My 1000th CFAA Post

Blogger: Dashboard tells me that this is my 1000th post for this blog, which is some sort of milestone. It's taken me almost five years to reach this number, so it's a safe bet that I won't be seeing 10.000 posts. A year ago today, in a post titled Apples to Apples, I did a comparison of my five distinct chess resources, along with a follow-up in Adsense and Sensibility. The results are in the following graphic, with an explanation in that Apples post.

It's a good time to make another comparison, especially since I haven't added anything to the About.com material since September 2010: About Face to Fischer (and Larsen). Here are similar numbers for the six most recent full months, again using the most popular resource as a baseline for the others.

The resource m-w.com/chess (my World Chess Championship site) itself showed a 10% increase in page views over the previous period, indicating that all resources are trending up.

***

In reality, the post that you are currently reading is only number 999. My 'oldest' post was a test of the earliest acceptable blog date, which is 1/1/2000. Just now I tried changing the date on that post and discovered that 'The post date must be between Jan. 1, 1970 and Dec. 31, 9999'. When I set it to 'Jan. 1, 1970', the year didn't appear in the Blog Archive, so I restored the date to 'Jan. 1, 2000', where the year does appear in the archive. My next post will be the real number 1000.

More Capablanca Annotations

My post titled A Capablanca Brilliancy Dissected was the last in the series on Capablanca's Games 'To be studied very carefully'. After researching and writing that series, I'm convinced that when the Cuban World Champion recommended that his moves 'be studied very carefully', he wanted to avoid annotating them himself. It was his equivalent of saying 'the following moves are a matter of technique', where his technique was impeccable and worth studying. When I launched this latest series of posts in More Capablanca, I mentioned a second source of Capablanca's notes.

I'll compare Capablanca's annotations to his 1921 match with Lasker against the notes for games from that match selected by Kasparov for Predecessors I: games 5, 10, & 11. Kasparov seems to have overlooked that Capablanca wrote notes to the games, and since their annotation styles are opposite -- minimal for Capablanca, detailed for Kasparov -- I might learn a thing or two.

When I did a similar exercise for Fischer and Kasparov, 18 Memorable Games, Full Circle, it was easy to compare the notes of the two because Kasparov often incorporated Fischer's comments in full. To locate differences of opinion required comparing punctuation and identifying obvious discrepancies, e.g. Kasparov's '?!' vs. Fischer's '!'. Comparing Capablanca's notes to Kasparov's proved to be more difficult because (1) Capablanca didn't use punctuation, and (2) Kasparov never referred to Capablanca's notes.

My source for Capablanca's notes is 'World's Championship Matches, 1921 and 1927' (Dover 1977; see the book's page on Amazon.com for details), ostensibly by Capablanca, but according to the copyright page, 'an unabridged republication' of two books published in the 1920s, one by Capablanca, one by Yates and W.Winter. I'll tackle game five of the 1921 match in my next post.

Octopus Takes Rook

There wasn't much information attached to this photo.

Hastings March 2011 © Flickr user nogbad the bad under Creative Commons.

Another Flickr photo -- Crazy Chess Octopus -- marked 'All Rights Reserved' meaning I couldn't use it, said,

Metal sculptor, Leigh Dyer who welded the Radiator Arts' Crazy Bikes also created these fantastic pieces that live in the Chess Square, George Street, Hastings Old Town.

and linked to metal-sculpture.blogspot.com, 'Contemporary metal art by metal sculptor Leigh Dyer'.

Chess Paintings Require Dogs

The last time I featured a painting in this series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, was more than six months ago, in Cavaliers or Conquistadors?, because they just don't appear very often. The title of this particular image was '19C LADY GENT CHESS PLAY PAINTING BESSON LISTED FRENCH', and although I thought I had seen it before, the 7 bids and winning bid of US $550 convinced me that I must be mistaken.

The description said,

Finest quality! CLASSICAL late 19th Century genre painting of a Lady and a Gent playing chess outdoor by well listed French artist Faustin Besson (1821-1882) signed by artist in LR. • Media: Oil on beveled oak board, nice antique frame, size: 8 by 6 inches, the painting framed is about 14 by 12 inches, in pretty good antique shape. No restoration, clean and beautiful! The painting may have just a few very minor rim nicks and scratches - nothing to disturb the beauty!

For more by the same artist, see About 5,590 results : Faustin Besson.

Another Larry Disappears

I've been a follower, if not a fan, of Larry Parr for as long as I've been following chess on the Internet, and was saddened to learn of his recent death: Larry Parr 1946-2011 (Chessninja.com). Editor of Chess Life (CL) from 1985 to 1988, Parr was an excellent writer and had an insider's knowledge of USCF politics and personalities. His last article for CL was an obituary for his good friend Larry Evans, The Grandmaster Who Did It His Way (USchess.org):

GM Evans was arguably the most versatile figure in American chess history. If Siegbert Tarrasch enjoyed the title, Praeceptor Germaniae, then Larry Evans was the Chess Teacher of America.

Through sheer force of habit, I visit rec.games.chess (rgc) once in a while to catch up on any interesting discussions. Today I found The rumor of my death is somewhat exaggerated or premature, signed parrthenon@cs.com. Parrthenon is an rgc nickname for Parr, but the post turned out to be the sort of tasteless joke that has turned rgc into a colossal waste of bandwidth.

Parr's occasional posts were one of the main reasons I kept returning to rgc. Although there will be no more from Parrthenon, his legacy lives on in the rgc archives:-

• 2001-06 to 2010-10: parrthe...@cs.com
  
• 1995-01 to 2000-04: 75227.3...@compuserve.com
  
• 1997-02 to 2000-10: fide...@tm.net.my (only a handful of posts)

While preparing this post I encountered a few of Parrthenon's rgc posts that I had enjoyed in the past.

• 2006: Keene reviews Kingston (part 1)
  
• 2000: Khalifman Humiliated
  
• 1998: A Fide Primer

There are many more. Thanks, Larry! RIP.

A Capablanca Brilliancy Dissected

The second game in my series titled More Capablanca, which is the second and last series on Capablanca's Games 'To be studied very carefully', is Corzo - Capablanca, Havana 1913, an eight player, double round robin. The game is mentioned in the book World Chess Champions (Pergamon 1981), where E.G.Winter both served as editor and wrote the chapter on Capablanca.

For the first time in his life [Capablanca] lost two games in the same event (to Janowsky and Marshall). He was placed second, half a point behind the United States champion, but won the brilliancy prize for his magnificent first-round victory over his old rival Corzo. He then wrote Torneo Internacional de la Habana 1913, annotating all fifty-six games played. (p.56)

Of his 10th move, Capablanca wrote, 'With this move Black obtains the attack [...] From now on there are a series of brilliant moves which should be very carefully studied.' As with many brilliancies, it took some cooperation from the opponent. To illustrate this, I'll use a double diagram starting with White's 15th move. White played 15.Bd4, and Capablanca commented, 'Excellent, for eight moves at least, White plays perfectly in a most difficult position.' He answered 15...g5, awarded himself a '!', and mentioned that the move was 'The only way to keep up the attack and obtain the upper hand'.

The engine, for its part, calculates that instead of 15.Bd4, both 15.Bc1 and 15.Bd3 are stronger. The move 15.Bc1 pins the Knight on the e-file, protects the b-Pawn, and stops ...g5. A sample variation is 15...c6 16.Bd3 cxd5 17.cxd5 Rc8 18.h3, where both White and Black have trouble activating the Kingside Rook, and Black has no attack on the e-file. After 15.Bd4, the game continued 15...g5!, bringing the Rook into the attack, then 16.Bxg7+ Rxg7 17.Nd4 Bd7 18.f5 Qe5 19.Qd3 Re8 20.Ne6+ fxe6 21.fxe6 Rxe6! 22.dxe6 Bc6, reached the second diagram.

In the position from the lower diagram, White played 23.Qf3+, and found himself in trouble after 23...Qf4!. Here the engine diverges again, suggesting 23.b4. With that move, White protects the b-Pawn and threatens b4-b5, winning the Knight. Black avoids the worst with 23...Qf4 24.Qd4 Nf6 25.Qb2 Be4 26.g3 Qe5 27.Qxe5 dxe5 28.Bg2 Bxg2 29.Kxg2 e4, but ends up with only one Pawn for the exchange and a struggle for a draw.

When Capablanca advised us that his moves should be 'be studied very carefully', little did he imagine that we would one day have mechanical GMs capable of understanding and improving the moves of both players. To play through the complete game, see...

Juan Corzo vs Jose Raul Capablanca; Havana 1913
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1001105

...on Chessgames.com.

The Most Instructive Chess Video of All Time

'First, I just want to show you how awesome this plant is...'

Scholars Mate Preventing + How to do the move (7:21) • 'How to get checkmate in 4 moves.'

'...Don't do this if the person goes to, like, some chess camp or has, like, this chess class.'