I have done some more roadmap pages today. In particular the Instructive games is a massive list - taken a lot from my own OTB games.

BTW, question for all : please check out my "Brilliances" page:

http://www.chessworld.net/chessclub...

Any Lasker Gurus out there?! Did he really have everyone's number ?!

I received an interesting translation this morning of description of Lasker. I knew Hans Kmoch had described Lasker's style as "Style of Style" in the immortal overprotection game annotations. But check this out:

" [ Article starts with Tarrasch vs. hypodernism struggle, names of Reti, Alekhine etc. are mentioned]

"...Lasker admits, that for him chess is primarily a sport. Lasker was a sportsman, a player at its best, a player with a quick response, cold blooded and far-sighted outlook on the position, intuitively accounting for opponent's personality.

...In somewhat exaggerated form, Lasker has given the overview of some common playing styles and points out some of the weaknesses of each one. With a shade of mockery he described the "stodgy" style, which he had seen enough of at the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. His view of the äutomatic"style was also strongly negative

"Stodgy Style: In closed, quiet position one tends to make moves at leasure and ignoring many of opponent's threats, like a turtle ignoring a fly sitting on its back. In case of a mistake by the opponent attempt to sharpen up the game, in the absence of them the quiet nature of the position is attempted to be preserved. In another article Lasker hints at his way of winning against such a style: its chief characteristic is the lack of energetic play with little or no struggle for the initiative often confining the "stodgy" player to lack of mobility. The attacker is therefore better off in increasing the pressure and cutting down the mobility of opponent's pieces

'Automatic style. At its root is a template; for each type of position position (as their number is limited), the automaton has a move prepared. Without a search or any kind of creative work the automaton produces the same move in the same position every time. Serve to it something that is not accounted for in its algorightm!!"

"Combinational style. Disreagarding all laws and rules, such a player calculates all variations move by move (here the book mentions that Lasker considered Alekhine a prime example of that style"

"Enticing style. The opposite of the stodgy style. Player of that style likes to create a position which appears lost for him but which upon arduous calculation turns out to be drawn. At the first hyper-courageous move by the opponent the picture changes: dogged defence turns into a ferocios attack...Evidently, Lasker in writing about the enticing style has described one of his own tricks, in the art of performing which he was second to no other, for such fine positional trickery was a gift only Lasker fully possessed.

"Which style does Lasker consider correct?
Classical style - the fight according to the laws of the confrontation. Unfortunately, Lasker hasn't described this style very clearly; however, summing up his remarks, one might conclude such a style being fighting, flexible depending upon the circumstances, yet not self-defining style. Using well-known rules as a guide this realistic style ought to, within reason allow for various possibilities.

The book also gives examples of his evaluations of his opponents

Liked your videos on today's GOTD Anand vs Topalov, 2010 (this opens your post of Apr-29-10 referencing the videos for World Championship match Game 4).

Playing White, can you win from the diagram against Crafty End Game Trainer?

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(Anand vs Topalov 2010 WCG4 White to play, 27?)

Video annotation about this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=772r...

For those interesting in an engine assisted chess puzzle , this is really interesting - I was going over a Nezmet Game - and my engine couldn't fine Nxc7 in this position:

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[Event "17th RSFSR Ch"]
[Site "Krasnodar, USSR"]
[Date "1957.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Nezhmetdinov"]
[Black "Yuri M Kotkov"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C67"]
[PlyCount "49"]
[EventDate "1957.??.??"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. Re1 Nd6 6. Nxe5 Be7 7. Bd3 O-O 8. Nc3 Nxe5 9. Rxe5 Bf6 10. Re3 g6 11. Qf3 Bg7 12. b3 Ne8 13. Ba3 d6 14. Rae1 Nf6 15. h3 Nd7 16. Nd5 f5

Would your engine found Nxc7 now?!

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(Nezhmetdinov vs Y Kotkov 1957, 17?)

Explanation - 17 Nxc7? loses. Over to you. Black has a hidden resource which I leave you to find from the diagram - if you get stuck check with Crafty End Game Trainer using the link below: http://www.chessvideos.tv/endgame-t...

[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Chaosmaster"]
[Black "Ruffian"]
[Result "*"]

The fact is that the engines still aren´t capable of making plans. What they do is simply "pacman", based on the value or relative value of the pieces and in a more complex way on a square relative value. In the beggining they still have a good development based on key square control, but in middle game is almost all about "pacman".

So, we can´t be so stucked in engine´s analysis, even if they are too powerfull like some like to say ...about 3400 elo and bla bla bla... they can just be wrong, and very wrong.