While browsing through some old collections of mine, i came across this article published in some chess newsletter in the mid 1990's. I hope that I can reproduce it here without any problems. I do not recall the Newsletter, I have just saved the text and the author.

Chess is a great sport, but let’s admit it doesn’t offer much in the way of cardiovascular fitness.

So, hoping to expand my repertoire of hobbies a bit -- as well as to get some exercise and prevent a stroke before I turn forty -- I recently started checking into martial arts classes. What I learned about Karate also taught me something about chess.

The opening is a race to see who can get their pieces out first while keeping at least a share of control of the center.’ To illustrate this point, we will be introducing the Evans Gambit.

The Evan's Gambit - Position after 4.b4

If you chose to play this opening, you will be able to rapidly deploy your pieces, create positions that require tactical play, and can apply a great deal of pressure on your opponent. Perhaps the most famous example of the opening occurs between the Grandmasters, Robert Fischer and Robert Fine.


Fischer,R - Fine,R [C52]
New York, 1963

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4 Bxb4 5.c3 Ba5 6.d4 exd4 7.0-0 dxc3 8.Qb3 Qe7
9.Nxc3 Nf6 10.Nd5 Nxd5 11.exd5 Ne5 12.Nxe5 Qxe5 13.Bb2 Qg5 14.h4 Qxh4 15.Bxg7 Rg8
16.Rfe1+ Kd8 17.Qg3 1-0

Making a lasting mark at chess is a tough thing to do. Maybe you play as well as Kasparov, or compose as splendidly as Grigoriev, or teach as memorably as Purdy, but not many of us attain the levels of skill required
to do those things.

Some players achieve some immortality by attaching their names to an opening. Sometimes the moves are not so good - Robert Durkin claimed 1. Na3 - and sometimes they are based in real positional grounds. Two different wing gambits, where one side aims for center control by deflecting an enemy bishop pawn, have been named for Bay Area players.

Compiled by Steven Craig Miller

1. e4 e5
2. Nc4 …

Other 2nd moves for White include:

2. f4 — King’s Gambit
2. Nc3 — Vienna Game
2. Bc4 — Bishop’s Opening
2. d4 — Center Game & Danish Gambit

Excerpt from Chess Step by Step - by Frank Marshall and J.C.H. Macbeth

1. Do not move any pawns in the opening of a game but the King and Queen pawns.
2. Do not move any piece twice in the opening, but put it at once on the right square.
3. Bring out your knights before developing your bishops, especially the Queen's Bishop.
4. Do not pin the adverse King Knight (ie. by Bg5) before your opponent has castled.

1. Get your pieces out into the center quickly. The opening is a race to see who can get their pieces out first while keeping at least a share of control of the center.
• This is the main point to remember; all the other rules are just footnotes to this one
2. More detail on winning the race:
• Move pieces not pawns, and
• move them to their best squares in one move if you can, and also
• try to gain time if you can by aggressive moves.
3. Move minor pieces out first, not your Q or RRs which can be attacked and lose time
4. Get a firm foothold in the center and don't give it up
5. Generally move Knights straightaway to f3/c3 or f6/c6
6. Move your king to safety at the side by castling King's-side (which also gets your Rook into play)
7. Complete your development before moving a piece twice or starting an attack
8. Keep your queen safe
9. Don't grab pawns or attack if you haven't completed development
10. What to do if there is a lead in development:
• If you are ahead in development, start something going and open up lines for your better pieces
• If you are behind in development, don't start anything and keep things closed until you have caught up

"A knowledge of tactics is the foundation of positional play. This is a rule which has stood its test in chess history and one which we cannot impress forcibly enough upon the young chess player. A beginner should avoid Queen's Gambit and French Defence and play open games instead! While he may not win as many games at first, he will in the long run be amply compensated by acquiring a thorough knowledge of the game" - RICHARD RETI

Title:Back to Basics:Tactics

I am reading  Dan Heisman’s Back To Basics: Tactics about a week ago. The book aims to teach tactical concepts to “beginning players who have never played tournament chess or who possess a U.S. Chess Federation rating lower than 1500″ or online players with a rating below 1700. I believe the book is well-suited for this purpose and audience. I also think players rated 100-200 points higher might use this book for a quick “tactical tune-up” if they are a bit rusty.

This is a synopsis of  an Interview on Twitter conducted by Forbes India, a few days after he had retained the World Championship title against Veselin Topalov in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Must have for an Anand Fan!

Vishwanathan Anand 


On turning 40 and being called the Lightning Kid: Its not a big deal, I feel the same, just entering your age in places surprises you!

What was the first variant game of chess played by a computer — a simplified version of the game scaled down so the earliest number-crunching systems could actually handle the analytical demands?

The answer is Los Alamos Chess (sometimes called anti-clerical chess), played on a six-by-six chessboard, rather than eight-by-eight. Named for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, this version excludes bishops.

In 1956, scientists at Los Alamos used this chess variant as the basis for the world’s first chess computer program, written for the MANIAC I computer. To completely scale back the game for the benefit of MANIAC I, the game excluded en passant capture, two-position pawn openings, and castling as possible moves.

The Los Alamos Chess program, written by computer scientists Paul Stein and Mark Wells, apocryphally ran only three times. On the first run, the computer played itself. On the second, the computer played an unnamed but supposedly skilled human opponent, who defeated the machine. On the third run, a chess novice faced off against MANIAC and lost.

The program was largely a proof of concept, validating the theoretical possibility of a chess-playing program as proposed by such visionaries as Norbert Wiener and Alan Turing. It wasn’t until 1958 that someone wrote computer programs to play full, true games of chess, though precisely who wrote the first such program is a matter of some debate.

In 1967, the Mac Hack Six computer program became the first to defeat a human being in tournament play. In 1970, the ACM North American Computer Chess Championships formed, as there were enough competing chess software efforts to face them off in a traditional chess tournament. Four years later, an international equivalent tournament formed.

Thus, for more than 30 years, computers have been just as busily playing chess as their human adversaries, and in the last 10 years — starting with Deep Blue’s 1997 six-game defeat of Gary Kasparov — computer grandmasters have proven the equal or better of reigning human champions. That’s not just some game-changing computational power - it’s also a great gambit of Geek Trivia.

These are a few steps  believe can help with openings in chess.

1. Identify the first unfamiliar position. (Out of book, in other words)
2. Evaluate the results of the opening—as the game transitions into the middle game, how do both players stand? Are you happy with the results from the opening phase?
3. Play over the opening moves and look for improvements. In particular, look for candidate moves that you didn’t really consider during the game. (This is because you tend to overlook good candidate moves.)
4. Use ChessBase to run opening reports, find similar games, etc., to help confirm what you’d like to play next time, and to get ideas about piece development and middle game plans.
5. Save the result into a ChessBase database devoted to that particular opening.

Did you know what the Scientific American thinks of Chess as a  game? Read this direct quote -

“A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this? It may be asked. We answer, chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises—not this sort of mental gladiatorship.”

As quoted in Scientific American, July 2009

Of course this was way back in the year 1859 before many Americans even made an impact on this great game. Just imagine what they would have thought of computers and computer games back then!!

I saw an interesting article in Chess Life Online called “Moving up the Ladder: A Class Player on Gaining 200 Rating Points” by Christian Glawe.

6 Points that really stood out for me - 

1. Study your own games with an instructor.
2. Study openings based on pawn structures and plans instead of variations. For example, study the Mastering the Chess Openings series by Watson.
3. When reviewing a particular opening line, use a games database to gather 50-100 GM games played in that variation. Play through them quickly. Make a note of the common ideas and motifs. Time: 30 minutes.
4. Analyze every blitz game you play.
5. 30-45 minutes of tactical training exercises every day. (The author prefers chesstempo.com.)
6. Exercise to improve your stamina for those two-day weekend tournaments.

(From the Excellent web site, How to Play Chess:   http://www.chessdryad.com/education/magictheater/index.htm  )

Recommended For Beginners in Chess

1. DON'T bring your KING out with your OPPONENT'S QUEEN on the board.

2. The KING must be ACTIVE in the ENDING.
3. IN SUPERIOR POSITIONS, to ATTACK the ENEMY KING, you must OPEN a file (or less often a diagonal) for your HEAVY PIECES (QUEEN and ROOKS).

The computer is just too good to play against. Witness World Champion Vladimir Kramnik’s drawn 8-game match against Deep Fritz the multiprocessor version of Fritz 7. The pre-match hype was incredible. Fritz was described as “the most lethal chess computer ever created” by Nigel Farndale in the Daily Telegraph. Author
Monty Newborn, whose book Deep Blue: An Artificial Intelligence Milestone was published in October, said that today’s computer programs “are playing at least as good as Deep Blue”, the IBM supercomputer that defeated Kasparov in 1997.

Kramnik himself asserted that Fritz was stronger than Deep Blue and that it was “the strongest chess software ever written.” He added “there are not many humans left who would have a chance in such a match.”