misc

Mopping Up

There were three issues raised at the start of the summer that I haven't dealt with yet, and thought I'd offer some reflection.  It turned out that the people who wanted to work on these issues aren't around at the moment, so I might come back to these!
  1. Making practice (at club and at home) really helpful in terms of improvement
    That would be a good thing to solve!  Well, in many ways I've tried to promote and model this over the last few years, so I will be brief here.

Level 290

We're used to doing puzzles which might be mate-in-one (Level I), mate-in-two (Level II) and so on. Someone asked on Friday, what's the highest level you can get? Well, I have heard of a 1220-move monster by Babson, but that has some peculiar conditions.

The most moves in a forced-mate problem with no conditions is this one, from Otto Blathy, who published a whole book of such monsters.

Mate in 290 -- best of luck!

Chessboxing

Following Andy Costello's good performance and much interest in his other sport at Torbay, I wondered if people would be interested in knowing more about chessboxing :
  • Chessboxing article in the Guardian
  • Chessboxing feature on the BBC
  • One of Andy's fights on YouTube
  • Material imbalance: Queen for Two Rooks

    I have to say, if this is the aspect of your game most in need of fixing, then count yourself lucky, but there are some general lessons to be learned.

    Example games:

    Ish follows some theory:

    Ramdewar I. - Edney R. [B76]

    Kramnik wins with the Rooks:

    Leko P. - Kramnik V. [C42]

    Fischer wins with the Queen:

    Portisch L. - Fischer R. [E45]

    The Queen on the attack:

    Janowsky - Lasker

    The Rooks make a team:

    Euwe - Rubinstein [D05]

    So, what features favour the Rooks, which the Queen?

    Yusupov loses to the Queen:

    Jussupow A. - Shaked T. [E81]

    The Knight's Tour

    Exeter Junior Chess Club: Knight's Tour Problem


    Active Chess

    From Sverre.Johnsen@dnv.com  Fri Nov 21 12:27:48 1997
    
    Anyway these activities are very popular in Norway. When organizing
    summer camps or larger team competitions we always try to find some
    time for social/ physical activities like "relay-chess", "basket
    chess" or "chat-team" competitions. A brief explanation:
    
    RELAY-CHESS
    
    This is a competition between two teams. It is basically an ordinary
    game of chess where the teams have to run a bit to do their
    moves. They can each have from 2 to app.12 players. It is not

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