| Oct-25-10 | | Whitehat1963: Monday puzzle: White to play after 30...Rxf5. |
 |
Sep-20-12
 | | Rob Morrison: Was this really "the" puzzle? As in the game of the day? No, if it had been there would be more comments. |
|
Sep-20-12
 | | perfidious: <Rob>, <Whitehat> was suggesting it as one. You and Findlay had to have met innumerable times in local events of those days. As a King's Indian player yourself, did you ever have to face this subvariation of the Four Pawns? The time we met (at the Toronto International blitz event), I remember playing a Saemisch and blundering away an exchange in the middlegame. |
|
Sep-23-12
| | Rob Morrison: Wow, a mystery voice from the past.
Well, innumerable speed games. I'd guess Ian and I had maybe 4 or 5 tournament games. I recall I surprised him once (and won) by playing the black side of a Petroff. He must have beaten me several times. And he was clearly the better speed player--UNLESS it was in the TCC Speed Championships! I never faced this on the black side of a KID. And, actually, I was no expert at all on the KID. When I look back to those times I'm really appalled at how lazy I was in my opening study and how I generally was just sort of winging it. If I could do it all over again I would have hired Roman Pelts to teach me pretty much as soon as he stepped off the plane (and defected) from the USSR. Indeed, Pelts once commented to me how I didn't understand the KID and I knew in my heart that he was right but I was surely too proud and stupid to confront the fact honestly. |
|
Sep-23-12
 | | IMlday: I noticed that the 7..Qe7 against the Gligoric System which you 'winged' against Kasparov and Spraggett may not have been too successful but Kasparov himself then played it himself a couple of times. |
|
Sep-23-12
| | Rob Morrison: Hey Lawrence--I assume it's you. Maybe "lazy" overstated things a bit. How about lack of rigour. My focus in opening play back then tended to be on ideas that looked neat and that might even score well against, say, 2100 players but there was rarely enough hard thinking on the question of whether or not something was actually sound--i.e., you can play it against a super GM (or a super computer) and it holds up because it's just correct. |
|
Sep-24-12
| | IMlday: Correct chess is OK with White but with Black it will lead to a lot of draws against those same 2100 players; not very practical for winning tournaments. |
|
Sep-24-12
| | Rob Morrison: Well, yeah, sure, of course. Though someone like Karpov might have something to say about that as my sense is that it was his style to be "correct" even against the 2100s--and, of course, he beat tons of them. My point is that when I was facing Kasparov (and other GMs, for that matter) I was suddenly forced to confront the realization that all my prepared opening knowledge, including lines I'd won many games with, was really just junk. Either it was junk in and of itself or my grasp of it was junk-like. |
|
Sep-24-12
| | IMlday: Ian became much stronger when he switched to QGDs from the 'junky' Modern Benoni. In this game 14.g4 was Karpovian, exploiting 11..Re8?! since the N has no convenient future. Maybe then ..Re8-f8!? clearing the way for ..Nf6-e8 made some sense. |
|
Sep-24-12
| | perfidious: <IMlday> It's ironic that, only in my thirties, did I make the switch to sharper defences against 1.d4. Earlier I'd often played the Nimzo/QID, but then it was on to the Leningrad Dutch, Modern Benoni and KID. Must have been the impatience of approaching middle age. From that event in Toronto '84, I well remember both players in this game. There was also the booklet on the 1984 Canadian Closed a few months on, with a number of interesting insights and thumbnail sketches, courtesy of Danny Kopec. |
|
sac: 31.Rh3