Monday, December 15, 2014

Basman in action at the London Chess Classic Rapidplay 2014

In a previous post we talked about the game:
Basman,Michael J - Giri,Anish [A00] London Chess Classic Rapidplay 2014 
Mike Basman's tournament card from the London Chess Classic Rapidplay 2014
is fully respectable if we consider that Basman is 68 years old now and he doesn't play serious chess very often:
see link to the FIDE Rating's site
We have great respect for this chess genius and we would be more than happy to be able to see the game scores of Basman's wins & draws against players rated > Elo 2.400 ...... :-)
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WE LOVE MIKE BASMAN'S CHESS 

Saturday, December 13, 2014

1.e4 Nh6 tournament game between FIDE rated players above 2.250

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Basman,Michael J - Giri,Anish [A00] London Chess Classic Rapidplay 2014

During the recent London Chess Classic Rapidplay, IM Basman played against super GM Anish Giri. Of course he played "his stuff": 1.g4
Basman lost the game, but after 13 moves the game would have been very interesting and approximately equal, had Basman played 13.Bg5!? instead 13.h5?!
IMO the difficulty with 1.g4 is that it is much easier to go astray with it than in standard openings. 
Basman,Michael J - Giri,Anish [A00]

London Chess Classic Rapidplay (5.6), 06.12.2014

1.g4 d5 2.h3 e5 3.Bg2 c6 4.d4 e4 5.c4 Be6 6.Nc3 Ne7 7.f3 Ng6 8.fxe4 dxe4 9.Bxe4 Bxc4 10.Nf3 Bb4 11.Qc2 Nd7 12.h4 Nf6 13.h5 [better is  13.Bg5 (see diagram) Qd6 14.Bxf6 gxf6 15.0–0–0 and the game is open to every possible result]  


Friday, September 26, 2014

Timman - Fries Nielsen 0-1, Politiken Cup July 2014

The Danish IM Jens Ove Fries Nielsen is an original player. 
Here you can see his recent win against Timman where Jens Ove Fries Nielsen played the Hippo.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

TASC Chess Tutorial 2 (CD)

The first 5 Chess Steps material contained in a single CD.
Although this CD has been published a few years ago, the chess principles contained in it do not change in time. Recommended.
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Oct. 22nd 2016 update
The Chess Tutor  is the evolution TASC Chess Tutorial 2 (CD).

Friday, February 14, 2014

More on the "Chess-Steps Method"


 At this web page 
 we read that specific books are recommended for players having a target rating. For instance:
  • Step 4 Workbook & Manual suit players having an USCF rating up to 1750
  • Step 6 Workbook & Manual are recommended for players USCF rated up to 2100
Somewhere I read that Fide Ratings are about 100 elo points lower than USCF ratings. I have wondered if these indications were really correct or if they were a vague guess only. So I made a research on the Internet in order to find  if other chess players, besides me, had published any report of their own success/ratio in solving the Chess-Steps Workbooks.

Unfortunately I found only one.
This is the link:
http://chesstrainerphaedrus.blogspot.nl/2009/12/step-6-and-stoyko-exercises.html
There we can read what follows:

5 december 2009 - Step 6 and Stoyko exercises

At the moment I use two training methods. The first is step 6 of the steps method. I already did this book once (over a period of more than a year) and had an overall succes rate of about 85%.
At first I thought it would be best to concentrate on the exercises I failed to solve. But when I started to pick up the book I noticed that I didn't remember most of the (1300) positions. For this reason I decided to go through the book again. Not surprisingly my succes rate is now about 95%, and I also solve them a lot faster than I did the first time. I consider this work to be largely a kind of maintenance of acquired patterns. (...)

 In another post written on 25 February 2009:
http://chesstrainerphaedrus.blogspot.nl/2009_02_01_archive.html
the author states that :
"(...) I think that for a player of my strength (2050+), (...)
so, that player had a Candidate Master rating at the time he was solving the Chess Steps 6th Workbook.

As my own final success rate of Step 4 is about 95% (my current FIDE rating is 1780), in absence of additional data, for the very limited info/reports in my hands, I suppose that the rating indications provided at http://www.chess-steps.com/index.php may be accurate.
If any reader has gone through the chess-steps workbook and he/she would like to share his/her success ratio, please send an email at ricettario@fastwebnet.it so I will be able to update this post. Thanks.

Friday, January 24, 2014

1.e4 a6!? 2.d4 h6!? tournament game between FIDE rated players above 2.250

THE CREEPY CRAWLY OPENING
A Creepy Crawly game in a Women's Int. Tournament game between the two winners:

see also this link


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Two GMs play a 1.g4 game in a rapid event

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Godena - Montilli, Bergamo (IT) July 2013

A former post discussed Vincenzo Montilli's chess:
http://theamazingchessworld.blogspot.it/2013/01/vincenzo-montillis-games-played-in.html
We are happy to report that in July 2013 Montilli drew a game with GM Godena:

[Event "12th Bergamo Open"]
[Site "Bergamo ITA"]
[Round "2.6"]
[Date "2013.7.19"]
[White "Godena, Michele"]
[Black "Montilli, Vincenzo"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]

1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.Be2 e6 7.O-O cxd4 8.cxd4 Be7 9.Nc3 Qd6 10.Nb5 Qd8 11.Bf4 Nd5 12.Bg3 a6 13.Nc3 O-O 14.Rc1 Qa5 15.Qb3 Rd8 16.Rfd1 Qb4 17.Qc2 Bf6 18.a3 Qa5 19.Ne4 Be7 20.Bc4 Nf6 21.Nc3 b5 22.d5 bxc4 23.dxc6 Rxd1+ 24.Rxd1 Qb6 25.Nd4 Nh5 26.Na4 Qa7 27.Qxc4 Nxg3 28.hxg3 e5 29.Nf3 Be6 30.Qe4 f6 31.b4 Rc8 32.Nc3 Bf8 33.Nd4 Qf7 34.Nxe6 Qxe6 35.g4 Qxc6 36.Nd5 Qc2 37.Rd3 Qc1+ 38.Kh2 Qh6+ 39.Rh3 Qg6 40.Qxg6 hxg6 41.Rc3 Rxc3 42.Nxc3 Kf7 43.b5 axb5 44.Nxb5 Ke6 45.Kg3 Kd7 46.Kf3 Kc6 47.a4 f5 48.Nc3 Bb4 49.Ne2 Kd5 50.Ng3 e4+ 51.Ke2  1/2-1/2

Sunday, January 12, 2014

The Luzhin Defence


Yesterday I wanted to see a movie related to the chess world. So I proposed to my wife to see the movie in subject. She agreed (BTW she has no interest at all in chess) and she liked it a lot. So did I.