CHESMAYNE
Advice
“Peonies in a Vase”,
Auguste Renoir
01 An opinion recommended, or
proffered, as worthy to be followed. A
communication from a distance, containing information: advice from abroad. Advice, counsel are suggestions given by a
presumably wiser or more
highly trained person to one considered in need of guidance. Advice is practical recommendation as to
action or conduct.
02 Counsel is weighty and
serious advice, given after careful deliberation.
03 Advice is seldom welcome; and
those who want it the most always like it the least (Philip Chesterfield).
Advice: “Go
into chess as young as possible. Bring
all the assets you have and play to win.
Chess is a remarkable game. If
you saturate yourself with chess, then the game will all but take you by the
hand and point the way”.
|
Openings |
Middlegame |
Endings |
General tips Keep
KTs near the center Watch
BSs and fixed PAs Watch
out for unopposed BSs Capture
toward the center Consider
the PA structure Attack
pinned pieces
Opening tips Play
your PA moves carefully Develop
minor pieces early Don’t block BSs with PAs Develop KTs to f3 and c3 Clear your back rank Don’t attack early with QU Develop ROs on open files Don’t capture wing PAs Castle early in open positions Wait to castle if no danger Stop your opponent castling
EPIGRAMS OF CHESS
by Bill Wall
Epigrams are terse, witty sayings that sometimes
have a meaning or moral. Chess has an
abundance of epigrams from famous people and famous chess players. Here are a few examples of chess epigrams:
”Chess is a good mistress but a bad master”. - Abrahams
”Chess will always be the master of us all”. - Alexander Alekhine
”Of all the drugs in the world, chess must be the most permanently
pleasurable”. – Assaic.
”To have a KT planted in
your game at K6 is worse than a rusty nail in your knee”. - Efim
Bogolyubov.
”Chess is the art of analysis”. - Mikhail
Botvinnik.
”Chess is the art which expresses the science of logic”. – Botvinnik.
”The good player is always lucky”.
- Jose Capablanca.
”Chess players are mad
wo/men of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn’t,
in general”. - Marcel Duchamp.
”Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shakling the mind and brain so that the inner
freedom of the very strongest must suffer”. - Albert Einstein.
”A wo/man that will take back a move at chess will pick a pocket”. – Fenton.
”You can only get good at chess if you love the game”. - Bobby Fischer.
”I like to make them squirm”. - Bobby Fischer.
”If I win, I’m a genius. If I don’t, I’m not”. - Bobby Fischer.
”Chess is life” - Bobby Fischer.
”Life is a kind of chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events”. - Benjamin Franklin.
”You cannot play chess if you are kind-hearted”. - French proverb.
”Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe”. - Indian Proverb.
”Chess is everything: art,
science, and sport”. - Anatoly Karpov.
”Chess is a test of wills”. - Paul Keres.
”Chess is a cure for headaches”. - John Maynard Keynes.
”I often play a move I know how to refute”. - Bent Larsen.
”On the chessboard lies and hypocrisy do not survive long”. - Emanuel Lasker.
”It is impossible to win gracefully at chess”. – Milne.
”Help your pieces so they
can help you”. - Paul Morphy.
”The isolated pawn (:is-PA) casts gloom over
the entire chessboard”. - Aron Nimzovich.
”The PA is the soul of
chess”. – Philidor.
”PA endings are to
chess what putting is to golf”. - Cecil
Purdy.
”Chess is a fighting game which is purely intellectual and includes chance”. -
Richard Reti.
”Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing
something very clever, when they are only wasting their time”. - George Bernard
Shaw.
”Chess is ruthless: you’ve got to be prepared to kill people”. - Nigel Short.
”Chess is a cold bath for the mind”.
- Sir John Simon.
”Chess is a game of bad moves”. - Andrew Soltis.
”Between the opening and endgame the gods have placed the middlegame”. - Siegbert Tarrasch.
”Chess, like love, like music, has the powers to make men happy”. – Tarrasch.
”When you don’t know what to do, wait for you opponent to get an idea; it is
sure to be bad”. – Tarrasch.
”White lost because he failed to remember the right
continuation and had to think up the moves himself”. – Tarrasch.
”All chessplayers should have a hobby”. - Savielly Tartakower.
”Tactics is knowing what
to do when there is something to do; strategy is knowing what to
do when there is nothing to do”. – Tartakower.
”The blunders are all
there, waiting to be made”. – Tartakower.
”The winner of a game is
the one who has made the next to last blunder”. – Tartakower.
”It is always better to sacrifice
your opponent’s men”. – Tartakower.
”There is no remorse like a remorse of chess.
It is a curse upon man. There is
no happiness in chess”. - H.G. Wells.
”Chess is like marriage. You cannot
have a mate without a check”. - Brian Wood.
Chess
Advice
In January of 1996, I replied
to a query about how one could improve one’s game. Since the local response was positive, I
felt that it might be appropriate to humbly offer the WWW community what little
expertise I’ve managed to acquire over twenty years of woodpushing:
He just plays for fun, and would very much like for
someone to teach him the ‘strategy’, or ‘technique’ behind the game that makes
a winner.
Sounds great!
Here’s two related lists of ‘strategy’ and ‘techniques’ the whole chess
group can implement starting right away:
While your opponent is
thinking, keep readjusting his/her pieces.
This becomes extremely distracting and annoying.
Hum, but only in tuneless,
rambling ways. If the game reaches a
critical point, start whistling, also randomly. Eric Brody is probably immune to this
tactic, but most people get VERY irritated.
And that’s the point, right?
This is sort of a variation
on the above. Hum or whistle common
jingles while your opponent is thinking – “Mary had a little Lamb”, “Three
Blind Mice”, etc. Nice, repetetive
jingles are best. Then skip notes, or
fail to conclude important lines.
After every move your
opponent makes, mutter, “Ah, the Zhurovski Gambit! Refuted in ‘75 by Spassky in
the
If you’re at a table, play
footsy with your opponent. This is very
distracting, whether the person is attracted to your gender or not!
Snigger when your opponent
moves. Simple, but in the early part of
a game, devastating.
Actually, with the exception of fidgeting during the
critical portions of my games, I very rarely engage in any sort of distracting
behavior. Anymore, at least. Usually.
The critical aspect of chess that all of those first
points highlight is, of course, that much of the action does NOT take place on
the board. The board is just a
manifestation of the swirl of vectors you are constructing in your own mind. The player with the better grasp of the
vectors wins! While I hardly feel the 6
“tips” listed above are appropriate, they do indicate that disrupting your
opponent’s view of the complex system you both are manipulating gives you a big
advantage. So, don’t play for money or
for wagers which involve humiliating penalties for the loser:
1) Against extremely attractive
people (fortunately, very few extremely attractive people play chess).
2) After consuming
quantities of alcohol.
3) After 40 straight hours
of academic grinding (unless you were grinding on other academics, in which
case your body odor and general appearance will give you a HUGE advantage - see
points 1-6 above!)