will make me much stronger. I understand allmost everything. There is an abundance of explanation between the moves with great clarity.
If you are 1500 rated, you probably will understand the book too, but I doubt seriously if you can incorporate it in your games. Simply because positional moves have more subtlety, and it is of no use as long as tactics throw you easely off balance.
A russian proverb says "the advantage of the bishoppair is that you can trade it off". That shows something about the subtlety of positional play. The bishoppair is an asset, but not one you have to maintain at al costs. The greatest challenge is to learn when to exchange advantages. What the values of the distinctive positional assets are. In tactics you can simply count wood, that is here not possible. Only experience can be of help.
Off topic:
Margriet conducts a choir wherein I sing as bass. You can hear us here (2.6 Mb)
If you are 1500 rated, you probably will understand the book too, but I doubt seriously if you can incorporate it in your games. Simply because positional moves have more subtlety, and it is of no use as long as tactics throw you easely off balance.
A russian proverb says "the advantage of the bishoppair is that you can trade it off". That shows something about the subtlety of positional play. The bishoppair is an asset, but not one you have to maintain at al costs. The greatest challenge is to learn when to exchange advantages. What the values of the distinctive positional assets are. In tactics you can simply count wood, that is here not possible. Only experience can be of help.
Off topic:
Margriet conducts a choir wherein I sing as bass. You can hear us here (2.6 Mb)
now that i read your new post, i seem to recall that this third Dvoretsky book seemed like a fitting continuation to Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy book.
ReplyDeleteof course, the level of complexity seemed to build upon that, and therefore appeared to me that it would be fruitless for someone to read the prior without having first read and therefore studied the latter.
nice post. appreciated, dk
Thanks for the info about the book.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful choir!!! Did you compromise: I'll do choir if you do chess?
DK,
ReplyDeleteI think there is a natural flow. I'm very good in the opening and the early middlegame. In 90+ of the cases I have a big plus and the initiative. I screw up in the complex middlegame and the endgame. Right now I just haven't the energy to study endgame strategy. For the sole reason that at this moment the endgame costs me little points since I encounter it seldom. So focussing on middlegame strategy is very logical. I expect when I stop losing in the complex middlegame, I will enter an endgame far more often. I trust that at that very moment the energy levels for endgame study will rise all by itself, due to the amount of points I will lose then in the endgame.
Blue,
ReplyDeleteno. I have to admit, Margriet has been very patient and waited 7 years before I entered the choir. Knowing very well that any pressure would trigger protest. When there was a shortage of basses I decided to offer help. From that moment she wasn't patient with me anymore! I sang false, and it took me 6 months singing of daily tone scales before I had that corrected. I'm singing for 4 years now and I have become very enthousiast.
Margriet entered the chessclub a year after me. She had to learn the rules first! Since the lowest rated player at the club had still a rating of 1480, you can imagine that the first 3 years she had lost every single game. Imagine that! A losing streak of 150 games! But she persisted. Of course she had become much better, but that couldn't be proved. At that moment I decided to enter a second chessclub with much more lower rated players. At the first evening she throwed the champion of the lowest pool off the board in 20 minutes and all suffering ended.
all very well said, both reply to me and delightful story for BDK about 'the mrs', as we say. lovely.
ReplyDeletedo you wish to come to the U.S. and fight to see if the rule can be changed, whereby foreign nationals cannot be president?
for were it not so, perhaps you could 'run for president here' since you appear to have as much common sense and practical genius as i have idiosyncratic tendencies, and this is refreshingly unique.
the pay relative to effort required and torment is not good, but then again youd get to sleep daily in the Lincoln Bed Room.
If you change that rule, you will have a terminator as president before you know it. It seems that the US can use a little common sense indeed. But I'm afraid that the way presidents are elected only invites candidates for the title "Hasnamuss", be it eternal or for the time being.
ReplyDeletedefinitions for our friends: Hasnamuss, explicated here:
ReplyDelete"Gurdjieff has another word for psychopaths, it was the Hasnamuss which I've read in Persian translates to s-h-i-t soul.
"Gurdjieff mad up a checklist which could almost be considered a code of honour amongst these theives, robbers, conmen, murderers, captains of industry and lawyers. The list is as follows:
"(1) Every kind of depravity, conscious as well as unconscious
"(2) The feeling of self-satisfaction from leading others astray
"(3) The irresistible inclination to destroy the existence of other breathing creatures
"(4) The urge to become free from the necessity of actualizing the being-efforts demanded by Nature
"(5) The attempt by every kind of artificiality to conceal from others what in their opinion are ones physical defects:
"(6) The calm self-contentment in the use of what is not personally deserved
"(7) The striving to be not what one is".
sound familiar?
warmest, dk