offramp Member since Aug-16-03 · Last seen Jan-16-26 Some chess books that I think are outstanding: 1. <Fundamental Chess Endgames>, by Müller & Lamprecht, reprinted 2020. 400pp+, £25. 2. <Secrets of Practical Chess>, by Dr Nunn. 256pp (the USUAL 256pp!, i.e. the usual 2^8). £20. 3. <Capablanca's Best Chess Endings>, Irving Chernev's best work. 300pp. £15. 4. <107 Great Chess Battles 1939-1945>, written by Alexander Alekhine, but edited by Edward Winter. 256pp, £15. 5 (a) <Petrosian Year by Year Volume 1 (1942-1962)>, and - Karolyi & Gyozalyan, 484pp. (b) <Petrosian Year by Year Volume 2 (1963-1984)> - Karolyi & Gyozalyan, 516pp. They are £34 each. I bought one, then a few months later, the other volume. They are available in Kindle format! 6. <The Queen's Gambit Accepted: A Sharp and Sound Response to 1. d4> by Chris Ward. Ward wrote a superb book about the QGD, many years ago. I think this is useful for a book about the QGA. A total antidote to 1. d4, 2. c4. And now some total clinkers. NOT those well-known garbage chess books. The following are really bad chess books. 1. <Capablanca: A Compendium of Games, Notes, Articles, Correspondence, Illustrations and Other Rare Archival Materials on the Cuban Chess Genius Jose Raul Capablanca, 1888-1942> by Edward Winter. 360pp. c. £35. The title is the best thing. 2. <Larsen: Move by Move> - Cyrus Lakdawala Paperback, 488pp. 3. <Emanuel Lasker Volumes 1, 2 & 3 - Forster, Negele & Tischbierek>. £55 each. This book is unbelievably boring and tedious. Just look through it, then forget about it. AT THIS SAME TIME a totally superb book has just come out: <Emanuel Lasker All Games Volume 1 & 2: 1889-1940 (2 books)>, £55 for two books: Volume 1 covers the time Lasker became World Champion and played matches against Steinitz (twice for the World Championship), Bird and Blackburne amongst others. He also took part several famous tournaments including Hastings 1895, St Petersburg 1895-96 and Nuremberg 1896. Volume 2 covers the time Lasker played matches against Marshall, Tarrasch, Janowski, Schlechter and Capablanca for the World Championship. He also took part several famous tournaments including St Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Moscow 1935 & 1936 and Nottingham 1936. Hardbacks, 388 and 342 pages, Russian Chess House. A real bargain. 4. <Pal Benko : My Life, Games and Compositions>, £140. Who is the most famous chess player out of Benko and Fischer? Who published the most plush, most opulent book? Benko. ..... Here are another 7 books: <He received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for the balance. Scythrop <[SKI-throp]> did not despair. <Seven copies,> he thought, <have been sold. Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good. Let me find the seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they shall be the seven golden candlesticks with which I will illuminate the world.>.>

Current net-worth: 1,436 chessbucks [what is this?]

offramp has kibitzed 25205 times to chessgames   [more...]

Jan-16-26 Tata Steel Masters (2026)    offramp: <Freelance Assassin>, in Giri's last major tournament I predicted that would end up no where. I lambasted him. I face-planted because Giri won that tournament easily. SO NOW I have made a volte-face, whatever that is. I believe that <GIRI> will win this Tata Masters. ...      Jan-16-26 offramp chessforum   offramp: Here's a good DVD Database: <ChessBase '26 Premium-Package Expand Your Chess Horizons Only available as download - Most computers no longer have DVD drives and the amount of data is now so large that it can no longer be stored on a DVD. After your purchase you will receive ...      Jan-16-26 M Schekachikhin vs C Dolgun, 2024   offramp: The Caissa Hotel is on the Aegean Sea, in Ayvalik, Turkey. This game is very interesting all the way through, right from 4...Qh4!      Jan-15-26 Julien Song   offramp: The first game is dead level. I reckon Song will win this match easily.      Jan-15-26 Giri vs Niemann, 2025   offramp: Giri said... <"Before the game I visualized a victory against Niemann. There's this technique.... I saw myself win. Then I went a bit too far and I started thinking about who would be in my team for the Candidates' - and that's when I realized I had gone too far."      Jan-15-26 Dickson    offramp: Someone asked, "What the dickens??" The answer is "No."      Jan-15-26 S Rosenthal vs Count Isouard, 1871    offramp: "Is You Is or Is You Ain't Isouard?"      Jan-14-26 Keymer vs Carlsen, 2023   offramp: Keymer Rouge.      Jan-14-26 Garry Kasparov    offramp: <Petrosianic>. I dislike stories about the 3rd Reich... Kasparov was expounding about Molotov and Stalin and the Germans. I could have followed the details but I <hate> checking WWII facts on Google because you get sucked into a whirlwind of right-wing horror. So I am ...      Jan-14-26 J Puccini vs J P Gomez, 2015    offramp: Good pun and a good game. The final move is hard-to-spot! I was expecting some hay-maker final blow, but it is a quiet move. In fact, that last move, 19. Qd2, could be a <CREEPING MOVE>. Creeping moves can only made by queens; Spassky specialised in them.

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Ye Olde Offrampe Predicktions

< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 68 OF 86 ·  Later Kibitzing> Jul-13-24    offramp: There are or were some important anniversaries: 12th July, Orangeman's Day 13th July, World Cup started in 1930 14th July, Bastille Day 15th July, St Swithins Day. Jul-15-24    offramp: I would buy this book, if it existed: <120 Rapid Games by Magnus Carlsen>, preferably with short notes by MC himself. Jul-19-24    offramp: Here's a good question. Brian May, of Queen, has the same birthday as Ilie Nastase, i.e. today. Who's the oldest and how old? Jul-20-24    offramp: Brian May 77; Nastase 78. Jul-21-24    OhioChessFan: I'd have guessed Nasty was older. Jul-21-24    technical draw: Nastase is 78? That makes me feel real old. Jul-24-24    offramp: My <novia>, i.e. a woman, strongly wants to join Freemasonry. I am looking into Co-masonry. Jul-25-24    technical draw: <offramp><Freemasonry> A mason earns $25 an hour why would they do it for free? Aug-02-24    Teyss: Hi offramp, A quick friendly note on your personal page to avoid bothering other users with our drivel, er, subtle humour. I really like your posts. Your avatar is original too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alber... in case you picked it without knowing). Apparently you live in Britain, somewhere around Hastings (there was a post about this town so I associated "The Battle of Hastings" with your name, that's how my silly memory works). Hope all is fine there. Take care. Aug-03-24    offramp: These two had a birthday today. How old are they? Martin Sheen Martha Stewart Tough one! Aug-04-24    offramp: Martin Sheen 84 Martha Stewart 83. Aug-04-24    offramp: You can bet on the Paralympics. Here is the field for the 110m Hurdles. Lane 1 Stutterer Lane 2 One arm, one leg, one eye Lane 3 Turbocharged wheelchair Lane 4 No arms but compulsive masturbator Lane 5 Registered alcoholic Lane 6 Double hip surgery Lane 7 Feelings of self-delusion Lane 8 Stone DEAF. Aug-09-24    offramp: Have you seen the USA decathlete <Anna Hall>? PHWOOOOAAAAARRR!!! Aug-14-24    offramp: On September 1st all clocks will be reset to zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. Aug-14-24    offramp: I have put some money on Kamal Harris, five quid. But the odds are only evens. I should have put the money on her <before> Biden left the race. Aug-14-24    offramp: <...Dreary Ruys, French stupid brain-worrying Zukertort and the pleasure-crushing P to Q 4 openings.> Steinitz - Lasker World Championship Match (1894) Aug-14-24    offramp: As Perec's (generally admiring) biographer noted: ...it is undeniably difficult to read. Knowledge of the constraint disarms critical faculties; when you know that it is a monster palindrome, you tend to see nothing but its palindromic design. At Manchester, in 1989, doctored photocopies and unsigned handwritten versions were given to students and teachers of French who were asked, respectively, to use it for the exercise of explication de texte and to mark it as an essay. Perec's palindrome barely made sense to the readers. Some teachers took it for the work of an incompetent student, while others suspected that they had been treated to a surrealist text produced by "automatic writing". Those with psychiatric interests identified the author as an adolescent in a dangerously paranoid state; those who had not forgotten the swinging sixties wondered whether it was LSD or marijuana that had generated the disconnected images of the text. Readers seem to project their won positive and negative fantasies onto Perec's palindrome, as they do onto other difficult, obscure and unattributed works. -- David Bellos, Georges Perec: a Life in Words, p. 429 But the first and last sentences have been translated (not as palindromes, just for their plain sense (such as it is)) -- not once, but twice. So I thought I'd share them with you here. Here is Perec's opening paragraph: Trace l’inégal palindrome. Neige. Bagatelle, dira Hercule. Le brut repentir, cet écrit né Perec. L’arc lu pèse trop, lis à vice-versa. Perte. Cerise d'... Here's how Bellos translates it in his aforecited biography (p. 430): Trace the uneven palindrome. Snow. A trifle, says Hercules. Unadorned repentance, this piece born [of] Perec. [If] the bow of reading is too heavy, read back-to-front. Loss. Cherry... Aug-14-24    offramp: All of that is from someone's blog. Aug-14-24    offramp: I used to really like Georges Perec but I went off him, after his death. A lot of his work is garbage. I liked W. That's his autobiography but there's an interwoven novel, which has a very good punchline. Aug-15-24    offramp: Chess players are clever guys but in a way they are a bit dim, they are dimwits. Aug-16-24    offramp: I saw a macintosh that Adilph Hitler used to wear. You can see him wearing one at Hausbiergarten, in the mountains. The Mac looked great. It was designed by the originl Herr Hugo Boss. I had a look around the internet and I found a Hitler-era mac. It looks great; it has no buttons, it is fastened using a belt, no buttons. I tried it on today. I looked great. I wish I had a mirror. I went up to town. I had a lot of admiring looks, but one malcontent kicked me up the arse. I went down the east end but it poured down. What a bunch of gits. Aug-18-24    offramp: My parrot has a spastic colon. It's going to cost me eight thousand quid. But the parrot and the snakes were all stolen. But the fish were legitimately come by, like the squid. Aug-19-24    offramp: About a year ago some supermarkets renamed Chicken Kievs to Chicken Kyivs. Who kyres? I noticed in my freezer that I had a Chicken Madras. Shops sell "Bombay Aloo". Why aren't they called <Chicken Chennai> and <Mumbai Aloo>? And why not rename Dutch, Leningrad, Main Variation (A87) to <Dutch, St Petersburg>? Aug-19-24    offramp: [Event "Rated blitz game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/uiYUVAqA"] [Date "2024.08.19"] [White "offramp"] [Black "panztamburynem"] [Result "1-0"] [UTCDate "2024.08.19"] [UTCTime "14:26:47"] [WhiteRatingDiff "+13"] [BlackRatingDiff "-5"] [Variant "Standard"] [TimeControl "300+3"] [ECO "C41"] [Opening "Philidor Defense: Bird Gambit"] [Termination "Normal"] [Annotator "lichess.org"] 1. e4 [%clk 0:05:00] 1... e5 [%clk 0:05:00] 2. Nf3 [%clk 0:05:01] 2... d6 [%clk 0:05:02] 3. d4 [%clk 0:05:01] 3... exd4 [%clk 0:05:03] 4. c3 [%clk 0:05:01] C41 ♙hilidor Defense: ♗ird Gambit 4... dxc3 [%clk 0:05:05] 5. Bc4 [%clk 0:05:00] 5... Nc6 [%clk 0:05:05] 6. Nxc3 [%clk 0:04:57] 6... Bg4 [%clk 0:05:04] 7. h3 [%clk 0:04:52] 7... Bxf3 [%clk 0:05:05] 8. Qxf3 [%clk 0:04:53] 8... Nf6 [%clk 0:05:07] 9. Bg5 [%clk 0:04:50] 9... Be7 [%clk 0:05:07] 10. O-O-O [%clk 0:04:50] 10... Ne5 [%clk 0:05:04] 11. Bxf7+ [%clk 0:03:06] 11... Nxf7 [%clk 0:04:53] 12. Bxf6 [%clk 0:03:04] 12... Bxf6 [%clk 0:04:54] 13. Nd5 [%clk 0:02:39] 13... Be5 [%clk 0:04:47] 14. Rhe1 [%clk 0:02:28] 14... O-O [%clk 0:04:48] 15. Qb3 [%clk 0:02:17] 15... b6 [%clk 0:04:18] 16. f4 [%clk 0:02:17] 16... Bf6 [%clk 0:04:08] 17. e5 [%clk 0:02:17] 17... dxe5 [%clk 0:04:08] 18. fxe5 [%clk 0:02:18] 18... Bg5+ [%clk 0:04:06] 19. Kb1 [%clk 0:02:17] 19... Qc8 [%clk 0:03:52] 20. e6 [%clk 0:02:07] 20... Nd6 [%clk 0:03:24] 21. e7 [%clk 0:02:02] 21... Re8 [%clk 0:03:07] 22. Nf6+ [%clk 0:01:42] 22... Kh8 [%clk 0:03:04] 23. Rxd6 [%clk 0:01:34] 23... cxd6 [%clk 0:02:56] 24. Nxe8 [%clk 0:01:12] 24... Qxe8 [%clk 0:02:55] 25. Qe6 [%clk 0:01:06] 25... Rc8 [%clk 0:02:27] 26. Qxd6 [%clk 0:00:55] 26... Qxe7 [%clk 0:01:49] ♗lack resigns. 1-0 Aug-26-24    offramp: I have a beautiful 15 year old daughter who has just come back from Kenya. She bought me back a very eclectic chess set, made from horn and slate. Not very portable but it looks great. My daughter set up the board. About a half hour later, I made a huge fatal mistake: I said that h1 should be a white square. (I should have changed it quickly and she wouldn't have noticed.) When I mentioned it she dissolved into a vale of tears and went straight from her room for a coupe of hours. <NEVER BUY PEOPLE CHESS SETS>. Jump to page #   (enter # from 1 to 86) search thread:    < Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 68 OF 86 ·  Later Kibitzing>

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