But you're right: chess *does* have elements that aren't obviously linguistic. So maybe it's multiple modules in each case, with one major overlap?

Does any of it apply to me getting hooked into a 5 and a half hour game yesterday against a supposedly "weaker" player who was more like a Pit Bull and apparently having to play an endgame with 3 (count 'em) Queens and a King against his two Queens and a King?

When does chess become a nightmare?

OK let's memorize the "correct moves" for a 3 queen and king v. 2 queen and king endgame.

over 100 moves.

He finally resigned, but I think it's because he had to go to bed or something.

For all I know, he was 8 years old.

Dam he played tough though.

Just saying.

I had a won game with a Rook And Queen against a Rook and Queen except I had THREE EXTRA PAWNS, ALL PASSED AND LINKED ON THE FIFTH/SIXTH RANK.

And managed to make a real abortion of it.

Involving the multiple Queens etc.

He got into my Open King and I was so afraid of giving him a perpetual I actually gave him my Queen and Rook for his rook.

But my King was In front of my three passers by then.

So he tried to stop them, but no way- they were on 7th rank..

So he marches his own passed pawn down the g file while I queen mine and then it was

"Queenfight at the old Patzer Corral" till He just got plain worn out, I think.

NO way was I going to agree to a draw after five and a half freaking hours.

<Time>! I really did enjoy your debate with <Dom> about memory, openings, language, kids, etc.

I just went down to a guy in a Sicilian where I knew for a fact the first 20 moves were theory-- (I had the line memorized)-- and five moves later he had me.

So maybe yes, maybe no to your idea.

I'm addicted to 3.d4, so though your efforts were appreciated, I'm a "tactical mess" gal.

Not happy unless the position is super double edged, edgy, and incomprehensible.

You wouldn't have been reading George Steiner's preview of Karpov-Korchnoi 1981, would you? The author talks about something very similar:

'Take the two cardinal points: "triviality" - in the "humane" and social sense - and inexhaustible depth in the formal, structural, aesthetic senses. Seen together, they make chess one apex of a fascinating triangle. It is in pure mathematics, in music and in chess that this singular duality of playful, autonomous profundity is vital.

Pure mathematics constructs its own conventions of beauty and rigour. Its theorems *may* turn out to have some application to vulgar reality. But such application is a contingent, almost embarrassing by-product.

There is, to be sure, plenty of music which accompnies, mimes or evokes human activities. But the greater the music, the more integral its self-containment, its plentitude to itself. A Bach partita is of *no use*; it does not picture anything in the world; it is not to be marched to or danced by. It simply *is*, in an existential necessity and totatility which constitutes a world.

So it is with a great chess game, indeed with a single supreme move (Rook takes on h7 in Botvinnik's epic draw with Fischer at Golden Sands in 1962 - Botvinnik vs Fischer, 1962). In short: there is literally infinite "matter" in pure mathematics, in music, and in chess. But its relation to common reality is, to borrow from the physicists, "anti-matter".

This may prove the clue to a well-known psychological and physiological conundrum. Pure mathematics, musical composition and chess are the only three human pursuits in which we have reliable evidence of creative achievements (even major creative achievements) before puberty. Pascal and Gauss were rediscovering for themselves, or proposing, important theorems in earliest boyhood. Games which Samuel Reshevsky played before his teens retain their classic authority. Mazart, Rossini and other composers produced flawless, inspired music in pre-adolescence.

This suggests the possibility that these three "autistic" activities are fuelled by neuro-physiological and cerebral centres which are independent of general and, particularly, sexual maturity. One can be a mathematical prodigy, a musical genius, a chess master, before becoming a "normal" human being; one can continue to be so without ever achieving, or achieving fully, "normality".

And the deep structural link may be this: in ways which we intuit but cannot yet analyse or transcribe, pure mathematics, music and chess are "internal spaces", and configurations of energy across and within special "mappings" - the algebraic field, he acoustic sphere, the chess-board. Mastery in each of the three somehow depends on the ability to sense - at some highly abstract level of inward sight or hearing - the right configuration (figura) of symbols, notes or pieces, and to leap towards this "figure" across the intervening, plodding, step-by-step stages which separate you and me from the flash of right vision (the solution to the equation, the musical resolution, the mating position).'

I bet all my chessbucks on <jabenta> against <kramnik> today.

Do you think that makes me <abnormal>?

Congrats on your second Cinema teaching job!!!

Computers don't get scared, they don't feel time pressure.

Here is a game I just won at 1 and a half hour each time control on Yahoo--

I sacced a Knight and then my Queen for a connected passed pawn attack, and on first analysis I see that he missed an easy win SEVERAL TIMES.

But he didn't find it.

He got in time trouble and my pawns scared him.

AROOOO~~~!!

Heh-- he thinks we are both TERRIBLE players and I can't refute him.

I don't think I will post this game-- It would be instructive only as a "comedy of errors" and two humans both thinking they were losing at the exact moments they were winning, and VICE VERSA as well, if you can believeit.

It's still one of my favorite games I played though.

Cuz I made the <second to last mistake> and I lost my queen and my passed pawns hurt his brain and I won.

So there.

Here to save you the trouble: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/35...

Hi <Nako>!! No way. It's too embarrassing even though I won.

But you know the irony--

I just played my last game of the day and I had a great attack agaisnt a very strong player-- my Yahoo froze and I couldn't get back in the game.

I just replayed it over my engine and this last game I played MUCH BETTER and so did my opponent.

A worthy game, but I lost it cuz my PC froze on the Yahoo board.

Oh well.

I guess it evens out.

I will pretend the two games are "mingled" and call it a good day's work.

I won when I had no right to win, and lost when I was winning in maybe one of the best games I ever played in my life.

God I love chess.

One of the delights of being a Dylan fan is that you always know that there's some little curio out there that you've missed. The following is a good example; this is from the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, and made the 1976 live album 'Hard Rain'. How bloody cool is he here?

I'd always wondered about the one-eyed undertaker -- does he blow a <futile horn> or a <feudal horn>?

Sometimes you find an opponent who knows a variation better than you. When you run out of opening moves, it's time for "messy girl."

Usually your opponent won't get that far. When they play something new, try to refute it.

Be sure to replay your games, especially your losses, to find improvements. This is probably the best way to achieve master strength.

At YouTube <Majnu> posted this fantastic Rook and pawns endgame -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-_6...

It's from the last stage of this game: Capablanca vs Yates, 1930 (Hastings)

I think you should check out the vid - if you find a window of opportunity, that is.. ( That endgame is SO GOOD I started laughing while <majnu> explained it! I kid you not.

How's the Bled book coming? I've never actually played through all the games of one tournament--what a great and ambitious thing to do! Your passion and talent for the game are really inspiring!

I just recieved a catalogue from the United States Chess Federation that has all kinds of tourny books, including some of the early classics. Might shell out for some.

God, Kramnik looked really strong last week at the Tal Mem, effortless, like a machine. Although I favor Anand, I don't know he'll do if Kramnik can play at the same level in the match as he did in this tourny.

Did you know there was a Mongo Park, Ohio? (They filmed some of Deerhunter there.) I just can't get enough of words that rhyme with "bongo."