Temposchlucker

A herd of buffalo's has an average speed by with they move forward. Prairie wolfs attack only the slowest animals which are weak or sick. In doing so, the average speed of the herd inclines. Now scientific research has found that alcohol attacks the slowest and weakest braincells. So by drinking alcohol you can speed up your brains. This is proven by the fact that when you go to your local chesscafe and challenge the guy who has obviously drunk the most beers, you will be "stampeded" of the board. Knights, I have a proposal for a modification of MDLM's program .....

Some time ago a chessfriend and I were talking about how nice it would be if you had a little chessset in your head, where you could work out all variations while playing an OTB-game. So I started a little investigation on visualisation. On a certain moment I landed on the website of Jan Matthies He has a real nice chess visualisation program that you can use online. I exercised for quite some time and found many interesting things about the human mind. I will try to explain. I hope you are willing to do a few experiments. Try the following: Close your eyes and try to visualize a rook on a chessboard which moves from d1 to a7. That it easy isn't it? It's easy to spot the file, rank and crosspoint. Now try to visualize a bishop on c1 heading to a7. (Now you can open your eyes.:) That is far more difficult isn't it? It's nearly imposible to get a good picture of the crosspoint. It is much easier to see ranks and files than diagonals. It turns out that the mind is extreme...

For years I played the Sicilian defense with black. So what's on the menu of the Sicilian kitchen: Seduce the enemy to a premature King attack by developing as slowly as possible. Beat this attack off graceful but determined, with the help of the pawnmajority in the center. Frustrate the enemy by trading off pieces. Mop up the left wreckedge of whites position. On the queenside there are now two black pawns against three white ones. Start a minority attack at the queenside. After trading off the pawns white is left with one weak pawn, which black conquers. All the other pawns are traded off until black has one pawn and white has none. Promote the pawn to rook and play around a little untill whites flag falls. I played the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian for about 3 years but never succeeded in eating all the coarses to the end. There was always someone rude to the cook by throwing tabasco in the food by a Knightsacrifice on e5 or by the Morragambit. The reason I never reached the...

During the last six year, I felt from time to time the urge to tie up my thoughtprocesses in a conscious system. To get more grip on things. But unvariably the same thing happened: I made a clear and good sytem with usefull points to do during a move. When I brought this in practice during a few weeks I forgot about the system. Thinking it over after a month or two I noticed that I followed the system in a subconscious way, "automatic". This seems to correspond with my findings in my post a few days ago about "understanding and ability". First I use the new developed system "with understanding", later on, it is etched into my brain and it becomes an ability, hence subconscious. When it is subconscious you have the feeling that there has been no progress at all, but in fact you improved. For example, when I started with tactical exercises, I had never heard about a double attack. I decided to look during every move if there were unprotected pieces. After so...

I found the following names: Mandelamaza = Don Queue Sancho Pawnza = Oneday Governor of the Isle de la Maza Pale Morning Dun = The Knight of the Big Sky Pawn Sensei = The Fair Knight Generalkaia = Der Wunderkind Knight J'adoube = The Off-Center Knight Celtic Death = The Dark Knight Temposchlucker = The International Knight of Pancakes Fussy Lizzard = The cold-blooded Knight Yet another patzer = The International Knight of Mystery King of the spill = The Knight Loquacious 65th square (Fatboy) = The Knight of the Round Margriet = Princess Errant Desperate Measures = The Knight of Last Resort Takchess = The Knight of the Secret Country Chessconfessions = Blue Devil Knight Vic = Queen-less Knight Mousetrapper = Animated Knight Harmless = Nasty Knight Satish Talim = Anand's Knight RomaLavrn = Pomaranch Knight JavaManIssa = The Prodigy Knight Zeon - The Paradoxical Knight Silver Dragon - The Pyrotechnic Knight Dread Pirate Josh - The One-Eyed Knight Guruchess - The Jovial Knight ...

I have tried to reconstruct the rating of Kasparov during his youth by researching his autobiography "high play". Age Rating Fact 05 1300 Learned the game 06 1400 07 1500 Started with lessons 08 1600 09 1700 10 1800 Botwinnik-school 11 2000 12 2100 13 2200 Candidate master, first tournaments abroad 14 2300 Master 15 2450 First victory over a grandmaster 16 2545 17 2595 2nd grandmaster result 18 2625 Grandmaster So even a very talented player like Kasparov grew only at average 100 points a year! Two years of tactical traning improved my rating from 1532 to 1701, about 170 points. In this period I solved about 10.500 tactical problems. Which is about 62 problems per ratingpoint. I didn't repeat the problems. Now I'm plateauing during a year. Inspired by de la Maza I started to repeat problems now a seven times. This new approuch seems to work. My results OTB are very good at the moment. If I don't blow things the upcoming games I'll leave the plateau of 1701. Wh...

For the quest of chess improvement I observed a lot of chessplayers. A fact that astonished me over and over again is the extreme difference in speed of calculation between two persons who differ only 300 points in rating. And what is even more amazing is that nobody ever seems to notice. It looks like a conspiracy that no one ever talks or writes about this phenomenon. To explain what I found to be the cause of this extreme difference in speed I'll give an example. Say, I want to go to Rome. For a grandmaster that is no problem since every road leads to Rome (=at least a Dutch saying). But for me, who knows nothing about cars, even the most minor event will cause me trouble. When it starts to rain, I have to pull over because I cannot see through the front window any longer. I can figure out that those two little bars have something to do with cleaning the windows. I have to open the hood, where is the handle for that? Where are the cables of the screen wiper? I have to demolish t...