The two-minute rule

We had a 4-board match this week where eight Division One chessplayers weren't clear enough about the rules to give much confidence in the knowledge of the rest of you...

Stewart Reuben says in the latest Organiser's Handbook that this rule "...continues to give arbiters problems. ... When I was in South Africa and held a seminar, the local arbiters wanted to spend the whole time discussing nothing else."

The simplest mutual full-point Zugzwangs

Tim came to the club buzzing with these a few weeks ago. [Skip intro] A Zugzwang (German: forced move) is a chess position where, if it's your turn to move, you lose, and if your opponent has the move, you might be OK. Here's an example from one of my own games: anything White does loses. We say, White is in Zugzwang.

A la carte

I have been looking at French repertoires recently, and thought it was useful for my own amusement at least to see what various authors writing for the Black audience recommended.

Repertoire books these days often give you a choice, which is excellent.

Variation

McDonald 2008

Happiness

"Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!", said GBS, but typically there's not a lot of overlap between my day job in health and education and my pastime of chess.

Then two come along at once :)

My colleague David McGeorge called to my attention to some research about going second, which looked at penalty shoot-outs and the game of chess.

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: last minute gifts for the unimproved player

Some tips when choosing a Christmas gift for the chess player in your life. (An odd idea I know, but I think many of them still live with their mum. [Hello, Mum!])

The Ideas Behind Modern Chess Publishing (Gravy Train)

Winning Chess for Humans

Winning Chess for Computers, Super-humans and Mortals...

Charlie Keen emerged triumphant from doing battle in Torbay, equal first with 4½/5, and came home to show his last round game to Fritz... who thought he should have done better! It's enough to make you despair... Do you really have to analyse as well as Fritz? Or play as well as Capablanca and Alekhin? I think the answer is 'None of the Above'... but if you can get a bit better at either tactics or manoeuvring, then that would help!

Woof

Occasionally, two unconnected bits of the world collide in the space between my ears, which can make me laugh.

I don't know if Nigel Short still refers to Judit Polgar as 'Lassie'.

Anyhow, I was doodling online while listening to a repeat of Cabin Pressure on the radio, when I came across this interesting statistic:

Play through PGN collections

The selected PGN file [What's PGN?] from a dropdown menu will be shown in the inline frame underneath
Hover mouse over board squares to see extra controls e.g. b2 = toggle autoplay, b5 = search, f3 = next game, f8 = shortcuts help
See separate page for Canon PGN with index.

PDF versions of handouts

Maintained elsewhere: http://franosch.org/chess/index.html

Club games

I have a prejudice that club games are as interesting and as valuable for study material as master games. I have been asking around for club players' games - not necessarily special ones, just games - with the thought that these 'ordinary' games may also be instructive. Some are presented below.

"Why don't you use more club games in the coaching sessions?"

-- This is a common comment. There are some good reasons why not:

The reason for showing master games is often to illustrate a particular point of strategy so the games I use are often

Exeter Chess Club

A place to enjoy and learn about chess

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