Archive for the ‘Sources of inspiration’ Category

The wise words of Rowson

Posted in Sources of inspiration on March 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GM Rowson’s first published book was The 7 Deadly Chess Sins. It gained attention at all levels and sold well. I have added points he italicized through the book, there is food for thought here.

…all thought has some emotional content…

…when you realize that thinking means so many different things, your ability to understand your own thoughts is significantly enhanced…

….indeed, it seems that what chess want is not just to improve their intuition but to become more intuitive…

…’The master doesn’t calculate more than the expert. Rather, he sees more, especially the important things.’ Adrian De Groot…

…the stronger the player, the more abstract the visual image…

…your thoughts always have emotional content…

…all chess thinking is evaluation…

…there is definitely some sort of pre-intellectual awareness in your chess thoughts…

…rules are a wonderful servant but a terrible master…

…in chess the golden rule is there are no golden rules…

…confusion is caused by the non-existence of a concrete answer to the questions of a position…

…if a move strikes you as correct, it needn’t require an explanation…

…it is very difficult, if not impossible, to give any clear definition of what a key moment, or critical position, actually is…

…the main thing is to have a way to gauge the changing nature of a chess game, how it ebbs and flows…

…so another way to become more sensitive towards key moments is to be aware of the centrality of transformation in chess…

…what matters is not space but capacity…

…we need calculation to help us make the necessary transformations but more important is our judgement about which transformations are necessary…

…there maybe some positions where one side is better and worse, depending on whether you look at the position at hand or the direction of the game…

…you need to assess not only the position as it stands but the position as it has changed and how it is likely to continue to change…

…with improved ‘trend sensitivity’ and ‘position sensitivity’ you are much more likely to spot ‘gateway positions’, which are the turning points between one trend and the next…

…the best way to get a big advantage is to play for a small advantage…

…you often only see what you want to see…

…it’s a mistake to ever think you are winning…

…it is extremely difficult for most players to separate the general from the specific…

…there are more exceptions than rules when it comes to the value of the pieces…

MJM

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Have you Reddit?

Posted in On-line journal, Sources of inspiration on July 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I’ve started linking media from the website Reddit and will continue to do so because the community of chess enthusiasts and sub-categories is broader than most media platforms, meaning that it’s easy to find content that you can’t find elsewhere. Moreover, I do suggest you have a look at the site itself, as it has come on leaps and bounds from its early days…

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/ (this is the main one for chess but there are very many others).

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Patriotism

Posted in Chess, Sources of inspiration on December 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Contemporaneous hypermodernism laudible not meretricious for the simpatico.

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A still tongue makes a happy life

Posted in Humour, My own warped humour, On-line journal, Personal Interest & Experience, Sources of inspiration on August 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

A still tongue makes a happy life. A still cock makes an unhappy wife. Is it not plain to see: questions are a burden to others, answers a prison for oneself…cult following or no cult following sheepishly, as well as, an intrepid blogger who endured sub-zero temperatures on a photoshoot or no intrepid blogger who endured sub-zero temperatures on a photoshoot once upon a time and whilst holding his camera never asked himself whether he could grate cheese off his scrotum because it was that f**king cold because he believed in the above.

My Elo rating: I’m a number, not a free man…

The above applies, to lifelong fans of The Prisoner to questions posed by yourself to yourself also apply, as I found out today.

Eleven years ago, I posted the following on fb on this day.

“Okay ladies and mentalmen, should black play e3 or Qb2 here? Hint, decide what you think white’s primary defensive resource is first.“

A still tongue makes a happy life of that there is no doubt. Why imprison myself with answers when I can open up Stockfish and put that bastard-bitch to work instead? All it took was ten seconds or thereabouts: me less than one to be sure Qb2 was the stronger by far. But do you know why I saw the solution much faster than Stockfish? Dare you guess why? It’s because unlike Stockfish or any chess program or platform: I am bone all over. Bone is, of course, stronger than plastic and silicon, much stronger in fact. In being bone all over, I’m just too strong… .

“GIVE IT TO ME AGAIN. GIVE ME THE REST” I hear you echo f**king obscure characters who catch eye, ear, and brain of f**king obscure viewers. Digging deeper, from a perspective with a physiological lean “them bones gotta walk around”, furthermore anthropologically, “and a hipbone, and a thighbone, shinbone, kneebone, backbone, all yours dad” ...and if by now you are thinking ‘what’s all this oscure shit Mark’s coming out with this time? What’s he on now?’ Believe me, it’s all early 90’s identity conferring content…in my youth I even modeled myself on Alexis Kanner’s tv roles, hoping for his panache and suave befuddlement. Let us conclude by remembering what has already been stated.

I sign off proud and unpuzzled. Perhaps it’s clearer, I really do write for myself only.

A still tongue makes a happy life. Offload analysis onto whatever app you’ve lumbered yourself with. No need to open your gob then.

Mark

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Redrawn inspiration…

Posted in Sources of inspiration on April 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Not for the first time, big thanks go to: https://www.facebook.com/MemoryChess/

You may have noticed that the headers (the images or banners you see on each page were varied but are now much more so. Some are very personal, many from MemoryChess. It’s well worth a look if you have the chance and use facebook.

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