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Online Chess
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The Mall
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No Secrets Perry The PawnPusher The Club library was quiet and full of shadows when I stepped in. With a game coming against Pawson, it seemed a good plan to start with a Vienna, then transpose to the Glek Four Knights. I wanted to see what Pinski had written. My eyes spotted the opening tome, and my fingers tiptoed along the shelf toward it, when they recoiled, in response to a sudden, wracking cough. I was not alone. “Updating,” came a rasp from across the room, centered on a turned-away over-stuffed couch. “Always updating.” My head nodded, knowingly, as the voice continued. “Some openings you can play forever, driving them into the ground like an old Chevy. Other openings need constant tinkering and tune-ups in the shop to keep them in good running order.” I smiled. “Lucky, lucky Paul Morphy,” came my companion. “You know, 20 years after his death, they were still ‘discovering’ some of his games. The way communications were back then, he could get away with any kind of rickety old opening play, and few people would ever catch on.” As the voice cleared, it became more familiar. The philosopher was Perry the PawnPusher. “Even Frank Marshall got away with all sorts of stuff, like his gambit in the French and Sicilian Defenses, until one day it became, he said, ‘over-analyzed.’ Ha! How about just plain ‘analyzed’? It was no longer his secret line, that’s all.” “Nowadays,” I commiserated, sitting down in an armchair, “If Kasparov plays a Theoretical Novelty in a tournament game, by the next round it’s been all over the Internet, analyzed by a score of Grandmasters, refuted twice and improved upon a half-dozen times…” “Then you understand my plight,” sighed Perry. “The Terrible Two-Step?” I asked. He nodded. “Over-analyzed.” Perry, perennially occupying one of the lowest rungs on the Club ladder, and the kind of player Znosko-Borovsky must have been inspired by when he wrote How Not To Play Chess, had audaciously penned and printed his own opening monograph several years ago: The Terrible Two-Step. It advocated moving the e-pawn up one square on the first move, and then moving it again the next turn. That the plan amounted to surrendering White’s first move advantage seemed to have escaped this minor theoretician. “The surprise is no longer there,” Perry moaned. “Now I sit down and face player after player, each armed to the teeth with the latest master analysis, the product of countless evenings of burnt mid-night oil.” Piffle. Anyone who spent more than five minutes thinking about Perry’s monstrosity was, by that measure alone, no kind of chess master. “Here’s what you should do, Perry,” I offered. “Get those chess masters working for you. Start with a half-dozen opening ideas, and track them down in the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings.” Perry shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. The thought seemed to chill him to the bone. “Then,” I continued, “update each of those lines, using Nunn’s Chess Openings.” Perry dropped silently back onto the couch. “Grab a half-dozen Informants and a New in Chess Yearbook or two. See what’s been played and analyzed in those lines lately.” Perry’s eyes had rolled up. He seemed to be drifting into some kind of a trance. “Download two or three months worth of games from ‘The Week In Chess.’ Find your lines and set Fritz to analyzing them. Go on-line and play some blitz games to test out the analysis…” “Or” mumbled Perry. The rest was unclear. “Or?” I asked. “Or,” said Perry, coming back from wherever he had been, “I could identify the underlying principles of my system, and expand them to other opening set-ups.” “Huh?” Perry’s voice was growing as he sat back up. “I could start out with 1.d3!, and then counter-counterattack with 2.d4!! I could call it The Dynamic Dual-Step.” “The ‘Dynamic” what?” I puzzled. But the PawnPusher was becoming inspired. “Just think: I could also start with 1.f3! and then follow up with 2.f4!! The Bouncing Birdie!” Absurd. “Or start with 1.c3! and then play 2.c4 --The C and C-Again! I could call it The Raging C for short…” It was time to beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, I escaped with my senses intact. But, alas,
without my Pinski.
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