Hot Topics From The Chessville Forum FICS Cyborg Tourney 1140.1 Best FICS Interface Best World Championship Match Ever Russion Language Chess Books 1163.1 Chess Puzzle Curry System for Beginners Starting In the Pirc 1142.1 Repertoire Books 852.11 How To Look At A Position Improvement Plan 1172.1 Working On Weaknesses Using Chess Software For Improvement Top 10 Players of All Time
GAMES Pablo's Picks Hastings 2003
Nielsen
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1.d4 d5 Hastings 2003
McShane
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1.e4 e5
Past issues of The Chessville Weekly can be viewed at our archives. |
Volume 2 Issue 1
January 5th, 2003 In This Issue Position of the Week New At Chessville Basic Openings - Légall's Mate World Chess Network The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia Poll: Which Young Star Is A Future World Champ? Pablo's Chess News New On The Net From the Editor... Last call for all Fantasy Chess entries. The Corus Super-Tourney starts this week, on the 10th. Deadline for entries is midnight (EST) on January 9th. Join chess players from more then two dozen countries on six continents and Play Fantasy Chess today! This is also the last week to
register for the Online
Chess League's Winter 2003 Tourney. Team camaraderie
and slow time controls - the OCL is a great way to have fun and improve your
game. Join as an individual or form your own team with a few of your
friends; play in the Open, Under-1800, or
Under-1500 sections. Registration closes January 12th, so hurry.
Register Now! [FEN "r4rk1/1bp3pp/p3Pp2/1pb2P1Q/5B1N/1Pq1p1PK/P6P/R2R4 w - - 0 1"] White to move and win - Find the
Solution Opening Strategy: Légall's Mate! Learn how to recognize this famous mating pattern that occurs right in the opening. Opening Preparation: Smith Morra Gambit by Albert Hoogendoorn, Creator and Webmaster of MyChessSite. Read the third installment in his series on this fascinating way to respond to the Sicilian Defense. Chess Today: With the kind permission of GM Alexander Baburin we bring you another issue of his fantastic daily chess newspaper, Chess Today. This new issue, #785 dated January 1st 2003, contains a month-by-month account of the significant chess events of 2002, along with a selection of games which as he puts it, "show you some truly beautiful and simply bizarre and weird positions." International Chess Calendar: We'll track all of the major chess events of the year, inspired by GM Baburin's own accounting of 2002's events. Did you know that on January 5th international chess events are taking place in Ramat-Aviv, Israel; Tel Aviv, Israel; Stockholm, Sweden; Budva, Montenegro; Hastings, England; Reggio Emilia, Italy; Basle, Switzerland; Penrith, Australia; and Budapest, Hungary? International Country Codes - ever wonder what countries abbreviations like ANT, MYN, or SAF stand for? Wonder no more.
Problem of the Week: Test Your Tactical Prowess
Légall's Mate This well-known opening trap is credited to the French player M. de Kermar, Sire de Légall (1702-1792). It also is sometimes called the Blackburne Trap, since the English player Joseph Blackburne (1859-1951) used to catch so many players in it! It can arise in a number of different move orders in a number of different openings, and it's one of the traps you need to know so you don't fall victim to your own greed, and maybe you can even take advantage of your opponent's greed! Learn to recognize the famous Légall pattern in this
instructive article.
World Chess Network
Since September 26th 2002 WCN has been home to John Henderson's "The Scotsman". Each week John provides commentary on a current chess event, and an unannotated master game. Larry Evans also writes a weekly column for WCN - "Larry Evans On Chess". Evans features a variety of interesting items, from current events, to historical reminiscences, to editorial rants. When I first started following WCN I noticed another column, "The Chess Beat" by Larry Parr. The first Chess Beat I saw was dated December 1st, 2001 and provided an in-depth look at "The Uneasy Art of Resigning a Lost Position". Unfortunately, there were no more of Parr's interesting columns until September 1st of 2002, and there haven't been any more posted since. A Chess History section, also by Parr, includes biographies and a selection of games by 21 "World Champions", from Andre Philidor to Alexander Khalifman; results of world championship matches and tournaments from Andre Philidor vs. Phillip Stamma to Vladimir Kramnik vs. Garry Kasparov. Despite the content, the World Chess Network is, first and foremost, a place to play chess, an ICS. To play, you must download their 2 Mb proprietary interface. WCN does offer a free ten-day trial membership, but after that you either pony up for a membership ($49.95 annually for unlimited access) or you can continue to play for free, but only as an unrated, and you can not attend their events: Master Challenges - Pit your abilities versus a titled player head-to-head; Community Challenges - Join up with the other members of the WCN community and combine your chess knowledge to take on a titled player; Attend thier Lecture Series - WCN lectures are geared to all levels of player; Watch Banter Games - WCN takes two titled players and puts them in a head-to-head match where they explain each move to the audience; Play Predict-A-Move - Guess the moves of the masters and earn points for your chess knowledge; and Visit the Chat Room - talk to chess players from all over the world. Finding a game seems a bit awkward to me - there is no seek
graph, a la Blitzen, or many of the FICS interfaces. In fact, you
can not make an open challenge - you can only seek a
game by challenging a specific player. When I was logged on for this
review, the
list of players present showed only 88 of 430 players, and only two of those
were available for a game. Yet I was there only a few minutes before a
challenge window popped up, and I was challenged to a 5-0 blitz game.
Many of the features you might expect to find at a premium-based ICS are
present, including chat, observing other games, and analyzing online.
Check out the World Chess Network
for yourself. Poll:
Which Young Star Last week's poll asked Who Had the Best Overall Performance in 2002? The Best Performance of 2002 was put up by Peter Leko, who edged Garry Kasparov 27% to 25%. Forum Host Kelly Atkins explains his vote: "I voted for Leko because with the release of Leko 2.0, we finally saw him start playing for wins and climb into the top handful of players, plus he's earned a shot at the world championship."
This week's poll:
Which young player is most likely a future World Champion? We offer
sixteen of the brightest young stars in the chess firmament from whom to
choose. Ponomariov, Kosteniuk, Bacrot, Radjabov, McShane, Koneru, ...make
your choice now!
The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia Unsung But Not Forgotten: Isidor Gunsberg is the only player who played in a World Championship match prior to World War 2 who has never had an anthology of their best games published. Gunsberg lost his match to Wilhelm Steinitz in 1890/91. Drawn By Sleep: During the 1937 Chess Olympiad Dutch player Salo Landua fell asleep at the board after making his 11th move against Belgian player Arthur Dunkelblum. Dunkelblum sportingly shook Landau by the arm to wake him up, and suggested a draw, which Landau immediately accepted. Submit your trivia to the
Mad Aussie!
Chessville 20th Bermuda International Chess Festival January 25th to February 9th
More online chess news resources: Chess Crackers - Positions by Ashley & Muhammed Annotated Game: Amon Simutowe - Lim Yee Weng Daaim Shabazz: Metaphysics of the Chess Mind
The Chess Cafe Fred Waitzkin (New York Times): When Chess Was King ChessbaseGMs and Muggles Decide: what are the best time controls? The Man Behind the Fischer-Spassky Show Christmas Puzzle Week - The new puzzles are here Mig on Chess #183 Jeremy Silman Silman's Basic Tactics Chess Anagrams, Word Search, and Consonant Search Silman reviews The Sicilian Sozin, I Play Against Pieces, Secrets of Chess Intuition, King's Indian Defence: Mar del Plata Variation, Starting Out: The Caro-Kann,and The Nimzo-Indian: 4.e3 Scholastic Chess Update Newsletter December, 30 2002 -- Issue 13 FIDE OnlineJanuary Ratings Lists
Cramer Awards Letter toChess-in-the-Schools New Haven Register: After-School Program A Brain-Twisting Success Chess Siberia5 of the newspaper "64" for November, 1936 Vote for the Player, Game of the Month for December Player of the Month for November: Garry Kasparov Aleksandrov, A - Adams, M, Bled 2002, Best Game of November: Chesshaven - Master Tips The PawnPusher - Lazy Players Guide to the Scotch Gambit Mechanics' Institute Chess Room IM John Donaldson: Newsletter #120, 1-1-03 Tim Krabbé's Open Chess Diary - 198: More Ridiculous Wins On ICC Seagaard Chess Reviews Batsford Chess Puzzles (Leonard Barden) Chess Brilliancy (Iakov Damsky) RusBase Part Two - Added More From 1951, 1980 Annotated Games
Nick Beqo:
Sevillano-Beqo, Las Vegas 2002 Puzzles & Problems
Chessville -
Problem of the Week Tell us about your favorite site that you would like us to
keep an eye on for you. Write:
Newsletter@Chessville.com Position of the Week: Solution
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But the enemy has the move, and he is about to open his full game. And
pawns are as likely to see as much of it as any. Sharpen your blade! – J. R.
R. Tolkien Thank you for a very enjoyable game. – HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) I played chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes; only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently. – Mark Twain (from Life on Mississippi) 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. No chess player sleeps well. If a ruler does not understand chess, how can he rule over a kingdom? – King Khusros II Excellence at chess is one mark of a scheming mind. – Sherlock Holmes (by A. Conan Doyle)
Check out all the links to free game collection downloads at Lars Balzar's site
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