User Profile: Annie K.

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Annie K.
Member since Apr-02-04

Annie Kappel
This profile needs an update badly, but I don't have the time... :)
My YouTube channel, featuring pronunciations of non-English chess player names: http://www.youtube.com/user/AnnieK1...
I'm 45 y/o, of Transylvanian origin, living in Israel since childhood. I speak English (no, really), Hungarian (great language!), and Hebrew (if I must, which is often, for some reason).
Afflicted with an uncontrollable sense of humor and other highly controversial characteristics.
I learned chess as a child, but had no further opportunities to practice the game. Returned to it seriously around 2004, and have been hanging out here since.
Note: if I am not home (i.e., here), you can probably find me at the Domdaniel chessforum, the SwitchingQuylthulg chessforum, the visayanbraindoctor chessforum, or the chessgames.com chessforum! :)
---
<My City of Moscow skits:>
<<<<<<>>>>> Kramnik's Party -> City of Moscow (kibitz #752)
<<<<<<>>>>> Sochi 2008: An F-Files Production -> City of Moscow (kibitz #774)
---
<Game Collection: My GotD Puns>
<My favorites:>
All Your Baze Are Belong To Us - L Baze vs T Palmer, 2004 - GotD Mar-21-10
Y Yu No Claim Repetition? - Yu Yangyi vs M R Venkatesh, 2012 - GotD Jun-30-12
He Who Has E Tate is Lost - E Tate vs Y Shulman, 2001 - GotD Sep-22-16
How Many Roads Must Aman Walk Down? - S Shankland vs A Hambleton, 2014 - GotD Dec-23-16 (besides the obvious reason for the pun - a long King walk - note also the terms 'shank' and 'amble' embedded in the player names)
So me the Wei - W So vs Wei Yi, 2013 - GotD Jan-29-17
This Won't Borya Ider - B Ider vs Wei Yi, 2014 - GotD Apr-01-17 (follow-up to previous day's GotD, 'This Won't Borya')
Injun vs Engin' - Anand vs REBEL, 1997 - GotD Jan-06-2018
---
<My other (linkable) site contributions:>
* The Player Names Pronunciation Project: http://www.chessgames.com/audio (or look for names with a loudspeaker icon in the Player Directory)
* Created on my suggestion: Biographer Bistro
* The first (now retired) Carlsen Dancing Rook: https://web.archive.org/web/2013040...
* The Caruana Dancing Rook:
http://www.chessgames.com/chessimag...
* The Hou Dancing Rook:
http://www.chessgames.com/chessimag...
---
<<<<<<< MAJOR CHESS SITES <<>>>>>>>>>
<< Correspondence chess <<<<<<>>>>>>>>
< ChessWorld -> http://www.chessworld.net
ChessWorld is my new main chess playing base. It's a rather restrictive site for non-paying members, but one of the best sites for paying members. The full features include excellent interface options and first class study and analysis resources. Nice community, likeable admin. Paid membership recommended.
< Update: while I will leave the original entry for ChessWorld as-is, I have by now been a member of the site for 2 years, and am now an admin there. I still think the site is one of the best, and the <other> admins are nice. :p >
My ChessWorld profile: http://www.letsplaychess.com/chessc...
< Queen Alice -> http://www.queenalice.com
Queen Alice is a charming site - well behaved players, decent admin, site design visually very pleasant. It is also completely free. Unfortunately, it lacks team play, the interface and resources are relatively simple, and it can be frustratingly slow (loading times). Nevertheless warmly recommended.
My QueenAlice profile: http://www.queenalice.com/player.ph...
< GameKnot -> http://gameknot.com
GameKnot is technically an excellent site, however I would not recommend it to the serious player who is looking for a site to settle in, due to an anti$ocial admin with ju$t one $ingle intere$t in hi$ $ite... oop$, $orry about the typo$.
My GameKnot profile: http://gameknot.com/stats.pl?annie-....
<< Other chess sites <<<<<<>>>>>>>>
< FICS - the Free Internet Chess Server -> http://www.freechess.org
FICS is a great site to play chess at various faster time controls. There are a few difficulties getting started with it - first, it can be hard to find an email they will accept for registration; and second, there's a lot of site code to learn. But it's worth the hassle. :)
< ChessCube -> http://www.chesscube.com
ChessCube is quite good for fast time control games - provided you have a strong computer with broadband, as the site is entirely Flash based, which means it takes considerable computer resources to load. The site is nominally free, but heavily commercialized with all sorts of frills that can be purchased on it.
< Emrald Chess Tactics Server -> http://chess.emrald.net
Emrald is not a playing site - it is an invaluable tactical training asset. The only problem with it is also the difficulty of finding an "acceptable" email address to register with; but once past that hurdle, the site deserves nothing but praise.
It's a completely free site. You can play (practice) there as a guest, but they recommend registering, so that their program can keep track of your progress, in order to assign you puzzles best suited to your current level. I strongly second that recommendation. Register and always play logged in! It will make a huge difference in the site's ability to help you improve. An issue that scares some people off Emrald is that your progress is tracked via a "rating system", and because of the high importance they assign to speed, if you are not used to finding tactics fast, your rating will be very low at first - and many people are simply embarrassed to play logged in for that reason. Don't let it bother you! If you let embarrassment hold you back from letting the site help you improve to the best of its ability, you are only shooting yourself in the foot, and nobody else really cares that much anyway. ;p
A few of the people I've recommended Emrald to, had dropped it after a brief trial with remarks along the lines of "Oh, it's a blitz training site. I don't play blitz, so I don't like their obsession with speed." That reaction is absolutely wrong - and it's also one that many people who try the site out for only a short time are likely to have, if only because players who are used to being rated, say, 2000 and above, at corr. chess sites, are going to be annoyed and put on the defensive about finding themselves rated as low as 1200-1300 at Emrald, and will wish to dismiss the "insulting" site.
Yes, the Emrald rating system is heavily influenced by speed. But thinking that the site's purpose is blitz training is a complete misunderstanding of the lesson taught. The real purpose of Emrald practice is not to improve your blitz skills, but to train you to recognize dozens of tactical themes and opportunities AT A GLANCE - which will not only save you time in games of any time control, but is often the only way you will catch them AT ALL. Those brilliant tactical shots that can be seen in anyone's collection of "most memorable games", are often moves that will either occur to you as soon as you glance at the position, or you will miss them altogether. That's what Emrald really teaches - tactical chess intuition.
<Intuition in chess can be defined as the first move that comes to mind when you see a position. --- <Viswanathan Anand>>
<Personally, I am of the view that if a strong master does not see such a threat at once he will not notice it, even if he analyses the position for twenty or thirty minutes. --- <Tigran Petrosian >>
<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>
^ TL;DR.

Any other questions, feel free to ask. I might even answer. ;p

>> Click here to see Annie K.'s game collections.

   Current net-worth: 990 chessbucks
[what is this?]

   Annie K. has kibitzed 8212 times to chessgames [more...]

   Sep-15-20 S Mariotti vs A Geller, 1990

Annie K.: The Black player in this game has been corrected from Efim to Alexander Geller. Thanks. :)

   Sep-14-20 chessgames.com chessforum

Annie K.: <MissS> ah, yes, the key term "I challenged her" - that pretty much describes the previous post too, which was a blown out of all proportion tirade about the severity of the Player of the Day (not the entire homepage as claimed, which I check on almost every midnight, ...

   Sep-12-20 Champions Showdown Chess 9LX (2020)

Annie K.: Note: if you can't see the games, please set your game viewer to pgn4web (in the box under the game score) - but remember to set it back to our default viewer Olga in the end, as it is about to be upgraded soon, and will be the best of our viewers. :)

   Sep-04-20 Chessgames Bookie chessforum

Annie K.: The logs have been checked, and the top places are cleared. Congratulations to winner <moronovich>, the other 5 qualifiers, and the rest of the top 10! :) We have opened the Fall Leg, so if anything turns up, betting can start immediately, but we have no official schedule for

   Aug-01-20 Biographer Bistro

Annie K.: <Tab> The WCC pages are tied in with some special functions, and changing them can cause far-ranging problems at this time (remember when merely changing the WCC page titles caused stats to disappear from the pages of participating players?), so let's take this up again after

   Jul-29-20 Ding Liren vs Leko, 2020

Annie K.: Identical to K Stupak vs E Shtembuliak, 2020 .

   Jul-24-20 Annie K. chessforum

Annie K.: A fun conversation from 2016... :) <Daniel:> I’ve come to learn a lot about what sports broadcasting must be like. Actually I learned about it long before CG when I worked at a newspaper. If there is a sporting event you MUST be excited about it, from a business ...

   Jul-22-20 Biel (2020)

Annie K.: It gets worse - the chess24 intro says "In case of a tie for first place chess960 rapid games will be played", but in fact the official site specifies that the chess960 tiebreaks in question are the ACCENTUS 960 games - which have already been played on the 18th, the event's first ...

   Jul-21-20 Csom vs A Yusupov, 1982

Annie K.: The only requirement for this excellent pun is to pronounce Csom correctly. Which means, as "Chom". :)

   Jul-17-20 K Pedersen vs G F Kane, 1972

Annie K.: <jith> thank you for the always helpful directions. :) So all 12 Pedersen games we have in Chess Olympiad Final-A (1972) games are about to be reassigned from Eigil to Karl.

indicates a reply to the comment.

Procrastinators' Club (planned)

< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 147 OF 274 · Later Kibitzing>
Dec-02-12		Annie K.: <shiva> yes, although I really didn't do all that much. We are also collaborating on some audio work - Artiom is helping me with Cyrillic lists of Russian and Ukrainian players, and he'll get their audio files too when they are done. (This with Daniel Freeman's knowledge and blessing...) :) I'm not really obsessed with live ratings myself, but it's a worthwhile project, and he does a great job of it, so I'm glad to help him. He's also a very nice person. And did you know he was once Anna Ushenina's trainer? :D

Dec-02-12		shivasuri4: Ha ha, so you can now claim to be a World Champion Ushenina number 2, somewhat like the Erdos numbers.

Dec-02-12		Annie K.: Heh. Doesn't quite work that way, I believe. ;s Also, I'm not in touch directly with Artiom, but with James. :)

Dec-09-12		Annie K.: Now that's what I call 'distractable'... ;p [Event "FICS rated blitz game"] [Date "2012.12.10"] [White "AnnieK"] [Black "NN"] [WhiteElo "1520"] [BlackElo "1316"] [TimeControl "600+0"] [Mode "ICS"] [Result "1-0"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 d6 3. h3 Nf6 4. Bc4 a6 5. a3 e6 6. d3 Be7 7. Nce2 b5 8. Ba2 Bb7 9. Ng3 Nc6 10. f4 Qc7 11. Nf3 O-O 12. O-O Na7 13. c3 b4 14. Bb1 b3 15. Qxb3 Rab8 16. Qc2 Nd7 17. e5 d5 18. d4 cxd4 19. Qxh7# 1-0

Dec-10-12		tpstar: Good job, Snowdrop! ;>D

Dec-10-12		Annie K.: Heh - thanks, Tony! I figured the brand-new Tournament Index would come in handy for this one, and it did... :D

Dec-10-12		Thanh Phan: Well done <Annie K.>! Glad to see you have won one of them :)

Dec-10-12		Annie K.: Thanks <Thanh>. This is my second Klu - I also won #40 in 2007... :)

Dec-11-12		SwitchingQuylthulg: <Annie> Congrats, nice work!

Dec-11-12		Domdaniel: I remember the Snowdrops-Old Hands event. There was some discusssion as to whether it was a literal version of some untranslatable idiom. <heart> eeee cong-rats. Lucky the tourney had only 12 games, eh?

Dec-11-12		Annie K.: :) Thx much <Switch>, <Dom> - indeed, I haven't the patience to search through too many games... but I remembered that discussion too. So it was; Notice the Nuklu banner (probably a matter of seconds, as I happened to be browsing the site at the time) - take one look at the pic, mutter "snowdrop" (it helps that they were common in Romania, so I could recognize it at a glance) - head straight for the Tournament Index (because I knew that this tourney has been running for some years now, and didn't think the game would necessarily be from the latest year) - start with the latest year anyway, open the whole set with a click on MultiLinks, start closing tabs - spot banner and click without a pause - and I was probably only seconds ahead of others anyway. :)

Dec-11-12		Domdaniel: < the Emrald rating system is heavily influenced by speed> Ah, yes, speed. Street name for amphetamines and the title of a novel by Billy Burroughs Jr. I seem to recall a cartoon parodying the Little Orphan Annie strip - called Amphetamine Annie, or somesuch. Always with the hurrying, y'know.

Dec-11-12		Annie K.: Occasionally - such as when playing blitz, or trying to catch a stray Klu - speed (sometimes only a reference to quickness) can be somewhat advantageous. :) Besides, one wouldn't want to become too predictable. ;p

Dec-11-12		OhioChessFan: I have a friend who isn't all that conversant with high tech computer stuff and he is a little confused on this "Multilinks" stuff. I, of course, know what it is, but I can't quite put it in words. Could you tell me what to tell my friend about "Multilinks"?

Dec-11-12		Annie K.: <Ohio> Heh. It's a FireFox add-on that lets you open every link in a selected area in separate tabs at once, so you don't have to open them one by one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/fi... Actually, I'm using an Opera equivalent, and other browsers probably have such features too. :)

Dec-11-12		crawfb5: <OCF> "Multilinks" is an add-on for some browsers that allows you to open multiple hyperlinks all at once with each in a separate new tab. For example, if we have the following fake links: http://www.fakelink1.wow http://www.fakelink2.wow http://www.fakelink3.wow Holding down the right mouse button and "drawing" a rectangle around those three links will open up three new tabs, with one chosen hyperlink per new tab. It's handy for the clues hunt, but I also use it for things like checking all the dates and rounds on games in a collection or when building a new games collection.

Dec-11-12		OhioChessFan: Thanks to both of you. Now I know exactly what to tell my friend.

Dec-11-12		Annie K.: That is an enviable position. :)

Dec-13-12		hms123: <Annie> < Hmmm... I could perhaps be persuaded to take a trip to the US for something like that! :D> You are more than welcome to stay with us. We could drive to Florida together.

Dec-13-12		Annie K.: <H> your area seems a bit out of the way, but thanks - we'll see if/how things shape up. :)

Dec-14-12		Check It Out: Yeah! I hope Mr Daniel "CG" Freeman considers the idea, I think it would be a hoot.

Dec-14-12		OhioChessFan: http://www.pawnation.com/2012/12/13...

Dec-14-12		Annie K.: <Ohio> sad story. <Check It Out> yeah, an actual cg get-together - preferably a 3-4 day program, even, to make it worth the trip - would be a great social boost to the site regulars who could make it. I haven't much to do at a US championship or open though, as I couldn't play in them, not being a USCF member.

Dec-17-12		Domdaniel: <A> I finally located the email from Jess with her generous e-offer. And replied. People are nice, rilly. "I have always relied on the kindness of stranglers". "To be honest, Scarlett, I couldn't care less". "What doesn't kill me makes me stranger".

Dec-17-12		Annie K.: Yep. There, see? ;) <"What doesn't kill me makes me stranger".> Tall order, isn't it? ;s

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