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 70 OF 274 · Later Kibitzing>
Jan-19-11		jessicafischerqueen: Thanks tons <Annie> for those two names. I have one question about the "o" sound. <Owls> said it's similar to "law" and also "or". But that's not the same "o" sound. Is it in between "law" and "or"? In "law", that's a short "o" but extended right? Different from the short "o" in the word "lot" for example. And in "or" that's a long "O" but one that sounds different that the long "O" in the word "toe," right? This one vowel sound is proving difficult for me to comprehend.

Jan-19-11		SwitchingQuylthulg: <jessicafischerqueen> Well, like I said, this stuff would be difficult enough to explain even if the exact pronunciation of words like "law" and "or" didn't depend hugely on your local dialect. ;-) "toe" is more stable (though even that has multiple possibilities), so let's concentrate on that. Thing #1 to realize is that absolutely no "foreigner" would ever, ever, EVER describe the sound in "oh" or "toe" or "opens" as a "long O". That's what it's often called in English, yes, but it's actually an <ou> diphthong. It has two distinct sounds - an O-sound and an U-sound - not one long O-sound. If Czech had a word "tou" then its pronunciation would be almost identical to the English "toe". Anyway, the O-part of that <ou> is the O-sound that you're looking for here. That's the sound for O in Czech, and Hungarian, and most other languages as well.

Jan-19-11		jessicafischerqueen: <Mr. Owls> Aha that's very helpful actually. Thank you- I believe I'm ready to try now. If I get even an approximately more accurate pronunciation than English speakers normally use for European chess masters, then it's a big, big help from you, <Annie> and <Neils>. Not to mention <brankat>- his posts on how to pronounce "Aljechin" were what I used to coach my narrator on the Polish movie.

Jan-19-11		Annie K.: <Switch> you have my vote for "most helpful" for next year! ;) <Jess> hmm, if you set up QuickTime on your computer, I could also try to send you audio files for player names - I can make audio files by recording with my IPhone's 'microphone' app. Not what you'd call "studio recording quality", but would be serviceable for this purpose. Also, I'll get to your mail this weekend, promise. :)

Jan-20-11		jessicafischerqueen: <Annie> hear hear- I also officially register my pre-vote for <Mr. Owls> as most helpful on the Kibbutz for next year's award. I will even manually type in his full user name when I cast my vote. I've just successfully downloaded QuickTime- I'd be thrilled if you sent me some vocal samples- Annie would you include the Czech names as well? I have a feeling you would be able to get these more right than a solo English speaker could.

Jan-21-11		dakgootje: Hey miss Annie! Do you know of a certain 'Hungarian cherry-pepper'? Needed one yesterday for a 'puszta'-goulash - but well, obviously did not know where to get one so I used a normal red chili pepper instead :P

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: Hi <dakkie>! :) I don't really know what that's supposed to be - I'll guess some kind of small bell pepper. Chili pepper may have been stronger than what they had in mind, but if you like it hot, I have no objection. ;) <Jess> great on setting up QuickTime successfully. OK, I'll send you audio files for all the player names along with the email, when I finish it, that is - tomorrow at the latest. I'm a little tired today, since I hadda "get up early" to go play chess, and that after about 4 hours of sleep, as usual. ;s So I'll probably just relax today, by playing a few dozen blitz games. Well, of course, what else? ;p But my opponent was that girl I always beat, so that wasn't much of an effort - it would be much harder if I were trying <not> to beat her, the poor bunny. ;s Here's the "game" - [Site "Haifa"] [Date "2011.01.21"] [White "Annie Kappel"] [Black "Rebeka Frumin"] [ECO "C53"] [WhiteElo "1732"] [BlackElo "1400"] [TimeControl "5400+30"] [Result "1-0"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 Bc5 5. h3 O-O 6. c3 d5 7. exd5 Nxd5 8. O-O Bd6 9. Bxd5 Be7 10. Bb3 Bf5 11. d4 exd4 12. cxd4 Bf6 13. Be3 Nb4 14. Nc3 Rc8 15. a3 Nd3 16. Qd2 Qd6 17. Bc4 c5 18. Bxd3 Bxd3 19. Qxd3 cxd4 20. Nxd4 Bxd4 21. Qxd4 Qg6 22. Qxa7 Qc2 23. Rab1 Ra8 24. Qd4 Rad8 25. Qg4 Rd3 26. Qc4 b5 27. Qxb5 Rxe3 28. fxe3 Qg6 29. Nd5 Qe4 30. Rbe1 Rd8 31. Nc3 Qg6 32. e4 Rd2 33. Qe8#

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: Oooh, update - my new rating is out, the January one - just saw it. And it's only the 21st of January! I'm impressed. :p I dropped 4 points, to 1728, which utterly astonishes me - positively, I was expecting to drop a <LOT> more, since I've started playing at classical time controls, and um, "not doing very well" there yet. ;) But I did play mostly high-rated opponents (2000-2300 range), so I guess that helps.

Jan-21-11		dakgootje: Certainly! I am all about hotness. The recipe mentioned it should be spicy or hot or whatever it said - but even with the red pepper used, it was fairly mild :\ Still, first time I made a goulash and it was quite good so I'm satisfied ^^ :D

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: <dakkie: <Still, first time I made a goulash>> That puts you ahead of me. ;)

Jan-21-11		dakgootje: What are you waiting for?! Make it your 2011-resolution! :D

Jan-21-11		hms123: <Annie> Does poor Rebeka not know the meaning of "resign"? Good grief.

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: <dakkie> but, but... I don't even like it? Besides, it has recently come to my attention that cooking was men's work. I'd rather do feminine things, like fixing electric appliances and wall sockets and such. ;) <hms> she probably didn't want to go home after 5 minutes play, which was about when she dropped her first N. Or maybe she wanted to learn how to win won games, which is a notoriously difficult task. ;) I really don't mind in the least - although watching her blunders was a bit painful :s - but checkmates are fun, and the game ended within an hour anyway.

Jan-21-11		dakgootje: <but, but... I don't even like it?> When did that come into the equation? You eat things because they are <good> for you. I do not like having to eat a big chocolate cake, brownies, a lot of icecream and two pounds of meat every day - but it is healthy! Taste is very over-rated.

Jan-21-11		hms123: <Annie> I thought the way that you won the game was very straight-forward and, thus, very instructive. It all seemed so easy. As it should be.

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: <dakkie> thank you, now I understand! =) <hms> thanks. :) It's easier to play well when the only question is <exactly> how to win. ;s

Jan-21-11		crawfb5: <Annie> Regarding comments on "the other place," I haven't too much to say. I'd give generally high marks for the extent to which users can customize the use and appearance of features as well as for active maintenance and improvement of features. At the moment, only two very minor quibbles come to mind. 1) I like a little notice on the home page indicating games are awaiting moves rather than navigating to the "current games" page to check. When I have a low volume of moves being made, I turn on the email notification. 2) Ok, minor quibble #2 just turned into a nonissue when I popped over to the analysis page to check. I'd been thinking the "\|<" button should take you back to the current position of a game in progress rather than to the starting position, but I see now that the "START" button appears to do that. I'd been assuming for longer than I care to admit that they should work the other way around, but now that I know, it's cool. I'd like to explore more elsewhere on site, but it's a time management issue. I play on three sites, and I'm thinking that may be one too many. I like all three for different reasons, but I think I know which one has to go if it comes to that (don't worry, it's not "you" :-). I spend most of my nonplaying chess time <here> or digging around for historical info elsewhere as I appear to have stumbled backwards into becoming a bit of an amateur chess historian. I'm still trying to find that happy medium between enough games in progress to maintain my interest and too large a game load for me to keep up my level of play. I don't use any of the opening explorers at any of the sites because I have more games than any of them, built up over time from various sources. I also update it regularly from TWIC. I think I need to retire or sleep less or clone myself. I could have as many hands as Vishnu and they would still all be very busy...

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: <craw> thanks for the writeup. :) Interesting idea re. including a list of waiting games in the player page, I like it. I'll check with Tryfon whether he'd be willing to try it, a possible problem might be that some people have literally hundreds of games going on at the same time, so loading their lists might add an extra "burden" to the page (already the "heaviest" on the site) that could make it crash and become inaccessible altogether. I suppose limiting the feature - as in 'load list only if number of games is less than 30', or something like that, might be possible. I'll mention it when I get a chance. :) Heh, I know the time management problem (lemme know if you hear of a solution...)! ;) Personally, when I'm feeling like being "active" in cc - which is an on-and-off thing with me, and I have to say that since I started playing OTB, my cc activity has been dropping, though I intend to get back to it, since it's obviously better for developing a serious repertoire than blitz... eventually - anyhoo, I was saying that when I feel like being active in cc, I find 4-player all-play-alls (6 games at once) the most comfortable gameload. And you can always add a knockout tourney or two (only one game at a time) on the side, if that's not enough. But that's entirely personal taste. :)

Jan-21-11		crawfb5: <Annie> I didn't mean a list of all games awaiting moves. More along the lines of a little note at the top that says "X games awaiting moves" or even something that indicates "you have games awaiting moves." Then you can go to the "current games" page. That way when I pop into the site, I can see if I have <any> games awaiting moves, and if not, move on. Like I said, it's a <minor> quibble. Currently it requires loading two pages instead of one and that's not really all that burdensome.

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: <craw> oh - there is such a thing. :) There's supposed to be a "__ Boards await your move" line somewhere among the notices to the right of the board - I can't check right now because I, um, don't have any ongoing games at the moment(!), ;s but look for it. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll get back to you on that.

Jan-21-11		crawfb5: Well, yes, if you are currently looking at a game, it will, I believe, tell you how many games total are awaiting moves (I only have one game going at the moment). What I suggested was to have a little notification on your homepage, which is where you go when you log in, unless that can also be customized and I haven't done enough digging.

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: Hmm. You can choose what page will be your starting page when you log in at My Stuff -> My Login, but the only two choices are 'Game Board' and 'My Teams', with the default, and overwhelming majority, being the Game Board (with the game selected usually according to "game that has been waiting the longest for your move", although you can change the selection criteria) option. So generally a game board should be your "homepage" once you are logged in. Unless you are on auto-login and have specifically bookmarked some other page rather than the domain itself, which you are not really supposed to do? ;)

Jan-21-11		crawfb5: Yes, I'd had it bookmarked for my homepage (My Stuff --> My Homepage), so this is a nonissue also. Well done. Carry on. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Jan-21-11		Annie K.: A-ha! Gotcha. ;) Heh - but if you'll tell me <why> you'd want your profile (aka homepage) to be your actual "home page" on the site, perhaps I could look into adding it as an option.

Jan-21-11		jessicafischerqueen: <Annie> you can make your profile your homepage-- by posting the URL at another website! Strange but true. This irritates folk, however, because all the vast majority of them gets is a huffy YOU MUST REGISTER TO CG.COM TO LOOK AT THIS PAGE

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