Srsly, I always wonder who was the first person to perceive planet Earth as a beautiful thing. Was it the astronauts on the early Apollo missions, the ones who took the 'bluey-white ball' pics? Or did somebody imagine it earlier?

Or stay indoors and watch Disney-nature ("Pink in tooth and clipped in claw") on a giant plasma screen.

I admire the effort, regardless of outcome.

<Lemmingfan>? swoosh... zzzziiipp... poof

Boring, but we are, again, in agreement.

I can't sign off in the fine fashion you can, so I won't.

;)

Bien sur. (Near Big Sur, but healthier).

I find the thing about such books - the good ones - is that they offer a framework for thinking about the opening in question, and seeing how different plans follow naturally from different sub-variations. Sometimes an author can explain this in words - which is a good thing - but it's not absolutely vital.

Bellin's 1970s book on the Classical Dutch, for example, is completely dated. Some of his mainlines just aren't played any more, and theory has changed its mind on others. Some lines that he leaves out have become popular.

Yet it remains a good book. First, due to a solid intro where he talks about pawn structure, and the type of shape you're committing to by playing ...f5. Occasionally, even structure analysis gets dated -- Bellin tended to play ...fxe4 if White played e4, and most players then (including me) followed suit. More recently, Simon Williams has explored in detail the sharp idea of meeting e4 with ...f4, sometimes sacking a pawn.

Intro aside, I find Bellin's layout - his choice of schemes and chapter divisions - simply provides a good way of thinking about the Dutch. Even though I now have other more recent sources, and analysis of my own, Bellin's core framework stands.

A whole other area where old books are valuable is in out-of-fashion openings. I have some old books with vast amounts on the King's Gambit and similar Romantic openings. They weren't slouches 100 or 150 years ago: they did some deep digging, much of it now forgotten. It may need a spot of engine checking, but it's useful stuff to have up your sleeve.

I love opening books that explain the ideas behind the opening and when those ideas should typically be executed and also the tactical motifs that could arise

One of my favourite opening books is Tactics in the Grunfeld by Gennady Neisis

When I was younger I tried out everything, at least in speed games. I could still switch to a Pirc, Alekhine or Sicilian if I felt like it, and sometimes do. But I've met people who seem entirely ignorant of some of these lines, even to the point of thinking them unsound.

Databases have many advantages - as long as you don't take the win/loss stats too seriously, and learn to compare different ones - but there's a lot to be said for a one-volume openings book like MCO.

The big gap in my knowledge is the 'open' games - I didn't have a book on 1.e4 e5 as a teenager, though I played the Scotch or Italian sometimes. My basic primers, instead of MCO, were Pachman's series on Indian Defences, Queen's Gambit, and Semi-Open games.

Which led in turn to the French vice. The rest you know.

I think I qualify for that unto some extend. Sure, I am not many, nor legion - but in some respects I am 'younger'. On the other hand, I can't be classified as a 'player' -- and whether I <am> today?! Lets give half marks - because everything is 50/50.

In any ways, I've always said I never studied openings because there were no books which properly explained the ideas behind them. I liked stating them.

While obviously the truth is that I couldn't be bothered finding even a semi-decent opening book.

<Dom: <I must apologize, though. It's entirely my fault that some non-standard characters turn to garbage on this page. Annie told me how to fix it good, but I only did a semi-competent fast repair job with masking tape.>>

Naw, it's not your fault. :) I told you how to clean up the messed-up characters in your profile, but (1) what you did is good enough anyway, and (2) you can't determine the page charset ("character set") through your profile - that's a site setting on one hand, and also depends on every viewer's own encoding settings on their own computer, on the other.

I'm actually not sure what charset ceegee uses, since their source code doesn't show it - but it usually works well with UTF-8 or "Western" encodings at my end.

Ohwell. Sent you a small eeeeeemail too. ;) Speakina, the reason I haven't published a Ståhlberg video yet is that <Switch> doesn't seem to be pleased with my pronunciation - not of 'Ståhlberg', but of 'Gideon'! ;s

I still needed a qualifier. Certainly not "all younger players" because "all X" can never, ever be true, with no exceptions. "Some younger players" might be too few to register as a bona fide (sic - fide non bona est) trend. It's like a minority government - the 'many' pushes it towards an overall majority but the qualifying 'younger' just holds it in check. Kings hate being held in check but it's necessary in democracies. Americans call it 'checks and balances' then arrest you for having drug paraphernailia - "What's with the weighing scales, sir?"

And so on. When you worry at words to the extent I do, you've got a bad case of <Monojuveocaninitis>. You are one sick puppy.

And then you get headlines like 'Parents condemn underage drinking; teenagers disagree'.

Though it would be interesting if everyone was automatically member of numerous unions classifying people.

Maybe they're fans. Or somebody actually called Derek, Diana, Dodi, or Daniel Daniel.

Previously, I'd have scoffed at any instant coffee in fine powder form - as a rule, if you can't have the real stuff, granules are better than powder. Maybe granules are insufficiently kosher? Does kosherness even *have* degrees or is it strictly binary?

I misspent my youth trying to baffle people with Nimzoid moves. I was 45 when I discovered tactics, and I'm still not very good at them. But, weirdly, discovering tactics somehow improved my positional sense, including the ability to make up an opening as you go.

Which book have you read already? =)

Granulated coffee can be kosher, and they sell 'Taster's Choice' and suchlike garbage here too, but Nescafe Elite is in a class of its own. ;)

And the word "elite" is actually of Hebrew origin, aifinkso. At least, it means the same thing in Hebrew as in English, but in Hebrew it has etymological connections, being directly related to "Al" meaning 'above', or 'up': it simply means, literally, 'superior'.

'Elite', btw, is the name of the factory, not this particular coffee brand. Elite produces mainly sweets and coffees. I can't really vouch for all their products, but I think their instant coffee is superior indeed. :)

In Chabon's universe, this latter title is inherently hilarious, because Jews didn't *use* swords, so it conjures up visions of Uncle Manny the accountant (oops - sorry, Deffi) swinging from the chandelier with a dirk in his teeth.

But of course there wuz swords in Ancient Judea-Samaria (if it existed), there were sword-wielders at Massala, and it's difficult to slay thousands of shibboleth-sayers without edged weapons. And then there were the 10th century CE Khazars. And so on.

I'm now onto Zelazny's Jack of Shadows. It has a dragon. A bit part, but still a speaking role.

I'd have read them all in two days when I was youngrier, yanno.