"A blockaded bishop is of little value" - Lisa Simpson

Anyone can hang a piece, but a good blunder requires thought.

“The game of chess has never been held in great esteem by the North Americans. Their culture is steeped in deeply anti intellectual tendencies. They pride themselves in having created the game of poker. It is their national game, springing from a tradition of westward expansion… they distrust chess as a game of Central European immigrants with a homesick longing for clandestine conspiracies in quiet coffee houses. Their deepest conviction is that bluff and escalation will achieve more than scheming and patience (witness their foreign policy).”

"Style, I've got no style."

"no one ever won a game by resigning"

"A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound but leaves your opponent dazed and confused"

"After giving a student the basic mating patterns and strategies you must begin giving them advanced concepts. At first these ideas will not make sense, many players will have a vague idea of what you are talking about but nothing more. Even a fragmented understanding of these concepts will prove useful though, and eventually they will improve as these lessons are assimilated by repetition and example." Jeremy SILMAN, The Amateur's Mind, 1995

Compare:

"We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. ... (The "spiral curriculum") ... Is it not possible ... to introduce them to some of the major ... ideas earlier, in a spirit perhaps less exact and more intuitive?"

"O Life, what art thou? Life seldom answers this question. But her silence is of little consequence, for schoolmasters and other men of good will are well qualified to answer for her. She is, they inform us, a game. Which game ? Bagatelle ? No, Life is serious, so not bagatelle, but any game that . , . er . . . is not a game of mere chance ; not Baccarat, but Chess ; or, in moderation, Bridge ; yes, or better still, Football with its goals and healthy open-air atmosphere and its esprits de corps"

...

"Games of mere chance must, it is true, be excluded from this charge. They have abandoned any pretence of Free Will, and consequently their irony is too mechanical to be endorsed by Life’s ; Life may also be mere chance, but she has evolved the imposing doctrine of effort and reward to obscure her purposelessness, and any game that mirrors her must do the same. Let us therefore turn to games of skill, and in the first place to Chess.

"I play the Evans.

"The invention of a naval officer, the Evans Gambit is noted for its liquidity. A heavy current rapidly sets in from the south- west and laps against the foundations of Black’s King’s Bishop’s Pawn. The whole surface of the board breaks into whirlpools. But sooner or later out of this marine display there rises a familiar corpse. It is mine. Oh, what have I been doing, what have I been doing ? The usual thing. Premature attack, followed by timidity. Oh, why didn’t I move out my Rook’s Pawn ? Be- cause as always I was misled by superficial emotions. No, not as always. It must be that the Evans doesn’t suit my style. Henceforward I play Old Stodge.

"I do so. There is nothing liquid about Old Stodge. He smacks of the soil. On either side runs a dreary ridge of Knights and Bishops. Between them is a plain (whence the term of Giuoco Piano) where the Pawns butt one another like rams. The powers of earth move slowly to the shock, then topple over with alternate and uninspiring thuds. It’s supposed to be an exchange, But when the lines of the new landscape emerge from the dust, what familiar corpse is disclosed ? Mine. Oh, what have I been doing ? The usual thing. My character has come out. If I go down to the depths of the sea, it is there ; if I seek . the heart of the hills it is there also. Chess, which severely eliminates accident, is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in Life. In Life we can always blame the unknowable for our failures, wave the hand to some horizon, shake the fist at some star. But surely when we make the same mistakes in the Evans, Old Stodge, the choice of a tie, a row in the office and a love affair, the same defect must be to blame — character ; for which, the men of goodwill hasten to remind us, we are entirely and eternally responsible.

"Since there are these two elements in life, the uncontrollable and that which we are supposed to control ; and since games of chance exaggerate the former and Chess the latter — what game reflects their actual proportion ? "

XLVIX."'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and DaysWhere Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,And one by one back in the Closet lays. "Rubaiyat of Omar KhayyamRendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald, First Editionhttp://www.teachersoft.com/Library/poetry/fitzgrld/chapt01.htm"Impotent Pieces of the Game He playsUpon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;

"It was night. I went home and put my old house clothes on and set the chessmen out and mixed a drink and played over another Capablanca. It went fifty-nine moves. Beautiful, cold, remorseless chess, almost creepy in its silent implacability.When it was done I listened at the open window for a while and smelled the night. Then I carried my glass out to the sink sipping it and looking at my face in the mirror.'You and Capablanca,' I said."

"If you have any doubt what to study, study endgames. Openings teach you openings. Endings teach you chess."

"Well, hmmm, endgames, yes, they are important, Yaaaaawwwwnnnnn!"

1. From: Dan ScoonesMoments when you should sense DANGER in chess:There has been a change in the pawn structure. Your opponent has 8 and you don't have any.Your opponent begins to throw pawns at your eyes.You have a postion won but your opponent has a gun.The Director tells you not to bother turning in your scoresheet after the game.Before game begins you notice your opponents 1st initialsare 'GM'.After completing your development you sense your opponent playing the endgame.

"To play with correctness and skill the ends of games, is an important but a very rare accomplishment, expect among the magnates of the game."

About the Deeper Blue-Kasparov match (1997):" I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov. "

"When Garri Kasparov wrestles with his conscience, he always wins. It's what he's best at."

"Chess, like the tomb, levels all grades of conventional rank and distinction and reserves its high places for the best players."

"Chess is above all a fight"

I have formulated a rule for myself which I call the principle of the worst piece:"In positions of strategic manoeuvring (where time is not of decisive importance) seek the worst-placed piece. Activating that piece is often the most reliable way of improving your position as a whole."

"A draw can be obtained normally by repeating three moves, but also by one bad move.""The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake"

36. Ne1?"Well, well. IM (and correspondence GM) Douglas Bryson once told me that he almost never plays a game that flows smoothly from start to finish; there is always a "moment" of sorts where someone misses a big defensive opportunity or the nature of the position changes more than one might reasonably expect. This was such a "moment"."

" I have also heard that GM Oscar Panno said that -whenever you have to make a rook move and both rooks are available for said move- you should evaluate which rook to move and, once you have made up your mind... MOVE THE OTHER ONE!!! "

"The idea comes before the logical argument."

"The technician, whose vocabulary has been doubled by Dr. Euwe, will find that White could have saved his soul by a desperado combination. Had this failure anything to do with the fact that Dr. Euwe's terminology was not yet existent at that time!?"

"It is the aim of the modern school, not to treat every position according to one general law, but according to the principle inherent in the position."

"It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realisable plan"

"I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings"

"Always deploy," says Franklin K. Young, "so that the right oblique can be readily established in case the objective plane remains open or becomes permanently located on the centre or on the King's wing, or that the crochet aligned may readily be established if the objective plane becomes permanently located otherwise than at the extremity of the strategic front."  If this is somewhat obscure (and I see no reason to believe otherwise), the conclusion it reaches is stated in limpid prose by the same writer:

Chess and life"Luzhin, preparing an attack for which it was first necessary to explore a maze of variations, where his every step aroused a perilous echo, begain a long meditation: he needed, it seemed, to make one last prodigious effort and whe would find the secret move leading to victory. Suddenly, something occurred outside his being, a scorching pain - and he let out a loud cry, shaking his hand stung by the flame of a match, which he had lit and forgotten to apply to his cigarette.

"At that time two opposing concepts of the Game called forth commentary and discussion. The foremost players distinguished two principal types of Game, the formal and the psychological."

(another personal favourite)" A combination composed of a sacrifice has more immediate effect upon the person playing over the game in which it occurs than another combination, because the apparent senselessness of the sacrifice is convincing proof of the design of the player offering it.

This issue's Colemanballs selection:"Football today, it's like a game of chess. It's all about money."NEWCASTLE UNITED FAN, Radio 5 Live(R. Webb)

All openings are sound below master level.[LOMBARDY?]Choose an opening... which is sound, regardless of fluctuations in current theory.[HOROWITZ and REINFIELD, in recommending the Sicilian Dragon(!)]when I'm white I win because I am white, when I'm black I win because I am Bogulyubov"

"Deux fous gagnent toujours, mais trois fous, non!"

Here are some of the questions and answers to an examination paper in chess that was given some time ago by Dr. TARRASCH. (...)"Q: What is the object of playing a gambit opening?A: To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game.  Q: Account briefly for the popularity of the Queen Pawn Opening in matches of a serious nature.A: Laziness.  Q: What is the duty of an umpire where a player wilfully upsets the board?A: Remove the bottle.

"The captain was a good chess player, and the games with him were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting that they were foolish."

From: johnnymc@news.rio.com (John McMenamin)  Here's my entry to this mess:"Skeletons of mice are often to be found in coconuts, for it is easier to get in, slim and greedy, than to get out, appeased but fat."

"Henry won fo much at Cheffe of Louis the King's eldest fon, as hee growing into Choller, called him the fonne of a Baftard, and threw the cheffe in his face. Henry takes vp the Cheffe-board, and ftrake Louis with that force as drew bloud."

"Never go in against a Sicilian when *death* is on the line!"

<blockquote><em>"After white's reply to 1.e4 e5 with 2.f4 the game is in its last throes"</em></blockquote>

"The life of the American chess master is a `vale of tears'."

"The hardest game to win is a won game."

"The older I grow, the more I value Pawns."

"There are no heroes in chess."

"Pawn endings are to chess what putting is to golf."

"There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine."

"Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all."

"All chess masters can play one game blindfolded."

"There is no remorse like the remorse of chess."

"Let the perfectionist play postal."

From time immemorial, chessmasters have excelled at two things: chess and alibis.

Ask yourself the following question, “Of all the games I have lost recently, what percent were lost because of something I did not know, and what percent were lost due to something I already knew, but were not careful to look for?”

GM Barcza was helping GM Szabo prepare for a candidates' tournament. They were working on a particular line but couldn't figure it all out. Barcza finally said, "It must be tried out! And let the better player win!" Szabo cried out, "That is exactly what I do not want to happen!"

"The essence of chess is thinking about what chess is."

"I hate anyone who beats me."

"Chess is a curse upon a man."

"Life is too short for chess."

"Chess is mental torture."

"Pawns are the skeleton of a chess position"

"Openings teach you openings. Endgames teach you chess!"

"Many players, even of a high calibre, will assert, half jokingly and half seriously, that a difficult labour of analysis can be replaced by intuition. 'I played this move in a flash - it was obvious it couldn't be bad' is the sort of thing we often hear in a post-mortem.

"At that age (ten), the odd piece here or there often makes little difference. Rather, ingenuity and the will to win may prove decisive."

" It is often supposed that, apart from their 'extraordinary powers of memory', expert players have phenomenal powers of calculation. The beginner believes that experts can calculate dozens of moves ahead and he will lose to them only because he cannot calculate ahead so far. Yet this is utter nonsense. From my own experience I can say that grandmasters do not do an inordinate amount of calculating. Tests (notably de Groot's experiments) supports me in this claim.

"In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."

"Black is now in desparate need of a good idea. Or, to put it standard chess notation, +-"

"Only a good bishop can be sacrificed, a bad bishop can only be lost."

Remember Soltis' immortal words:"Pawns are born free, yet are everywhere in chains..."

"The most important feature of the chess position is the activity of the pieces. This is absolutely fundamental in all phases of the game (opening, middlegame and especially endgame). The primary constraint on a piece's activity is the Pawn structure."

"Most commentaries in chess magazines and books are superficial and sometimes just awful. Once a certain experienced master explained to me how he worked. You put two fingers to the page with text on it and see that there are only moves under them - in other words, it is time to make a comment.

"Play your best chess by post..."

"To avoid losing a piece, many a person has lost the game."

"Chess is played with the mind and not with the hands!"

"The first principle of attack -- Don't let the opponent develop!"

"It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men."

"I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically."

"Mikhail Gromov, the outstanding Soviet pilot, wrote that if one wants to become a good pilot one must learn the art of self-control. These words may apply equally to chess and to every chessplayer."

"The delight in gambits is a sign of chess youth... In very much the same way as the young man, on reaching his manhood years, lays aside the Indian stories and stories of adventure, and turns to the psychological novel, we with maturing experience leave off gambit playing and become interested in the less vivacious but withal more forceful manoeuvres of the position player."

(fortissimo) "Have you ever seen a monkey examining a watch?"

In article <473jk9$phu@condor.ic.net> rasor@mail.ic.net writes: