I happened to get a hold of the NIC lustrum anthology publication, celebrating their 25th year, and here's just one of the many gems that are gathered; an interview with M. Botwinnik.

Excerpt, for your reading pleasure, MB on his academy and meetings with Garik, as he calls GK:

<'I usually had about fifteen to twenty pupils who came from the whole of the Soviet Union.
Mostly, these pupils were recommended to me
by trainers. What I did was, first of all look and
see if any of the pupils had natural talent. You
can see that almost immediately, if someone's
got it or not. Yes, how . . . by the manner of playing, how someone comments on his own games,
how he approaches the job of analysis. And with
Garik I saw it from miles off, although he was
at that time a small, thin and very excitable little
boy. And this latter quality especially hindered
him in his play. But, well, he was only ten
years old.

'To cut the story short, we worked together for
five years. And it was very intensive; that is simply my method of work.

'As far as Garik was concerned, I immediately
came to blows with him. For he first made a
move and only then thought about it. While the
proper order is, as you know, exactly the other
way around. 'Watch out,' I used to say to him,
'if you go on like this you'll become a Taimanov
or a Larsen, Garik.' These two were the same,
even when they were grandmasters - first move,
then think.
'Now young Garik was very insulted by this,
because he wanted to be an Alekhine.

In my opinion you can divide great chess
players into two sorts. First, the practical players. The most beautiful example is Capablanca.
When he was young he didn't really think a lot
about chess. He only did so when he was actually
sitting at the board and playing a game. But
then he showed his strength in practice and his
legendary talent. Later, when he was older, his
power declined but when he was young, he was
an absolutely fantastic player.
'The second sort of player is the researcher.

'Karpov is also a purely practical player. And
Kasparov, although he is still young, is already
a researcher. Although I agree with you if you
say that you can hardly tell that about someone
who is only twenty.

' I n chess we are dealing with other things
than the body alone. The development of the
nervous system, let me summarize i t by that
phrase. It's a slowly developing process - the
nervous system contains within itself an enormous
amount of inert strength. Like I said before:
with a bit of experience you can quite
quickly say if someone has the characteristics
of a great chess player - though whether or not
he becomes one is a different matter. The chess
player needs to be able to combine four qualities
into a synthesis to reach the top : talent, good
health, character and preparation.
'Very few chess players possess all these four
qualities.
Capablanca for example had a remarkable
talent and good health, but no preparation
at all, and his character was not all that it could
have been either.>

And it goes on and on, better and better.

Checking up a bit now 4pm on Biel 7th round.

Nice to see you again and I may say(knock wood;)that the healing process is going fine.E.g. walked 20 m´s without sticks today !!..Got some good sleep the last 2 nights and the energylevel as a whole feels OK or better also thanks to a splendid treatment by my wife.

And you !? How are you doing ? And had you also experienced a decline in temperature in Holland !?

Thanks for the Botvinnik article.I will give it a closer look later on,but have a vaque idea I have seen it before.

Who would you pick as a trainer if you
were 15 and motivated,talented and should pick a coach !? (You are allowed to pick between all
players,those from the past and those frome the present).

<Politiken Cup> I thought Timman might be there, but the table didn't show timman at all, and yesterday was a restday, as it appeared to me, so I am not upto speed yet with the latest.

Temp here is OK now, Saturday was a disaster, but I am still very tired because of the hours I missed. This morning at 10 I already wanted to take a nap. I may consider myself lucky that I can pretty much decide what I do, when, and when not to.

Great to hear your recovery is as stunning as you say, great surgery, but equally great follow up by you and the physio's.

I'd go for Lasker and Botwinnik, a bit of Kasparov (but we have to watch our available energy), and Capa and Karpov for keeping touch with natural, positional, Chess.

Hard to pick one of these five, but having read the Botwinnik article he may be the one, if I must choose.

Good question!

No Timman there of course, and thank you <moro> for providing the link. This way, I can not go wrong again, one would assume.

Right now the weather is changing between sun and thunderrain.Very charming.Today I made 40m´s without stikcs and the progress seems to be very fine (knock wood again ;)

Had a fag and a little research this morning 5 o,clock about the first issue of NIC you mentioned,but couldn´t find it(so far) .Do you by the way recall how the frontpage looks like ?? Cause the one I(think I) know I have somewhere is one with a frontpage covered with a vikingpiece(cut in ivorylike bone,famous),black background.

Good question about the coach which is in a way more difficult to choose,because I do it on the behalf of someone else.But after some thought I would go for 2xPeter.Namely Svidler and Heine Nielsen.I have a feling that they are very good with youngsters and have
a horizon for many aspects in life.
I have met PHN on several occasions and noticed he once talked about Magnus as "his friend".

So I guess I follow the old saying "go where the joy is" :)And I am delighted you got the right link to Politiken (actually my daily newspaper!)Cup and perhaps can follow your countryman closely. Aren´we just spoiled in these times with the net and direct transmissions and all kind of opportunities chesswise and as a platform for communication !?..

Hope you are enjoying the day and that the temperature is comming closer to bearable !

Good afternoon! Vintage stuff with your leg, moro, sounds very good.

The front page I don't know, since it is from the very first issue from 1984, and I have the article because it's part of an anthology of the "first 25 years" of New ♗n Chess, lustrum edition. That was published in 2009.

After the usual morningwalk.Today with
a couple of woodpeckers and still some progress :)

Inspector moro has for now stoppped the investigation after the mysteriously vanished # 1 NIC after I became mildly obsessed and even got a a headache ;).So for now I will let go, but further investigations will be resumed in a weeks time or so.

It has been a pleasure reading your reports on Carlsen and likewise to experience that you have done guite some homework.

Good afternoon. ;) (4 minutes)

Incredibly interesting to know that you were buying the NIC magazines right from its inception? First issue?

Wow... NIC was in fact the natural successor to "Schaakbulletin", which I think was never translated from Dutch... NIC went for publication abroad, as well as at home, and reading those earlier articles from the 80s is like a festive party for me!

Never mind looking up that magazine, I have at least the Botvinnik article from the special edition anthology, and can send it to you by email if you would like. I offered the same to Branko, but he has unpleasantly vanished from the scene. I hope he is relatively doing well.

I was so rooting for him last night, a left-handed Dane, at the Olympics...

Yes, it was the Table Tennis QF against a guy from Germany, very strong player, but I so admire the Flamboyant style of Maze.

The woodpeckers were not there today,but another fine walk and the progress semms to continue (knock wood;).

And yes I know M.Maze and was also rooting heavily for him,but I had to take care of the sleeping time but got the report from wify next morning ): After all his injuries it would have been fantastic to se him on top..but you are the expert on ping-pong so I could imagine it would have been even more nervewrecking for you !? :)

Re Carlsen i think that the matter is that he is just so good that e.g. a romantic as Takchiev is not able to fully understand the depth in his play and understanding of the game. When Peter Heine started to work with
Anand he was a kind of shocked to realise the level of Anand.In a just different leaque. A GM I have worked a lot with phoned me one night and said that he almost was shure that Kasparov (occasionally)
cheated).(I was stunned but kept neutral).But the same morale as in Peters case,roughly spoken.

I think it is easy/tempting to flatter ones own ego and create an illusion of this kind.At least on a subconsciuosness level. Like an ad I saw some years ago where they tried to introduce a BigBigBurger,but to my perception it was only a normalsize.But you know : it looked kind of big on the poster. Then it dawned on me ! The man on the poster eating the burger had an extremely narrow face !;)...

Carlsen is as far as I can see an absolutely complete player.Just name a quality of his(physics included) and I will most likely nod my head. And the fact that he uses less time on openings than his colleques may be one of his cleverest moves ever.

Well I could go on and on but I son need a break..

Another GM I know was playin at the omlympics were also MC particiapted.And between one of the rounds he asked Magnus a guestion about a certain position (of Mags)he had a couple of months prior to the olympics and MC, without any hesitation recognized the position and gave several plans and some keyvariations.Efortlessly,according to my source.So...

The fact that someone is critizising some of his play is something that I will take as a compliment.Like if there were a worldfamous dutch painter we could call him Van Achieve :) And then the generations to follow would also,at least some artcritics,look for minor mistakes and so on....
Perhaps because the "daily" human brain operates from a point were it is longing for something "perfect",which often turns out to be a misleading road IMO.

And thanks for the offer about NIC and e-mailing,but for now I will rely on the possibility that the "mysteriuos" issue is to be found in this very house.

Take care and enjoy and off course feel free to agree,disagree and/or ad something if you like.

I'll let your words sink in a bit, and recently because of thinking deeply about the factors that contribute in large part to MC's success I have developed a different view on "Opening Repertoire" and "specializing" in certain openings, and how much (or little, rather) that really pays back in the OTB tournament Arena.

Matchplay is a bit different of course, it used to be, and I am curious how Carlsen would approach a 12 or 24 game match with an Anand/Aronian... He'd probably simply adapt and do what he thinks needs to be done to be successful. Simple strategy, but complex in its execution.

Finalists in London btw are two Chinese, who could have guessed, and one goes by the name...........

Wang Hao

:)

Moro, I was thinking last night how a small, tiny country like Holland can dominate, or be at the top, in so many global, big, sports, as we have football, field hockey, swimming, cycling, horseriding, Judo, K1 fighting, and a few less globally practised sports....

Naturally I was also thinking of a sport that has been dominated, unexpectedly one might say, just as the Dutch, by Denmark...

And I remember very well that Danish players have been quite a force in Badminton, and for a long time could at least threaten the asians. China, Indonesia, especially...

The Swedes are remarkable as well, the way they took over from China at Table Tennis in the late 80s, with Waldner, Appelgren and Persson... In Ice/hockey, together with Finland, they keep threatening the huge blocks of Russia, US, and Canada...

When I were younger we sometimes said that it was the doing and no the size that matters - on a related topic but not an olympic discipline :)

The simularity Holland - Denmark could be the sea,the long winters and to sail,explore and conquer abroad which could make ground for winners culture and how to spend the long winter with badminton and other sports.

Just a thought to throw in the air.
Actually there are IMO some thruths out there to be found,thouhg there are more interpretations ;)

Talking about the sun :
I once was dining with Tony Miles and
asked him: "What weak spots do you see
in Kasparovs game !?".
Tony became silent and took a long think,about 30-40 seconds and now I quote litterally : "Well,perhaps,he sometimes is too optimistic". This was 1993.

I was at the doctor (300 m´s away !)
and the sting were taking out and all was fine.So a happy man left the building.Life is good.

Played throuhg your game one time yesterday but will come up with a few comments later on.And I enjoyed it.

I´m reasonably fine, but seeing anyone, especially your dad, to be in the state he is in, is depressing.

You dined once with Tony Miles=

About the game I posted, it started with me wanting to let spar the program on my tablet computer, with the old Rybka on my "faster" desktop. At a certain point I noticed that White played several "planless" moves, evaluations of Rybka were much too low IMO, as I saw a promising plan, potentially go to waste, and decided to take over and force a few moves through; the K-side developments and expansion. From there on I played my own moves, but half an eye on the eval to see if I didn't play outright blunders. To an extent human+engine play, which is by far the strongest. But to me it was about testing my ideas, because I lose 8 out of 10 games against the 3000 rated engine within 25 moves, really. Like most mortals.

I mostly am a player/student who wants to test out ideas, deep thoughts on pawn structures, not much of a tactician, me, but positionally my aim is, has always been, to simplify to a winning endgame once an advantage has accumulated, and then, with the hectic phase behind me, I can indulge in my favorite activity/area/phase in Chess: endgame technique

Because I was so pleasantly surprised that after a few weeks you still even remembered the game! - I thought I'd give you the proper back-ground. :)

Grest to heasr that you and your Mom
has a strong and giving relation !

And thanks for sharing the background to your game as it doesn´t come as a surprise that the endgame is your favouritefield and it sounds like you have found a "friend for life" in this area !?

Right now a thriller in badminton,almost too nervewracking for me ;)Kibitzing is more peacefull and the morningwalk is tending to be close to pure bliss...I have since long ago always had a soft spot when someone/somebody is making a comeback... The woodpeckers are seemingly gone but a modern maleparent who took good care of his 2 kids,lookin for small fish, was a fine replacement.

Wify is for a short shopping in the big city (Århus)and I enjoy now and in one minutte I will have a homerulled dutchstyle ? fag in the sunny and windy garden and enjoying her absense as wellm as the fact that she will be back again.

click for larger view

Black to play (WK has just been checked on d3; and I played Kc4)

White appears to have the upper hand, probably should win this, but of course this is very complex and double-edged... The engine after some time insists (my initial reaction was, no way! - too risky!) on playing Nxa2 - it grabs the pawn, which is obviously very risky, eg there is after 1...Nxa2 2 Ne4!!??

Black must not take the Knight, since the c-pawn will run for the glory, but Black can defend better.

Question for you is: do you think there should be a forced win for White?

Would the procedure be very hard in practise (let's just assume that there is no timetrouble)?

Black's g-pawn after all can turn into a runner in no-time...

I thought this endgame was interesting enough to post, as computers find it hard to see past the horizon with a risky move like Rxa2, but perhaps there is not much of an alternative.

A very very interesting position youve got there and there will most likely be MATErial for a lot of analysis which in any case would be a good exercise which I dont have the time and energy for right now... Have had my kicks today concerning all the danish medals ot the olympics ! My assesment would be white advantage,with a possible miracledraw for black.

<Would the procedure be very hard in practise (let's just assume that there is no timetrouble)?> Yes,but for a student like you (or any student,like yours truly too;)it would be worth all the time and effort and would pay off in other games as well! You are probably/likely aware of the rule of thumb which says that knightendgames shall be roughly treated like pawnendgames.

Enjoy,if you go further with the position and if you want a 100-400 points ratingadvice ???

Here it comes :

Glue on the chair ! ;)

Thanks for the conversation. Now it's time for some GOLD MEDALS!!!!!!!!

;)

And thank you too for the conversation.

Yeah i noticed Kromowidjojo yesterday,and not without a certain charm in there.She could be one of the absolute stars in the red light district :)