What the heck is cussing?

Created by OnePlusYou

Not so strange since I needed the dictionary to find out what cussing is:)

Translate it out loud in chess

Most aspects of the method of Pimsleur such as spaced repetition etc. are put into practice by us while training tactics. Yet today I managed to formulate something new in his method that maybe is worthwhile to experiment with.

We are used to solve problems that are already there. But actually that is not what we want. We want to create a problem that isn't there yet. The speaker in the French course says "Miss, do you want to have lunch with me now in a restaurant?" and asks me to say it in French. Following that analogy, someone should say "create a postion with a knightfork in combination with a discovered attack over the long diagonal with a rook and a queen as targets", and I would create the position. Let me think if this can be done in a practical way.

Do you belief in CO2 neutral chess?

Confirmation bias divides: Song

Is chess a waste of time?

From time to time you have to ask yourself if playing chess isn't a waste of time. Aren't there things in life that are more worthwhile to devote your time and energy to? If we are to believe the media, our society is running towards the abyss. Mustn't I at least try to hit the emergency breaks? Aren't there wars to prevent, or to stop? Isn't chess just too trivial to spill your time?

Everybody has to answer such questions for themselves.
To me, a main consideration is if my efforts can make a difference. If not, it doesn't matter which windmill I fight. The windmill of chess improvement or the windmills of environmental polution, poverty and war.

It is not so easy to make a difference as it might look like. Matters have a momentum of their own. Changing things along the line yields unexpected results later. No matter how good your intentions are.

If there would be one person that could make a difference, it would be mr. Bush. Or mr. Putin, for that matter.
I'm sure that mr. Bush had the best intentions. But every action of his brought the world closer to the abyss. Which leads to the following statement: If you have the power but you don't know what you are doing, HANDS OFF!! Good intentions or not.
If you have no power, it doesn't matter what you are doing anyhow.

The road to the abyss is paved with good intentions, a lack of knowledge how to handle momentum and the arrogance to think that you have that knowledge while you have not.

How is it possible that someone who has no knowledge, can think he has?
How can he ignore all the evidence that he hasn't?
Even more weird: how can the people around him suffer from the same confirmation bias and vote for him? Year after year and president after president? Country after country?
It must be some form of collective hypnosis.

The study of confirmation bias, collective hypnosis and blind spots is the study of the human mind. Which is exactly what I'm studying while trying to improve at chess:)

Mother Nature has her own goals. To preserve her goals she makes use of the possibility to hypnotize mankind. Looking at our zombie-like worldleaders is very reassuring: no chance that anyone of them has the power to do anything on his own. The plans of Mother Nature are not in danger at the moment! When I play chess I can be reassured that it is according Her plans. The worries about spilling my time suck away the energy that could endanger the plans of Mother Nature. If those plans are always in the best interest of mankind is another matter. . .

Ou est la rue Jean Jacques?

Ok, time to make a new start.
Now where was I?

My latest conclusion was that complex motorskills are the base of good chess. The method of drilling bore great relationship with the microdrills of DLM. The main difference being the quality of the skills to train.

At the moment I'm learning to speak French via the method of Pimsleur. It is a remarkable effective method. Of course I'm continuously asking myself if there are elements in his method that I can use for my new approach to chess. I do the course every morning in my car while driving to work. The teacher says a sentence in English, what I have to translate in French (active thinking required), Then a native French speaker says the same once or twice in French, which I have to repeat (passive). The fact that I have to drive a car in the mean time seems to contribute to the effectiveness of the transfer of the knowledge from the conscious part of my brain to the unconscious part of my brain. I intend to do some experiments with chess based on this idea.

Besides that, I intend to attack the endgame. The Polar Bear has proven to be a solid base for my openings, so I don't have to worry about that the coming years. The book of Lars Bo Hansen will be my guide for the endgame.

Ratinggraph

Finally surpassing the 1800 mark!

As usual it took the dutch chess federation quite some time, but now it is official: my new rating is 1819 !!

The intensive training did a lot of course to make this happen. But my choice of the Polar Bear as new opening has played a role too. This opening, which I play with both black and white now, makes my games longer. Oddly enough, this gives me more opportunity to show my tactical tricks! When I played my usual gambits in the past, I always found myself in an all or nothing situation. Often I had to trade a better position for a half or a whole point, due to time trouble. When every move counts, I often lost on time against lower rated players in search for the winning tactical trick that wasn't there at that moment, or which I couldn't find. The Polar Bear is slow and strong. It builds up a strong position anyway, even if there are no tactical tricks around at that very moment. Positional considerations take less time than calculations in an all or nothing situation. It sounds odd, but in a game that last 60 moves or so, there are a lot more chances to find a tactical trick that works than in a game of 24 moves, which used to be my average when I played gambits! Especially my results against lower rated players has gone up drastically due to this phenomenon.

Besides that, the Polar bear seems to be hard to grasp for lower rated players. It is basically an optical trick. You seem to develop slowly, even to the extent that you are lagging behind in development, but this is an optical illusion. Although your opponent can move his pieces out quickly, they are neutralized by your pawn moves. His pieces are doing close to nothing on their new position. At the same time you prepare the breaking move e4 (with white) or e5 (with black). Once the breaking move is played, you can catch up with your piece development, with a favourable pawnstructure, while your opponent is left with impotent pieces.