English Chess Forum

First he spends all his time moaning about chess being played out and recommends everyone to try some variants as a solution. Then he declares that he wants "proper" chess. :roll: Did you see the end of his last post - I think that's called "having your cake and eating it" :lol: There are many inte...

Isn't there some remark about Bobby FIscher winning the famous 1970 Herceg Novi blitz event where someone said (admiringly) 'Fischer never put a single piece en prise in the whole tournament'. .. the clear implication being that others did, thus meaning all the great players of the day, but playing...

The chess master of old would never play like this. Would Petrosian or Smyslov, in practice, lose in the beginning of the game, or make obvious blunders? Perhaps modern GMs take rather more risks. Petrosian was capable of losing quickly with risky openings. From the 1969 match Event "Ch World (matc...

Look at the quarter final games--the quality of the games is almost amateurish. Where is super-GM chess going? I wonder what's behind this. Of course, it's rapid chess, but I find this disappointing, anyway. http://en.chessbase.com/post/london-super-sixteen-semis-ready M. Winther The chess master o...

Look at the quarter final games--the quality of the games is almost amateurish. Where is super-GM chess going? I wonder what's behind this. Of course, it's rapid chess, but I find this disappointing, anyway.
http://en.chessbase.com/post/london-sup ... emis-ready

M. Winther

I think Magnus belongs to that class of players who are born with the gift of 'feel'. This gift can be applied in the middle game or the ending. In the case of, for example, Mickey Adams, the gift is used more in the milddlegame, whereas Carlsen happens to use it more in the ending. Players born wi...

Hi Geoff, I agree with most of what you are saying about the difference between people and machines, my comment was based on watching the WC games with engine analysis available. What was apparent was that Carlsen made several 'sub-optimal' moves in the middlegame, however in the endgame there were...

No, it undergirds my thesis that Carlsen is a concretist, since he tends to play the most natural move, that is, the move which immediately suggests itself. This is typical of concretists. Positional players, on the other hand, find it hard to play the natural move, except in blitz. They always wan...

Well Kasparov and others disagree. Stating that he is an intuitive player in the style of Karpov. Obviously his ability to calculate is world class, and he certainly plays the endgame like a computer. For the most part though he plays quickly, and says himself that he nearly always plays the first ...

Anand says that Carlsen's style is like a computer's. This substantiates my idea that he is a concretistic player, and that's why his style tends to evoke irritation in positional players, since it's hard for logical people to understand the underlying ideas of his moves. I wrote the following artic...

Today it's cheap to buy a dual CPU computer, ideal for chess. This one costs £149.99 (refurbished). I bought it myself. It has a separate graphics card (GPU) as well. (But one must keep pressing the start button for a while each time, I do not know why). It is silent and takes up only little place....

[Event "World Teams 2013"] [Site "Antalya TUR"] [Date "2013.11.28"] [Round "3.3"] [White "Ivanchuk, Vassily"] [Black "Mamedov, Rauf"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "E92"] [WhiteElo "2731"] [BlackElo "2647"] [PlyCount "93"] [EventDate "2013.11.26"] [WhiteTeam "Ukraine"] [BlackTeam "Azerbaijan"] [WhiteTeam...

I played this slightly silly game according to the device of Petrosian: "maintain control over the important squares by way of maneuvering". Notice that Black is evidently a good player that knows the game. Visually black has an overwhelming advantage. Black controls the c-file, pressures on the e-p...

Another idea is this. A drawn game counts as half a game. This means that a 12-game match with only drawn games would consist of 24 games. Thus, drawn games would prolong the match, making it a less attractive strategy to draw your way to match victory.

M. Winther

I would also win against Anand if he, for no reason at all, sacrifices a pawn in an equal ending against me. M. Winther No you wouldn't. With all due respect, you're deluded and know nothing about the game. I know enough to be creative. Look at this game, which I played yesterday at FICS. Opponent'...