After 25...d4 we had this position:

click for larger view

White played 26.Bxd4? - and, too quickly, as I was 30 mins ahead on the clock - I played the flashy 26...Rxg3+. Instead, simply 26...Ne4 wins. I wound up with a Queen and outside passed pawn vs two Rooks, missed one other decent chance, and let my opponent, out of time and playing on the 10" increment, hold a draw.

Due to results elsewhere, a win in Rnd-5 would *still* have done for joint 2nd place. And again, I got what I assumed was a winning position - barely out of the opening:

click for larger view

So here I played 14.Bxf6 Bxf6 15.e5 Bxg2 16.exf6 and he spent 45 mins on his next two moves. And found a defence I'd underestimated.

16...Bb7 17.Qg4 g6 18.Qg5 Qd8 19.Ne4 Bxe4 20.Rxe4

I'd earlier calculated this as winning, but it's not so straightforward.

click for larger view

20...h6 21.Qh4 Kh7 and Black fights on. I could have played solidly, but I chose to let him grab my d, b, and a-pawns while I went for the King. After dubious choices on both sides:

click for larger view

And I played 42.Qxf7+, missing a clear win with 42.Re7!

So it went on and on to move 85 or so, reaching a Rook ending where I have 2 pawns (g+h) to his one (b). Still winnable, especially as I have 20 mins left and he's playing inside the 10-sec increment. I let him hold the draw, somehow.

At least he got the grading prize for his effort. I was playing a 14-year-old for £100, which is strange.

I *like* increments, but chess has now changed again. Both of these games would have been easy wins under any of the older sudden death systems. I had a legitimate advantage in each, as well as much more time on the clock - so no arbiter could've said I was just waiting for flags to fall. But they would, inevitably, have fallen.

Maybe it's because I don't play blitz, but both of these guys played well when very short of time.

Forget about openings: I do well with whatever I play. Endings could maybe use some work.

Damn, I just saw *another* missed win. In this position I played 49.Kg2? which is a draw.

click for larger view

But 49.g4 wins.

All that extra clock time isn't much use if you're unable to spend some of it finding better moves.

*clears throat*

*primal scream I-have-had-it-with-chess*

OK, the storm has abated. I've even tentatively agreed to play for a different club team in next season's FIDE-rated team event.

WHY YOU MAY ASK

Hoping you will understand,

Nellie Maynard (Mrs)

<Forget about openings: I do well with whatever I play. Endings could maybe use some work.>

OK then, you know that analysis with Fritzie isn't going to help with that much, right? Take thee to Emrald and <practice> doing your own chance-spotting. Srsly. :)

But this you know. More specifically, while well intended, the suggestion merely demonstrates why one-size-fits-all advices can't work.

I cannot take such games seriously. A deficiency, no doubt, but maybe my seriousness threshold has an iron deficiency, or something.

AHHHHHHH

ahahahahah

Against the Day is , as it were, another story. I greeted publication with joy - it *looked* like the Pynchon I'd been waiting for. Then I got weirdly bogged down (the hardback is *heavy*, man) and found myself unable to finish it. All the good stuff is in there -- anarchists and electricians, mathematicians and mind-altering drugs, high voltages and higher altitudes, and cameos from Tesla et al -- but those pastiche ballooning 'chums' just irritated me. Maybe I'm getting cranky, or less patient. Maybe that tubal detox damaged my attention span ...

Then I zipped through his next book, Inherent Vice, and enjoyed it hugely. It's almost snappy, very noir and cinematic, like a more world-weary remake of The Crying of Lot 49. Weltschmerz in California.

So I've gone back to Against the Day, and this time we're ready for one another.

For some obscure reason, I keep thinking the title should be Latin -- <Contra Diem>.

*Fame*, like its quarrelsome siblings *Celebrity*, *Notoriety*, and, um, *Family*, is a fearsome thing. Literally terrifying: the awful prospect of life in the public arena.

Some say that they want to be famous in order to 'live forever' -- I can think of several better ways to achieve this aim, such as gambling on the veracity of a religion or building a nanotech necro-machine in your garden shed. Even sharing your genes with a cabbage or a slug, and hoping that your mixed-race and scrambled-species offspring honour your example. It's gotta be worth a shot.

Or you could have your cranium flash-frozen and your gonads deep-fried, and hope they don't mix your bonce up with Warhol or Disney ... hell, you know what it's like, groping around in the freezer and hoping the crimson ice isn't actually *frozen blood*.

No, there are many roads to immortality, and the fact that nobody has ever proven that they work shouldn't put you off. After all, nobody has ever counted all the way to infinity, in ones, have they?

But I digress. The object of the exercise today is *fame*, in all its spine-tingling horror. Some want to live forever, ideally by not dying. A laudable aim in itself, but possibly better accomplished with a stupendous bank balance and a discreetly private flock of villas in aspirational first-world statelets.

Others see the money as sufficient in itself. They want to be famous because they've heard the wages are good. Well, it ain't necessarily so: how can mere dollars/euros/yen compensate for the lack of anything resembling a life?

It is difficult, I know, for people who have not seen the abrasive, ablative awfulness of the celeb existence close up to grasp quite how ghastly it is. They imagine the dosh can buy security and privilege, and you can buy people for any other services.

But such an existence is hell on earth. It's no coincidence that so many celebs are pill-popping heavy drinkers with half a dozen full-time addictions, so many divorces they've lost count, and a permanent entourage of hangers-on jostling to exploit you, borrow some money for a yacht, have your babies or do cosmetic surgery on your kirlian aura.

Trust me, I've met celebs and I've met recluses, and I know who is happier.

It's not the filthy lucre, it's the feelthy lookers-on.

So, naturally, I've had to expend a quantum of effort - not an easy thing for me to admit to - in avoiding the dead hand of fame.

There are degrees of tolerance. Much as I'd like to have the Pynchonesque full monty -- fifty-odd years of invisibility, with no media contact or photographs -- it's too late, and I've already sailed too close to the snapperfish.

But it's quite pleasant being a cult figure. It has benefits, and, as a bona fide eccentric you can disappear whenever you want. There are no obligations in Cultsville, as long as you don't try to found a religion.

Isn't this where I came in?

<El Hombre Invisible> of the month is Chris Marker, who is due to hit the age of 90 in July - unless he died and forgot to mention it. Cinema's great essayist, maker of <La Jetee> and <Sans Soleil>, is a creature of light and shadow, a digital guru with a working knowledge of cats and cameras. Hey, it worked for the Egyptians in Thebes and Abydos.

We haven't met, of course. Space and silence demand decorum and respect. But he once let a message filter back indirectly, saying that he had read something I'd written, and approved.

I *could* say that these long posts were part of a scientific experiment -- I'd observed that people who say "I never read long posts lol" are almost always Lollards, even fully-fledged LOL-abusers.

So I thought I saw a way to excise them without taxing myself.

What's the point, though? And who'd fledge a Lollard anyhows?

These are *good* people, generally. Not Lollards or Sado-Lolliers. To be patronizing, they may be educable.

And if not, well, everybody had some fun and nobody died. Which I reckon is a pretty useful measure of the value and validity of an activity.

There's a presupposition there which, on this site, is so close to being an automatic reflex that it is almost never put to the question. And I found myself sensing some undertone in your post: something that, for me, didn't add up -- though it does for a great many others.

It's simple, rilly: the assumption that one's chess-related activities are fueled by a wish to get better, to improve, to see more faster and to get a higher rating. Apart from the simple pleasure of playing, something like this seems to motivate most people here.

Sure, the parameters (skill vs performance vs sight vs rating vs results vs prize-money) vary a bit from case to case. Many younger players tend to have a very hard-edged focus on improvement -- they're the ones with less tolerance for our seemingly unhelpful off-topic meanders. And to think of all the free lessons we give 'em in applied psychology.

I wasn't immune at that age. Within a year of taking chess seriously in my late teens, and seeing my rating go from unrated to 1650 to 1840 to 1980 in three hops, I bet a friend £5 that I'd be world champ by the end of the (20th) century. I lost. I haven't seen the winner since 1978, so I hope the bet wasn't index-linked. £5 was a week's rent or a hardback chess book in those days.

Point is, I'm not sure that I do want to improve. Yes, I sometimes talk about getting more consistent and getting back to 2000, but I can't see it happening.

Which is one reason that a win-directed strategy -- play 1.e4! and nuke the whales! -- would be an ecological disaster.

Oops, I'm longing again. Better short out.

You are very perceptive, dear. ;)

Let me put it this way: no, I couldn't care less about your rating, whether you (or I for that matter) ever become a titled player, etc. What I care about is simply that I like it better when you are happy, or at least satisfied with your <game> (not the result), than when you are disappointed with it.

Letting several winning opportunities slip away clearly didn't constitute a particularly satisfactory experience for you. Not because you didn't win, but because of - the aesthetic disappointment of missing the available pretty fireworks of the game, nesspah? :)

And that's where practicing at the <tactics server> Emrald would help.

Btw, you don't play <games> there - it's more like the POTD here at cg - you are shown a board position, the one before "the opponent's" move, then you are shown that move, and then your clock starts running and you start looking for the available tactic. If you don't find it, you can check the answer, too. But you <will> start finding them after a while, and that's a very satisfying thing.

The site is not meant to be "taken seriously" - it's meant to be enjoyed. :)

How did that US presidential TV debate go, the one where Quayle (I think) tried to borrow some Kennedy aura ... and walked into a one-liner prepared by Bentsen, who had known Kennedy well ... "Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine -- and Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy".

Heh. Sucker punch. Does it work with idiots?

<"Buddy, I have known some real idiots. Those idiots were good friends of mine. And Bud, you're no idiot.">

I <once> told you this: mworld: *Chuckles*

I normally skim the long winded posts, but I read every word of yours. Always interesting and well said.

The effect is similar to OTB blitz or online games: I don't take 'em seriously. My usual reaction to a chess problemo is to give it 30 seconds, maybe a minute or two, and see what I see, Which is often quite a lot, actually... but I rarely bother to pursue these to sufficient depth.

I don't *motivate* easily, as you may have noticed. Artificial rewards don't grab me, and even 'real' rewards have to compete with the procrastination reflex.

I sometimes do those 'how good is your chess' games, or CG's version - pretty good, given the constraints.

What actually intrigues me there is *style* -- I 'did' a Topalov game recently, and scored well above par - despite picking the 'wrong' move in many cases. If there was a playable alternative, I took it ("Take 3 points, that is also a good move. Take 3 points if, like Topalov, you chose Nb5"). Yet there are *other* GMs -- dare I mention Ivanchuk? -- where I find it much easier to stay on their wavelength. An innaresting phenomenon, and more likely to get me doing this kind of thing than any will-to-improve. Go, figure - va, chiffre.

I'm also liable to stop keeping score, or to let my attention wander and just play thru the game without the illusion of competing. Much the same way that I can watch a third of a football game and lose innarest.

I reckon, nonetheless, that I'm getting better at these tactic things, when I complete 'em ... the output or the adjudicator tends to suggest I might be a lesser species of Master. FM for Fake Master, maybe.

Simultaneously, my OTB level has dropped. Actually, it bounced off a scary 1700 floor two years ago, and has been creeping back up since, very slowly. I don't care, not the way I once did.

I was always too good with IQ tests and the like. You figure out some meta-strategy and questions tumble like polyominoes. Doesn't necessarily make me a calculating prodigy or a cast-irony genius, though, does it?

Just a rambling man, yanno. I think last weekend's main problem was actually clock-handling ... I didn't take the extra time needed to look deeper and find a couple of forced wins -- because experience had taught me not to fall behind on time, and that such positions (advantage on board and clock) will 'win themselves' in due course.

Heh. Of course that could never happen in real life ...

So far, I have it doing chess. But wait and see ...

Or read Imaginary Magnitudes by Stanislaw Lem, which features an AI so far beyond human cognition that it won't talk to its programmers. It's called Honest Annie.

Heh!

<My usual reaction to a chess problemo is to give it 30 seconds, maybe a minute or two, and see what I see, Which is often quite a lot, actually... but I rarely bother to pursue these to sufficient depth.>

30 seconds is waaaaayyy too long! ;p

...for Emrald puzzles. This site specifically trains one to spot the tactical opportunities in about 1-3 seconds: in other words, <at a glance>. That's why it's so valuable as training for OTB play - as has been said by a number of World Champions, tactics are something you'll either spot at a glance, or not at all.

Look, sweet, why can't you just click on that link, go over there, look around, solve a couple of puzzles (you can even practice as a "guest", without signing up) and then see how you like it? This won't hurt a bit... honest. ;)

I sure wish I could hear the purr in the voice there.

<dom: How did that US presidential TV debate go, the one where Quayle (I think) tried to borrow some Kennedy aura ... and walked into a one-liner prepared by Bentsen, who had known Kennedy well >