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| Jun-25-07 | | mack: <Imlday>
Was searching back through the archives to find one of your posts about Reti and came across this instead: <One day, about age 15 I went to school and people were arguing very loudly in the hall about the heresy of one Bob Dylan having played an electric guitar at the Newport folk festival. Huh..?? Confused I went out after school to buy the single "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and figure out what the fuss was about. It reminded me of Stravinsky, but with lyrics..> I dig the idea of Subterranean Homesick Blues being 'Stravinsky, but with lyrics' very much! |
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Jun-25-07
 | | IMlday: The next book will be autobiographical to cover the 60s. It's a difficult era to write about because research material like Chess Canada came later. But it should fill out the history, even if familiarity with Stravinsky before Dylan seems an odd perspective. Also a lot of my memorable games then were losses (and for a while no gambit was too goofy;) |
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| Jun-26-07 | | mack: Hang on, is it going to be a book solely on the sixties, then? Could well be a masterpiece. I've never felt that chess was properly slotted into the swinging sixties. I've mentioned this elsewhere but I'm sure you'll dig this - I quite often do poetry readings in pretentious East London watering holes, and very occasionally it's worth it. A few months ago now one poem, 'Black Coffee Vampire Blues', contained a line about 'coked up Canadian chess players / collecting dust & putting it on the mantlepiece for show'. One of the lads in the audience was this charming chap who makes hip-hop records, and we got talking about what this line meant. I wasn't entirely sure, but I started drawing all these parallels between the Canadian hypermodern crazy gang and the Beats - and despite the fact Mr. Hip Hop had never played chess in his life, he was fascinated. I'm not sure if it ever materialised, but he started trying to work this into his new record, eventually coming up with the following peculiar couplet: <Been fightin' my way through a hundred street scuffles,
With weirder tactics than Duncan Suttles...> Your book on chess in sixties Canada could be the hypermodernist's On the Road. Oh, and I take it this game will find its way in, right? Matynia vs L Day, 1966 It's an idea I've used a few times in tournaments now. For some reason I seem to have faced 1.b3 more than any person alive, which is why I'm also trying to get 1.b3 e5 2.Bb3 Qe7!?¿¡ to work... I'm getting there, I tells ya. L.H.O.O.Q.
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Jul-01-07
 | | Open Defence: Happy Canada Day ... IM Day |
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Jul-02-07
 | | ray keene: lawrence-got your nickoloff book today-nick's best-its great-everyone shd go instantly buy a copy!!and i agree-its time for your chess autobiography too. <mack> what was the reason for quoting above the marcel duchamp caption to his reworking of the mona lisa? LHOOQ?? |
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| Jul-02-07 | | mack: <ray> It's just my sign-off of choice at the moment. Sense of mystery, innit. You're a Duchamp fan, am I right? |
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Jul-02-07
| | IMlday: <mack> It seems you have happened upon the dada part of Canadadadidactica!
<ray> Thanks, glad you like it. The word of mouth is pretty good. I'll give some spiel and sign more at the Canadian Open in Ottawa, July 12th. Any cgers who want special signed copies should order before then.
<Open Defence> Cheers eh. |
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| Jul-20-07 | | mack: <Imlday>
This, from back in 2004, caught my eye: <At university I took an easy 'Mickey Mouse' course in Classical Music Appreciation and wrote the big essay on 'Hypermodernism in Music, Art and Chess' comparing Reti, Stravinsky and Picasso's 'cubist' phase. It was fun and the Prof loved it.> You wouldn't have that essay lying around in some shape or form, would you?? |
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Jul-21-07
| | IMlday: <mack> No I'm afraid I didn't keep much of anything concrete from university. It was only certain distilled talents, like from that course I can still identify the various instruments by sound, and to appreciate the different moods created by the different vibrations of the instruments in music or colours in art.
That course and Philosophy of Science I found to be surprisingly enriching and with long-lasting benefits. |
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| Aug-25-07 | | refutor: <IMlday> i found some small editorial errors (wrong move numbers, Nbd2 instead of Nfd2 etc.) in your book. are you planning a second edition? if so, should i collect them up and send them to someone? |
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Aug-25-07
| | IMlday: Yes please. Aside from things the reader might easily spot, the last move of Nickoloff-Benjamin circa '88 may be wrong but with Black's flag down. Plus Polugaevsky Variation has evolved since the Teodoro-Nickoloff '96 annotations. |
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| Sep-03-07 | | refutor: <Also a lot of my memorable games then were losses (and for a while no gambit was too goofy;)> what was your inspiration back then? suttles? you have mentioned bohatirchuk as a mentor but he never played stuff like 1.b3 Nh6?! ;) |
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Sep-04-07
| | IMlday: Actually Bohatirchuk played Old Benonis with ..Nh6 ..f6 ..Nf7 and Suttles ..Nh6 in 1..g6 Rats and with White Nh3 in Closed Sicilians. Having got it from them I was really pleasantly surprised when Spassky tried Nh3 in a Cl. Sic vs Petrosian in the World Match '66. It was a draw but just seeing it played legitimized it as a sensible line, even at the very top. This was reassuring. Aside from Suttles, Bohatirchuk and Spassky, Tal was inspirational for me and Chigorin and Smyslov.
The players I didn't study were Capablanca, Alekhine and Fischer, at least until later when I was trying to universalize my style. |
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| Sep-24-07 | | refutor: on p.212 of the nickoloff book (nickoloff-southam toronto closed 1995, you mention that the "popularity of the makogonov rose directly in proportion to White being unable to demonstrate any clear advantage against Réti's Variation" (early ...Bg4 in the King's Indian) do you believe that? i know stats can be misleading but white looks pretty good in the lines with ...Bg4 |
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Sep-26-07
| | IMlday: Igor Ivanov picked up Spassky's Toluca 1982 ..Re8 inno that he sprang on Poluugaevsky, and tried to use it on the U.S. Swiss circuit. But, he lamented, his GM opposition kept playing h3 to avoid it. Likewise with Reti in the 20s, the 'theoreticians' like Gruenfeld and Saemisch avoided it, if not Makagonov's by h3 then Saemisch's f3. I don't think any line explored by Spassky, Tal, Botvinnik and Petrosian can be too bad, despite statistics based on us mere mortals. |
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| Sep-26-07 | | refutor: i will have to dig deeper thank you |
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| Nov-03-07 | | Sularus: This is not meant to be disrespectful but you sir look like the guy in the ChessMaster software! |
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Nov-20-07
| | IMlday: This was a post I made for a young player who felt studying sucks (sic:) on the Canadian site chesstalk. It got some enthusiastic response from chess teachers. In the thread the title was "Schleimann's (sp)is Strong like Bull!!"
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My perceptual method obviates studying. You just have to look and watch the ideas develop historically. No books required. The Schleiman(sp?) is a good example.
1) Get a chessgames.com membership. It costs like one book.
2) Scroll down the right column to ‘explore openings’.
3) Play 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 f5 on the board.
4) Click search database for position.
5) Up come 776 games in chronological order.
6) Flip sides and play through games by the pointy Black’s, say Steinitz, Lasker, Marshall, Tarrasch, Nimzovich, Tartakower Spielmann. All these guys show up before 1908 in games 1-75. (Spassky's in the 1950s)
7) Just look. No thinking. Watch and learn by osmosis. Don’t analyze or think too much.
8) Play through whole games, not just the openings.
9) Eventually you will probably consider playing the gambit yourself. If so you will want to know how modern players react.
10) Jump to the end of the database >>|
11) Yikes! it’s Shirov-Radjabov, 2007 and Black won despite White’s having had a whole century to prepare. Carlsen and Kramnik don’t seem to have beaten Radjabov’s treatment either. Look at those, Kramnik even has to hold a pawn down endgame. Vallejo-Aronian also.
12) 742, 747 and 750 are all Zvjaginsev games from 2007, two draws and a win.
13) Consider, if players over 2650 can repeat the Schleimann against GMs who know they play it, how much more so can you play it against 99.9% of the opponents you are likely to encounter.
14) Realize the thing is totally scary! You don’t have to study at all, just bluff and all your 1.e4 players will start wimping out with passive Bc4 pianos.
15) Just kidding. But forget studying. Find someone your own strength and have a secret Schleimann blitz match with alternating colours and looking in the ‘book’ permitted between games.
16) Never feed your memory but always feed your intuition.
17) Above all, have fun!
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| Nov-21-07 | | whiskeyrebel: A fine post, especially #17. I've felt for a long time that as pleasurable as it is seeking out new books to hopefully, finally straighten my game out, that the answer is probably right in front of me if I could only see it. If I knew how to best use what I have I wouldn't need more. These words of advice confirm to me that it is there..somewhere..the next level of understanding. I've just missed it. |
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| Dec-02-07 | | Treadway: Maybe you have already read "Zen in the Art of Archery" by E. Herrigel (1884-1955) a useful, and fun, read. Here's a quote:
"The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art..."
Cognition after Perception seems to be the rule. |
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Dec-12-07
| | IMlday: I read that and also Mrs Herrigal's companion volume "Zen and the Art of Floral Arrangement". Definitely for clear thinking perception has to precede conception. |
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| Dec-17-07 | | refutor: <IM Day> after our conversation in september i have taken up the ...Bg4 line (admittedly with mixed results) but i think i have learned lots about the king's indian by playing it...thanks for the recommendation and have a merry christmas! also i agree with the comment above about "learning by osmosis". when trying a new opening i try and play through a couple hundred games quickly (mostly wins and draws on the side i'm hoping to play) and it works a lot better than trying to work with MCO or any of its bretheren |
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Dec-24-07
 | | Eggman: <<when trying a new opening i try and play through a couple hundred games quickly (mostly wins and draws on the side i'm hoping to play)>> "An expert is a man who has made every mistake there is to make in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr My two cents: you should be placing at least equal emphasis on the losses. |
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| Dec-24-07 | | Kajtek: Very nice beard |
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| Jan-06-08 | | refutor: Happy New Year Lawrence! I seem to remember a while back you stated that you liked 5. ...Qd6 v. the Ruy Lopez Exchange. What do you think about 5. ..Ne7? |
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